Published Paper Details:

The overarching impact of traumatic experiences often challenges contained epistemologies, compelling a re-examination of handed down assumptions. Identity�the most fraughted subject of human civilization�seems to have waged numerous battles on the global platform. Zionism�the struggle for the liberation of Jewish identity on the promised land is one such example which has created an irreparable antagonism between Arabs and the Jews. With the aim of creating a homogenous Jewish society, this �artful violence� has led to what Amartya Sen calls �miniaturization� of people�boxing in existence�that has appalling consequences. The double-edged inclusionary and exclusionary narratives of Zionism is but not merely a product of evil intentions as the media portrays, rather a �conceptual disarray� that lends to the barbarity and turmoil we see around us. A person in reality is a confluence of plural identities�religious, communitarian, cultural, national, civilizational�each of which lends a particular affiliation that varies with the context. Violence is promoted by the cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique, often belligerent identity, which apparently makes extensive demand on us. Thus, there is a need to meditate, understand and respond to this manufactured crisis of human choice crafted by Zionism in the Israeli-Palestinian context that creates an illusion of a single hardened line of impenetrable division between the people of the Semitic faith. The paper attempts to negotiate fuzzy boundaries of Identity with reference to Susan Abulhawa�s Mornings in Jenin that depicts one of the most convoluted and protracted divisions in human history.