Palestine

       In Edward Said's essay, "States," he presents the changes of Palestinian identity from the time of 1948, when Israel was made a nation after War World II. Once Palestine didn't exist and Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, Palestinians lost their identity from a worldwide standpoint; other countries didn't recognize them as originating from "Palestine". Yet, when living in other countries, they didn't have the identities of the other citizens. They're recognized as "either 'the Arabs of Judea and Samaria,' or, in Israel, 'non-Jews.' Some are referred to as 'present absentees'" (Said 571). This has led to Palestinians connecting in many ways, much more than they would be if they lived back in their homeland. But, Said writes, "The further we get from the Palestine of our past, the more precarious our status, the more disrupted our being...When did we become 'a people'? When did we stop being one" (Said 591)? Said argues that this unstable status of Palestinian identity is found in all things and all people derived from Palestine, even down to the form of Palestinian fiction, which presents the instability and precariousness also found in Palestinians.

       Said presents the changes that he foresees in Palestinian identity in his essay, while these changes did happen to African Americans from the time of Frederick Douglass, in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, to the way that Du Bois speaks of the Negro American in The Souls of the American Negro: Of Our Spiritual Strivings. Said writes, "When I was born, we in Palestine felt ourselves to be part of a small community, presided over by the the majority community and one or another of the outside powers holding sway over the territory" (Said 577). During this time, Palestinians were close to their roots and their communities, but Said shows while making his father an example, that some Palestinians want to disconnect themselves from the memories of Palestine; he believes it will be a continual process, and the more amount of time that passes without a physical Palestine, the more Palestine identity loses a tangible meaning. This is similar to the black identity in America that changed from African Americans during the time of Frederick Douglass and a wish for freedom from slavery to the identity of the Negro American, who is not tied with Africa nor has a wish to be so. Instead, they want to find their identity within their race, history, and the meaning of being "American."

If Said's essay discusses the exile of Palestinians from Israel, doesn't the argument of the mentioned poem, "The Twenty Impossibles," not follow the arguments of the essay? What is the purpose of discussing the poem in the essay?