heritage in palestine: colonial legacy in postcolonial discourse

Heritage in Palestine: Colonial Legacyin Postcolonial Discourse

Khaldun Bshara, RIWAQ—Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah, Palestine

E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT________________________________________________________________

This essay addresses the need to look into ‘postcolonial’/‘post-Oslo’

Palestine heritage discourses and practices to uncover commonalities and

divergences. These practices and discourses, I claim, tell a story about

hidden codes of subjectivity while revealing the setbacks of postcolonial

heritage discourses in a ‘postcolonial era’. I show that the Palestinian

‘postcolonial’ heritage polices and preservation practices echo colonial

discourses in terms of approach, legal framework and end results. My

premise is built on a long engagement with governmental and non-

governmental heritage organisations as well as the literature on the topic

that shows heritage discourses and practices implicated within the specific

narrative that they are destined to (re) produce. I claim that postcolonial

approaches to the material culture, consciously and unconsciously,

reproduce the colonial situation and while the impetus towards

preservation itself is a symptom of postmodernity, it is still carried out in a

modernist spirit. Throughout my analysis, I show that what spills out from

the heritage discourses, as well as the unintended consequences of heritage

practices are worth considering in any analytical approach of heritage

discourses.________________________________________________________________

Resume: Cet essai repond au besoin d’etudier les pratiques et discours

patrimoniaux dans la Palestine « postcoloniale » / « post-Oslo », pour y

decouvrir des points communs et des divergences. Je soutiens l’idee que

ces pratiques et discours en disent long a propos des codes subjectifs sous-

jacents, en revelant les retards pris par les discours patrimoniaux

postcoloniaux a « l’ere postcoloniale ». Je demontre que les politiques et les

pratiques de preservation patrimoniales postcoloniales palestiniennes font

echo aux discours coloniaux en termes d’approche, de cadre legal et de

resultats finaux. Mon postulat est construit sur un long engagement au sein

d’organisations patrimoniales gouvernementales et non gouvernementales

ainsi que sur la litterature portant sur ce sujet, qui montre des discours et

pratiques patrimoniaux impliques dans le recit specifique qu’ils sont

destines a (re)produire. Je soutiens que les approches postcoloniales de la

culture materielle reproduisent, consciemment et inconsciemment, la

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� 2013 World Archaeological Congress 295

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (� 2013)

DOI 10.1007/s11759-013-9235-2

situation coloniale. De plus, bien que l’elan vers la preservation soit en lui-

meme un symptome de postmodernite, il reste mis en œuvre dans un

esprit moderniste. Tout au long de mon analyse, je demontre que ce qui

transparaıt dans les discours patrimoniaux, au meme titre que les

consequences inattendues des pratiques patrimoniales, merite d’etre pris en

compte dans toute approche analytique des discours patrimoniaux.

________________________________________________________________

Resumen: El presente ensayo aborda la necesidad de revisar los discursos y

las practicas ‘‘poscoloniales’’ / ‘‘post-Oslo’’ sobre el patrimonio de Palestina

para descubrir coincidencias y divergencias. Argumento que estas practicas

y discursos dicen una historia sobre codigos ocultos de subjetividad

revelando al mismo tiempo los obstaculos de los discursos poscoloniales

sobre el patrimonio en una ‘‘era poscolonial’’. Muestro que las polıticas

sobre el patrimonio y las practicas de conservacion ‘‘poscolonial’’ palestinas

repiten los discursos coloniales en terminos de enfoque, marco legal y

resultados finales. Mi premisa se construye gracias a un largo compromiso

con organizaciones gubernamentales y no gubernamentales del patrimonio,

ası como tambien al material publicado sobre el tema que muestra

discursos y practicas sobre el patrimonio implicados dentro de la narrativa

especıfica que estan destinados a (re)producir. Argumento que los enfoques

poscoloniales de la cultura material, consciente e inconscientemente,

reproducen la situacion colonial, y aunque el ımpetu hacia la propia

conservacion es un sıntoma de posmodernidad, todavıa se lleva con espıritu

modernista. A lo largo de mi analisis, muestro que vale la pena considerar,

en cualquier enfoque analıtico de los discursos sobre el patrimonio, lo que

se desprende de los discursos sobre el patrimonio, ası como tambien las

consecuencias no intencionadas de las practicas sobre el patrimonio_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

KEY WORDS

Palestine, Heritage, Preservation, Colonial and postcolonial discourse,

Decolonisation_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I studied archaeology and yet found no identity in the stones—MahmoudDarwish, Why have you left the horse alone (1995).Every successful revolution has defined itself in national terms, […] and, in sodoing, has grounded itself firmly in a territorial and social space inherited fromthe prerevolutionary past—Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983).The postmodern are right about the dispersion; every contemporary assemblyis poly-temporal—Bruno Latour, We have never been modern (1993).

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Introduction

In Facts on the Grounds Nadia Abu El-Haj (2002:7) notes the intrinsic rela-tion between archaeology as science and ‘larger social political worlds’. Sheconvincingly argues that the Israeli archaeological practices aimed atgrounding historical narrative in the material world of archaeology. AbuEl-Haj shows how archaeology as a discipline was turned into a state ideol-ogy apparatus directed towards producing a ‘cohesive national imagination’of the newly born state of Israel (Abu El-Haj 2002:3, cf., Silberman2001:21, 28).1 Meron Benvenisti arrived to a similar conclusion by follow-ing the process through which the cultural landscape of Palestine was re-mapped, and re-envisioned to produce the sacred landscape of Eretz Israel,from which the indigenous Palestinians are missing.2 Rightly put by AmiraHaas, one ‘can drive along [in the West Bank] and never see an Arab’(quoted Edward Said in Dabashi 2006:2).3

Benvenisti elsewhere notes that the struggle for visibility is also aboutdomination. What matters in the Arab/Israeli conflict, he argues, is thetwentieth century in which destruction, depopulation, displacement,archaeology, planning, development, construction and restoration weretools used to create ‘historical fact,’ facilitating the domination of Palestin-ian history and landscape by Israel (Benvenisti 1996:8, 49).

Other researchers show how early expeditions to Palestine were cloakedwith a biblical approach to archaeology that mounts to the search for Godand country at the same time, thus emphasising the innate relationbetween biblical archaeology and ‘imperial ambitions’ (Silberman 2001:14).This is not an unusual practice as the Israeli officials see and use theremains of the past as a source for its national collective identity, and aclaim for a physical connection with the ‘promised land’ (Silberman1990:306; cf., Benvenisti 1996:8).4

These scholarly works, to name but a few, focus on the colonial dis-courses and archaeology practices in pre-Oslo Agreement (1993). Thisessay addresses the need to look into the ‘postcolonial’ or, more accurate,the ‘post-Oslo’ discourses and practices to uncover commonalities anddivergences, which might tell us more about hidden codes of subjectivityand the setbacks of the postcolonial discourse in a ‘postcolonial era’.5 Thisessay addresses the politics of heritage policies and preservation practicesin Palestine. I claim that the Palestinian ‘postcolonial’ heritage polices andpreservation practices echo the colonial discourses in terms of approach,legal frame and goals. My premise is built on a long engagement withNGOs and IGOs and GOs heritage bodies as well as the literature on thetopic that shows that heritage discourses and practices were never innocentfrom specific narrative that it was destined to produce. I claim that the

Heritage in Palestine 297

postcolonial approaches to the material culture, consciously and uncon-sciously, reproduce the colonial situation and while the preservation itselfis a symptom of postmodernity, it is still carried out in a modern spirit.

Background

Palestine is blessed and cursed at the same time by its natural and culturalresources. It is blessed with the diversity of its built heritage and naturallandscapes. No wonder, this richness has led to bloody conflicts over theterritory, and subsequently the destruction of these resources. It is also nowonder that successive colonial regimes especially the British mandate(1921–1947), the establishment of the State of Israel (1948) and later, theIsraeli full domination of the territory of historic Palestine (1967–1993),aimed at appropriating, expropriating, or, when these are not possible,destroying the indigenous culture. Because they are cultural incubators,built forms and natural habitats were still a main target in the conflict.

In Palestine, as the case in other colonies—particularly Africa—the colo-nial processes commenced with the ‘deterritorialisation’ and the subsequent‘reterritorialisation’6 of the indigenous people into easily controlled territo-ries. This entails the destruction of the built and natural resources andhabitats. It is not necessary to reiterate the story of the Palestinian Nakbain 1948 and the subsequent destruction of hundreds of communities andthe separation of the indigenous people from their lived practices and tra-ditions let alone the expropriation of Palestinian subsistence resources suchas water, farms and orchards (Abu-Sitta 2004; Benvenisti 2000; Khalidi1992; Masalha 1992; Morris 1987; Nazzal 1978; Pappe 2006).7

The Oslo Agreement, signed in 1993 by the Palestine Liberation Organi-zation (PLO) and the State of Israel, established the Palestinian NationalAuthority (PNA) to govern Palestinian civil affairs. The quasi-autonomousPNA ruled over some parts of the Occupied Territories (OT) of the WestBank and Gaza Strip. As a result of the Agreement, the OT were dividedinto three areas with different relation to the State of Israel and the PNA:Area A, which includes the populated towns and villages, fell under thePNA civil and security control; Area B, which includes a buffer zonearound Area A, fell under PNA civil administration and under Israeli secu-rity control; and Area C, which includes the vast majority of the OT, fellunder the Israeli civil and security control.

The consequences of this division on cultural heritage have been colossal.First, thousands of archaeological sites fell into Area C and were left withneither serious management nor firm inspection. This ultimately led to loot-ing practices, illicit excavations and artefacts trafficking. Second, the divisionof the OT created an urban sprawl in Area A that is fully administered and

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controlled by the PNA. Because of the limited territories for development,the historic centres were subjected to fast and unplanned real-estate invest-ment resulting in the destruction of huge amount of historic buildings.Third, the newly born ‘state’ (the PNA) has prioritised neither the protectionnor the restoration of heritage. This can be seen in the absence of protectionlaws and the scarcity of financial resources dedicated to heritage preservationor development. This, as well, resulted in the destruction of historic build-ings that were replaced with the new high-rise buildings. Fourth, the PNAfollowed donors’ community concerning the priorities of the new entity.Seemingly, neither heritage preservation nor development was considerednecessary compared to other fields such as health, education and security.Fifth, the focus of the PNA on urban centres left the rural Palestine—thehome of the majority of the historic buildings and archaeologicalsites—without decent support. Because rural Palestine lacks the human andthe financial resources for what is considered luxury (i.e. preservation), theseareas suffered vastly from destruction and neglect of once upon a timevibrant social centres. Sixth, the newly born state saw the vibrant civil society(inherited from the long years of occupation and resistance) as a competingbody rather than integral partner to heritage protection and development.

Ultimately, the liberal (huge) government has been failing to deliver thepromise of change on different levels, heritage included. As we stand today,after almost two decades from Oslo Agreement, no legal frame was puttogether to protect heritage; no incentives or financial resources were allo-cated to hinder illicit excavations, looting, or demolition of built heritage;and no integration of the civil society and its takes on heritage into theprocess protection and preservation of built heritage in Palestine.

On the other hand, civil society (mainly the non-governmental organi-sations) along with local and private initiatives has been showing tremen-dous resilience in the protection and preservation of cultural and naturalheritage in Palestine. For example, RIWAQ, established in 1991 during theIsraeli occupation, managed between 1994 and 2004 to compile a compre-hensive register for historic buildings in the West Bank, East Jerusalem andthe Gaza Strip. In addition, RIWAQ pioneered by shifting the focus onjob-creation and with their aggressive approach to physical protection ofrural Palestine including the Throne villages architecture of the Ottomanera. Further, RIWAQ developed a ‘national’ plan to conserve the 50 mostsignificant historic centres in Palestine as an answer for the acceleratedurbanisation and destruction of vernacular architecture and landscapes.Other organisations such as Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC),established in 1996 by a presidential decree, managed to restore and torehabilitate more than 800 houses and hundreds of shops in the Old Cityof Hebron. The Bethlehem 2000 Project, and later the Bethlehem Centrefor Heritage Preservation, led an extraordinary restoration and urban scale


rehabilitation projects affecting large portion of historic centres in theBethlehem governorate. The Welfare Association (WA) managed to workout and implement a revitalisation plan for the Old City of Jerusalem tothe universal standard that the City has enjoyed since its enlisting into theWorld Heritage List (WHL) in 1981.

These initiatives and others8 are examples of the possibility and potenti-ality to work out plans and tactics within the conditions of possibility cre-ated by the Oslo Agreements (1993). What I can safely claim is that whilethe PNA as executing body failed to deliver the promise of prosperity and wel-fare of the nation—as most postcolonial governments—the conditions the OsloAgreement created allowed the long-lived and thriving civil society to resil-iently act upon space and heritage, undermining the colonial ‘falafelisation’project.

Falafelisation

According to Achille Mbembe, to colonize is to put to work the two-fac-eted movement of destroying and creating, creating by destroying; to colo-nize is also to deploy a subjectivity freed of any limit, a subjectivity seeingitself as absolute but which, to experience that absolute, must constantlyreveal it to itself by creating, destroying and desiring the thing and the ani-mal that it has previously summoned into existence (Mbembe 2001:189).

In Palestine, the colonial conditions were amplified under the IsraeliOccupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. The post 1967 Wartriggered the process of Judaism of Palestine. This process entailed not onlyto the further deterritorialisation and territorialisation of the remainingPalestinians into easily governed spaces and the on-the-ground settlementactivities, but also the appropriation of the Palestinians’ culture in what Irather call falafelisation9 or the process of claiming and incorporating theindigenous heritage into the new colonial regime. Naming anew the indige-nous peoples’ traditions such as the local cuisine and embroidery, sacredplaces and shrines and the indigenous building arts are some of these pro-cesses. Carol Bardenstein calls the adoption of the Palestinian indigenoustraditions into Israeli culture as a process of ‘role switching and cross-cast-ing’10 (quoted in Stein and Swedenburg 2005:101). Benvenisti notes(2000:192–193) that the Jewish newcomers/settlers related the fine architec-ture they found in Palestinian villages and towns to the Crusader’s perioddenying the possibility that indigenous Palestinians had developed such ahigh taste of architecture and art. How Israeli State treats the depopulatedvillages reveals how planning was used as a fundamental tool in makingthe transition from a Palestinian village to the realisation of a ‘utopian ide-ology of a modern Israeli society and nation’ (Shoshan and Bronstein

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2006).11 Similarly, Slyomovics (1998:xvi) shows how the new Jewish resi-dents of the Arab depopulated village of Ein Houd, produce and narratethe history of the village ‘linearly in time,’ wiping out the history of livedand embodied practices of the Palestinian residents, expelled from the vil-lage in 1948 War.

Falsification

One of the key colonial processes is the devaluation of the indigenous tra-ditions and practices that undermine the colonial project. Therefore, whatare left out from appropriation become the primitive, the backward, theanti-modern and the anti-civilisation (Benvenisti 2000:6). By its civilisingmission, the colonialist writes the new history books and tells a new storyof a landscape that was essentially and necessarily empty. This is what Iwill call ‘history falsification’ or the process through which the colonialistfavours a particular biased narrative, which is matched with equallyaggressive chauvinistic approach to value colonial related materials/prac-tices/histories. In archaeology practices, a modest finding from biblicalarchaeology is publicised as a novelty and as a cutting-edge discovery,while other monumental historical layers, which are well and alive, arenot valued or celebrated. This process is also accompanied with a newnarrative that brings a cohesive, long and continuous narrative of frag-mented presence, while at the same time it wipes out the obvious conti-nuity of indigenous people material culture and embodied practices. Thefalsified narrative also ignores the ‘deep history’ imbedded in Palestinelandscapes thousands of years before all three monotheisms. Benvenistinotes in the City of Stones that the way the museum of Jerusalem wascurated and arranged emphasized the long and continuous relation of theJewish people to the Land and at the same time it fragments the fourteencenturies of continuous Arab/Islamic culture in Palestine into short peri-ods of ‘foreign occupations’.

Alienation

The colonialist is also by definition against common space. IndigenousPalestinians were alienated from their common spaces that gave meaningto their lives and formed a solid structure that structures social ties andcommunities (see for example Bourdieu 1979; De Certeau 1984; Hodderand Cessford 2004; Weiner 1992). Common spaces include grazing areas,valleys, mountains, springs, the sea, village plazas, the mosque, the church,the shrines, etc. In short, the colonialists divide the colonized world into


private and public dominions, with nothing in between. In this new imag-inary, the State is the sole proprietor of the public spaces, while individu-als keep clearly defined, mapped and numbered plots of land and builtstructures (houses, farms or businesses). This process denies the indige-nous people from their common spaces, the space for the communalinteractions and communications. Further, expropriation of the commonresources drives the indigenous people from their subsistence resourcesand ‘frees’ them to be exploited in the colonial labour market (Mamdani1996).12 This process is known in postcolonial theory as estrangement,double alienation, or debilitating alienation (Butler 1997; Oliver 2004), tonote the process that denies the colonized from practicing the freewillalienation, which is essential for meaning-making and for sustaining valuesystems in their respective communities/societies.

Estrangement

Palestinians, therefore, are born/thrown into a world that already has itsown meanings, written by the colonialist. They have not only lost theirfalafel, or ‘humus’ (khumus in Hebrew), but also they are not allowed totalk about it nor question the history that made the ‘humus’ into khumus.This is what I refer here, in the context of the Palestinian heritage,estrangement, debilitating alienation or double alienation. The inability toreflect, contemplate or express one’s ideas of the world makes this type ofalienation debilitating and traumatic (Kristeva 1989:23, cf., Butler 1997;Oliver 2004). Within the PNA structure, there is no apparatus that man-aged to de-write or challenge the Eurocentric narrative about Palestine.And again, within the conditions of possibility Oslo Agreement created,NGOs and private initiatives such as RIWAQ Monograph Series on theHistory Architecture in Palestine, PASSIA publications, Institute of Pales-tinian Studies publications and thisweekinpalestine can be seen as the subal-tern narrative that, consciously, undermines and provincializes theEurocentric historiography (see for example Chakrabarty 2000; Mantena2012).

National Legal System and Colonial Legacy

There is no unified legal regime in the Palestinian territories. In fact, thereare different laws that are applicable in the territories (the Antiquity Lawof 1966 in the West Bank and the Antiquity Law of 1929 in the GazaStrip). Both only pay attention to, and protect, archaeological sites created

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prior to 1700 AD. This leaves out major portion of heritage in Palestinesuch as historic centres and cultural landscapes from the scope of protec-tion.

In 1929, the British Mandate government put the Antiquity Lawtogether. The Law founded administrative structure to govern antiquityexcavations, findings, market and so forth. The Law gave the authority tothe Head of the Antiquity Department to declare sites he considered of his-torical value as archaeological sites. Further, the Law provided sanctionsregarding looting, trafficking, vandalising antiquity sites or the assault onthe department’s personnel. The most influential article in the Law, whichleft an everlasting impact on the antiquity in Palestine, is the definition ofarchaeological site. According to the Law, archaeology is any structurefounded or material worked upon prior to the year 1700 AD. This practi-cally meant that most Palestinian towns and villages’ vernacular architec-ture of more than two centuries of Ottoman heritage in Palestine wasneither considered nor protected as antiquity.

Knowing how dialectical is the relation between heritage and antiquityon one hand and the identity politics on the other, the colonial AntiquityLaw defined what is worthy as a past, and therefore defined the relation ofthe indigenous people to their histories and landscapes. The embeddedemphasis on the historical value as a defining criterion for archaeology inthe colonial Law undermined the possibility of considering anthropologicalvalues related to Palestinians’ traditions and their spatial and material prac-tices.

Although the PNA helped to raise social awareness about the impor-tance of preserving tangible and intangible heritage, it continued to apply adeeply flawed, 1929 Law, which was amended in 1966 during the Jordanianrule of the West Bank, and used during the pre-Oslo Agreement—at thetime of direct Israeli occupation.

This colonialist Law poses one of the greatest dangers/challenges toarchitectural preservation in Palestine, since it excludes most of the archi-tectural heritage of the last three centuries from protection. Consideringthe relationship between identity and heritage, it is ironic to leave, in a‘postcolonial’ regime, the protection of heritage to a colonialist law.13 As aresult of this exclusion, many significant heritage sites were lost throughnegligence, the absence of protection and the urban sprawl.

As a matter of fact, the colonial Antiquity Law lived beyond the colonialera (1921–1948). After the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, which ended with thePalestinian Nakba (exodus) and the creation of the State of Israel, theHashemite Kingdom of Jordan ruled over the West Bank and East Jerusa-lem. Egypt administered the Gaza Strip. The Jordanian rule (1948–1967)incorporated the Antiquity Law into the legal system amending the articlesrelated to the head of the antiquity department, replacing him with the


Minister. The Jordanians adopted the Law with all its articles. The defini-tion of what constitutes archaeology, however, did not change.

The full Israeli occupation (1967–1993) in the West Bank, Gaza Stripand East Jerusalem, adopted the colonial Antiquity Law, mandating thepowers of the Jordanian Minister to the Officer of the Civil Administrationof the OT. Not only did the Occupation control excavations and managearchaeological sites but also put its hands on many sites as sites of specialimportance to the Jewish faith such as the Moroccan Quarter (the WailingWall), the Ibrahimi mosque (the Tombs of the Patriarchs) in Hebron, theBilal mosque (Raheil dome) in Bethlehem, Yousef shrine in Nablus andseveral other sites. During this era, looting of archaeology and traffickingflourished. In spite of the PNA tourism police, archaeological artefacts andhistoric buildings components have been sold in the black market includ-ing the stone pavements of historic buildings; the olive presses stone com-ponents; decorative metal works, wood or stone decorative elements ofhistoric facades, in addition to glass, pottery and coins.

During the Israeli occupation, Palestinians considered the historic townsand buildings as an obstacle to development. Average Palestinians foundthemselves at ease to destroy their own historic buildings to construct newprojects or residential buildings in the limited and precious land they ownwithin the urban centres. The absence of monetary incentives to reveal thepresence of archaeological site on one’s property as well as the meaning-less—by the time—sanctions introduced in 1929 by the British Law, led todestruction of valuable cultural resources. In spite of the huge currency infla-tion, the sanctions were kept at the amount set by the Law in 1929. Themonetary fines in Palestinian Pounds were replaced with the same amountof Jordanian Dinars in the Hashemite era, and with same Jordanian Dinarsor its equivalent in the Israeli currency at the times of Israeli occupation.While the sanction for looting, put at 20 Palestinian Pounds, was back thena year worth of work, in post-Oslo era, it is worth less than one-day work!

Other Palestinians, voluntarily, chiselled out some ornaments that couldsupport Jewish claims over Palestinian sites, though themselves knew thePalestinian/Arab/Islamic history of such elements or ornamentation. Agood example is what is known as David Star found on many historicbuildings and archaeology artefacts in Palestine dating back to the postMuslim conquest era (Umayyad, Mamluk, Ottoman). An Israeli official ornon-official visit to a building or to a site that bears some of these ‘indige-nous’ symbols generates a fear of confiscation and therefore the chisellingout what the Palestinians themselves produced. Because myth was a found-ing element in the Israeli archaeology practices, Palestinians abided, andgave weight, to the Israeli systems of belief rather than the historicalrecords, or the indigenous population lived and embodied practices. Notonly did the Palestinians conceal, and sometimes destroy, antiquity sites,

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which they did not have a clue about its history and origin, but also theydestroyed sites they themselves made possible. In doing so, they areestrangement in the sense I described earlier.

With the advent of Oslo Agreement (1993), and the creation of quasi-autonomous Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on parts of OTs, thecolonial Antiquity Law, inherited by the Jordanians and practiced by theIsraeli occupation, was incorporated within the PNA structures to governarchaeology practices. Again, the responsibility over antiquity was relocatedto the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquity instead of the Officerof the Israeli Civil Administration. No amendments were made, and withthe impact Oslo Agreement have had on the geographical unity of the Pal-estinian Territories, and the impact of the urban sprawl encroaching overthe historic centres described earlier, archaeological sites suffered hugeindirect losses, let alone the direct Israeli destruction (in 2002) of impor-tant portions of the historic centre of Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem(Amiry and Bshara 2007) as well as the destruction of the colonial heritageknown as Tegart14 forts—constructed as administrative centres by theBritish mandate in the 1930s (Muhawi and Qawasmi 2012:51).

Centralized Practices in Neo-Liberal Era

As in any postcolonial government, the PNA created a huge bureaucraticstructure to carry out projects and plans that were condemned to fail, firstbecause of their humanitarian emergency nature, and second, because ofthe inefficiency of government bodies compared to the civil society. As Imentioned earlier, the newly born ‘state’ saw the vibrant civil society insti-tutions as a competing body rather than integral partner to heritage protec-tion and development. The central role the Palestinian Ministry of Tourismand Antiquity tried to occupy as an implementing agency undermined thelegacy of thriving civil society, and defeated its purposes concerning heritageprotection and development. While the PNA advocates—at least in post-Arafat era (2004 and on)—the decentralisation and the mandating of powerto communities and individuals, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquitycarry on with their ambitious role as the sole responsible, or more accu-rately the sole proprietor, of heritage in Palestine and its development. Thedrafting and the preparation of a new ‘progressive’ Law of Antiquity in1999/2000 (by Birzeit Law Institute, Riwaq, Bethlehem 2000, independentorganisations and relevant experts) for the Palestinian Ministry of Tourismand Antiquity, and funded by the World Bank, came to a blank wall, or bet-ter say a black hole, simply because the new Law decentralizes administra-tion and gives power for local communities to mange their heritage,according to a key architect of the draft of the new Law.15


Because of the Oslo Agreement and its impact regarding the geographi-cal fragmentation of Palestine, the PNA were confined to Area A and AreaB, i.e. the urban populated centres and its puffer. This left the rural Pales-tine, the home of the majority of the historic buildings and archaeologicalsites, with no adequate inspection or development strategy. In doing so, thepostcolonial structure followed, unavoidably, the colonial approach that,intentionally, paid attention to the centre and undermined the periphery.

Universalising the Local

In spite of the setbacks of the Oslo Agreement, the post-Oslo era allowedfor new expressions of the Palestinian national identity and collective nar-rative. This was manifested through what Doumani (2009) coins the mem-ory fever to point out the huge work Palestinians dedicated to theproduction or reproduction of inventories, oral history projects and resto-ration of historic buildings, revival of folk traditions and the compiling ofscholarly volumes that sought to make pre-Nakba era visible, to reconcilewith a broken history, and to construct an alternative visual imaginary forPalestine, other than the biblical rhetoric. In a space charged with historicalclaims and counter claims, spaces of memory attain obvious politicalsignificance.

Certainly, Palestinians are more and more aware of the importance ofthe physical remains of the history in their struggle against the Israeli hege-mony. Edward Said describes the Palestinian struggle as ‘after all a strugglefor visibility’ (Said in Dabashi 2006:3). Lately, Palestinians use the samediscourse/rhetoric/tools that have been silencing them, to challenge theState of Israel definition and crafting of the past. I argue here that Palestin-ians have been using their lieux de memoire, to use Nora (2001) words, intheir struggle for visibility. The compilation of a list of twenty natural andcultural sites, nominated for the WHL as Palestinian sites of universalvalue, and the subsequent nomination and acceptance of the Nativity ofBethlehem—the Crist’s Birthplace—as a world heritage site, is one of these‘national visibility’ projects. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism andAntiquities believes that ‘the list reflects the cultural and natural diversityin Palestine, and places Palestinian culture within the setting of humanhistory.’16

By universalising the local, the Palestinians use a tool available for themto protect the remains of their heritage, to locate Palestine into a differenthistorical Atlas, and to use the process of making the local universal to re-write the local history anew—a discursive production of knowledge. Indeed,among the twenty sites nominated to the WHL are Wadi Natuf and ShuqbaCave that contain two major prehistoric settlement indications that date

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back to the Early Bronze Age. Another site is Tel es-Sultan, which is claimedto be the first agricultural settlement in the world with 23 layers of settle-ment, some of which dates back to the 10th millennium BC. The list contin-ues to include cultural and natural sites such as Samaria (Sebastia), aHellenistic and Byzantine site, trade routes, religious roots, Ottomanthrones, forests and wetlands, et cetera. These sites not only represent adiversity of heritage in Palestine, but also reconstruct new visual and histor-ical narrative of Palestine.

The list in one-way or another shows Palestine before the interruptionof the Iron Age (Jewish tribes) as a space replete with life and culture. Thismeant to challenge the Israeli narrative about Palestine as a vacant placebefore its desert bloomed with the newcomers restless efforts, as sarcasti-cally put by Benvenisti (2000).

Paradoxically, the attempt to claim the local heritage by making the uni-versal detour opens new terrains on which battles to be fought. By adopt-ing a national, supranational, and universal approaches towards builtcultural heritage and landscape, the Palestinian lieux de memoire acquiresnew meanings in the landscape of resistance. While one expects a postcolo-nial regime to acknowledge its local traditions and practices for their sakeand for their locality, the PNA followed the sweeping attitudes of makingthe local heritage universal. This attitude has been the driving force of col-onising Palestine through biblical practices of archaeology and the univer-salising the indigenous cultures and landscapes, laying the grounds for its‘appropriation.’

The Palestinian Heritage Charter, Modernism inPostmodern Era

Of course, we may see the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquitypreoccupation with making the local heritage universal as a means ofdebunking history, or as means to protect sites of national value fromIsraeli aggression by nominating and ‘upgrading’ them into sites of univer-sal value worth of protection—a possibility emerged only in post-Oslo era.

Preoccupied with universal values, the Ministry has recently initiated thePalestinian Heritage Charter, which is a ‘refined’ version of UNESCO char-ters, with a preamble that acknowledges the holiness of the Land and itsimportance to the three monotheisms. In doing so, the Ministry adopts amodernist approach to the local heritage by following, one, the charters’world, which is a symptom of modernity—one fits all (in spite of theircraft or attention paid to the specificity of every case). Second, theacknowledging of the importance of the Land for the three main religions


reproduces the rhetoric and the discourse of the colonialism, i.e. theimportance of the Land and its material culture for mystical reasons.

Acknowledging the universal, in terms of universalising the local, or interms of drafting charters for heritage is, paradoxically, a modern approachto a post-modern symptom (that is heritage preservation) in a ‘postcolo-nial’ era. From the above-mentioned examples, the PNA Ministry of Tour-ism and Antiquity seems to keep faith with the modern traditions and itsepistemology that brought destruction and annihilation to the Palestinianpeople and their traditions.

Theorists caution us about the masking of the modern in a new cloakwhile retaining its former frameworks. While Jean-Francois Lyotard, positsthat ‘post-modernity refers to a shift away from faith in humanly engi-neered progress’ (quoted in Giddens 2000:2), Bruno Latour argues that therejection of empirical works as ‘illusory and deceptively scientific, [since] itretains the modern framework but disperses the elements that the modern-izers grouped together in a well-ordered cluster’ (Latour 1993:46). Latourhimself believes that ‘we have never been modern’ if modernism refers tothe separation of physics from metaphysics. The holiness of the Land inthe preamble of the Palestinian Charter confirms we have never learnedthe history even when we claim we, as human/social science, provide mate-rial evidence about kan wa ma kan (what was and what was not).

Universalising the local, centralisation in a neoliberal era, drafting char-ters for heritage and the using of the colonial law to classify heritage, andconsequently, define its relation to preservation and social world, are somecontradictions in Post-colonial era. Further, archaeological sites are subjectsof protection and fully controlled when Israel allows by the PNA Ministry,and historical buildings are subjects to historical preservation and aremainly privately controlled and beyond the Law of Antiquity. All theselook natural and ‘common sense’ for a PNA who seeks to claim a positionon the international stage, with Palestine’s own heritage, own charters, andown laws that are an extension to the international laws, charters and defi-nition. Instead of offering the universe some new dimensions to heritage,and instead of questioning the taken-for-granted definitions and charters,the postcolonial institutions ‘naturally’ reproduce these ‘colonial’ defini-tions. One cannot of course ignore the economy of the production and thereproduction of the common sense terms and worlds in a government thatrelies mainly on the Western/foreign donations to run the seen.

Preservation in Palestine Between Theory and Practice

Elsewhere, I argued (Amiry and Bshara 2007) that most Palestinian preser-vation initiatives have been driven by politics. Instead of preserving the

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heritage for its own merits, heritage preservation has been a vehicle forpolitical action or a medium to produce alternative facts on the ground.For example, Bethlehem 2000 project was meant to prepare the Jesus’birthplace for the third millennium in which western donors invested bothin the space and in the peace process that was on the verge of collapse.Hebron Rehabilitation Committee was founded by a presidential decree in1996 to rehabilitate the old city of Hebron as an answer for the mountingJewish settlers’ pressure. The WA also invested generously not only to pre-serve the universal heritage of the Old City of Jerusalem, but also to con-tribute to the ‘steadfastness’ of the Palestinian Jerusalemites threatened byIsraeli discriminatory policies, such as the ‘Centre of Life Policy’ imple-mented by 1996 and on.17 RIWAQ also directed the restoration mainlytowards the job creation for the Palestinian marginalized communities suf-fering from high level of unemployment as a result of the closure imposedby Israeli armed forces on the Palestinian territories since the outbreak ofthe second intifada (2000).

The work of HRC and the WA in particular exemplifies the extent towhich preservation was diverted from its main goal, to protect the heritageper se, to the political ends of heritage preservation. The political ends jus-tified/have been justifying the blind eye on restoration or preservationalphabets. Instead of paying attention to authenticity and technically cor-rect restoration interventions, attention was shifted towards other questionssuch as living conditions, minimum living standards, occupancy andcapacity, social needs, poverty alleviation, accessibility, material availability,Israeli settlement threats and so on.

The WA and the HRC work on enhancing living conditions or theadaptation of historic buildings into contemporary residences led to thechange in the spirit of heritage and the morphology of the historic build-ings or sites. The WA, for example, found themselves obliged—in order tohelp Palestinian Jerusalemites sustain a permanent address—to make useof a Mamluk shrines, mausoleums, caravansaries or schools in the heart ofthe Old City of Jerusalem (such as al Jawhariyya, al Jaliqiyya and al Maw-lawiyya to name but a few) as residential courtyards where people live sideby side to the dead, to protect not their identity but their Jerusalem identitycards threatened by the Israeli policies.

The HRC, similarly, divided extended family residential courtyards,sometimes formed from tens of rooms, into three-room apartments, leasedto different families who never resided together. In addition to the changeof the physical structure of the historic fabric by kind of contemporarypartitions (to provide privacy), the social structures were equally changedfrom the kinship related families residing together as a mode of life andsocial support, to nuclear families residing together because they benefit


from low rent and incentives provided by the PNA through its arm theHRC functioning in an area which is still fully under Israeli occupation.

These examples show that preservation has become a medium throughwhich pragmatic and everyday life questions are addressed. Though itappears to defeat its purpose concerning the preservation as we study it inbooks, the preservation and restoration works, a la Palestinian mode ofdoing, brought about new ways to rethink future of heritage and new waysto rethink restoration grammar. In Palestine, should there have not beenpolitical conflict over geography and history, the interventions and politicalends of preservation works would have varied remarkably. In some other cir-cumstances where Israeli ‘factor’ was not massive, preservation works wereimplemented in the highest standards. Good examples of technically andtheoretically sound restorations are the Islamic Orphanage School (Mamlukand Ottoman building) and al Ashrafiyya (a Mamluk building), as well asthe Islamic Museum (Mamluk Building)—all in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The theoretical (call it the grammar or the structure) of preservationwas also not in concordance with the practice (call it the parole or theuttered everyday language) in sites where direct Israeli political impact onthe site itself was minimal. Architects, planners and restorers design pro-jects and people appropriate these spaces differently and innovatively. Al-Thahiriyya town, southern West Bank, exemplifies such divergence between‘intended’ and ‘unintended consequences.’ RIWAQ since 2005, for exam-ple, has been restoring historic buildings to host cultural activities and edu-cational facilities. After several years into restoration activities, it hasbecome clear that the local community (represented by the Municipality)found solutions to occupancy and rehabilitation of the historic town—oncedeserted—more innovatively than the designed/planned functions. Forinstance, once the Palestinian Ministry of Education refused to relocate theelementary school into the renovated historic buildings, because of a stan-dard code that the spaces do not meet, the Municipality divided therestored facility into smaller units to accommodate different associationsand civil society bodies (such as the women centre, the sport club, thefarmers’ union…) and allocated some space for electrical company ofSouthern Palestine (24 h 7 days a week facility), and leased some otherspaces as a cafe and restaurant (where the Spanish Clasico is a big hit onits screens), and hosted the local FM radio in some other rooms.

One important change in the historic centre took place when theMunicipality transformed the space designated to the historic town rehabil-itation committee into the religious courthouse. The religious courthousesin Palestine are busy departments because marriage, divorce, inheritanceand family disputes take place or get resolved in these governmental insti-tutions. The inauguration of the courthouse in the historic town benefitedthe whole community as it serves not only the town but also the surround-

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ing villages. The busy courthouse led to a boost in restoration for privatelaw offices that benefited from the clients of the courthouse and increasedthe visibility of the preservation initiatives. When, after several years, thecentral government in Ramallah decided to shut down the courthouse andto relocate it in other town for rationalising purposes, the Municipalityand the residents of al-Thahiriyya protested the decision and went on dem-onstration at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah, leading ultimatelyto the reversing of the decision and the reactivation of the courthouse inthe town again, as the director of the Municipality proudly explains. Thecourthouse incident tells us that the grammar (structure) imposed by theplanners or by the central administration can be challenged by the on-the-ground practices (the spoken everyday language). It also shows that therestoration of the historic centre opened not only new possibilities forbusinesses but also for political mobilisation and social organisation/change.

Dis-Alienation and the Decolonisation of Psychic Space

We are encouraged by the idea that wherever there is power, there is alsoresistance (Foucault 1978). And again, it is not necessary to reiterate thatPalestinians on different levels engage in resistance. Some boycott all colo-nial products, including knowledge and history books; others rally andsound their discontent with the colonial conditions; some take up arms asa violent response to colonisation; some look into art as an expressive fac-ulty that helps to reverse the colonial conditions and enables the colonisedto inject meaning into their lives and make sense of the absurdity in whichthey live.

Heritage and Spatial Subjectivity

As psychoanalysis proves the importance for individuals to establish linkswith the personal past (Lowenthal and Binney 1981:19), Palestinians findthemselves required not only to ‘assert the relevance of the past’ but also‘to ensure that its tangible relics survive…as guarantors of historical iden-tity for [their] descendants’ (Lowenthal and Binney 1981:31). Like anythreatened indigenous people, who find themselves in a continuous iden-tity struggle with stronger groups or states, Palestinians require in theirdramatically changing landscape different kinds of reminders to fill in their‘imagination’ with memories of the past.

Heritage in Palestine has a salient position in the postcolonial discourse.Restoration cannot be seen as the material reproduction of the past; rather, it


is the repair of the run-down places spaces and palaces of memory into sig-nificant symbols ready for political appropriation. No wonder then that somePalestinians see restoration as a mode of expression that helps them under-mine the colonial project including its historiography (see De Cesari 2010).In a sense, Palestinians are following a universal fashion as ‘virtually everymodern state feels some obligation to safeguard historic monuments fromvandalism, neglect and redevelopment’ (Lowenthal and Binney 1981:10).

Institutions, such as RIWAQ, the Bethlehem Centre for Heritage Preser-vation, the HRC, the WA and others have been working on the restorationof the built cultural heritage in Palestine, and have been preoccupied withrestoring not only the buildings, but also the cultural practices they oncesupport. In making these spatial practices and longings explicit, they makepossible the transformation of architectural heritage in Palestine into sym-bol. As an explicitly formatted aesthetic form, the symbol becomes avail-able for political action. The restoration of heritage in Palestine and therevitalisation of historic centres are, therefore, dialogic practices that are notexplicit representations, but ‘implicit’ engagement with the political.

There is a stark difference between the official (the PNA) vision of heri-tage in Palestine and the on-the-ground localized heritage practices. Whilethe PNA succumbs to the universalising discourse of heritage in terms ofWHLs, charters and platforms (such as UNESCO), and thus, adopting theEurocentric approach to heritage, local initiatives have been movingbeyond such approach and contributing to the heritage discourse at large.Instead of being the recipient of the knowledge, they produce knowledgeand challenge the taken-for-granted European aesthetics. De Cesari rightlynotes (2010:625) the NGOs’ takes on heritage, which mounts to defyingarts of government. In a way, heritage NGOs in Palestine escapes prede-fined meanings of heritage to contemplate an idea about, and to engagewith, the political (ethical) questions—i.e. why heritage is valued in theparticular time and space. Biennale (2005, 2007, 2009, 2012) is one initia-tive that challenges the well-established art biennales and its staging/aes-thetics by turning built heritage and historic centres into a medium thatartists, architects, planners and social scientists express their dreams aboutalternative aesthetics, histories, geographies and futures.

The Colonial Wants the Postcolonial to be Precolonial

Embedded within the postcolonial discourse is a tricky subject position thatthe postcolonialists are called to embody: the over-valuation of the pre-colo-nial era—obsessive nostalgia and romanticism (Tamari 2003:69–70, 77). Thecolonial despot expects the indigenous people to ‘return’ to their primitivemodes of life because of what Fanon coins as ‘a postcolonial sensitivity’

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(Fanon 2004:161). As if the colonial utters the ‘open sesame’ words: ‘Con-gratulations, you got your independence, you are free, you got your Ministryof Tourism and Antiquity and you also got your Ministry of Culture, etcet-era. So, reproduce your pre-colonial conditions.’ This is the danger in thepostcolonial discourse, which assumes the indigenous people have been liv-ing static or primitive past that can be reproduced. In other words, embed-ded in the postcolonial discourse is a whole set of preconceptions about theindigenous that are inherently colonial (see Anderson 1983).

If ‘the view that the tangible past is attractive is initially rooted in theRenaissance perception of a classical antiquity clearly distinguishable from,and superior to, the recent past’ (Lowenthal and Binney 1981:10–11, cf. Hal-bwachs 1992; Nora 2001:xiv),18 Palestinian officials and practitioners need toask questions such as: does the Palestinian preservation of the past and theattention paid to folk traditions are following the European aesthetic valuesystem? What does make such approach national? And, what goals are set inthe process and who are the targets? To decolonize, Fanon (2004) urges usto follow neither the colonial aesthetics nor the primitive indigenous aesthet-ics—already past at the moment of decolonisation. Instead, it is imperativeto look forward and have self-reflexive approach to one’s heritage that keepssearching and targeting the human in us—not the other.

In the postcolonial era (if we are to live one), art, music, folklore, archi-tecture and cuisine are all expectations and attributes of the postcolonialera, and it is upon the postcolonial to choose the direction to follow.Fanon argues that the colonized intellectual, at the very moment when heundertakes a work of art, fails to realize he is using techniques and a lan-guage borrowed from the occupier. He believes that culture never has thetranslucency of custom; rather, it eminently eludes any form of simplifica-tion. In its essence, it is the very opposite of custom (Fanon 2004:160–161). National culture, for Fanon, is the collective thought process of apeople to describe, justify and extol the actions whereby they have joinedforces and remained strong. The crystallisation of the national conscious-ness will not only radically change the literary genres and themes but alsocreate a completely new audience. Whereas the colonized started out byproducing work exclusively with the oppressor in mind, he graduallyswitches over to addressing himself to his people. This is a combat litera-ture because it informs the national consciousness, gives it shape and con-tours and opens up new, unlimited horizons. Therefore, national culture isthe outcome of tensions internal and external to society as a whole and itsmultiple layers (Fanon 2004:170–177).

The government, as important as it gets, cannot and should not maskthe political in its technicalities, and should allow and facilitate the human-ist approach to heritage, an approach that combines the populous, the intel-lectual and the expert. The role of the intellectual in zones of suffering and


blurred images, and times of uncertainty is to be part of the popular, partof the people, and part of a humanist approach that calls for alternativemodes of fashioning the self and searching for unity between the physicaland psychic spaces.

Memory for Future

Despite all, the preservation of the built heritage in Palestine has gainedmomentum over the last two decades. Heritage has become not only amode of expression, but also a mode of knowledge production that reversesor, at least, undermines the colonial conditions on different terrains. First,Palestine sets a precedent in using cultural heritage for job creation. Insteadof restoring heritage for their architectural and historical merits, historictowns and buildings have been restored to help unemployed Palestiniansmake a living. Second, in the process, the restoration projects have becomethe sites of knowledge production and revival of techniques that had beenlost as a result of ‘modernity’, and contemporary (and colonial) construc-tion techniques. Third, the newly acquired crafts by young Palestinianlabourers serve as tools and modes for living. Fourth, this knowledge isvaluable for understanding the past and what Palestine might have lookedlike if Palestinians had continued to manage their resources. Fifth, the endproduct of these restoration projects not only stands in between the privateand public world recreating the common space, which had been sacrificed bythe colonialist and, regrettably, by the postcolonial projects,19 it also standsas a metaphor of a possible ‘renaissance’ (on the postcolonial indigenouspeople’s own terms) without being a by-product of the aesthetics the Euro-pean Renaissance produced. Finally, the design, mapping, planning andmodelling of historic spaces has been functioning as a medium for empow-erment for Palestinian artists, architects, designers and planners, allowingthem to practice what the colonial once prohibited, i.e. planning the future.When young architects and planners engage with their own spatial ques-tions, they are no longer thrown into a world to inhabit; rather, this worldis waiting for them to shape and change it.

Notes

1. ‘Archaeological sites and ancient stories [the Israelis] told’, Abu El-Hajargues, ‘galvanized public sentiment. Science and the popular imaginationwere deeply enmeshed’ (2002:1).

2. Benvenisti (2000:5) writes, ‘Once the human landscape disappears, the physi-cal space is inevitably transformed’.

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3. An article by Amira Haas in Haaretz on 22 January 2003 (Said in Dabashi2006:2).

4. Benvenisti argues (1996:8) that ‘[h]istory is a vast quarry from whose stonesa magnificent edifice dedicated to the cult of Israeli Jerusalem has been con-structed’.

5. I reluctantly use the term postcolonial in Palestine to refer to the conditionscreated by the Oslo Agreement signed between the PLO and the State ofIsrael in 1993.

6. I am using the concepts deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation created byGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972), connoting the tak-ing of the control and the order away from a land or place (territory) that isalready established, and the subsequent loss of the local culture into the dom-inant culture.

7. Walid Khalidi lists 418 depopulated and destroyed villages (1992:xx). Abu-Sitta (2004:60) puts that the number of destroyed villages at the final phaseof Land conquest at 530. The Israeli historian Morris (1987:1) believes that369 villages were vacated, while Pappe (2007 [2006]:146) writes that over 400villages were destroyed.

8. Nablus Municipality, private sector investments and the UNESCO interven-tions are worth mentioning.

9. Falafel is fried balls of smashed chickpeas with spices. In West Bank Storycomedy/musical short film (2005), the director Ari Sandel envisions the polit-ical conflict in the cultural domain. He depicts the Palestinian Israeli conflictas a conflict between rival falafel restaurants, one Israeli and the other Pales-tinian.

10. In Cross/Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema by cross-castingCarol Bardenstein refers to ‘the extradiegetic practice, outside of the narra-tive frame or plot of the film, of casting actors in particular roles and itseffects: the casting of the Palestinian actors, or Palestinians with Israeli citi-zenship, for example, in the roles of Israeli Jewish characters, or the castingof Israeli Jewish actors as Palestinians’ (Bardenstein in Stein and Sweden-burg 2005:99).

11. Shoshan and Bronstein (2006).12. In Citizen and Subject, Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonial-

ism Mamdani shows how the colonial states aggregated the natives (territo-rial segregation) then administered them through customary law(institutional segregation) by appointed chiefs (1996:63–65), and in sodoing, the colonial took over the land, destroyed the communal autonomy(substantive economy) and ‘freed’ individuals for wage labour ready forexploitation (Mamdani 1996:66, 119).

13. The Palestinian Antiquities Law of 1929 was amended in 1934, 1937 and1946 (during the British Mandate) and again in 1966 by a decision of theJordanian cabinet. The law was amended further through a series of nineIsraeli military orders (decisions); decision no. 119 gave all authority per-taining to the law to the military governor or whomever he mandates, andit cancelled all decisions, appointments and jurisdictions issued prior to June


7, 1967. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Antiquities Law remained in effectuntil 1967; it was then amended by military order no. 462 of 1973. Chapter1 of the Palestinian Antiquities Law includes Terms and Expressions Itemno. 1, which defines antiquity as anything human made prior to 1700 A.D.,and it also includes human or animal remains prior to 600 AD.

14. Named after the British police officer and engineer Sir Charles Tegart, whodesigned tens of these forts in 1938 to crack on the Palestinian Great Revo-lution (1936–1939).

15. In an interview with Farhat Muhawi, architect and planner of RIWAQ andthe head of the team concerned with historic towns and buildings compo-nent of the new Law, interviewed in October 2012.

16. Inventory of Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites of Potential OutstandingUniversal Value in Palestine. Ramallah: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities(2005).

17. In the beginning of the year 1988, Israeli governments sought and obtainedauthority from the Supreme Court to treat East Jerusalem Arabs, in effect,as immigrants under Israel’s Law of Entry. The Supreme Court ruled infavour of the Ministry Interior, in the case of Mubarak Awad, a Jerusalemiteliving in the United States, who had petitioned against the cancellation ofhis resident status in the city. The decision of the Court included the follow-ing statement: ‘…permanent residents must show that their ‘‘centre of life’is in Jerusalem to retain residency rights’ (Tsemel 1996:9).

18. Pierre Nora argues that the association of the fascination with antiquity withRenaissance aesthetics has its roots to the growing of nation states and theneed to construction of uniform pasts for unified nations (Nora 2001:xiv).

19. I refer here to the planning and zoning policies in Palestine, which perpetu-ate the colonial conditions with ever decreasing public/social space com-pared to clearly defined and controlled spaces.

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heritage in palestine: colonial legacy in postcolonial discourse

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