Writing the historical past of Palestine raises a basic historiographical query: how can a historic narrative be produced within the face of exile, dispersal and destruction? Since Marc Bloch, historical past has not been understood merely because the retelling of previous occasions, however as an inquiry into human societies based mostly on fragmentary traces, that are all the time located and unequally preserved. Within the case of Palestine, this takes on a specific type: archives have been scattered, confiscated or destroyed, and entry to the previous itself has change into certain up with energy.
The historical past of Palestine and its individuals has lengthy been marginalized by the dominant Israeli narrative. Though absent, fragmented or relegated to the margins of the ‘Israel-Palestine battle’, this historical past has however continued to be written in Arab scholarly circles and, later, transnational networks. Palestinian historiography has been cast via rupture: the rupture of expulsion and exile and the disappearance of a social world.
Ever because the Naqba, writing Palestinian historical past has been intrinsically linked with the battle in opposition to erasure. Palestinian historiography just isn’t restricted to the reconstruction of a nationwide previous: it enquires into the very situations that make a historic narrative potential. How do you inform the story of a society that has been scattered? How do you write historical past when websites of reminiscence have been destroyed, libraries looted, and archives made inaccessible?
Tracing the evolution of Palestinian historiography is to analyse how successive data regimes have responded to this enduring problem, from the autumn of the Ottoman Empire to the current day. This text first appears to be like on the building of a nationwide narrative in Obligatory Palestine and in exile, after which examines the function of archives within the emergence of a Palestinian historiographical discipline. It goals to show how, confronted with dynamics of erasure, writing historical past and preserving archives are practices which can be without delay scholarly, activist, and existential.
An Israeli soldier in newly liberated East Jerusalem, knocking out the Arab signal naming the Wailing Wall as ‘Mohammed’s Horse El Bourak’, June 1967. Supply: Wikimedia Commons
The Arab Palestinian nation and the 1936 Arab Revolt
The primary Palestinian historians located Palestinian historical past inside a broader horizon formed by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Arab nationalisms, and the institution of the British Mandate for Palestine. This broader framing was not merely a matter of ideology. In that historic second, classes of belonging have been being reconfigured. The time period ‘Palestinian’ slowly started to emerge as a definite identifier, with out instantly changing the phrases ‘Ottoman’ or ‘Arab’. The affirmation of Palestine’s Arab identification was tied to naming and narrativization efforts, wherein referring to oneself as ‘Palestinian’ helped to assemble a collective topic.
As an area for producing and disseminating these new classes of identification, the press performed a central function on this course of. The rise of Arab newspapers within the early twentieth century fostered the usage of the time period ‘Palestinian’, which step by step grew to become a software of cohesion, mobilized in debates regarding Zionism, migration and social change. The affirmation of the land’s Arab identification and the battle in opposition to the denial of that declare by the Mandate authorities and the Zionist motion have been a part of a historic narrative with a powerful performative dimension: the goal was not solely to recount historical past, however to create the situations for collective identification. Superior by the mental elites however disseminated inside a broader public sphere, this narrative sought to encourage a sense of unity inside a politically outlined Arab group that spanned spiritual divides. It contributed to stabilizing the contours of an rising Palestinian identification, with out ever fixing it absolutely.
The Arab Revolt of 1936–39 was a watershed second, extensively recognized in Arab historiography as a foundational second for Palestinian nationalism. One of many important anticolonial uprisings in opposition to the British Empire within the inter-war interval, it shaped a part of a broader regional dynamic of opposition to the colonial order whereas additionally revealing the distinctive options of the Palestinian case. For that purpose, the Arab Revolt occupies a central place within the building of the Palestinian nationwide narrative.
The writings of the interval are imbued with a powerful political dimension searching for to strengthen the sensation of unity inside the Arab group – each Christian and Muslim – within the face of international domination. This historiography, which strove to be extensively documented and grounded in each Arab and western archives, was produced in a unified Palestinian society, earlier than it was shattered by the upheavals of 1948. It was written from inside a territory that was nonetheless a lived, inhabited and socially organized house. The 1936 revolt thus marked the ultimate main historic second earlier than the destruction and scattering of Palestinian society, whereas additionally representing a significant reference level for later narratives of the nationwide battle.
Each the suppression of the Arab Revolt and its final failure shaped a part of broader imperial doctrines of counterinsurgency, based mostly on the deliberate dismantling of the social cloth as a way of political management. From a historiographic standpoint, the revolt was subsequently not solely a second of nationwide mobilization, but in addition a testing floor for colonial practices, the results of which continued to be felt lengthy after the top of the Mandate.
The narrative constructed round these occasions, extensively circulated via the Arab press, contributed to the stabilization of the time period ‘Palestinian’ as a political and historic class. By naming these concerned within the rebellion and situating their battle inside a nationwide chronology, the press performed a vital function in reworking the rebellion right into a foundational second of a collective narrative.
Thus, the 1936–39 revolt can’t be solely understood as a army confrontation: it constitutes a second of crystallization the place dynamics of resistance, practices of colonial domination, and competing types of historic data manufacturing converge. It grew to become a part of an extended sequence of occasions that culminated within the rupture of 1948 and contributed to the emergence of a nationwide motion inside which a collective consciousness was cast, constructed round resistance to colonialism and the affirmation of a Palestinian nationwide narrative.
Lengthy understood as a strategic defeat stemming from inner divisions and an imbalance of energy, the Arab Revolt is now being re-evaluated as a second of mass politicization that helped give form to the rising nationwide consciousness. However, its failure weakened the Palestinian nationwide motion on the finish of the Nineteen Thirties. Mixed with the consolidation of the army and political buildings of the Zionist undertaking below British safety, the failure of the Arab Revolt seems to be one of many components that helped make the rupture of 1948 potential. It thus varieties a part of an extended historical past of anticolonial struggles, whereas additionally underscoring the asymmetrical situations wherein historic data about Palestine is produced, transmitted, and contested.
After the Naqba
The yr 1948 marked a turning level: for the primary time since that they had change into nation states, the impartial Arab international locations entered struggle in opposition to the brand new Israeli state and have been defeated. That is the catastrophe of the Naqba: the erasure of an Arab state in Palestine, the fragmentation of a society, and the emergence of the refugee drawback. In Palestinian historiography, 1948 is usually taken as ‘12 months Zero’, marking each the top of historic Palestine with its Mandate-era borders and the start line of a historical past now structured by dispersal. The ‘gradual, seemingly countless prepare wreck’ that was the Naqba fully reworked the frameworks via which the previous was understood.
Constantine Zurayk’s The That means of the Catastrophe, first revealed in Arabic in 1948, triggered a decisive shift by defining this second as a ‘disaster’, a defeat that was not solely army however ethical and psychological, involving the whole Arab world and calling for an mental and political transforming of the Arab nationalist undertaking confronted. The lack of territory and the expertise of exile reconfigured Palestine’s ‘geography’, with the nationwide narrative being written from exterior of its historic homeland, delineating the contours of a misplaced, however nonetheless continuously reaffirmed, territory.
The Fifties, nevertheless, noticed a relative decline in Palestinian historiographical manufacturing, a time of silence and mental dispersal. The scattering of the elite to completely different host international locations fostered the emergence of an exile literature, riven with a deep feeling of injustice and the issue of rebuilding shared frameworks of data manufacturing. On this context, the rise of Arab nationalism tended to incorporate the Palestinian query inside a broader framework, making it a central trigger for the Arab world in its interactions with the worldwide group and thus producing a ‘globalizing’ studying of Palestine.
The defeat in June 1967 marked one other main turning level that affected the whole Center East, shifting political and mental balances. It coincided with the emergence of a brand new Palestinian management drawn from armed resistance actions (fedayeen), whose look on the scene profoundly reworked analytical frameworks. The renewed centrality of Palestine in political discourse was accompanied by a change in perspective: Palestine was not seen as merely a trigger to be supported by Arab unity, however as a way by which that unity might be superior.
Palestinian researchers and historians, in lots of circumstances influenced by Marxism, started to reinterpret Palestinian historical past via new classes, giving rise to extremely politicized writings with a powerful activist bent. This era was additionally noteworthy for a sociological transformation of the mental discipline: a brand new technology, lots of whom had grown up within the refugee camps and been educated in UNRWA networks, helped redefine the important thing figures of the historic narrative, particularly by placing the resistant peasant and the working courses centre stage.
On the similar time, from the mid-Sixties onward, the manufacturing of data about Palestine grew to become institutionalized via the founding of analysis centres and publishing homes. These have been primarily based mostly in Beirut, the mental capital of the Arab world on the time, and the cultural and political capital of the Palestinian trigger. This improvement met a central want: affirming the existence of Palestine exterior of its territory, via writing its historical past, creating archives and disseminating structured data.
Establishments such because the Institute for Palestine Research, based in 1963, and the Palestinian Analysis Middle, based in 1965 by the Palestine Liberation Group, performed a vital function as areas for scholarly manufacturing, contributing to the internationalization of Palestine Research. The historiographical undertaking took on a emancipatory dimension, foregrounding the figures of the peasant, refugee, and fighter as heroes of the nationwide liberation narrative.
By way of their publications, editorial programmes and documentary endeavours, these establishments helped to determine Palestine Research as an instructional discipline, combining historical past, social sciences, archives and reminiscence research. Writing historical past grew to become a approach of combating invisibility, by producing narratives able to restoring a way of Palestinian historic continuity throughout the rupture of 1948.
Archives and the combat in opposition to erasure
The Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 struck a significant blow to the cultural and educational work of Palestinian establishments. Beirut’s analysis, documentation and cultural and creative centres grew to become prime targets of the Israeli military. The looting of the archives of the PRC and of the PLO’s cinematography unit disadvantaged Palestinians of a substantial proportion of their documentary heritage. Manuscripts, images, movies and supplies regarding each each day life and the resistance have been seized and integrated into Israeli army archives, catalogued in accordance with classes and norms imposed by the colonial energy.
Management over archives varieties a part of a wider means of rewriting collective reminiscence, via which a colonial narrative of the previous is imposed, erasing all hint of Palestinian presence or identification in Israeli territory.By appropriating Palestinian documentary traces, Israel exerts decisive management over the situations wherein historic data may be produced, preserved and handed on. On this context of dispossession, writing historical past and amassing archives change into basic technique of resisting erasure. Preserving, reconstructing and sharing archives tackle political, memorial, and scholarly significance.
With no sovereign Palestinian state and the archives dispersed, oral historical past has change into one of many principal modes of manufacturing historic data about Palestine. Orality turns into each a historiographical observe and a political act, geared toward affirming the existence of a dispersed individuals and preserving the reminiscence of a society destroyed in 1948. From the Eighties onward, campaigns to gather oral testimonies in regards to the Naqba have been carried out within the Palestinian territories and among the many diaspora by universities, analysis centres and NGOs.
The ever-increasing variety of narratives, recordings, images and household archives is a part of what Beshara Doumani has referred to as Palestinian ‘archive fever’. In refugee camps, analysis centres and home settings, Palestinians collect the traces of a misplaced world. Life tales, people songs, embroidery, maps of destroyed villages, and picture albums change into autos of reminiscence. By giving a central function to refugees, peasants and girls, these narratives convey out another historical past based on the lived expertise of uprooting and exile – a historical past written from the underside up.
Three strains of reflection emerge when contemplating archives and historical past on this context. The primary considerations the colonial relationship to archives. Because the creation of the State of Israel, Palestinian historical past has been marked by the confiscation, repurposing and reappropriation of traces of the previous and of Palestinian cultural heritage. Archives, libraries, and archaeological artefacts are frequent targets of a colonial energy that seeks not solely to regulate territory, but in addition to impose its personal historic narrative. The looting of Palestinian libraries in 1948, the confiscation of the PLO archives in Beirut in 1982, and the latest destruction of cultural and documentation centres in Gaza are all pushed by the identical logic: controlling the situations wherein data is produced and handed on.
The second dimension considerations the necessity to rethink the shape that archives take within the context of everlasting occupation. Within the absence of a sovereign Palestinian state able to defending collections via establishments, centralized buildings similar to museums and archives are notably susceptible. The expertise of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, opened empty in 2016 as a symbolic gesture, demonstrates the impossibility of defending collections in the long run below colonial domination. The absence of objects on show served each as a preservation technique and as a political critique of the colonial situation. From this attitude, Palestinian archives should be conceptualized as cell, scattered, digitized or hidden buildings, able to evading pillage and destruction.
The third and last dimension considerations the truth that Palestine now exists far past its geographical territory. The dispersal of Palestinians, a direct consequence of the Naqba and successive displacements, has contributed to spreading traces of Palestine all through the world. Due to the internationalization of the Palestinian query and transnational solidarity networks, Palestinian archives now flow into in a mess of areas. Copies of movies rediscovered in Tokyo or Rome, images preserved in personal collections in Europe, and paperwork safeguarded by activists or international establishments all show Palestine’s fragmented however persistent presence on the planet.
Dispersal, skilled before everything as dispossession, has thus change into a way of preserving the Palestinian historic narrative. Palestine can’t be understood solely as an occupied territory: it additionally exists as a fragmented constellation of archives, narratives, mental works, and recollections unfold throughout the globe. Palestinian historical past is constructed from copies, oral testimonies and the circulation of paperwork which have escaped the dynamics of erasure. On this context, producing data, publishing journals, digitizing archives and monitoring down misplaced movies are all a part of the identical battle to maintain the very risk of a Palestinian historical past alive.
Since 2023, the struggle on Gaza has profoundly altered the way in which the Palestinian narrative is produced and handed on. Regardless of the devastation of lives, locations and bodily archives, Palestinians are nonetheless documenting their on a regular basis life, sharing their experiences of struggle, and preserving the traces of their existence. Blogs, on-line newspapers, social media and collaborative platforms have change into different archives, produced from the margins and partially escaping the management of dominant narratives. This digital documentation varieties a part of an extended historical past of the Palestinian battle in opposition to erasure.
When archives are confiscated, libraries are destroyed, and cultural establishments stay fragile, documenting abnormal life turns into an act of resistance. Each testimony, {photograph} and narrative helps protect a collective reminiscence that’s below menace of disappearance. On this sense, oral historical past, social media, and the Palestinian blogosphere will not be solely areas for self-expression, but in addition contribute to the development of a residing, decentralized archive. On this approach, the writing of Palestinian historical past has now expanded past the framework of educational establishments, archive centres and the borders imposed by dispersal and occupation. This continuously renewed historiography helps to contest the dominant Israeli narrative and resituate the historical past of Palestine in a wider, shared narrative of the land, thereby countering the dynamics of erasure.
Translated and edited by Cadenza Tutorial Translations
Revealed in cooperation with CAIRN Worldwide Version
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