PLUNDERING PALESTINE - Jerusalem Quarterly

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The looting and loss of Palestinian cultural and other property in 1948 is examined in several contributions to this volume. In an illuminating piece, Gish Amit relates the ‘untold story’ of the fate of Palestinian libraries and books ‘abandoned’ in 1948 (and their depository in Israel’s national library), making the important point that “occupation and colonization does not end in taking over physical space. They achieve their fulfillment by occupying cultural space as well, and by turning the cultural artefacts of the victims into ownerless objects with no past.” Amit implicitly raises an important question that has not been fully addressed by concerned Palestinians: how to re-claim these objects, not simply physically as property, but also culturally as embodiments of patrimony. In a helpful review of the right of Palestinians to reparations for lost property inside Israel, legal expert Leila Hilal points out that “the fate of Palestinian properties inside Israel has often times been neglected for the issue of the right of return,” but that the right of return and restitution are in fact, independent rights and that therefore, delving into issues of restitution does not forgo the right of return. Reviews of two books address new scholarship on the 1948 war and its aftermath, as well as the destruction of cultural and other property. Raja Shehadeh reviews Ilan Pappe’s crucial new investigation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, while Roger Heacock critiques the uneasy mixture of revelation and justification in Raz Ketter’s Just Past? The Making of Israeli Archaeology. Ketter, a long-time employee of the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), uses IAA archives to document the Israeli army’s vast swath of destruction of archaeological, historical and other cultural sites not only during the 1948 war but for years afterwards, while largely defending the role of the IAA itself. Aside from the historical evidence, the recent approval of the IAA to allow construction of a Museum of Tolerance on the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem’s Mamilla district raises questions about how professionalism and commitment to preservation of cultural heritage operates in that state institution. A scholar who offered an alternative, pioneering and carefully-researched view of the history and role of Israeli archaeology in her 2001 book 4 –Barnard professor Nadia Abu El-Haj–was subjected last year not to an academic critique, but to a right-wing campaign to deny her tenure, orchestrated by a Barnard alum who lives on an Israeli settlement. That the crass campaign met with failure is of some comfort amidst the many-pronged assaults on academic freedom (particularly of scholars on the Middle East) that has cast a pall on American campus life. Other forms of silencing in our context are even more direct. On the occasion of the 40 th anniversary of Jerusalem’s occupation (and illegal annexation), the Israeli Ministry of Interior prevented a conference on the subject, affixing a sign to the entrance of the hotel where the conference was scheduled that read: “According to the Jerusalem Quarterly 33 [ 5 ]
law applied in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 1995, which organizes activities, we order not to hold this conference in this hotel or anywhere else in the borders of the state of Israel.” Once again, a version of the law (this time the interim accords of 1995!) is cited in the banning of expression or, in the idiom of this issue, the looting of cultural expression and historical truth. In addition to their specific interventions, we hope this issue makes a modest contribution to opening subjects that have been forcibly closed. Penny Johnson, Special Editor for this issue Endnotes 1 Thanks to Jamil Hilal and Rema Hammami for sharing this story. 2 Weizman, Eyal 2007. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, London: Verso, p. 40. 3 Slyomovics, Susan 2007. “The Rape of Qula, a Destroyed Palestinian Village,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the Claims of Memory (eds. Ahmed Sa’di and Lila Abu Lughod), New York: Columbia University Press, 44-45. 4 Abu El-Haj, Nadia 2001. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self- Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago. [ 6 ] EDITORIAL Why are Those Men in Black Camping Near the Wall?
Page 1 and 2: PLUNDERING PALESTINE Ownerless Obje
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Page 5: course of the Wall. “It’s all o
Page 9 and 10: later resold to Arab schools. Some
Page 11 and 12: war and exile in Egypt, where Sakak
Page 13 and 14: the collection project had begun -
Page 15 and 16: Two other things seem worthy of men
Page 17 and 18: The National Library and Orientalis
Page 19 and 20: The Owners of the Objects Following
Page 21 and 22: 19 I recently had the opportunity t
Page 23 and 24: the cultural heritage of the region
Page 25 and 26: as commodities, consumer demand and
Page 27 and 28: as a springboard, and in consultati
Page 29 and 30: for the fifth draft on Palestinian
Page 31 and 32: Chapter 4 Section 20 Presumption of
Page 33 and 34: Later in the draft under Section IV
Page 35 and 36: The archives of the IAA also contai
Page 37 and 38: In interviews conducted as part of
Page 39 and 40: 19 Garstang, “Eighteen Months Wor
Page 41 and 42: and thereby devising a comprehensiv
Page 43 and 44: tomb robbing from foreign archaeolo
Page 45 and 46: Impact of the western separation wa
Page 47 and 48: ministry appeared willing to accept
Page 49 and 50: Khalat al-Qadat The most interestin
Page 51 and 52: The excavation had uncovered what a
Page 53 and 54: That may be true, but conditions in
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Reparation for Lost Palestinian Pro
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ights of Palestinian land owners st
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it sought to shield itself from lia
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Annex 7 included details concerning
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Endnotes 1 United Nations General A
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There are more revelations in Pappe
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The most prominent of these was Ord
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Jewishness-Judaism has many faces a
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a truly commercial run of the volum
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Kletter does one thing that is virt
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‘Time Out’ in Jerusalem Penny J
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Counting Game: Israel In, Palestine
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‘I Come From There and Remember
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these buildings are permanent - hom
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Poverty in Jerusalem is growing at
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PLUNDERING PALESTINE - Jerusalem Quarterly

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