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The Bethlehem Sumud Choir of the Sumud Story House, the members of which were interviewed for this article. Source: Photo by Fadi Abou Akleh.
As a national Palestinian concept, sumud, or, literally translated, "steadfastness," carries the meaning of a strong determination to stay in the country and on the land. In this article,1 we will sketch the historical development of the concept and then make the case, on the basis of dozens of interviews and discussions with Palestinians in the West Bank, that today's meanings projected onto the concept have become more plural, "democratic," and closer to people's experiences in daily life.
From Militant Struggle to Nonviolent Resistance
It is likely that sumud, avant la lettre, was part of a collective Palestinian consciousness of struggling for and clinging to the land that goes back at least to the British Mandate time. However, as a national symbol, sumud only started to be frequently used in the course of the 1960s.2 It became part of the revival of Palestinian national consciousness after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) resistance movements emerged as the leading organizations in the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Refugees living in camps were identified as samidin (those who are steadfast) almost by definition, as in those communities the struggle for daily life and national rights required a consistently demanding level of sumud.3
The symbol was all the more applicable when the Palestinian refugees had to defend the besieged camps such as during the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and 80s. Exemplary models of samadin were those whose willpower was tested to the extreme. Popular heroes included Palestinian martyrs and prisoners associated with the armed struggle of the Palestinian resistance groups. In that context, sumud strengthened a militant message of armed struggle dominating the discourse of the Palestinian national movement at the time.
In the course of the 1970s, the discourse of sumud became primarily associated with the Palestinians living "inside," on the Palestinian land. Palestinians who remained in what became Israel in 1948 had already declared their sumud if not in political forms, barely allowed in the 1950s and 1960s when they lived under Israeli military occupation, then at least culturally and artistically. The poetry of Tawfiq Zayyad can be seen...