Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ghosts in the archive: The palestinian villages and the Decolonial archives

  • Published:
GeoJournal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 11 August 2022

This article has been updated

Abstract

The article drives from the Israeli colonial archives and seeks to crack their structure, foundations and imagination. It wishes to establish a counter postcolonial/decolonial archive, based on colonial sources, while taking into consideration the specific condition of the Israeli colonialism and settler colonialism, and mainly the repressive administration of the colonial archives. While colonial bodies and archives erase the indigenous history and past, the counter archive aims to return them to their original population and to the pubic-sphere, calling for democratization processes. It will be established on the ruins of the Israeli colonial archive, will tell the story of the Palestinian villages that their population was uprooted and exiled (before and after exile), the story of the Palestinian population who remained in Palestine under military regime, strangers in the house; the erasure and attempt to control Palestinian historiography and culture to support official Israeli narrative. The decolonial archive will also gather indigenous materials in colonial archives, point out the physical and interpretative forces exerted on them, cleanse them of their biased interpretation and focus on structuring a reading that differs from the original colonial designation. It will restore them to indigenous history, enabling the construction of an alternative multi- layered database, different from the one-sided characteristic of colonial archives. The proposal then is to turn the Israeli colonial archive–corrupt, oppressive and destructive, into a more autonomous site–not only the materials themselves but also the way they are contextualized, read and interpreted.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

Notes

  1. Re alternative Palestinian/Israeli discourse see Robinson 2003.

  2. Margalit Shilo shows that Arthur Ruppin was familiar "with the Arab press, through a special Zionist clerk, that translate the Jewish material they printed" (1984, 56). However, she doesn’t indicate when it started. It might be in 1910 as Etan Bloom demonstrates (2008, 366). In addition, it is not clear if the clerk also translated Palestinian material. If not, the practice of collecting intelligence about the Palestinians for colonial purposes started towards the end of WW1 and after (Gelber 1992, 11–13).

  3. https://www.knesset.gov.il/review/data/heb/law/kns1_property.pdf (all web sites were accessed on February 10, 2020).

  4. State Controller’s Report 50b: http://www.acri.org.il/he/1940 See also Forte 2003, Hazkani 2019.

  5. Except of the Museum of Israeli Intelligence Heritage and Communication Center that shows weapons alongside cultural artefacts and present them in a biased manner as material confiscated from terrorists: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/he/%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%95%d7%a8-%d7%95%d7%99%d7%a8%d7%98%d7%95%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%99/.

  6. “Rules, Orders and Instructions:” http://www.archives.mod.gov.il/about/Pages/hukimtkanot.aspx. At the same time, museums are too ruled and expose material according to colonial norms.

  7. https://sipurheifai.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/מאגד-חמרה-ماجد-خمرة/.

  8. Correspondence with Al-Halabi 26.9.16.

  9. The Nakba Archive was stablished in 2002: http://nakba-archive.org/?page_id=956.

    Palestine Remembered was established in 2003: https://www.palestineremembered.com.

  10. Akevot–Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research was established in 2015 following a lecture I gave in Zochrot in 2013. It collects information in Israeli archives that deal with "black holes"- such as the kidnap of Yemenite children and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although it researches within Israeli archives, it doesn’t define itself as a postcolonial/decolonial archive and doesn't collect information from a Palestinian perspective.

  11. I suggested to use the materials taken by Jewish forces- such as Village Files, aerial photographs and surveys- by neutralizing their biased contents and transformed them into a vital source of information in Sela 2009a, b, 2011, 2013a, 2015, 2018a, b.

  12. A proposal to build a postcolonial archive of the villages was submitted, with no success, to various institution- to Zochrot in January 2010, to School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University in October 2010, to Van Leer Institute in November 2010, to the Truman Institute in February 2012, to Palestinian Internally Displaced Committee in 2014; and also presented at several conferences.

  13. Earliest studies do not distinguish between the two methods and relate to the Surveys as Village Files (Black & Morris 1991, 24–25, 129; Benvenisti 2002, 70–71; Pappé 2006, 17–22). Yoav Gelber was the first to set apart the two different methods of information gathering. However he wrote that they were both initiated by the Information Service and attached only initial and general information about the Village Files (Gelber 1992, 329–31, 526–527; see also Ben-Ze'ev 2011, 51–55), while studies from the beginning of the millennium showed that these were different methods and expanded the research (Salomon 2001, 2005; Sela 2009a).

    I allocate a lot of room to the visual aspects of the Village Files (photography from the ground and from the air, maps, sketches (Sela 2009a, 2011, 2013a, 2018b; later also Salomon 2010, 2018), while others studies dealt mainly with different (non-visual) aspects. Ben Zeev too relates to the cartographic aspect and photography from the air, but do not discuss other means (Ben-Ze'ev 2011, 51–55).

  14. It is also important to note that for many years hundreds of Surveys were not open to researchers and to the public. Although they do not have the potential to harm Israeli national security or foreign relations or privacy (the cause to restrict material according to The Freedom of Information Law, 1998 paragraph 9a), they were closed in the office of the deputy manager of the Haganah Archive who himself wrote about them (Salomon 2001, 2005). Furthermore, he analyzed the activities of intelligence bodies who were active before 1948 from an official Israeli perspective and deleted, from his publications, studies that challenge the official narrative. With regards to the Village Files, many of them have been lost, destroyed, burned or hidden by intelligence after the establishment of the State of Israel; only a small number is available (Sela 2009a, 2011, 2013a, 2018b). Salomon testified: "There is no doubt that quite a few files survived the war. What became of them? I imagine that most of them were cleared out by intelligence officers" (ibid). In addition, aerial photographs that I saw prior the publication of my first book on the subject (2009), were declassified and closed later. However, as photography is a medium that enables to duplicate images, I found them in another place (ibid, 50).

  15. Probably from the latest days of the SHAI. It was closed and moved to IDF in June30, 1948.

  16. Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Archives: http://www.israelalbum.org.il/.

    Nostalgia Online: http://www.nostal.co.il/#.

  17. From the Facebook page of A'inak Ala Haifa.

  18. http://www.jancodada.co.il/?page_id=1263&lang=en.

  19. See the film 500 Dunam on the Moon (2002, directed by Rachel Leah Jones) that narrates the tragedy of 'Ayn Hawd occupied and depopulated by Israelis. See also House (1980, directed by Amos Gitai), depicting a residence in Jerusalem’s German Colony which belonged to Palestinian doctor Mahmoud Dajani captured and expropriated by Israeli immigrants.

  20. See also Stein 2010, 10.

  21. "Reading a Visual Archive, Lifta as a Case Study", Save Lifta conference, July 25, 2013: http://savelifta.org/article/%D7%9C%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%97%D7%96%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%AA%D7%90-%D7%9B%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%95%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%93/.

  22. www.tursinai-organi.co.il.

References

  • Abu El-Haj, N. (2001). Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abu El-Haj, N. (2003). Reflections on Archaeology and Israeli Settler-Nationhood. Radical History Review, 86(1), 149–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Abu-Sitta, S. (2004). Atlas of Palestine. London: Palestine Land Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Almog, O. (2000). The Sabra-The Creation of the New Jew. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Amit, G. (2014). Ex-Libris: Chronicles of Theft, Preservation, and Appropriating at the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Amitai, Y. (1998). The Arab Minority in Israel: Years of military rule. In A. Shapira (Ed.), Independence - The First 50 Years (pp. 129–149). Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Avisar, O. (2011). It's Good to travel for Our Country. In G. Cohen & E. Shysh (Eds.), Development in the Myth of the Trip in the Light of National-Zionist Education (pp. 59-87). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Barthes, R. (1980) 1981. Camera Lucida. Great Britain: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bastian, J., & Alexander, B. (Eds). (2009). Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London: Facet.

  • Bäuml, Y. (2002). The Military Government and its Cancellation Process, 1958–1968. Hamizrach Hachadash, 43, 133–156. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bäuml, Y. (2007). Blue-White Shadow. Haifa: Pardes (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bäuml, Y. (2011). The Military Government. In N. N. Rouhana & A. Sabbagh-Khoury (Eds.), The Palestinians in Israel: Readings in History, Politics and Society (pp. 45–55). Haifa: Mada al-Carmel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Artzi, Y. (2011). The Archive’s Silence. In M. Nir (Ed.), The Furrow Line: Studies on Perceptions of the Strategic Settlement in the Hebrew Settlement (pp. 10–29). Jerusalem: Carmel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Yosef, T. (2011). Four Areas of Activity and Five Generations of Instructors in the Area of the Study of the Country. In G. Cohen, & E. Shysh (Eds.), Development in the Myth of the Trip in the Light of National-Zionist Education (pp. 9–21). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Benvenisti, M. (2002). Sacred Landscape, The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benzamin, U., & Atallah, M. (1992). Subtenants. Jerusalem: Keter (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Ze’ev, E. (2011). Remembering Palestine in 1948: Beyond National Narratives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, K. H. (1990). The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism. In R. Ferguson (Ed.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (pp. 71–87). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Black, I., & Morris, B. (1991). Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services. London: Hamish Hamilton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloom, E (2008). Arthur Ruppin and the Production of the Modern Hebrew Culture. PHD Thesis Tel Aviv University. Tel Aviv

  • Caswell, M. (2011). ‘Thank You Very Much, Now Give Them Back’: Cultural Property and the Fight over the Iraqi Baath Party Records. American Archivist, 74(1), 211–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caswell, M. (2014a). Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse: Lessons from Community Archives. Archival Science, 14(3–4), 307–322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caswell, M. (2014b). Seeing Yourself in History. The Public Historian, 36(4), 26–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chennels, A. (1996). Rhodesian Discourse, Rhodesian Novels and the Zimbabwe Liberation War. In N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (Eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (pp. 22–11). Oxford: James Currey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, H. (2004). Archives Law, Security Service Law and the Public Discourse in Israel. Adallah Notebooks, 4, 37–45. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, H. (2006). Good Arabs. Jerusalem: Keter. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (1992). Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook, T. (2012). Evidence, Memory, Identity and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms. Archival Science, 13(2–3), 95–120.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), 9–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dror, Y. (2011). The Trips as Part of National Education. In G. Cohen, & E. Shysh (Eds.), Development in the Myth of the Trip in the Light of National-Zionist Education (pp. 22–33). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, E., & Mead, M. (2013). Absent Histories and Absent Images: Photographs, Museums and the Colonial Past. Museum and Society, 11(1), 19–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • El-Haj, N. (2001). Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self- Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elkins, C. (2005). Britain’s Gulag, The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elkins, C. (2015). Looking Beyond Mau Mau: Archiving Violence in the Era of Decolonization. The American Historical Review, 120(3), 852–868.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, I. (2008). Governing Gaza Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917–1967. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Flinn, A. (2007). Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges 1. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 28(2), 151–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flinn, A., & Stevens, M. (2009). ‘It is Noh Mistri, Wi Mekin History’: Telling Our Own Story: Independent and Community Archives in the UK, Challenging and Subverting the Mainstream. In J. Bastian & B. Alexander (Eds.), Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory (pp. 3–28). London: Facet.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Forte, T. (2003). Sifting People, Sorting Papers: Academic Practice and the Notion of State Security in Israel. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 23 (1): 215–223. Gelber, Y. (1992). The Roots of the Israeli Intelligence 1918–1947. Tel-Avi: Ministry of Defense (Hebrew).

  • Gelber, Y. (1992). The History of Israeli Intelligence, Part I: Growing a Fleur-de-Lis: The Intelligence Services of the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, 1918-1947. Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense Publications (Hebrew).

  • Gertz, N., & Khleifi, G. (2006). Landscape in Mist: Space and memory in Palestinian Cinema. Tel-Aviv: Am Oved Publishers and Open University of Israel (Hebrew).

  • Gil-Glazer, Y. (2013). Family Albums as Collective Memory of a Community: The Public Projects of “tarshiha.co.il” and “Tarshiha Nights.” The International Journal of Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts, 8(1), 65–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Golan, A. (1992). The Capture of Arab Lands by Jewish Settlements in the War of Independence. Cathedra, 63, 122–154. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Guha, R. (1983). The Prose of Counter-Insurgency. In R. Guha (Ed.), Subaltern Studies II (pp. 1–42). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guha, R. (1998). Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hazkani, S. (2019). Israel’s Vanishing Files, Archival Deception and Paper Trails. Middle East Report, 291, 10–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hegasy, S. (2019). Archive Partisans: Forbidden Histories and the Promise of the Future. Memory Studies, 12(3), 247–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henning, M. [2000] 2009. The Subject as Object: Photography and the Human Nody. In L. Wells (Ed.), Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge

  • Holton, A. (2007). Decolonizing History: Arthur Schomburg’s Afrodiasporic Archive. Journal of African American History, 92(2), 218–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, B. (2013). Decolonizing the Violence Against Indigenous Women, Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education and Society. Word Press, February 13.

  • Jawad, S. A. (2016). Colonial Anthropology: The Haganah Village Intelligence Archives. Jerusalem Quarterly, 68, 21–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jiryis, S. (1962). The Military Government, Organization and Authorities (MA Thesis). Jerusalem: Hebrew University. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jiryis, S. (1966). The Arabs in Israel. Haifa: Al-Itihad. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Karabinos, M. (2015). The Djogdja Documenten: The Dutch-Indonesian Relationship Following Independence through an Archival Lens. Information and Culture, 50(3), 372–391.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, A. (2003). 'Migration of Peoples' or 'The Great Burning': State Control and Opposition in the Distant and Isolated Israeli Areas. In Y. Shenhav, H. Hever, & P. Motzafi-Haller (Eds.), Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Review (pp. 36–67). Raanana: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Kibbuts Hameuchad.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khalidi, W. (1992). All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khoury, E. (2002). Bab Al-Shams. Tel-Aviv: Andalus (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Levin. D. (2014). Our Hirbe: Representations of Arab Ruins in Israeli Culture. Israelis 6, 53–67.

  • Masalha, N. (2007). The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine. London & New York: Zed Books

  • Masalha, N. (2012). The Palestine Nakba. London and New York: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • McEvan, C. (2003). Building a Postcolonial Archive? Gender, Collective Memory and Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 29(3), 739–757.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKemmish, S. M., Gilliland-Swetland, A. J., & Ketelaar, E. (2005). Communities of Memory: Pluralising Archival Research and Education Agendas. Archives and Manuscripts, 33(1), 146–174.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery, B. (2004). Fact-Finding by Human Rights Non-Governmental Organizations: Challenges, Strategies, and the Shaping of Archival Evidence. Archivaria, 58, 21–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery, B. (2011). Immortality in the Secret Police Files: The Iraq Memory Foundation and the Iraq Baath Party Archive. International Journal of Cultural Property, 18(3), 309–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, B. (1988). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. Cambridge University Press.

  • Nurieli, B. (2005). Strangers in a National Area, the Arab Jews in the Lod Ghetto 1950-1959. Theory and Criticism 26, 13–42 (Hebrew).

  • Osatsky-Lazar, S. (2002). The Military Government as a Control Mechanism over the Arab Citizens: The First Decade, 1948–1958. Hamizrah Ha’hadash, 43, 103–132. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pappé, I. (1992). The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pappé, I. (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawlings, G. (2015). Lost Files, Forgotten Papers and Colonial Disclosures: The ‘Migrated Archives’ and the Pacific, 1963–2013. The Journal of Pacific History, 50(2), 189–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, S. (2003). Local Struggle, National Struggle: Palestinian Response to the Kafr Qasim Massacre and its Aftermath, 1956–66. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 35(3), 393–416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sa’di, A. H. (1996). Minority Resistance to State Control: Towards a Re-analysis of Palestinian Political Activity in Israel. Social Identities, 2(3), 395–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sa’di, A. H. (2016). Stifling Surveillance: Israel’s Surveillance and Control of the Palestinians during the Military Government Era. Jerusalem Quarterly, 68, 36–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salomon, S. (2001). The Haganah’s Arab Intelligence Service and Project for Surveying Arab Places, Palestine, 1940–1948. A Sheet from the Cache, Quarterly Bulletin of the Haganah Archives 9–10 (Hebrew).

  • Salomon, S. (2005). Documenting and Learning the Arab Areas by the ‘Haganah’. A Sheet from the Cache, Quarterly Bulletin of the Haganah Archives 12 (Hebrew).

  • Sauvage, A. (2010). To be or not to be Colonial: Museums Facing Their Exhibitions. Culturales 6 (12): http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandpid=S1870-

  • Seikaly, S. (2018). How I Met My Great-Grandfather: Archives and the Writing of

  • History. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, 6–20.

  • Sela, R. (2000). Photography in Palestine in 1930s and 1940s. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sela, R. (2009a). Made Public: Palestinian Photographs in Military Archives in Israel. Tel Aviv: Helena and Minshar Gallery. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sela, R. (2009b). The Absent-Present Palestinian Villages. History of Photography, 33(1), 71–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sela, R. (2011). It took a Village, Haaretz Supplement (Hebrew).

  • Sela, R. (2013a). Scouting Palestinian Territory 1940–1948: Haganah Village Files, Aerial Photos and Surveys. Jerusalem Quarterly, 52, 38–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sela, R. (2013b). Fawaran–Effervescence (Unrest)–Housing, Language, History–A New Generation in Jewish-Arab Cities. Tel-Aviv: Gutman Art Museum (Hebrew & Arabic).

  • Sela, R. (2015). Rethinking National Archives in Colonial Countries and Zones of Conflict. In A. Downey (Ed.), Dissonant archives: Contemporary visual cculture and ccontested narratives in the middle east (pp. 79–91). London and New York: IB Tauris.

  • Sela, R. (2017, director). Looted and Hidden–Palestinians in Military Archives in Israel. https://vimeo.com/213851191.

  • Sela, R. (2018a). The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure- Israel’s Control over Palestinian Archives. Social Semiotics, 28(2), 201–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sela, R. (2018b). Made public: Palestinians in Military Archives in Israel. Ramallah: Madar Center (Arabic).

  • Sela, R. (2019). 'Imprisoned Photographs': The Looted Archive of Photo Rissas (Rassas)—Ibrahim and Chalil (Khalil) Rissas, Intermédialités 32 (Concealing).

  • Sekula, A. (1992). The Body and the Archive. In R. Bolton (Ed.), The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (pp. 343–389). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sekula, A. (2003). Reading an Archive: Photography Between Labour and Capitalism. In L. Wells (Ed.) The Photography Reader (pp. 443–452). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shai, A. (2002). Fate of the Abandoned Arab Villages in the State of Israel before and after the Six Day War. Cathedra, 105, 151–170.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shehadeh, R. (2002). Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine Attribution. South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press.

  • Shenhav, Y. (2003). The Arab Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity. Tel-Aviv: Am Oved (Hebrew).

  • Shilo, M. (1984). Arthur Ruppin and the Zionist Settlement. In M. Naor (Ed.), The Second Aliyah, 1903–1914 (pp. 44–57). Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. (Hebrew).

    Google Scholar 

  • Shepard, T. (2015). ‘Of Sovereignty’’: Disputed Archives, “Wholly Modern” Archives, and the Post-decolonization French and Algerian Republics, 1962–2012.’ American Historical Review, 120(3), 869–883.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sleiman, H. (2016). The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement. Arab Studies Journal, 26(1), 42–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Small, S. (2011). Slavery, Colonialism and Museums Representations in Great Britain: Old and New Circuits of Migration. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 9(4), 117–128.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. U.S.A: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan. http://abahlali.org/files/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf

  • Steele, K. (2010). Gender and the Postcolonial Archive. The New Centennial Review, 10(1), 55–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stein, R. (2010). Israeli Routes Through Nakba Land scapes: An Ethnographic Meditation. Jerusalem Quarterly, 43, 6–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stendel, U. (1996). The Arabs in Israel. Brighton: Sussex Academics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoler, A. L. (2002). Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance. Archival Science, 2(1–2), 87–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoler, A. L. (2008). Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination. Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), 191–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoler, A. L. (2018). On Archiving as Dissensus. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 38(1), 43–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tamburn, C., & Courtios C. (2010). L'impossible Photographie - Prisons Parisiennes: 1851-2010. Paris: Paris Musées.

  • Tsuruta, A. (2017). Expanding the Archival Horizon: American Archives for Researching Postcolonial Rwandan History. History in Africa, 44, 265–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaqub, N. (2015). The Afterlives of Violent Images -Reading Photographs from the Tal al-Zaʿtar Refugee Camp on Facebook. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8, 327–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zoabi, H. (2017). Israeli Policies from the Period of Military Rule until Today. Jadal 30: http://mada-research.org/en/files/2017/12/Himmat-Zoabi.pdf.

  • Zureik, E. (2015). Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zureik, E. (2016). Strategies of Surveillance: The Israeli Gaze. Journal of Palestine Studies, 66, 12–36.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. History of Art Department, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

    Rona Sela

Authors
  1. Rona Sela
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rona Sela.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This is an expanded and updated version of the article: "On the Ruins of the Colonial Archive." Bezalel Journal 4 (2017, Hebrew).

The original online version of this article was revised: The figures are updated in the article.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sela, R. Ghosts in the archive: The palestinian villages and the Decolonial archives. GeoJournal 87, 3423–3442 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10364-4

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10364-4

Search

Navigation