Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Halftitle Page -- Title Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Literacy and Functionality: The Scribal Schools of Ancient Palestine -- 2 Cities of Learning: The Intellectual Revolutions of Byzantine Palestine (Third to Early Seventh Century) -- 3 Greek and Syriac into Arabic and the Palestinian Translation Movement under Islam: Monasteries of Learning, Mar Saba and Arabic Belles-Lettres (Eighth-Eleventh Century) -- 4 Latin Learning and the Crusader Kingdoms of Palestine: The Library of Nazareth -- 5 The Golden Age of the Islamic Law Colleges of Jerusalem: The Palestinian Madrasas under the Ayyubids and Mamluks (1187-1517) -- 6 Legal Pluralism and the Social World of Palestine in the Seventeenth Century: The Azhar College of Cairo and Palestinian Muslim Scholars -- 7 The 'Azhar' of Palestine: The Ahmadiyya Seminary of Acre (1782-1948) -- 8 Modernity, the Printing Press and Mass Literacy: The Educational Revolution of Late Ottoman Palestine and the Mandatory Period (1860s-1948) -- 9 Humanism and Arab Nahda Education: Khalil Sakakini and Reforming Palestinian Education -- 10 Learning from Below: The Kuttab Schools in Palestine (Muslim, Jewish and Christian) -- 11 Between Professionalism and Cultural Nationalism: Palestinian Education in Mandatory Palestine (1918-1948) -- Epilogue: The Libraries, Archival Collections and Sharia Courts' Records of Modern Palestine -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Imprint.

I: Evolving Israeli policies and indigenous resistance -- Present absentees and indigenous resistance / Nur Masalha -- The state of Israel versus the Palestinian internal refugees / Hillel Cohen -- Patterns of internal displacement, social adjustment and the challenge of return / Nihad Boqa'i -- Forced sedentarisation, land rights and indigenous resistance: the Palestinian Bedouin in the Negev / Isma'el Abu-sa'ad -- II: Palestinian oral history and memory -- "A muted sort of grief": tales of refuge in Nazareth (1948-2005) / Isabelle Humphries -- Kafr Bir'im / William Dalrymple -- The Nakba, oral history and the Palestinian peasantry: the case of Lubya / Mahmoud 'Issa -- Unrecognised villages: indigenous 'Ayn Hawd versus artists' colony 'Ein Hod / Jonathan Cook -- The Nakba in Hebrew: Israeli-Jewish awareness of the Palestinian catastrophe and internal refugees / Eitan Bronstein -- III: Human rights and international protection -- The real road map to peace: international dimensions of the internal refugee question / Ilan Pappe -- International protection and durable solutions / Terry Rempel.

1. Framing the conflict : instrumentalizing the Hebrew Bible and settler-colonialism in Palestine -- 2. Promised land and conquest narratives : Zionism and the 1948 Palestine Nakba -- 3. Archaeology as civic religion : secular nationalist ideology, excavating the Bible and the de-Arabization of Palestine -- 4. Colonialist imagination as a site of mimicry and erasure : the Israeli renaming project -- 5. God's mapmakers : Jewish fundamentalism and the land traditions of the Hebrew Bible (1967 to Gaza 2013) -- Conclusion : the new scholarly revolution, and reclaiming the heritage of the disinherited and disenfranchised Palestinians.

The Concept of Palestine is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of the indigenous people of Palestine and the multicultural ancient past. The name Palestine is the most commonly used from the Late Bronze Age (from 1300 BCE) onwards. The name Palestine is evident in countless histories, inscriptions, maps and coins from antiquity, medieval and modern Palestine. From the Late Bronze Age onwards the names used for the region, such as Djahi, Retenu and Cana'an, all gave way to the name Palestine. Throughout Classical Antiquity the name Palestine remained the most common and during the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods the concept and political geography of Palestine acquired official administrative status. This article sets out to explain the historical origins of the concept of Palestine and the evolving political geography of the country. It will seek to demonstrate how the name 'Palestine' (rather than the term 'Cana'an') was most commonly and formally used in ancient history. It argues that the legend of the 'Israelites' conquest of Cana'an' and other master narratives of the Bible evolved across many centuries; they are myth-narratives, not evidence-based accurate history. It further argues that academic and school history curricula should be based on historical facts/empirical evidence/archaeological discoveries – not on master narratives or Old Testament sacred-history and religio-ideological constructs.

Cartography, place-naming and state-sponsored explorations were central to the modern European conquest of the earth, empire building and settler-colonisation projects. Scholars often assume that place names provide clues to the historical and cultural heritage of places and regions. This article uses social memory theory to analyse the cultural politics of place-naming in Israel. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs' study of the construction of social memory by the Latin Crusaders and Christian medieval pilgrims, the article shows Zionists' toponymic strategies in Palestine, their superimposition of Biblical and Talmudic toponyms was designed to erase the indigenous Palestinian and Arabo-Islamic heritage of the land. In the pre-Nakba period Zionist toponymic schemes utilised nineteenth century Western explorations of Biblical 'names' and 'places' and appropriated Palestinian toponyms. Following the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, the Israeli state, now in control of 78 percent of the land, accelerated its toponymic project and pursued methods whose main features were memoricide and erasure. Continuing into the post-1967 occupation, these colonial methods threaten the destruction of the diverse historical cultural heritage of the land.

Historians too often construct frameworks and methodologies which obfuscate social, economic and political oppression. This article explores new historical methodologies that can represent oppressed and marginalised groups in Palestine. In particular the article focuses on the role of indigenous history and memory in critical learning and shaping individual and collective identity in Palestine. It further argues that Palestinian memories 'from below' since the Nakba have played a major positive role in the recovery from the traumatic catastrophe and the reconstruction of Palestinian identity. The article critiques the manipulation of collective memory by social, political and economic elites and top-down nationalist approaches. It argues that reconfigured popular memories can be liberating and empowering for embattled Palestinians. The article also calls for the establishment of an interdisciplinary subfield of Nakba Studies that would bring together historians, social memory and cultural theorists, postcolonial scholars and scholars of trauma studies with the aim of documenting and studying the embattled social memory of Palestine as a site of lifelong learning and empowerment.

This article coins a new expression: 'civil liberation theology' in Palestine. Astonishingly while feminist, black and post-colonial theologies of liberation have flourished in the West, there is little discussion of indigenous and decolonising perspectives or civil and secular-humanist reflections on liberation theology. Inspired by the works of Palestinian visual artist Naji Al-Ali and public intellectual Edward Said, the article brings into the debate on theologies of liberation in Palestine-Israel a neglected subject: an egalitarian, none-denominational theology rooted in decolonising methodologies. This civil liberation theology attempts to address the questions: how can exile be overcome? How can history be transcended and decolonised? And how can indigenous memory be reclaimed? The article brings into focus indigenous, humanist and non-religious ways of thinking on which Edward Said and Naji Al-Ali (in his famous figurative character Handhala) insisted. This civil liberation theology also draws on contrapuntal methodologies and critical indigenous and non-denominational theologies in 'historic Palestine' – progressive, creative and liberative theologies which occupy multiple sites of liberation and can be made relevant not only to people of faith (Muslims, Jews, Christians) but also to secular-humanists.

Ever since the 1948 Palestinian Nakba a bitter controversy has raged over its causes and circumstances. While the Palestinian refugees have maintained that they were driven into flight, Israeli historians claimed that the refugees either left of their own accord, or were ordered to do so by their own leaders. This essay explores the emergence of an Israeli revisionist historiography in the late 1980s which challenged the official Zionist narrative of 1948. Today the 'new historians' are bitterly divided and at each other's throats. The essay assesses the impact of the 'new historians' on history writing and power relations in Palestine-Israel, situating the phenomenon within the wider debates on knowledge and power. It locates 'new history' discourse within the multiple crises of Zionism and the recurring patterns of critical liberal Zionist writing. It further argues that, although the terms of the debate in Western academia have been altered under the impact of this development, both the 'new history' narrative and 'Post-Zionism' have remained marginal in Israel. Rather than developing a post-colonial discourse or decolonising methodologies, the 'new historians' have reflected contradictory currents within the Israeli settler colonial society. Also, ominously, their most influential author, Benny Morris, has reframed the 'new history' narrative within a neo-colonialist discourse and the 'clash of civilisations' thesis. Justifying old and neo-colonialist ideas on 'transfer' and ethnic cleansing, Morris (echoing calls by neo-Zionist Israeli politicians) threatens the Palestinians with another Nakba.

In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely 'chosen people' and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically-ordained holy war of conquering and settling the 'Promised Land'.