Until 1948 the Zionists were not in control of the toponymic processes in Palestine. Following the mass ethnic cleaning of the Nakba and the Israeli assumption of full control of nearly 80 per cent of historic Palestine, the cultural politics of naming was accelerated radically. State toponymic projects were now used as tools to ensure the effectiveness of the de-Arabisation of Palestine. One of these tools consisted of the official Israeli road signs, which are often in Hebrew, Arabic and English. But both the Arabic and the English are transliterations of the new Hebrew place names – rather than reflecting the original Palestinian Arabic name. Of course the overwhelming majority of Israelis cannot read Arabic; this is partly to remind the indigenous Palestinians inside Israel of the need to internalise the new Hebrew place names or perhaps to seek the express approval of the vanishing Palestinian Arab (Shohat 2010: 264), making Arabs complicit in the de-Arabisation of Palestine.

Key features and methods of Israeli Zionist renaming patterns and creation of new place name in the post-Nakba period included:

• The role of the Israeli Army: the Hebrew Names Committee of 1949

and indigenising of the European settlers.

• State-enforced projects: the Israeli Governmental Names Committee.

• The legendary toponymy of Zionist settlers and the medieval Crusaders.

• Toponymicide and the appropriation of Palestinian heritage; silencing of the Palestinian past: mimicry, the de-Arabisation of Palestinian place names and assertion of ownership.

• The creation of a usable past: the power/knowledge nexus.

• Judaisation strategies and the assertion of ownership: the superimposition of biblical, Talmudic and Mishnaic names.

• Fashioning a new European landscape as a site of amnesia and erasure.

• Transliteration of new Hebrew place names and road signs into English and Arabic, post-1967 occupation.