trust and the attribution of rationality: inverted roles amongst palestinian arabs and jews in...

Trust and the Attribution of Rationality: Inverted Roles Amongst Palestinian Arabs and Jewsin IsraelAuthor(s): Dan RabinowitzSource: Man, New Series, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 517-537Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803927 .

Accessed: 16/12/2014 19:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Man.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, 16 Dec 2014 19:03:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rai

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803927?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


TRUST AND THE ATTRIBUTION OF RATIONALITY: INVERTED ROLES AMONGST

PALESTINIAN ARABS AND JEWS IN ISRAEL

DAN RABINOWITZ

Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Jewish Israelis tend to regard Palestinian Arabs, including those who are citizens of the state of Israel, as threatening and malicious. Nevertheless, personal interactions between Jews and Arabs in commerce, industry, government and in relations between professionals and clients often involve explicit and implicit ad hoc or minimal trust. Two cases from Natzerat Illit, a predominantly Jewish development town established by the Israeli government in 1957 next to the old Arab town of Nazareth in Galilee, are reviewed. One is of an Arab doctor treatingJewish patients, the other is of an Arab coach in charge of an exclusively Jewish basketball team. The ability of Jewish actors to invest trust in an Arab is shown to hinge on their attribution to him of solid, self-seeking rationality. The analysis ofthis case-matenral, combined with recent sociological and anthropological writing on the link between rationality and risk-taking, offers further insight into the nature of trust.

Introduction

Trust features in sociological literature in two major perspectives (Zucker 1986). One, the origins of which are traced back to Parsons (1939; 1969), 'asserts that trust resides in actors' assumptions that others in an exchange will put self-interest aside in favour of "other orientation" or "collectivity orientation"'. The other, which Zucker traces back to Garfinkel, 'rests on some degree of collective orientation at the beginning of interaction, but self-interest is often expected and legitimate at subsequent stages of the exchange' (1986: 57).

The discourse of trust in sociology1 highlights the function of trust as 'a deep assumption underwriting social order' (Lewis & Weigart 1985b: 455; see Shapiro 1987 and Roniger 1990 for more recent examples). This article, which focuses on relations betweenJews and Palestinian Arabs in Israel, attempts a more specific analysis of the links between risk, rationality and trust in interpersonal interaction. I shall show that in the adversarial context of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel rational self-interest is not merely a more or less legitimate option. Rather, I argue, it becomes the principal and most efficacious conjecture underwriting trust.

Jewish Israelis generally view Arabs, including the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, quite negatively (see Zemach 1980 and Smooha 1992: 233-61 for two outstanding examples). A distinction is suggested, however, between negative stereotypes which highlight perceived inherent qualities (for example white



518 DAN RABINOWITZ

Americans' belief that blacks are less proficient and ambitious) and negative stereotypes which are essentially self-referential - highlighting perceived intentions. My argument rests on the contention that in the eyes ofJewish Israelis, the stereotypical Arab is not so much one who is inherently stupid or incapable, as one whose first priority is to harm Jews at all times, regardless of costs and benefits.

Rather than doubting Arabs' capabilities, then, Jews are suspicious of Arabs' intentions, which are often interpreted as irrational. This sense of imminent danger dissuades Jews from interaction with Arabs - an observation probably as valid for individuals in daily life as it is for official teams in international peace negotiations. Moreover, life in Israel places Jews in more dominant roles. Arabs generally occupy less authoritative positions, where their conduct can be more readily monitored and controlled by Jews. Most routine situations in Israel in fact lend Jewish Israelis the feeling that 'danger' is or can be contained, and that safety nets and exits are easily available should interpersonal relations turn sour.2

There are exceptions though. This article is based on ethnographic observations of the circumstances surrounding two unusual individuals operating in Natzerat Ilit - a predominantly Jewish development town in Galilee. One is an Arab paediatrician who looks after Jewish patients. The other is an Arab basketball coach who, in 1988, took charge of the town's exclusively Jewish team. Tensions associated with the status inversion involved in these cases, and with the investment of trust by Jews in individual Arabs, were exacerbated in both instances by the fact that the Jewish actors involved were otherwise known to hold extreme anti-Arab attitudes, often verging on blatant racism. Put in terms of Luhmann's (1979) opposition between danger as built into the way the world is (i.e. as an aspect of cosmology) and risk as entailed in human attempts to control it (i.e. as an aspect of technology), the starting point forJewish actors was nearer the pole of 'cosmological (Arab) danger' than that of a 'rational technology' of risk management.

The field, in fact, is wider. Trust is routinely evident in Israel as part of interpersonal interactions and co-operation between Arabs and Jews of all political persuasions in business, commerce and industrial relations (cf. Smooha 1992; Horowitz & Lissak 1990: -78-9). Explanations of the phenomenon in terms of existing theories of professional-client relations, while applicable to the case of the Arab physician and his Jewish patients, cannot account for the whole spec- trum of Jewish-Arab interactions involving trust. My more comprehensive argument is that when particular Arabs are identified by their Jewish counterparts as quite obviously acting out of rational self-interest rather than irrational malice, Jewish suspicion, if not resolved, is at least suspended. The old maxim- that 'all Arabs hate us all and are out to get us' is eclipsed by the essentially pragmatic position that 'Arabs, like all other people, are out first and foremost to help themselves'. This, in turn, allows Jewish actors to perceive the Arab individual as more predictable, hence more trustworthy. Ad hoc trust or minimal trust may then pave the way to relatively relaxed interaction, at least within specific limits.

Anlalytical attention thus shifts from the relatively well documented rationality of actors who invest trust, to the less obvious notion of the rationality which actors attribute to counterparts. But the fact thatJewish Israelis sometimes perceive



DAN RABINOWITZ 519

Arabs as rational and co-operative in spite of their being Arab has another, more intriguing implication. Once a Jewish actor sees an Arab individual as someone who has overcome the inherent resistance to peaceful interaction with Jews, as someone who has somehow mastered his own irrational destructive drives, he is bound to attribute this particular Arab with an exceptionally solid rationality. Probably more solid, in fact, than that of many potential counterparts who may happen to be Jewish, but whose motives for co-operation might be unknown, unclear or even dubious. If rationality and predictability are indeed so highly valued in business and professional encounters, there follows the paradoxical, counter-intuitive expectation that interpersonal trust can in fact be sometimes founded in the adversarial context.

Background and methodology

Natzerat Illit, a town of 28,000 inhabitants (State of Israel 1988), was established in 1957 in the midst of an Arab heartland, bordering on the old Arab town of Nazareth.3 Much of the new town's municipal land was formerly under the jurisdiction of Nazareth, and was transferred by central government for the estab- lishment of Natzerat Illit. A small proportion of that land, which had been owned by individual Arabs, was expropriated 'for public needs'.

Part of a concerted settlement drive by the Israeli government, the new town was established with the objective of overturning the Arab majority in the area. The town absorbed new Jewish immigrants from fifty-nine countries, the main contingents in descending order of numbers being Rumanians, Moroccans, Russians, Tunisians and Argentinians. The number of Jewish residents rose steadily throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, with a particularly large rise between 1967 and 1973 (see Garbuz 1973). This growth was arrested in 1985, when the Jewish population of the town declined slightly (State of Israel 1988).

Natzerat Illit was initially designed to be exclusivelyJewish. By the late 1970s, however, young Arab families began renting and buying flats in the town, taking advantage of the relatively low prices of real estate. The majority of Arab newcomers were from neighbouring Nazareth, often regarded as the metropoli- tan capital of the 700,000 Arab citizens of Israel. Nazareth, one of the only Palestinian towns where residents stayed put in 1948, in fact grew rapidly after the war, as it absorbed a large number of villagers whose villages had been destroyed by Israel during the war or immediately after it. The town's uneasy topographical location constrained development, but not as much as the transfer in 1957 of some 15,000 dunams - approximately 3,500 acres - to the municipal control of Natzerat Illit. This exacerbated the acute shortage of land for development in Nazareth, pushing up real estate prices.

By 1989 Natzerat Illit had some 3,500 Arab residents - roughly 15 per cent. of the entire population of the town. The Jewish inhabitants tend to regard the Arab presence as the major drawback of their town. At the interpersonal level, however, neighbourly relations between individuals and families tend to be good.

Natzerat Illit Arabs are predominantly Christian. They are, on the whole, well educated, professional, urban and upwardly mobile (Rabinowitz 1990: 36-43), and perceive themselves as the suburban elite of adjacent Nazareth. Natzerat Illit



520 DAN RABINOWITZ

Jews, on the other hand, perceive themselves as peripheral to the bustling centre of modern Israeli life on the coastal plain. There is a sense in Natzerat Illit of its being what Kramer (1973: 49) calls 'a residual community', and what Spilerman and Habib (1976: 805) call a 'sink' for the less resourceful immigrants - a theme reiterated more recently by Ben-Arn and Bilu (1987: 249). The low self-esteem of Jewish residents is coupled with a pervasive sense of an imminent Arab inva- sion, exacerbated by an acute feeling of isolation from the physical and cultural mainstay ofJewish Israel.

My fieldwork in Natzerat Illit betweenJanuary 1988 and May 1989 took place at a time when the proportional strength of the Arab population in the town was at its height.4 Fieldwork included open-ended as well as structured interviews with both Arabs andJews, casual observations, collection of data in local archives and institutions, and a survey of 247 Arab households. Most of the material presented here is based on casual talks and interviews during the main period of fieldwork.

A special note is in order regarding data from Hapoel Natzerat lit basketball club. Having previously played in Israel's professional basketball league, I joined the squad soon after moving to Natzerat Illit for fieldwork. As an active player, my place in this particular context was natural. Players and management alike were relatively relaxed about my presence, showing little interest in my inves- tigative persona. All were aware of the fact that I was engaged in an investigation of the town as part of a university degree, but none seemed particularly preoccupied with the details. This was unlike my experience in other arenas of fieldwork, where my identity as an investigator was always paramount. Rightly or wrongly, I judged the unique situation in which I found myself within the team - a legitimate participant and only marginally an observer - to be beneficial. Not wishing to compromise this unexpected vantage point, I simply refrained from positive acts of inquiry, limiting myself to casual, noncommittal queries. The material I present on Hapoel Natzerat Illit is thus based exclusively on casual observations. I never had a notebook, writing utensils or an audio recorder with me in the context of the basketball club. My entire record of it is based on notes taken iinmediately after my return home from the gym (which, fortunately, was only minutes away). None of the names of individuals appearing in the text is real.

An Arab or a doctor?

Like most development towns in Israel, Natzerat Ihlit suffers from a chronic shortage of doctors. None of the doctors serving the community is a long-term resident of the town. Many - particularly specialists - live elsewhere, attending clinics once or twice a week. There is no hospital. Kupat Holim Klalit (KHK) - Israel's largest health insurance scheme, run by the Histadrut trade union federation - operates two medium-sized clinics, but requires patients to travel to Afula or even Haifa for a variety of non-routine checks and treatments. Macabbi, the up-and-coming health insurance scheme which challenges KHK's hegemony, has one smaller clinic.

Neighbouring Nazareth, on the other hand, has a thriving medical community. It has three hospitals (all run by Christian organizations), and a large number



DAN RABINOWITZ 521

of resident specialists - all Arab - who are either hospital staff themselves or have ready access to hospital facilities. A decade-old crisis in public health in Israel, which has left KHK impovenrshed, discourages Nazarene specialists from making themselves available to patients exclusively through KHK. One result is that private health care in Nazareth thnrves, with most doctors routinely seeing patients privately.

Dr Nawaf Sa'adawi, a resident of Nazareth, is a paediatrician. Originally from a village in western Galilee, he is one of a handful of Arabs who graduated from the medical school at the Hebrew University in the 1960s. After his graduation he worked for KHK for a while. He later started his own clinic in Nazareth, and quickly gained a reputation in both Nazareth and Natzerat Illit. Veteran Jewish residents of Natzerat Illit often describe Sa'adawi as 'the doctor who raised the children of Natzerat Illit'. When, upon arrival at Natzerat Illit to begin fieldwork, my spouse and I inquired about medical care for our baby daughter, a Jewish resident of Natzerat Illit, a mother of four, told us, with deliberate exaggeration in order to emphasize her point, 'there is only one paediatrician around here. His name is Doctor Sa'adawi'.

A keen, experienced diagnostician, Sa'adawi commands an up-to-date knowledge of therapeutic methods and a comprehensive acquaintance with specialists both locally and beyond. He operates mainly from a private clinic in downtown Nazareth, but attends a clinic of one of the health insurance schemes in Natzerat Illit three afternoons a week as well.

We soon began to notice an interesting phenomenon regarding Sa'adawi: many of the Jewish residents who testified to his excellence came across on other occasions as strongly anti-Arab. One example is Brakha Benisho, a Jewish resident of Natzerat Illit of Moroccan onrgin. Aged 25 at the time of fieldwork, she had just given birth to her second child.

Returning from the maternity ward of the regional medical centre in Afula, this is what she had to say of her experience:

It was O.K. generally. But the Arab women really brought me down. They really are like cattle, giving birth year in year out, no fail. They are so primitive - you should have heard them scream in the labour room. It made me so angry. And they take so much space. Imagine - Arab women all over the place, with millions of noisy relatives around them, all chattering in Arabic. It is disgraceful, the way the hospital authorities put them with us Jewish women. The least they could do, if they insist on helping the damned Arabs multiply, is put them separately.

On another occasion Brakha complained about KHK, of which she is a member, emphasising the queues, the rude service and the incompetent doctors. She then related the following incident:

My older daughter was once ill with a rare infection which no one in KHK tracked down. It went on and on. The child was suffering. We had no sleep for weeks. Eventually it was too much to endure, and I went to Sa'adawi. Imagine - going to his clinic in the shuk (the market) in downtown Nazareth. All those Arabs, and the dirt. So foul. But then, Sa'adawi, I swear, had one quick look at the poor child, and knew exactly what was wrong. He told me, then and there: it was an infection. A rare one. He wrote the prescription. I got the medicine. The child was well within a day. Not that it did not cost. It did, and how: those Arabs know too well how to take money. Especially from us.5

Dina Hirsh, aged 27 at the time of fieldwork, originally from Tel-Aviv and of European origin, is another example. Herself the mother of a one-year-old child,



522 DAN RABINOWITZ

she was once present when a friend who had recently given birth in the medical centre in Afula described her experience. The narrator had apparently seen an Arab woman who had given birth to a stillborn baby. 'She was so stupid and primitive, that Arab woman', she told her listeners, 'that she completely lost control, and the baby ended up suffocating'. To this Dina reacted instan- taneously: 'Oh good. One less Arab'.

This notwithstanding, Sa'adawi was Dina's ultimate authority on child-care - from nutrition through hygiene to treatment of real and imagined illnesses. There were weeks when she attended his clinic three or four times. She refused to consult any other doctor, insisting that the efficacy of his treatment was unsur- passed.

Brakha and Dina obviously hold extreme views regarding Arabs and Arab- Jewish relations. For Brakha, everything about her experience with Sa'adawi which is objectively Arab (the location of the clinic in Nazareth, the shuk, the people on the way) is negative and threatening. Conversely, all aspects of the experience which are objectively negative (the cost, the distance, the dirt in the shuk) she subjectively links to Arabness. Dina resolves the problem of Sa'adawi's identity by other means. Being a member of the health insurance scheme with which he is affiliated, she is not normally forced to attend his private clinic, and is thus spared the 'Nazareth experience' to which Brakha was subjected. In the context of the Natzerat Illit clinic where he sees Dina and her infant, Sa'adawi's Arabness is virtually obliterated. His (real) family name is not stereotypically Arab. His forename, a more typical Arab name with an obvious Muslim conno- tation, is omitted from spoken as well as written communication in the clinic. His Hebrew is meticulous and authoritative, and is often mixed with English and Latin expressions.

Brakha Benisho had only one episode involving Sa'adawi, an experience which was obviously trying for her. Only one aspect stands in glorious isolation: the doctor's unassailable professionalism. She attributes her daughter's remedy to a specific, magic moment which stands out from the rest of time - a miraculous instance in which all takes place simultaneously: the man observes, identifies, pronounces a diagnosis, and cures by prescription. That is the brief moment in which, for her, Sa'adawi ceases being Arab. For Dina, this mnoment is extended to a routine, buttressed by her insistence that Sa'adawi's efficacy is unrivalled. For her too, one thing is indisputable: it is an excellent, trustworthy doctor who looks after her son, not an Arab.

The underdog as coach

Natzerat Illit has one competitive basketball team, Hapoel Natzerat Illit (hence- forth HNI). Formed in the 1970s, when it joined division 5 (Liga Gimel) - the bottom division of Israel's National League - the team took a few years to be promoted to division 4 (Liga Bet), where it competed from 1984 to 1990.6

The 1988-9 squad offers a fairly representative cross-section of the Jewish population of the town. The oldest player (not counting the anthropologist) was a 28-year-old driving instructor. The youngest were three 17-year-old school- boys. There were two conscripts, a police sergeant, a shop-keeper, a technician and a bank clerk. Five players were of North African origin, four were of East



DAN RABINOWITZ 523

European origin, and three were natives of the Soviet Union who arrived in Natzerat Illit as toddlers in the early 1970s. There were no Arab players in the team.

HNI players were loud and clear regarding their attitudes towards Arabs. One of the conscripts, a military policeman, was stationed as a warden at a nearby military prison, guarding Palestinian prisoners apprehended during riots in the Intffada.7 On one occasion, when the team was at a restaurant for lunch, he recounted the suppression of a riot which had taken place in the prison a few days earlier. His gleeful and gruesomely detailed account had clubs and hose pipes, black eyes and blue faces, streaks of blood, broken toes, twisted fingers and heavily breathing prisoners. His audience, save two who remained expressionless, was as sympathetic and attentive as he was proud. When one of the younger players queried whether 'you guys ever show mercy', the answer was a recitation in unison by two or three of his older mates to the effect that 'these sons of bitches, who threw stones on our soldiers and hurled abuse on the state and the army - they deserve no mercy'.

Another player, a police sergeant, was occasionally summoned with his unit for tours of duty in Jerusalem, to police the Friday prayers at the Al Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount. He once announced that he was going to miss an approaching training session as his unit was about to go to Jerusalem 'to beat and blow those Arabs to bits. Show them the cost of messing with the police'.

One player complained on several occasions that his family's transport business was systematically ruined by unfair competition from Arabs. He repeatedly stated that he was planning to move to adjacent Migdal Haemek, since 'Natzerat Illit is gradually becoming an Arab town'. Another player, an avowed supporter of Meir Kahana's ultra-right Kach movement, once expressed content with the Lockerbie disaster of December 1988, when a Pan American airliner was blown up in flight above western Scotland, killing hundreds. He said:

That's good. It will teach the Americans who Yasser Arafat really is, and that they should not deal with him. That is what the Arabs want to do to everyone. This is how they are, and this is why I don't want them here or anywhere else.8

These statements were admittedly made in public, in the context of a relatively young, all-male, exclusivelyJewish sports team, where discursive survival hinged on lucidity. Debates, many of which took place in a van on the way to or from away-games, tended to consist of short, bold statements, often breeding verbal extremism. In private conversations, some players came across as somewhat more restrained. The overall picture, however, is clear enough. HNI players, like many residents in Natzerat Illit, had definite ideas regarding Arabs. As far as they were concerned Arabs were as dangerous for Israel as they were detrimental for Natzerat Illit. Nice as they may be as neighbours, at the end of the day they are out to get the Jews, who must in turn get tough.

As the 1988/9 season approached,9 HNI management began looking for a new coach who would harness the talent and ambition they believed was present in the squad, so as to promote the team to the third division. Financial limitations and a shortage of qualified local candidates narrowed the choice considerably, until the team manager, a devoted volunteer on behalf of the local workers'



524 DAN RABINOWITZ

council,10 came up with a surprising choice. In August 1988, following extended negotiations, he recruited Shafik Daher, an Arab coach of about 30 years of age.

Daher had an outstanding record. Six previous seasons saw him coach three clubs, all of which were promoted at the end of his first year as coach. One of the three, a club in Nazareth, had been promoted under him from fifth to fourth to third division in two straight seasons, missing further promotion the following season by a whisker. This was corrected in 1987-88, Daher's fourth year as coach, when history was made: the club was promoted again, thus becoming the first ever Arab club to make Israel's National Basketball League Division Two - a fully professional, big league. Typical of many peripheral clubs in Israel, once promoted to the senior division the club chose to drop their local coach and hire a better-known one, with more experience in the major leagues. Shafik Daher was thus fired after his most successful season. Frustrating as this may have been for him, it enabled him to respond positively to HNI's offer and thus to become the first Arab ever to coach aJewish team in Israeli team sports.11

Reproduced below is Daher's opening speech to the HNI squad at the beginning of his first training session as coach. At eight o'clock sharp, he stood up in front of the players who were seated on a bench along the wall in the gym, and spoke as follows:

First of all, if any of you consider being late even by one second for a practice, or for any drill I set, he'd better not come at all. Likewise, if anybody has a pain in his hand, in his leg, in his stomach or whatever, he'd better stay away. I don't like these stories. This must be understood now. My language is good enough. You will understand whatever I have to say.

You probably know me, or have heard of me. So far, every team I coached was promoted. And I intend to go on that way. You will all have to work hard. I may not be here next year, but you will. You remain here. This is your team. I shall insist that you give everything (to the team), which you will.

I did not come here to make new friends. I do not want you to be my friends, I don't need it. My wife, back home, loves me, and that is enough for me. We are here to work, and work hard. I shall not let you off or exempt you from anything. What I want is to practise as much as possible. We have a month and five days until the first match. I would like us to practise five or six times a week, including a concentrated day of training on Saturdays, from morning to evening, or at least from morning to noon. If anyone has a problem with this, let him speak out now.

The players were silent. The combination of the tone and the demands, which represented a quantum leap for an essentially amateur club, was overwhelming. An inconclusive brief discussion of dates and times for approaching sessions ensued, then the practice began.

Daher proved to be eloquent, meticulous in his demands and very tough. Players repeatedly found themselves penalized with extra runs for imperfect ex- ecution of drills and exercises, particularly for failure to complete them within the time budgets allocated. The practice, which was exceptionally long, was relentless. The coach did not smile, made no jokes and reprimanded those players who attempted to exchange a few hushed words with one another. There were two short intervals for drinking water, each timed to last three minutes sharp.

Two strenuous hours after he began the session, Daher finally blew the whistle to signify that it was over, uttered a rapid 'good night' and was out of the gym. The exhausted players, distorted with pain and effort, at once collapsed on the floor. One of them exclaimed: 'This is not a training session. It is the Intifada'. Another added that 'this guy has had specific orders from the PLO: he is here to



DAN RABINOWITZ 525

kill us'. Nobody laughed, and there were no more remarks. People pensively collected their gear and left.

Daher's opening speech, which to an extent determrined the atmosphere in the team for the weeks and months to come, shattered a number of implicit assumptions which Natzerat Illit Jews - and Israeli Jews in general - have regarding interpersonal relations between Jews and Arabs. The speech was of a dominant, confident, often threatening Arab, issuing particular, unrelenting demands to Jews. It was delivered in immaculate, authoritative Hebrew of the kind one tends to expect from Israeli Army officers talking to subordinates, not from Arabs addressing Jews.12 It portrayed the Arab as an ambitious, successful professional, not an underdog. It implied that in the context of HNI it is Jews, not Arabs, who are more prone to backwardness ('I may not be here next year. You will. You stay here'). It had an autonomous, proud Arab rejecting the potential closeness of his Jewish counterparts ('I do not need you as my friends... My wife, back home, loves me and that is quite enough for me').

Daher's capacity and willingness to depart from stereotypical modes of 'Arab' behaviour to Jews was demonstrated on various other occasions which I can only briefly mention here. He was astutely inquisitive and matter of fact when con- scnpts and army reservists found that their military service clashed with practices and matches. His discourse and exposition drew on explicit military metaphors such as valour, esprit de corps in battle, mutual dependence under fire and control of territory - an imagery which deviated sharply from the Jewish stereotype of the Arab as one who shies away from anything even remotely linked to military affairs. The salience of values such as military valour, camaraderie and soldier-like responsibility to the definitions of Israeliness in general and of Israeli manhood in particular has been alluded to by several writers (see Horowitz & Kimmerling 1974; Katriel 1986: 30-1; Ben-Ari 1989; Helman n.d.). One implication is that Israelis find great difficulty in extending these values and applying them to non- Israelis, least of all to Arabs. Daher's choice of such metaphors thus effectively appropriated them from a hitherto exclusivelyJewish sphere of use.

Other instances had Daher use the term 'us' for the team, and allude to 'our mentality' - meaning the team's mentality. In both instances the all-pervasive gulf between Arabs and Jews in Israel was temporarily glossed over. This was coupled with a strict avoidance on Daher's part of displaying any signs of his national identity in the context of HNI. He took great care not to use Arabic words in his speech, to the extent of being acutely embarrassed when Arabic words - including ones often used by Jews in Hebrew - somehow crept into a sentence. The few explicit references to his identity were strictly folkloristic. On one occasion he explained that 'amongst us [the Hebrew word used was etslenu] there is a saying that if you eat Zaa'tar you become leaner, and have much energy and speed.13 So before you come to the next session make sure you have some Zaa'tar'. Another time he had to reschedule a practice session because, as he explained it, a cousin had just married and, since all his evenings were taken up by basketball (he coached a youth team in Nazareth on alternate nights), he had 'not yet been able to visit and greet him. Sunday, unfortunately, remains my only available evening'. While extended formal wedding celebrations are known in some onental Jewish communities in Israel too, their observance amongst



526 DAN RABINOWITZ

Palestinian Arabs is customary. By raising this point Daher was clearly signalling his Arabness.

The Za'atar and wedding episodes dispelled the uneasy silence which had shrouded Daher's identity. Significantly, however, these episodes were characterized by their non-threatening nature. They engendered the folklorization of Daher's Arab identity, rather than its politicization, thus facilitating a more relaxed treatment of a loaded issue. An unbroken silence, I suspect, might have been construed as a more politicized expression. Knowing Daher's political incli- nations, the drift of which was an anathema to HNI players, one can safely speculate that delving into the issues of identity and politics more explicitly and comprehensively would have brought immense tension to his relationships with players and management alike.

Daher's personal authority notwithstanding, the weeks just prior to the formal season and immediately after its commencement exposed a growing rift between the coach and his players in terms of attitudes and commitment. The players, most of whom had never played professionally, found it exceedingly difficult to adjust their demanding basketball schedule to their professional, familial and social commitments. The result was incomplete attendance at practices and matches. Many sessions took place with fewer than ten men - the all-important quorum needed for drills and game plans. Shafik Daher grew bitter and frustrated, and made no secret of his misgivings. It then transpired that he was not getting as much support as he expected from the management or from the leadership of the local workers' council. Most members, I later discovered, had been uneasy about hiring an Arab coach all along.

The first matches in September brought less than satisfactory results. Defeat in the first two matches made the season look unpromising. The players' attendance did not improve, and an early crisis was in the making. An emergency meeting convened in mid-October by one of the veteran players and the team manager was attended by all the players and the coach. During the meeting another fact emerged: Daher was still awaiting his first salary since he began coaching in August.

The players, who had been preoccupied with the reasons which prompted Daher to coach HNI from the fourth division after promoting his former club from third to second, were now asking themselves why he was willing to go on for such a long time without pay. At that juncture, a veteran and highly regarded player volunteered an explanation: Daher, he said, elected to coach HNI so as to demonstrate that he could succeed with a Jewish team. 'He needs to prove it', said the player, 'it is the key to his future career as coach'. This interpretation met with instant approval from the players and was adopted as the most plausible solution to the riddle.

In mid-October, having realized that neither his wages nor new blood were forthcoming, Shafik Daher decided to suspend himself for two weeks. This move had considerable repercussions, though hardly in the direction which Daher had envisaged. The team manager, who had recruited Daher in the first place, and who remained the mediator between the coach and his employers (the local workers' council), resigned. Three new volunteers from outside the inner ring of Labour activists quickly stepped into the managerial breach, forming the new



DAN RABINOWITZ 527

management committee.14 The new committee immediately embarked upon an energetic and successful fund-raising effort. Unrestricted by any moral obligations to the self-suspended Daher, they also appointed a new provisional coach - a veteran player whose experience, considerable natural leadership and immediate availability made him the obvious choice. As things turned out, he ended up coaching the team for the rest of the season, and did reasonably well.

By the time the team seemed to be functioning smoothly under the new management and coach in early November, the local workers' council officials had lost even the limited interest they had in it before. One result was the disowning of Daher, whose claims to be paid for the months he had worked were simply ignored. His court claim against his ex-employers was still awaiting judgment in late 1992.

The players, too, were quick to lose sight of their former coach. Daher's professional impact on the team was soon eroded by new ideas and attitudes brought in by his successor, and his name was hardly mentioned any more. In early December, some seven weeks after his departure, the following conversa- tion took place between two players during a practice session. The new coach had just introduced a novel exercise, but one of the players found it similar to a drill he already knew. He turned to his mate and said: 'This is like the drill we used to have with ... that guy. He used to do this with us, remember? What was his name? ... the Arab'.

The Black professional revisited

Dim-a Hirsh, Brakha Benisho and the basketball players of HNI exemplify an interesting and not uncommon phenomenon. While subscribing to crude derogatory generalizations regarding Arabs, they are nevertheless willing, in certain circumstances, to trust and even subordinate themselves to Arab individuals.

In his The rebirth of anthropological theory Stanley Barrett defines the notion of 'contradictions in personal attributes' (Barrett 1984: 150-8). People's stereotypes and preconceptions of personal attributes, Barrett argues, tend to be arranged 'in binary opposition' which 'push toward polar extremes' (1984: 157). Thus the 'dumb blonde' syndrome reflects an ostensible contradiction between being in- telligent and being beautiful, conversely Falstaff and Cassius reinforce the stereotypical opposition, for Shakespeare and his audiences, between being fat and being gloomy, and so on. Barrett concentrates on the classic contradiction represented by the black professional. White people, he asserts, hold certain assumptions about blacks. Blacks are 'supposed to be poor; they are slaves, or field-hands, or migrant labourers, or factory workers. When one comes across a black physician, which of his (or her) statuses dominates, race or profession?' (1984: 157-8).

The problem was long ago addressed by Hughes (1945) and Lenski (1954). Hughes (1945: 355) observed that non-white, female, non-Protestant physicians of 'lower social stock' are accepted by white Americans only in the most acute emergencies or as exotic healers for the desperate. This assertion, wlhile probably more true of the United States in the 1940s than of the nationwide situation there today,'5 is nevertheless revealing for our present study too. More recent research likewise in-dicates that the chief negative characteristics which white



528 DAN RABINOWITZ

Americans tend to attribute to blacks are lack of ambition, lack of competence and intelligence, underachievement, laziness and inconsistency (see, for examples, E.G. Cohen 1982; 1984). Schuman (1982: 346-9) asserts that the psychogenetic beliefs regarding the sources of black underachievement which were typical of American whites in the early twentieth century have been replaced in the second part of the century by a kind of environmental determinism. The key characteristics, however, seem to remain at the level of blacks' performance (see also Campbell & Schuman 1968).

An important distinction must be made, however, between the North Amer- ican case as characterized above and the one observed in Natzerat Illit. The main difficulty facing white Americans when confronted with a black professional seems to lie in reconciling professional performance with the stereotype of blacks as poor achievers - an incoherence revolving around blacks' capabilities or, more precisely, the assumed absence thereof Exposed to a relatively affluent, urbane and educated Arab community, Natzerat Ihit Jews have an easier and less per- plexing time realizing that Arabs can be successful achievers. The perceived contradiction in personal attributes presented by an Arab professional or an autonomous Arab in a position of authority is thus considerably weaker. Jewish Israelis, including the residents of Natzerat Illit, seem to be preoccupied with other derogatory aspects of Arabness.

The negative views of Arabs held by Israeli Jews have been monitored peri- odically by means of attitude and stereotype surveys (see Peres & Levy 1969; Peres 1971; Robin 1972; Levy & Guttmann 1976; Zemach 1980; Bizman & Amnir 1982; Smooha 1988; 1989; 1992). A striking feature of most survey results is that the qualities which Jewish Israelis attribute to Arabs are primarily self-referential. When asked to comment on 'the Arabs', Jews do not primarily focus on inherent cognitive or affective characteristics ascribed to Arabs. Rather, they tend to concentrate on Arabs' intentions and conspiratorial designs vis-d-vis Jews. Peres, who asserts that 'attitudes ofJews towards Arabs are obviously dominated by the struggle against the Arab world' (1971: 1029), indicates that 76 per cent. of IsraeliJews of European origin and 83 per cent. of those of oriental extraction believe that 'every Arab hates all Jews'. Peres and Levy (1969) likewise suggest that Jews view Arabs as potentially violent.

In her much quoted survey of 1980, Mina Zemach asked Jewish Israeli re- spondents to specify the first five words which spring to mind upon hearing the term 'Israeli Arab' or upon thinking of it. The words were then grouped-into fourteen sub-groups. The largest sub-group (including 35.2 per cent. of the expressions used) was characterized by Zemach as 'reflecting negative emotions - hatred, fear, suspicion' (1980: 82). An additional 13 per cent. of expressions were associated with the Israeli-Arab conflict ('PLO', 'terror', 'murder', 'hatred of Jews', 'the enemy') or with the Holocaust ('concentration camps', 'antisemitism', 'Germany'). This yielded a total of 48.2 per cent. of first reactions directly linked to Arab ill-intentions. Only 16.5 per cent. of the expressions cited referred to perceived inherent characteristics of Arabs ('dirty', 'lazy', 'family oriented', 'sav- age', 'diligent', 'ignorant', 'poor', 'miserable').

In his treatment of what he calls Jewish ethnocentricism, Smooha likewise attributes the way Jews feel regarding Arabs to the persistence of the Israeli-Arab



DAN RABINOWITZ 529

conflict and to Arab dissent within Israel (Smooha 1988; 1989: 150). Trope, too, indicates that Jewish stereotypes of Arabs primarily reflect the perceptions of the Jewish actors of Arabs' intentions vis-d-visJews (Trope 1989: 135).16

The self-referential nature of the stereotypes of Arabs held by Israeli Jews may be typical of situations of protracted conflict. More generally, such stereotypes imply the attribution of irrationality. Jewish Israelis perceive Arabs as motivated primarily by hatred, as revengeful rather than self-seeking, as given to raging malice rather than dedicated to careful choices which would serve their own best interests. This view of the Arab, I believe, is pervasive throughout Jewish Israel. The notion that any Arab can turn his skin at any time, deny his own interests and allow his dark, demonic alternate self to possess him and his actions, features regularly in the discourse of right-wing political leaders. It is often reflected in headlines in the popular Israeli press describing Arabs' assaults against Jews, such as the one in Yediot Aharonot of 16 July 1991 which reads: 'He ran with the axe, waved it about and assaulted as if possessed by a craze'. This attitude is also found, however, in less likely quarters, such as in Amos Oz's description of the Arab twins in My Michael (Oz 1968). A. Cohen's study of the image of the Arab in Israeli literature (Cohen 1987) includes a diverse sample of similar depictions.

Let me sum up the argument so far. The problem facing Natzerat Illit Jews when confronted by an Arab in a position of authority is not his faculty. Arabness for them does not exclude excellence a priori. Their difficulty lies in reconciling Arabness with the benevolent intentions required for responsible authority and for proper professional performance. The issue of trust, not that of aptitude, is at the core here.

Trusting the professional

Trust has often been portrayed as a bulwark of relationships between professionals and clients. The service ideal mentioned by Willensky (1964) presupposes trust. Both professional and client, it is argued, must believe that the client's interests are paramount. This belief separates the professional encounter from other kinds of transaction. It is essential for the performance of the professional's task as it secures the free flow of information, without which the professional is unable to perform.

Goode has taken the issue further. Society, he argues (1969: 292-3), grants professional autonomy only when it is deemed essential for adequate performance of the service. In exchange, the profession undertakes to exercise effective internal control over ethics and performance. The more the client is exposed to potential damage, the more important it becomes for the wider society to spell out the checks and penalties that would protect him or her. Goode goes on to identify the 'person professions' - those which deal with the individual's body, personality or reputation - as ones in which the public is particularly aware of the professionial's capacity to harm the client, intentionally or otherwise. The public is equally aware, however, that person professionals such as physicians, psych- iatrists or divorce attorneys are particularly restricted by codes of conduct, ethics and ideology. Paradoxically, it is in the person professions that clients often feel they are best protected from the potentially hazardous side-effects of being handled by professionals.17



530 DAN RABINOWITZ

There are of course cultural and historical variations. An impressionistic view of mainstream Israel, for example, would suggest that physicians, judges, professional soldiers and civil engineers enjoy a fair amount of popular trust. Advocates, clergymen, academics and media people, on the other hand, are not so fortunate.

Brakha Benisho and Dina Hirsh could be seen as taking a double risk with Dr Sa'adawi. One is the conventional risk that the physician might harm their children or families by misuse of the powerful tools of his trade - his expertise, his prescriptive authority, and the intimate knowledge of the family which he accu- mulates. The other is the specific danger that the doctor, being Arab, would attempt to cause indiscriminate damage to his Jewish patients. It is, after all, the same sort of damage which, according to their world view, every Arab always hopes to inflict upon every Jew, and which they themselves openly wish on Arab children.

One is thus tempted to conclude that where personal well-being is at stake, the comprehensive distrust of Arabs' intentions on the part of Brakha Benisho and Dina Hirsh is subordinated to the basic faith in the professional integrity of physicians, whatever their national affiliation. In the well-ordered context of their encounter with Sa'adawi the two women are clearly confident of their ability to distinguish good faith from malice. This confidence is what enables them to transform the 'danger' presented by the encounter, in a world where every Arab is construed to be threatening, into a manageable risk, anld thus to move - in Luhmann's terms (1979, and see below) - from a 'cosmological' to a more 'rational technological' solution.

But what about the coach? Coaching basketball, at least in Israel, does not constitute a profession in the normal sociological sense. Neither the coach nor those who hire him (the club management) subscribe to the service ideal. The interaction between coach and players is better described as one where interests are fused rather than one in which the interests of players or the club are paramount. Also, basketball coaches in Israel exercise only a limited version of professional autonomy.

The Arab coach, quite obviously, is less of a potential threat to his players and to management than the physician is to patients. This is not to say, however, that danger is completely absent. What if the coach discriminates against a particular player because of the player's obvious political leanings? What if he is out to harm the club representing the Jewish town which so obtrusively asserts itself in the Arab heartland, having expropriated large tracts of Arab lands? What if he sees his unusual position, in charge of young Jewish males, as a golden opportunity for sweet revenge for the humiliation and suffering inflicted on his people in the Intifada? What if he does, after all, get his orders from the PLO, as the bitter joke at the end of the first session tried to suggest?

These fantasies notwithstanding, the players clearly displayed a remarkable ability to disregard their own strong feelings and attitudes towards Arabs and to trust Shafik Daher, accepting his authority unquestioningly. This, as well as the plethora of other instances in whichJews invest trust in Arabs in non-professional contexts such as commerce, industry or government, compels us to seek an alternative explanation that would be applicable beyond the realm of strictly professional interactions.



DAN RABINOWITZ 531

Risk, rationality and trust Trust occupies what Spencer-Brown (1971) calls the unmarked space between the faIniliar and the unfamiliar. Luhmann (1979; 1988) specifies that space as the transition zone between cosmology - where the world is assigned with distinct, fixed dangers - and technology - where the sensation of precariousness gives way to a new belief in technical solutions. It is in this middle ground that we meet the rational construction of both risk and trust whose complementarity or mutual entailment has become a feature of virtually every venture and decision in modern life. Trust, where it exists, is a tentative bridge, consciously constructed between the impossible and the feasible.

Shafik Daher displays a well defined, familiar persona - that of the ambitious, determined and successful competitor. This image is substantiated by two additional and related factors. First, he consistently avoids display of any aspects of his personhood not directly related to his identity as an ambitious coach. He repudi- ates personal encounters to the extent of remaining unaware of his players' surnames, and, for that matter, of their ignorance regarding his.18 He is indiffer- ent to the players' failure to recognize him as a resident of Natzerat Illit, and to their tendency to associate him with Nazareth, where he is known to have coached before. On another level, he carefully circumvents uncontrolled reference to his national affiliation, making sure that this emotive aspect of his personhood crops up only in contexts and idioms which are innocuously folkloristic, not politically salient. As a result, the range of human qualities and attributes in terms of which players are able to relate to him is fairly restricted. The restriction, in fact, is so severe that it eventually exacts a heavy price. The lack of personal faithfulness on the part of the players became painfully obvious when Daher found himself isolated from HNI management and felt compelled to leave.

The other aspect of Daher's restricted identity is even more important. His outstanding previous record, his fastidious attitude towards practice and performance, and his total commitment to basketball and to his own ideas of it were in perfect accord with his apparent ambition and deep motivation. All this did not require explicit formulation: the players could and did discover it for themselves.

Thus in October 1988, when it transpired that besides Daher's professional frustration with the inadequate attendance in practices and the disappointing performance in the league he had yet to receive his first salary, players became preoccupied with his intentions. The easiest solution for them to adopt had to do with his perceived professional ambition. They agreed that his stint with HNI was an important and even vital stepping-stone in his career. This fresh discovery exempted them from the endemic search for cryptic explanations to the riddle of an Arab who chooses to co-operate with Jews. Their distrust and lack of clarity regarding Arabs' intentions, while not eradicated altogether, were easily suspended.

Both Daher and Sa'adawi, who are identified by theirJewish counterparts as employing highly rational calculations, represent a clear departure from the irrational malicious mould which Jewish Israelis so often attribute to Arabs. The ambitious coach is understood to be there because he seeks a brilliant career. The doctor wants to remain a doctor, and as far as Brakha Benisho is concerned, he



532 DAN RABINOWITZ

also wants the client's money. Likewise, Arab keepers of shops in Nazareth (where Natzerat Illit Jews purchase most of their provisions), Nazarene garage owners or Arab parties to joint ventures with Jews all have long-term interests which the Jewish actors easily discern and willingly endorse. This makes the Arabs more predictable, thus more trustworthy, offering the omnipresent Jewish anxiety of malicious Arab intentions a sensible, context-related exit.

Generalization and co-existence

Three interesting questions which emerge from this analysis can only be briefly explored here. First, do people generalize from specific interactions involving ad hoc trust to the wider arena of Jewish-Arab relations? My observations of HNI basketball players, ofJewish patients treated by Arab physicians and ofJews who have ongoing economic ties with Arabs provide no evidence to suggest such generalization. No shift has been observed on the part of the Jewish parties to such interactions towards milder attitudes regarding Arabs. This seems also to be the case in instances of economic co-operation, where Jewish partners, customers or employers of Arabs tend to identify their counterparts in the reasonable and legitimate guise of Homo economicus. The initial tendency to see the Arab as a non-rational, bloodthirsty creature may be mitigated by the recognition of familiar calculations. But however effective within specific, recognized contexts, these realizations do not appear to spill over to other spheres.

Shifting Jewish attitudes towards the Arab involvement in Natzerat Illit's real estate market (Rabinowitz n.d.) provide a vivid example. When negotiating the sale of their own apartments to Arab buyers, Jewish residents of Natzerat Illit seem to be aware of the rational and egotistical manner in which individual Arabs carry on. During the negotiations Jewish would-be sellers often learn of the personal circumstances which push potential Arab buyers to seek accommodation in Natzerat Illit: the housing shortage in Nazareth, the desire to break away from a suffocating family environment and so on. Once the specific deal is over, however, this view of the situation is often eclipsed by a more general view of the problem' of Arabs moving into Natzerat Illit. The representation of reality now changes. The same Arab who, before, was party to a rational and mutually rewarding deal, is now construed as part of a sinister and threatening conspiracy on the part of 'the Arabs' to take over the town and dominate the Jews.

Allport's (1954) assumption that friendly attitudes towards individuals belong- ing to an outgroup should generate a friendly attitude towards the group as a whole has been refuted on empirical grounds by several writers. Horwitz and Rabbie (1989: 118) tend to go along with Amir's (1969) empirical results, which do not support the notion of generalization. Pettigrew (1979) is in line with this negative conclusion. He interprets people's failure to generalize by indicating that their first priority is to defend the stereotypes they hold. This invariably leads them to view the favourable conduct of members of the outgroup as exceptions to the rule. For their part, Horwitz and Rabbie believe that generalization is feasible once persons 'can distinguish between the positive actions of individuals and the negative actions of their group' (1989: 119).

A person's action against my own interests can still be attributed to familiar - and hence legitimate - motives. Jewish residents of Natzerat Illit easily



DAN RABINOWITZ 533

understand Arab individuals who seek a better deal for their families by buying cheaper apartments in Natzerat Illit. Moreover, this kind of realization can sometimes happen at the collective level too, as was the case with Israelis' view of Egypt. Following Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977, the Egyptians were perceived by Israelis as genuinely seeking peace for their own sake. This enabled Israelis to modify their own retrospective views of Egypt's earlier resort to war.

The issue that remains is that of transference. Addressing the issue in terms of rationality and perceived intentions entails a distinction between the private and the collective domains. In this respect, there is no evidence to suggest any con- nexion between what Natzerat IllitJews see as the legitimate attempts of Nawaf Sa'adawi and Shafik Daher to further their own personal careers, and what they perceive to be the malicious collective drive of Israel's Arabs or the Palestinian national movement at large. Only a realization on the part of Israelis that the Palestinians as a group guide themselves primarily by self-seeking rationality - rather than by irrational hatred - can facilitate a shift of attitude towards them. Should that happen, a change along the lines we witnessed in the individual cases discussed above is perfectly possible. But a generalization from one domain to the other is nowhere evident.

The second question is whether any of this can be applied to the realm of interventive efforts for mutual understanding and better co-existence between embattled groups. Individuals and organizations committed to this worthy cause, it must be pointed out, often find solace and encouragement from evidence of 'normal' patterns of co-existence such as, for example, economic co-operation. But if generalization is indeed unlikely, attempts to use context-related ad hoc trust as an anchorage for the promulgation of an ethos of peaceful co-existence seem futile. My analysis in fact highlights the salience of the fresh and inde- pendent discovery by Jewish actors of an underlying calculative mentality on the part of Arabs. The chances of successfully reproducing this in educational or otherwise contrived contexts are slim.

Finally, there is the question of mutuality. Do Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel tend to attribute rationality to theirJewish Israeli partners? The evidence at hand is only impressionistic, and my answer - in the affirmative - cain thus only be tentative. Before and mainly after 1948 the Palestinian Arabs who interacted with Israelis, in particular those Palestinians who became citizens of Israel, have been exposed to a wide variety ofJewish activity which they seem to interpret primarily as genuine efforts on the part of the Jews to better their own lot. As members of the minonrty group after 1948 the Arabs have always been carefully attuned to trends and processes in the Jewish conmnunity, and have gradually gained a thorough knowledge of it. The intensive preoccupation of the Jewish community in Israel with the formidable problems associated with infrastructure and economic development, housing, agriculture, industry and other areas, has often been directly at the Arabs' expense: the expropriation of Arab land, active discrimination against Arabs in budget allocation, restnrcted opportunities for Arab individuals, discriminatory laws of citizenship and so on. No-one is more aware of the ubiquity and gravity of these inequalities than Israel's Palestinian Arabs themselves. And yet, I suggest, most Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel do not attribute to Jewish Israelis an irrational obsession to cause harm to them at all



534 DAN RABINOWITZ

costs. This is reflected in the pattern of Arab political protest within Israel, whose very existence implies a basic belief on the part of Arabs in negotiated improve- ment. This belief could hardly be sustained ifJewish Israelis were attributed with irrational anti-Arab malice.

This, I believe, creates a major distinction between the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians and Arabs elsewhere, including the occupied territories. The overriding interpretation of Israel in the Arab world remains an essentially self-referential one, whereby Israel is portrayed as an evil entity, inex- plicably and constantly obsessed with dominating Arab land and Arab sovereignty. Arab military and political rhetoric is rife with explicit references to Israel as driven by satanic forces rather than by the reasonable pursuit of realistic goals and interests.

The Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, in spite of their estrangement from the mainstream of the state, still seem to hold a firm belief in the rationality ofJewish Israel. This may be one of the reasons for their genuine determination to stick to a future within the Jewish-dominated state.

NOTES

This article is based on fieldwork conducted in Natzerat Illit between January 1988 and May 1989. Subsequent trips were made in 1989, 1990 and 1991. Partial funding for the project was received from the William Wyse Fund, Trinity College, Cambridge, the Merchant Taylor Fund, Pembroke College Cambridge, and the AVI Foundation of Geneva. I am grateful to Ernest Gellner, Declan Quigley, Enrk Cohen, Barukh Kimmerling, Yoram Bilu, Henry Rosenfeld, Tim Ingold and to the two anonymous reviewers appointed by Man for their comments on earlier versions of the text, and to Don Handelman for his comments on trust in the adversarial context. I am also indebted to members of the writing-up seminar in Cambndge (1990), and to partici- pants in the staff seminars in the departments of Sociology and Anthropology at Haifa University (1990), and at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem (1991), for their valuable suggestions.

1 Theoretical discussions of the main issues related to trust can be found in Blau (1964; 1968), Deutch (1962), Garfinkel (1963; 1967), Henslhn (1972), Holzner (1973), Luhmann (1979; 1988), Barber (1983), Lewis & Weigart (1985a, 1985b), Zucker (1986), Shapiro (1987) and Roniger (1990). My own analysis follows the perspective of Hart's (1988) discussion of the Frafras of Accra, Gambetta's (1988) analysis of the nineteenth century mafiosi in Southerni Italy, and Lorenz's (1988) argument concerning the relationships between industnalists and sub-contractors in France.

2 Smooha (1992: 236-7) indicates that Israeli Jews regard their dominance in interpersonal interaction with Arabs as taken for granted, and are consistently averse to change in this respect.

3My spelling of the town's name, 'Natzerat Illit', is a tranlsliteratioin of its official Hebrew name. Natzerat is the official Hebrew appellation of the neighbouring old Arab town E-Nasera, known in Eniglish as Nazareth; lit is 'upper'. It should be noted, however, that Israeli maps, signposts and documents in English carry the town's name in a vanety of forms, including Upper Nazareth, Nazareth lit and Natzeret Illit. Writers in English use various forms too, most frequent of which is Upper Nazareth - a term hardly ever uttered in daily use.

The Jewish inhabitants of Natzerat Illit are appalled whenever they encounter the erroneous suggestion that their town and adjacent Arab Nazareth might be one and the same. Cunously, however, many of them refer to their town as simply Natzeret - the folk term most often used by Jewish Israelis for old Arab Nazareth. In recent years they have been more often inclined to use Natzeret Illit.

The Arab inhabitants of the area, including those residing in Natzerat Illit, use other appella- tions for it. One most frequently used is E-Shikun - 'The housing estate'. Nassera el U'iya - 'Upper Nazareth' - is also used sometimes, as is Natzeret Illit.

4 This article does not cover the significant changes which occurred in Natzerat Illit as of 1990, after the arrival of an unprecedented wave of Jewish immigrants from the then Soviet



DAN RABINOWITZ 535

Union. The wave, which resulted in the addition of 7,000 to 10,000 Jewish residents to the town by early 1992, is having a far-reaching impact on a variety of aspects of the social life of the town, not least on relations between Jews and Arabs.

5 Since Sa'adawl is presently not affiliated with KHK, where Bracha and her family are in- sured, her visit to him had to be paid for privately. The selection of specialists in Natzerat Illit being as poor as it is, to consult a Jewish specialist she would have had to look further afield, to Haifa or Afula.

6 Following the 1990 season Hapoel Natzerat lit was promoted to the 3rd division. In 1991 it competed for promotion to the 2nd, eventually losing by a narrow margin. It remains Natzerat Illit's only competitive basketball team, and one of the town's chief sporting representatives.

7 The popular uprising of the Palestinians in the terntories occupied by Israel since 1967, which began in December 1987.

8 Investigations in Britain and abroad have established unequivocally that the PLO was not involved in either planning or executing the operation.

9 Most sports in Israel are played in year-long seasons which tend to correspond to the academic calendar, beginning in September or October and ending in June. Summer months are used for rest, regrouping and preparations for the coming season.

10 Competitive sport in Israel is controlled by politically onented sports federations. The big- gest federation, Hapoel, to which the Natzerat Illit basketball team belongs, is affiliated with the Histadrut trade union federation. The local Histadrut branch is the chief source of funding and organizational resources.

11 Arabs have not ascended to significant heights in any of Israel's main sporting establishments. Two outstanding exceptions are the rather marginal sports of weightlifting and boxing, which are considerably more popular in the Arab sector than they are amongst Jews. Arab coaches and managers have made their mark in these two sports. The head coach of the Israeli national team in 1991 was a Christian Arab. 1991-2 also saw Rifa't Turk of Jaffa, a former football player of Israel's national team and Hapoel Tel-Aviv, appointed as Hapoel Tel-Aviv's coach (under a Jewish manager).

12 Daher's proficiency in the production of such parlance was probably acquired during his academic training at Israel's main sports academy, the Wingate Institute (named after the Bntish Colonel Charles Ord Wingate). The Institute trains students to use curt, military-like orders when issuing exercise demands to their future trainees and students. Military tone and jargon thus feature as an integral part of physical education in Israel.

13 Zaa'tar is the Arabic word for thyme. It is also the name of a popular spice, made in Arab households by grinding thyme with other herbs. In recent years it has become almost equally popular amongst Jews in Israel. The name Zaa'tar has been incorporated into Hebrew with no alteration, though most Israelis are aware of its Arabic ongin.

14 The nationwide crisis of the Hapoel sports federation brought about a similar solution in many branches. Locally organized voluntary associations were often invited to take over the re- sponisibility for senior competitive teams, sometimes even for youth activities. Relinquishing some control over a potential focus of public interest, the local workers' council branch thus nevertheless freed itself from crippling debts and a considerable workload for its officials.

15 Hughes (1945) went on to indicate, for example, that the common solution in the U.S.A. seems to have been a form of voluntary segregation, by which, for example, women lawyers represent women clients and black personnel managers 'act only in reference to negro em- ployees'.

16 These findings, with their emphasis on intentions rather than attributes, suggest a certain modification of Said's assertion that the Zionist view of Palestinians - which he sees as an ampli- fication of the Western view of the Orient - portrays the Palestinians as equally vicious and stupid (Said 1980: 26).

17 Recent studies of trust as a social reality (Lewis & Wiegert 1985a), trust as a commodity (Shapiro 1987) and the concerted efforts aimed at the production of trust (Zucker 1986) seem to adopt a similar approach to trust as a 'climate' regulated by and for society.

18 For non-Arabic speakers such as HNI players, Shafik Daher's real name is somewhat difficult to fathom: both parts could denote either a family name or a forename. In fact, most players were unclear as to which was what. Some who addressed him or referred to him by his surname were obviously under the impression that they were using his forename.



536 DAN RABINOWITZ

REFERENCES Ailport, W. 1954. The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison Wesley. Amir, Y. 1969. Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations. Psychol. Bull. 71, 319-42. Barber, B. 1983. The logic and limits of trust. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press. Barrett, S. 1984. The rebirth of anthropological theory. Toronto: Univ. Press. Ben-An, E. 1989. Masks and soldiering: the Israelh army and the Palestinian uprising. Cult. Anthrop.

4, 371-89. & Y. Bilu 1987. Saints' sanctuaries in Israeli development towns: on a mechanism of urban

transformation. Urban Anthrop. 16, 243-72. Blzman, A. & Y. Amir 1982. Mutual perceptions of Arabs and Jews in Israel. J. cross-cult. Psychol. 13,

461-9. Blau, P.M. 1964. Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley.

1968. Social exchange. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, vol. 7. New York: Macmillan & Free Press.

Campbell, A. & H. Schuman 1968. Racial attitudes infl,fteen American cities. New York: Praeger. Cohen, A. 1987. The image of the Arab in Israeli children's literature. Haifa: Univ. of Haifa. Cohen, E.G. 1982. Expectation states and interracial interaction in school settings. Ann. Rev. Sociol.

6, 479-500. 1984. The desegregated school: problems in status, power and interethnic climate. In Groups

in contact (eds) N.Miller & M.B. Brewer. London: Academic Press. Deutch, M. 1962. Cooperation and trust: some theoretical notes. In Nebraska Symposium on motivation.

Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Gambetta, D. 1988. Mafia: the price of distrust. In Trust (ed.) D. Gambetta.Oxford: Blackwell. Garbuz, Y. 1973. Natzerat Illht: socio-economuc development. Shikun Uvniya 38 (Hebrew). Garfinkel, H. 1963. A conception of, and expenments with 'trust' as a condition of stable concerted

actions. In Motivation and social interaction: cognitive determinants (ed.) O.J. Harvey. New York: Ronald.

1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goode, W. 1969. the theoretical limits of professionalism. In The semi-professions and their organizations

(ed.) A. Etzioni. New York: Free Press. Hart, K. 1988. Kinship, contract and trust: the economic organization of migrants in an African city

slum. In Trust (ed.) D. Gambetta. Oxford: Blackwell. Helman, S. n.d. Conscientious objection to military service as an attempt to redefine the content of

citizenship. Thesis in preparation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Henslin, J. 1972. What makes for trust? In Down to earth sociology. New York: Free Press. Holzner, B. 1973. Sociological reflections on trust. Humanities 9, 333-45. Horowitz, D. & B. Kimmerling 1974. Some social implications of military service and reserve system

in Israel. Eur. J. Sociol. 15, 262-76. & M.Lissak 1990. Trouble in Utopia. Tel Aviv: Am Oved (Hebrew).

Horwitz, M. &J. Rabble 1989. Stereotypes of groups, group members and individuals. In Stereotyping and prejudice (eds) D. Bar-Tal et al. New York: Spnnger.

Hughes, E.C. 1945. Dilemmas and contradictions of status. Am. J. Sociol. 50, 353-9. Katriel, T. 1986. Dugri. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Kramer, R.M. 1973. Urban community development in Israel. In Israel: social structure and change (eds)

M. Curtis & M.S. Chertoff. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Lenski, G.E. 1954. Status crystallization: a non-vertical dimension of social status. Am. sociol. Rev. 19,

405-13. Levy, S. & L. Guttmann 1976. Values and attitudes of Israeli youth. Jerusalem: Institute of Applied Social

Research (Hebrew). Lewis, J.D. & AJ. Weigart 1985a. Trust as social reality. Social Forces 63, 967-85.

& 1985b. Social atomism, holism, and trust. Sociol. Q. 26, 455-71. Lorenz, E. 1988. Neither friends nor strangers: informal networks ofsubcontracting in French industry.

In Trust (ed.) D. Gambetta. Oxford: Blackwell. Luhmann, N. 1979. Trust and power. Chichester: Wiley.

1988. Familiarity, confidence, trust. In Trust (ed.) D. Gambetta. Oxford: Blackwell. Oz, A. 1984. My Michael. London: Fontana. Parsons, T. 1939. The professional and the social structure. Social Forces 17, 457-67.



DAN RABINOWITZ 537

1969. Politics and social structure. New York: Free Press. Peres, Y. 1971. Ethnic relations in Israel. Am.J. Sociol. 76, 1021-47.

& Z. Levy 1969. Jews and Arabs: ethnic group stereotypes in Israel. Race 10, 479-92. Pettigrew, T.F. 1979. The ultimate attribution error: extending Alport's cognitive analysis to prejudice.

Pers. social Psychol. Bull. 5, 461-76. Rabinowitz, D. 1990. Relations between Arabs andJews in the mixed town of Natzerat Illit, northern

Israel. Thesis, University of Cambridge. n.d. To sell or not to sell? Professed values and actual practice, the present and the past, the

individual and the collective: reflections on Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. Unpublished ms. Robin, E. 1972. Attitudes, stereotypes and prejudice among Arabs and Jews in Israel. New Outlook

15:9, 3-17. Roniger, L. 1990. Hierarchy and trust in modern Mexico and Brazil. New York: Praeger. Said, E.W. 1980. The question of Palestine. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schuman, H. 1982. Free will and determinism in public belief about race. In Majority and minority:

the dynamics of race and ethnicity in American Ife (eds) N.R. Yetman & C.H. Steele. Boston: Allyn & Acon.

Shapiro, S.P. 1987. The social control of impersonal trust. Am. J. Sociol. 93, 623-58. Smooha, S. 1988. Jewish and Arab ethnocentnsm in Israel. In Arab Jewish relations in Israel (ed.) J.

Hofman. Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall Press. 1989. Atabs andJews int Israel. Boulder: WVestview Press. 1992. Arabs andJews in Israel 2, Conflict and change in a mutual intolerance. Boulder: Westview

Press. Spencer-Brown, G. 1971. Laws ofform. London Allen & Unwin. Spilerman, S. & J. Habib 1976. Development towns in Israel: the role of community in creating

ethnic dispanties in labour force characteristics. Am.J. Sociol. 81, 781-812. State of Israel 1988. Statistical abstract of Israel. Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics. Trope, Y. 1989. Stereotypes and dispositionaljudgement. In Stereotyping andprejudices (eds) D. Bar-Tal

et al. New York: Springer. Willensky, H.I. 1964. The professionalization of everyone. Am. J. Sociol. 70, 135-58. Zemach, M. 1980. Attitudes of theJewish majority in Israel towards the Arab minority. Jerusalem: Van-Leer

Foundation (Hebrew). Zucker, L.G. 1986. Production of trust: institutional sources of economic structure, 1840-1920. In

Reseatch itn orgatizational behavior, 8 (eds) B.M. Staw & L.L. Cummings. Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Faire confiance et rationaliser: l'inversion des roles au sein des populations arabes palestiniennes etjuives en Israel

R&sivme En Israel, lesjuifs ont tendance a consld&rer les arabes palestiniens, meme ceux qui sont de nationalit& isra6lienne, comme etant dangereux et malveillants. Pourtant, les relations personnelles qui s'&tablissent entre julfs et arabes dans le commerce et l'industrie, au niveau du gouvernement ou blen entre les membres des professions lib&rales et leurs clients, se developpent dans un climat de confiance mutuelle explicite ou implicite, mimnmale et limit&e au contexte. L'article fait part de deux etudes situ&es a Natzerat Illit, une ville recente engee en 1957 par le gouvernement isra&llen a la penph&rie de la vleille cite arabe de Nazareth en Galilke. La premiere &tude porte sur un medecin arabe et ses patients julfs. La deuxieme, sur un entraineur de basket-ball arabe et son &quipe, dont tous les membres sont juifs. Ces &tudes montrent que les julfs sont prets a accorder leur confiance a un arabe, a partir du moment oui celul-cl semble agir selon ses int6rats propres. Ces donnees, ainsi que les travaux sociologiques et anthropologiques recents explorant la relation entre nsque et rationalit&, apportent de nouveaux elements pour une meilleure comprehension de la confiance.

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Hebrew University ofJerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel



trust and the attribution of rationality: inverted roles amongst palestinian arabs and jews in...

Documents