Collective Memory and Narrative Cohesion: A Computational Study of Palestinian Refugee Oral Histories in L ebanon (2025)

Abstract: This study uses the Palestinian Oral History Archive (POHA) to investigate how Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon sustain a cohesive collective memory of the Nakba through shared narratives. Grounded in Halbwachs’ theory of group memory, we employ statistical analysis of pairwise similarity of narratives, focusing on the influence of shared gender and location. We use textual representation and semantic embeddings of narratives to represent the interviews themselves. Our analysis demonstrates that shared origin is a powerful determinant of narrative similarity across thematic keywords, landmarks, and significant figures, as well as in semantic embeddings of the narratives. Meanwhile, shared residence fosters cohesion, with its impact significantly amplified when paired with shared origin. Additionally, women’s narratives exhibit heightened thematic cohesion, particularly in recounting experiences of the British occupation, underscoring the gendered dimensions of memory formation. This research deepens the understanding of collective memory in diasporic settings, emphasizing the critical role of oral histories in safeguarding Palestinian identity and resisting erasure.

## introduction the nakba, a pivotal moment in palestinian history marked by the mass displacement of approximately 770,000 palestinians during the forcible establishment of israel @xcite @xcite @xcite , embodies a broader colonial project to establish an ethnocratic state @xcite @xcite . the memory of the nakba and the immense suffering caused by forced displacement, loss of land, and erasure of the palestinian presence remains central to the national consciousness of palestinians @xcite @xcite . among palestini-ans, refugees in lebanon are exemplary in their resilience and their maintainance of a collective identity despite being intensely marginalized and disadvantaged. denied basic rights under lebanese law, they experience profound spatial, institutional, and economic exclusion @xcite . against these hardships, camps have historically served as spaces of resistance, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s when they became bases for the palestinian liberation organization @xcite . beyond armed resistance, cultural efforts such as storytelling and poetry are crucial for preserving their national identity and asserting the right to return @xcite @xcite . in consideration of the unique social and political context in which palestinian refugees in lebanon are situated, this study is centered on the following research questions: do palestinian refugee groups in lebanon, physically isolated from their homeland, maintain cohesive collective memory formation in their remembrance of the nakba? and if so, what are the indicators of similarity in their narratives? to answer these questions, we employ natural language processing (nlp) techniques in one of the most comprehensive digital repositories of oral histories told by refugees of the nakba, the palestinian oral history archive (poha) @xcite . poha has been used extensively to study collective memories and narratives of refugees. we contrast and complement prolific interpretive approaches @xcite @xcite that study the sociohistoric impacts of the nakba and extend other quantitative studies, such as @xcite , which demonstrate the persistence of collective memory in palestinian youth. our methodology uses various textual representations of archive interviews that encode themes, specific entities, and semantic content. we then statistically compare pairwise similarities of textual representations of the refugees' narratives. through this, we measure the degree of similarity within different refugee communities in lebanon in terms of how members remember the nakba. as a theoretical framework, we use halbwachs @xcite concept of group memory to understand how palestinian remembrance of the nakba in the diaspora is shaped by boundarymaking identity markers, in this case, location and gender. our main findings show that sharing origin is a strong indicator of higher similarity in refugee narratives, sharing residence in lebanon is also an indicator of similarity, and sharing both is in many cases an even stronger indicator of cohesion. we also find that the same gender is an indicator of cohesion, although to a smaller degree, as women's narratives are weakly similar to other women. by analyzing the narratives documented within poha, which represents more than 50 cities and refugee camps in lebanon, this study contributes understanding of how collective memory formation functions on a larger scale within the palestinian context. ## background memory work, through oral histories, counters zionist narratives and challenges the erasure of palestinian experiences @xcite @xcite @xcite . by documenting the lived experiences of women, refugees, and everyday palestinians that are underrepresented in national archival records and historiography @xcite @xcite , oral histories provide a more complex account of the nakba. this complexity is seen in how refugees diverge in how they remember the nakba. collective memory formation and positionality often dictate which events, people, and places are remembered based on the concerns that were and continue to be relevant for refugees @xcite . as silmi found in her analysis of oral histories within the nakba archive, different "economic, social, and political locations entail different positions, frames of reference and value systems. . . [such] different positionalities are reflected in the way they remember and tell their stories of life in palestine and arab-jewish relations before the nakba" (2021, p.61). gender produces further multiplicity, seen in rosemary @xcite @xcite exten-sive analysis of recorded testimonies in lebanon's refugee camps. sayigh was one of the first to assert that "women are often 'subversive' tellers of national history" (1998, p.47) because they include internal conflicts within the resistance movement and detailed accounts of atrocities suppressed within official historiographies. similarly, @xcite and @xcite found that palestinian women choose to transmit information based on what is meaningful within their lived experiences, causing their stories to diverge from "official" histories significantly. oral history archives, especially in audiovisual formats, present unique challenges for computational methods due to their non-textual medium @xcite . @xcite observes that nlp is particularly well-suited for archival collections, as numerous studies have demonstrated its ability to induce new metadata fields and values from archival records or existing metadata. more broadly, nlp can enrich archival practices-it can identify recurring themes, topics, and significant entities such as people, places, or events @xcite . notably, there is also substantial work in nlp interested in capturing narrative structure @xcite @xcite @xcite @xcite . this line of research at times even pertains to biographical narratives @xcite , similar to those in poha. we largely do not take advantage of these techniques for two reasons-poha's interviews have been explicitly given structure by archivists and there are few pre-existing resources available for arabic-but our study speaks to a more collective direction for computational narrative analysis. using computational methods, we uncover cohesion in narratives of dispossession and resilience, highlighting how these stories redefine palestinian identity through collective experiences of loss and resistance @xcite . in this paper, we leverage both the metadata included in poha and transcriptions of interview speech to construct a holistic representation of nakba narratives. the nakba-poha collection thus stands as a testament to the enduring fight for palestinian rights and dignity and an example of how computational tools can uncover deeper insights from underrepresented histories. ## theoretical framework and hypothesis to understand how palestinians remember the nakba, we build upon halbwachs' (1992) theoretical framework of group memory. this theory is appropriate for our analysis of narrative cohesion within refugee communities because it outlines how individual memories are co-constructed through external social relations. halbwachs observes that individuals will retrieve their memories in alignment with the logic of the group to which they belong. this can involve the reconstruction or rearranging of individual memories so that they have greater coherence with other group members' memories. in this process, the individual memories of group members will resemble each other and reflect the overall interests and thoughts of the group. however, this phenomenon only holds when the group is strongly established, long-lasting, and able to resist external modes of thinking. if group membership is interrupted through contact with externalities, such as outside beliefs or exposure to a different social context @xcite , the cohesion of recollection can also be interrupted. halbwachs delineates groups as families, religious groups, and social classes that have developed a distinctive unity of outlooks over time @xcite . additionally, other potential group formations particular to the palestinian context, such as the nature of trauma, age group, class, and tribe, could have an impact on narrative cohesion. however we limit our analysis to gender and geography because prior work has proven these aspects to be central identity markers that shape refugees' experiences of community (2018). as discussed in the background section, palestinian women exhibit their own gendered memory of the nakba. therefore, we situate gender as a boundary-making identity marker. additionally, geographical displacement from an original location to a foreign location is the key aspect that shapes palestinian refugee groups and their experience @xcite . therefore we situate place of origin and place of residence as another boundary-making identity marker. using this theoretical framework, we test the cohesiveness of the memories of palestinians that have formed groups within lebanon. while palestinian refugees remember the nakba in a multiplicity of ways, we expect that refugees' boundarymaking identity markers will reflect higher cohesion in their narratives. h1. we hypothesize that same interviewee gender would be associated with increased cohesion in narratives (more so than across genders). h2. we hypothesize that two interviewees belonging to the same spatial group will be associated with increased cohesion in their narratives. for our analysis, we define groups as interviewees who have the same gender, place of residence at the time of the interview and/or share the same place of origin from which they were displaced during the nakba. cohesion of group memories will be measured in the broader narratives around themes pertaining to the nakba experience, such as the narration of zionist invasions and their expulsion, as well as mentions of specific landmarks, significant figures, keywords and places. we expect that when refugees belong to the same group, there will be a higher similarity in how group members remember these entities. ## findings using the models outlined, we test cohesion for both gender and location along a set of different aspects. as discussed in section 3, we hypothesize that narrative cohesion will be higher 1) within same-gender pairs and 2) within same-community pairs (place of origin and place of residence). we refer to analyses of bow representations of metadata and extracted named entities as relating to "factual" aspects of the interviews and the analyses using embeddings of different interview sections as "thematic." ## discussion we observe evidence of group memory in several different scenarios concerning boundary-making identity markers. when interviewees share a community space (same origin or same residence), there is higher similarity within their narratives. critically, sharing both same origin and residence often results in an even stronger similarity in interviewees' narratives. this indicates that the cohesiveness of narratives depends on the continuity of the group, which, in turn, depends on the continuity of shared space. as well, we observe weaker evidence that gender is an indicator of similarity, though women's narratives tend to be more similar. the cohesion of narratives based on location can be reasonably explained through the theoretical framework of group memory. refugees sharing same origin but not the same residence still have cohesive narratives, demonstrating that group members' bond to other members of their original village are not severed in exile. as toivanen and baser (2019) state, diasporic memory is not constrained by spatial boundaries, therefore refugees can participate in group recollection with others from the same origins even when they are physically separate. when traumatic experiences threaten group bonds, members will "erase from its memory all that might separate individuals" (halb-wachs, 1992, p.183), allowing for a collective narrative to emerge from individual memories. therefore, the cohesion of narratives when refugees share the same origin but not the same residence is evidence of the strength and continuity of their bond despite the violent expulsion of the nakba. refugees who share the same residence but not the same origin also have cohesive narratives, which shows that the nakba itself was a catalyst for the formation of new group boundaries. it is anticipated that place of residence impacts group formation because studies @xcite @xcite show that different segments of a diaspora will engage in boundary-maintenance and preserve a distinct identity due to self-segregation or social exclusion from the host society. considering palestinian refugees in lebanon continue to be denied citizenship, legal identity, or work visas, their isolation from the rest of lebanese society has caused refugees to turn inwards and develop strong group bonds with each other. sharing the same place of residence, even without a continous bond stretching back to the homeland, therefore contributes to preserving a shared identity and cohesive memory as a group. finally, sharing the same origin and place of residence is often a strong indicator of similarity. this is consistent with the framework of group memory, which states that groups maintain cohesive memories so long as they are resistant to outside influences @xcite . when palestinians from the same village were forcibly displaced to the same place in lebanon, their group continuity was maintained. this is not the case for all memories, however, as refugees in the same residence narrativize refugee life and conditions dissimilarly. these memories are newer compared to those from the nakba period, so it is possible this specific theme has not yet been subjected to the processes of group memory. overall, however, existing research states that diasporic group memory is shaped by both the homeland and the host country (toivanen and baser, 2019; voytiv, 2024), therefore it is not unexpected that palestinian refugees who share the same past and present location have an even stronger similarity in their narratives than refugees who ohare only one location. our findings regarding gender merit further discussion. gender narrative similarity is more variable and there is no single identifier of a stronger similarity or dissimilarity. this speaks to an overall shared understanding of the nakba transcending gender boundaries. however, we highlight significant differences. namely, increased cohesion concerning themes in general (keywords) and pre-nakba village context. this connects to two factors that influence group memory. first, the constructed social and cultural roles of gender among palestinians in refugee camps, and second, the nature of refugee camps as spaces of displacement and vulnerability, which operate under unique socioeconomic constraints that profoundly shape gender dynamics. second, pre-nakba, villages were closely knit communities where women's roles and responsibilities were shaped by communal practices and survival strategies, including supporting resistance @xcite @xcite . in these settings, women often internalized dominant national narratives shaped by the era, which laid the foundation for their role in the broader narrative of resistance @xcite @xcite . women's factual cohesion appears strongest when referencing specific landmarks or entities in transcripts. this can be associated with their emotional connection to physical places. in contrast, men's narratives exhibit notable divergence in their descriptions of landmarks, families, and other entities. this suggests that men's experiences are either more individualized or less influenced by communal memory practices. sayigh's ethnography corroborates this, highlighting men's fragmented recollections shaped by personal trajectories and interactions with political and economic systems @xcite . overall, our findings challenge the notion that same-gender pairs inherently produce cohesive narratives @xcite @xcite . instead, cohesion reflects the collective memory fostered by women's roles in village life and under colonial rule, even as factual details vary. ## conclusion this paper constitutes a large-scale computational analysis of an oral history archive of the nakba using natural language processing. drawing from qualitative literature on palestinian refugees' experiences, we explore how boundary-making identity markers shape their life narratives. comparing the narratives of palestinians beyond lebanon or the narratives of those from rural vs. urban contexts are opportunities for further research into how locality shapes narrative cohesion. this study, however, is bound by the scope of poha which focuses solely on lebanon and offers a preliminary foray into one means of capturing multidimensional narrative cohesion in an archive. with these findings, we hope to both reaffirm and extend prior scholarship on palestinian collective memory, by providing empirical evidence of how oral narratives allow refugees to build continuity and counteract the violent fragmentation of palestinian society after the nakba.