CONTENTS

Algazi, Gadi. Introduction

Feldman, Ilana. Home as a Refrain: Remembering and Living Displacement in Gaza

Abstract:
This article explores the "refrain of home" among Palestinian refugees in Gaza in the first years after their displacement in 1948. Relying on narrative accounts of the 1948 war and its aftermath, it traces people's changing relations with their lost homes. It explores people's memories of home before 1948 and considers four principal moments in the post-displacement transformation: exile itself, returns across the armistice line to retrieve possessions, crossings to steal from Israeli settlements, and fida'iyyin attacks. Each of these practices of connecting with home both reveals and shapes people's understanding of their relation with these lost places.

Forte, Tania. Scripting for Hollywood: Power, Performance and the Heroic Imagination in Abu Hanna's "Real Arabian Nights"

Abstract:
This article explores narratives of heroism among Palestinians in the Galilee in order to address broader concerns about the workings of historical transformation and the power of creative agency, the nature of historical consciousness and its relation to practices of everyday life. It considers how meaning is constituted through performances of heroism for tellers and listeners, what kinds of selves and others are distinguished by narrative constructions of heroism, and what kinds of authorities inscribe themselves within them. Three separate approaches to the logic of heroic narratives are developed: narratives of heroism as performance, as the production of truths, and as the product of a struggle for power.

Shai, Aron. The Fate of Abandoned Arab Villages in Israel, 1965-1969

Abstract:
In spring 1965 the Israel Land Administration (ILA) initiated the demolition of houses in Arab villages that had been abandoned during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, a project that was subsequently extended to the territories occupied by Israel in the June 1967 war. The Israel Archaeological Survey Society (IASS) was for all practical purposes employed by the ILA in its efforts to clear the country of deserted villages. Its officials surveyed the villages intended for destruction, since the law required their authorization before the buildings could be demolished. The article reveals that (1) most of the abandoned Arab villages disappeared as a result of a clear plan originating with the ILA; (2) the demolition of houses in the Latrun enclave and the Golan Heights immediately after the June 1967 war was to a great extent a continuation of the pre-1967 operation; and (3) archaeologists of the IASS were not only instrumental in carrying out the ILA's initiative but subordinated their scientific agenda to that of the governmental bodies with which they cooperated.

Allen, Lori A. The Polyvalent Politics of Martyr Commemorations in the Palestinian Intifada

Abstract:
During the second Palestinian intifada (uprising), which began in September 2000, martyr funerals and posters were the most predominant form of memorialization. These practices did not constitute simple expressions of nationalist sentiment; they created a public sphere in which participants and observers were hailed as national subjects, while simultaneously generating a forum in which public political debate occurred. This article explores the tensions among different visions of the Palestinian national project that appeared through these commemorative practices as the normative effects of martyr memorialization dissolved into criticism, cynicism and apathy.

Nassar, Issam. Familial Snapshots: Representing Palestine in the Work of the First Local Photographers

Abstract:
This essay examines the ways in which the introduction of photography as a local practice in Palestine from the late nineteenth century affected the way Palestinians saw, imagined and presented themselves in photographs. The essay narrates the history of the inception of photography as a local career in Palestine by tracing the activities of the first known local photographers. In this context, it critically questions the notions of local and non-local before examining the specific ways in which photography was employed within the larger context of Palestinian society.

Handelman, Don. Tania Forte's Difference

Abstract:
Tania Forte valued writing the fictional, the autobiographical, the scientific. She strove to weave these routes together in shaping her life's journey through anthropology, though this did not yet emerge in her writing. Here I juxtapose three of Tania's texts that limn these routes, foregrounding her fascination with the fixed and the flowing, with differences between exteriority and interiority, between selves and others, between private and public.

Contributors