Religious Terminology as Consolidating and Mediating between Ethno-National Groups: A Case-Study of the Arab Communists in Mandatory Palestine and in Israel (1925-1967)

This paper uses a qualitative text analysis to examine the use of religious terminology (RT) as a tool for national engineering and achieving of political gains, by the Arab leadership and activists of the Communist Party in mandatory Palestine and thereafter in the State of Israel. Based on the framework posited by Antonio Gramsci, the paper examines how a group of "organic" intellectuals used religion as a tool for inserting ideas and for influencing the public arena, and presents a typology examining the changing circumstances that dictate the modes and purposes of RT usage. The main conclusion from this study indicates that RT was used in order to achieve legitimacy, presence, and dominance in the Palestinian and Arab ethno-national space, the Arab-Jewish joint space, and the cosmopolitan space identified with communism. RT seems to serve as a consolidating and mediating tool in and between the three spaces.