Palestinian Village Histories

This book chronicles the local histories written by modern Palestinians about their villages that were destroyed in the 1948 war.

There was a village in Palestine called Ein Houd, whose people traced their ancestry back to one of Saladin's generals who was granted the territory as a reward for his prowess in battle. By the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, all the inhabitants of Ein Houd had been dispersed or exiled or had gone into hiding, although their old stone homes were not destroyed. In 1953 the Israeli government established an artists' cooperative community in the houses of the village, now renamed Ein Hod. In the meantime, the Arab inhabitants of Ein Houd moved two kilometers up a neighboring mountain and illegally built a new village. They could not afford to build in stone, and the mountainous terrain prevented them from using the layout of traditional Palestinian villages. That seemed unimportant at the time, because the Palestinians considered it to be only temporary, a place to live until they could go home. The Palestinians have not gone home. The two villages—Jewish Ein Hod and the new Arab Ein Houd—continue to exist in complex and dynamic opposition. The Object of Memory explores the ways in which the people of Ein Houd and Ein Hod remember and reconstruct their past in light of their present—and their present in light of their past. Honorable Mention, 1999 Perkins Book Prize, Society for the Study of Narrative

Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war, their lands and property confiscated. Most of the villages were razed by the new State of Israel, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled—many refugees in their own right. The state embarked on a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was all but erased from official maps and histories. Israelis are familiar with the ruins, terraces, and orchards that mark these sites today—almost half are located within tourist areas or national parks—but public descriptions rarely acknowledge that Arab communities existed there within living memory or describe how they came to be depopulated. Using official archives, kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman has reconstructed this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages.

"Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war. Most of these villages were razed by the new State of Israel, their lands and property confiscated, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled--many refugees in their own right. The state embarked upon a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was erased from official maps and histories. While most Israelis are familiar with the walls, ruins, and gardens that mark these sites today--almost half are located within tourist areas or national parks--they are unaware that Arab communities existed there within living memory. Using official documents, kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman reconstructs this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and contemporary Israeli society"--Provided by publisher.

For outside observers, current events in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are seldom related to the collective memory of ordinary Palestinians. But for Palestinians themselves, the iniquities of the present are experienced as a continuous replay of the injustice of the past. By focusing on memories of the Nakba or "catastrophe" of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed to create the state of Israel, the contributors to this volume illuminate the contemporary Palestinian experience and clarify the moral claims they make for justice and redress. The book's essays consider the ways in which Palestinians have remembered and organized themselves around the Nakba, a central trauma that continues to be refracted through Palestinian personal and collective memory. Analyzing oral histories and written narratives, poetry and cinema, personal testimony and courtroom evidence, the authors show how the continuing experience of violence, displacement, and occupation have transformed the pre-Nakba past and the land of Palestine into symbols of what has been and continues to be lost. Nakba brings to light the different ways in which Palestinians experienced and retain in memory the events of 1948. It is the first book to examine in detail how memories of Palestine's cataclysmic past are shaped by differences of class, gender, generation, and geographical location. In exploring the power of the past, the authors show the urgency of the question of memory for understanding the contested history of the present. Contributors: Lila Abu Lughod, Columbia University; Diana Keown Allan, Harvard University; Haim Bresheeth, University of East London; Rochelle Davis, Georgetown University; Samera Esmeir, University of California, Berkeley; Isabelle Humphries, University of Surrey; Lena Jayyusi, Zayed University; Laleh Khalili, SOAS, University of London; Omar Al-Qattan, filmmaker; Ahmad H. Sa'di, Ben-Gurion University; Rosemary Sayigh, Lebanon-based anthropologist; Susan Slyomovics, University of California, Los Angeles

Palestinian Women is the first book to examine and document the experiences and the historical narrative of ordinary Palestinian women who witnessed the events of 1948 and became involuntary citizens of the State of Israel. Told in their own words, the women's experiences serve as a window for examining the complex intersections of gender, nationalism and citizenship in a situation of ongoing violent political conflict. Known in Palestinian discourse as the 'Nakbeh', or the 'Catastrophe', these events of 60 years ago still have a powerful resonance in contemporary Palestinian-Jewish relations in the State of Israel and in the act of narrating these stories, the author argues that the realm of memory is a site of commemoration and resistance.

A well-illustrated guide to the material culture of the fellahin, the villagers who inhabited the central highlands of Palestine at the turn of the 20th century.