Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

In the first two decades of the state Israelis had a deep anxiety about the discovery of the truth about the 1948 Nakba and the ‘nightmarish’ prospect of Palestinian refugees returning to their towns and villages in what had become Israel. Facing the Forests, one of novelist A. B. Yehushua’s first major works, was published in 1963. It opens with the destruction of a Palestinian village in 1948 and the planting of a JNF forest on its ruins.

The novel recounts the story of an Israeli student who is ‘obsessed’ with the history of the Latin Crusaders. The student, looking for a break and solitude, finds a job as a forest ranger. When he arrives at the watch house in the JNF forest he finds an Arab man whose tongue had been cut out and the man’s daughter. Shortly after his arrival the student begins to suffer from nightmares and he is constantly anticipating a catastrophe. As the summer continues the student begins to desire the man’s daughter. The tension between the two escalates and suddenly the man sets fire to the forest and the whole forest burns down. At dawn the student ‘turns his gaze to the fire-smoking hills, frowns. There out of the smoke and haze, the ruined village appears before his eyes; born anew, in its basic outlines as an abstract drawing, as all things past and buried’. While the student fails to see the truths unearthed by his research on the Latin Crusades, the fire reveals it. The novel ends with the destruction of the forest and the re-emergence of the Arab village (Yehoshua 1975: 385).

The JNF’s forests, such as the Carmel National Park, became an icon of Zionist national revival in Israel and in Israeli Hebrew literature, symbolising the success of the European Zionist project in ‘striking roots’ in the ancient homeland and sacred landscape. Children were often named after trees and children’s Hebrew literature described young trees as children (Zerubavel 1996). Names such as Ilan (tree), Oren (pine tree) Tomer and Tamar (male and female for palm tree), Amir (tree top), or Elon or Allon (oak tree) are very common in Israel. Natural woodlands of ‘Palestine Oak’ ( (بلوط فلسطين covered many areas of historic Palestine, especially in upper Galilee, Mount Carmel, Mount Tabor (Arabic: Jabal al-Tur) and other hilly regions. Some local Palestinian Muslim traditions in Galilee have even attributed holiness to ancient oak trees. The ancient Palestine Oak tree and its leaves have been seen as a symbol of strength and endurance not only in Palestine but in many countries across the world. European pre-Christian and medieval Christian traditions of veneration of Palestine Oak trees are well known.

The leaves of the oak were also traditionally an important part of German army regalia and symbolise ranks in the US army. In ancient Palestine, this tree had its own cult in local mythology, derived from local religious traditions; it is associated with life and is supposed to have grown since the beginning of the world (Niesiolowski-Spano 2011: 132–137).

But the worship of the JNF (European-style) forests in Israel has also become central to an invented Zionist secular collective memory. Israeli historian and journalist Amos Elon, who was born in Vienna as Amos Sternbach and immigrated to Palestine in 1933, changed his name to Amos Oak. In similar vein, General Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmah in 1948, was born Yigal Paicovitch and changed his name to the Hebrewsounding Allon (oak tree). As we have seen above, this tradition of the ‘ancient woods’ and wood worship was derived from central European notions of romantic nationalism. In 2004 Amos Elon moved to Italy, citing disillusionment with developments in Israel since 1967. In The Israelis:

Founders and Sons, Elon writes: ‘[F]ew things are as evocatively symbolic of the Zionist dream and rationale as a “Jewish National Fund Forest”’ (Elon 1983: 200). Israel’s European-style forests and reforestation policies enjoy Western support. Planting a European-style forest in the ‘sacred soil’ and ‘sacred landscape’ confirms the undeniable ethical value of Israel’s (and by extension the West’s) project in the East. Afforestation is also linked, materially and symbolically, to the European Holocaust, and thousands of trees have been planted in memory of the lost communities and individual victims (Elon 1983: 200). For Palestinians, however, few things better encapsulate the notorious role of the JNF since the Nakba (Jamjoum 2010).