A yau a Isra'ila ta zamani, ana yin ikirari mai matuƙar tsanani cewa an tabbatar da Littafi Mai Tsarki na Ibraniyawa a zahiri godiya ga ilimin binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki wanda ke raba shi da addini, wanda ke ba tarihin Yahudawa jiki da ƙashi, wanda ke dawo da tsohon abin da ya gabata, wanda ke sanya shi cikin 'tsari na daular mulki', kuma yana 'komawa ga wurin tarihi na asalin Yahudawa' (Said 2004: 46).

In present-day Israel, the claim is obsessively made that the Hebrew Bible is materially realised thanks to secularising biblical archaeology, giving Jewish history flesh and bones, recovering the ancient past, putting it in ‘dynastic order’ and ‘returning to the archival site of Jewish identity’ (Said 2004: 46).

Binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki ya kasance koyaushe a tsakiyar gina asalin al'ummar Yahudawan Isra'ila da kuma yadda ake ganin halaccin Jihar Isra'ila. Muhawarar game da 'Isra'ila ta dā', ilimin Littafi Mai Tsarki na masu ra'ayin boko da na kishin ƙasa, da binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki, muhawara ce kuma game da Jihar Isra'ila ta zamani, musamman saboda a idanun mutane da yawa a Yamma, halaccin 'maido da Yahudawa' na Zionist ya dogara ne da sahihancin hoton da Littafi Mai Tsarki ya zana.

Biblical archaeology was always central to the construction of Israeli Jewish identity and the perceived legitimacy of the Israeli state. The debate about ‘ancient Israel’, secularist and nationalist biblical scholarship and biblical archaeology is also a debate about the modern State of Israel, most crucially because in the eyes of many people in the West, the legitimacy of Zionist Jewish ‘restorationism’ depends on the credibility of the biblical portrait.

Wani bangare na wannan muhawara shi ne jayayyar da ake yi a fagen jama'a kan amfani da kalmar ‘Isra'ila’ wajen nuna ƙasar da ke yammacin Kogin Urdun, a zamanin dā da kuma a zamani. Sakamakon da ya zama dole daga yadda ilimin Littafi Mai Tsarki na Ibrananci ya mamaye nazarin ilimin Littafi Mai Tsarki a Yamma, da kuma yadda yake kiran ƙasar ‘ta Littafi Mai Tsarki’ tare da mayar da hankali kawai ga ƙaramin sashe na tarihin ƙasar, shi ne mayar da hankali kan asalin Isra'ilawa na ƙasar da, a zahiri, mazauna asali ba Yahudawa ba ne a mafi yawan tarihinta da aka rubuta (Whitelam 1996). Wannan yanayi ba zai wanzu a kowane yanki na duniya ba; sakamakon Littafi Mai Tsarki na Ibrananci ne da tasirinsa a Yamma, inda al'adar Kiristanci da aka gada ta goyi bayan ra'ayin cewa Falasdinu koyaushe tana da kasancewa a matsayin ‘ƙasar Isra'ila’ ta wata hanya. Ilimin Littafi Mai Tsarki na al'ada ya kasance a zahiri na ‘Sahyoniya’ kuma ya taka rawa wajen kawar da asalin Falasdinawa, kamar dai shekaru 1400 na mamayar Musulmi a wannan ƙasa ba su nufi komai ba. Wannan mayar da hankali kan ɗan gajeren lokaci a tarihi da ya daɗe da wuce yana taimakawa wajen wani irin mulkin mallaka na baya ga abin da ya gabata. Yakan kalli Falasdinawan zamani a matsayin masu shiga ba bisa ƙa'ida ba ko ‘baƙin mazauna’ a cikin ƙasar wani.

One facet of that debate is the argument in the public domain over the use of the term ‘Israel’ to denote the land west of the Jordan, both in ancient and modern times. The inevitable outcome of the obsession with the Hebrew Bible in Western biblical scholarship, calling the land ‘biblical’ and with its exclusive interest in a small section of the history of the land, has resulted in focusing on the Israelite identity of a land that has actually been non-Jewish in terms of its indigenous population for the larger part of its recorded history (Whitelam 1996). This state of affairs would not exist in any other part of the planet; it is due to the Hebrew Bible and its influence in the West where an inherited Christian culture supported the notion that Palestine has always been somehow essentially ‘the land of Israel’. Traditional biblical scholarship has been essentially ‘Zionist’ and has participated in the elimination of the Palestinian identity, as if 1400 years of Muslim occupation of this land meant nothing. This focus on a short period of history a long time ago participates in a kind of retrospective colonising of the past. It tends to regard modern Palestinians as trespassers or ‘resident aliens’ in someone else’s territory.

Ƙiyayyar kishin ƙasa ga kayayyakin tarihi masu tsarki na ilimin binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki da aka mayar da shi na duniya ta kasance tushen samuwar asalin al'ummar Isra'ila mai kishin ƙasa na sakulare da gina al'ummar Sihiyoniyanci tun 1948. Domin gabatar da asalin Yahudawan Turai a matsayin wanda ya samo tushe a ƙasar, bayan kafa Isra'ila an kira ilimin binciken kayan tarihi ya taimaka wajen gina da ƙarfafa wannan asali a zamanin duniya; malamai da kuma masana jami'a da suka ƙware a binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki an ba su tarihin tsarki a matsayin filinsu (Said 2004: 45). Aikin Abu El-Haj mai muhimmanci, Facts on the Ground, ya binciko muhimmancin binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki wanda aka zaɓa da hannu wajen gina asalin al'ummar Yahudawan Sihiyoniyanci kafin da bayan 1948. Aikin ya duba binciken kayan tarihi na mulkin mallaka a Falasdinu, wanda ya koma ga aikin Birtaniya a tsakiyar ƙarni na 19. Abu El-Haj ta mayar da hankali kan lokacin bayan kafa Isra'ila a 1948, tana haɗa aikin ilimi na binciken kayan tarihi da mulkin mallakar Sihiyoniyanci da shirye-shiryen Yahudanta da mallakar ƙasar sake ta hanyar canza sunayen tarihi da na yanki na Falasɗinawa. Yawancin wannan kawar da tasirin Larabci daga Falasdinu an ba shi hujjar kayan tarihi; wanzuwar sunayen Larabci an rubuta su a kan sabbin sunayen Ibrananci da aka ƙirƙira. Wannan 'dabarar ilimi' tana shirya gina asalin Yahudawan Isra'ila bisa haɗa guntuwar kayan tarihi, da ragowar ginin dutse da aka warwatsa, tebura, ƙasusuwa da kaburbura, zuwa wani irin tarihin rayuwa na musamman wanda daga cikinsa mazauna Turai na Yishuv suka bayyana 'a bayyane kuma a harshe, a matsayin gidan ƙasa na Yahudawa' (Abu El-Haj 2001: 74; Said 2004: 47–48; Bowersock 1988: 181–191).

The nationalist obsession with the sacred artefacts of secularising biblical archaeology has been central to the formation of Israeli secularnationalist collective identity and Zionist nation-building since 1948. To present European Jewish identity as rooted in the land, after the establishment of Israel the science of archaeology was summoned to the task of constructing and consolidating that identity in secular times; the rabbis as well as the university scholars specialising in biblical archaeology were given sacred history as their domain (Said 2004: 45). Abu El-Haj’s seminal work, Facts on the Ground, explores the centrality of selective biblical archaeology in the construction of Zionist Jewish collective identity before and after 1948. The work examined colonial archaeological exploration in Palestine, dating back to British work in the mid-19th century. Abu El-Haj focuses on the period after the establishment of Israel in 1948, linking the academic practice of archaeology with Zionist colonisation and with plans for the Judaisation and repossession of the land through the renaming of Palestinian historic and geographic names. Much of this de-Arabisation of Palestine is given archaeological justification; the existence of Arab names is written over by newly coined Hebrew names. This ‘epistemological strategy’ prepares for the construction of an Israeli Jewish identity based on assembling archaeological fragments, scattered remnants of masonry, tables, bones and tombs, into a sort of special biography out of which the European colony of the Yishuv emerges ‘visible and linguistically, as Jewish national home’ (Abu El-Haj 2001: 74; Said 2004: 47–48; Bowersock 1988: 181–191).

Yawancin masana da masu aiki a fannin tonon kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki na Isra'ila – tun daga Janar Yigael Yadin da Janar Moshe Dayan har zuwa Janar Ariel Sharon – sun bayyana cewa ilimin binciken kayan tarihin Littafi Mai Tsarki shi ne "gatan" kimiyyar Isra'ila mafi girma (Said 2004: 45–46; Kletter 2003). Magen Broshi, babban masanin kayan tarihi na Isra'ila, kuma memba a yanzu a Kwamitin Sunayen Gwamnatin Isra'ila, ya lura cewa:

A large number of Israeli experts on and practitioners of biblical excavations – from General Yigael Yadin and General Moshe Dayan to even General Ariel Sharon – have remarked that biblical archaeology is the ‘privilege’ Israeli science par excellence (Said 2004: 45–46; Kletter 2003). Magen Broshi, a leading Israeli archaeologist, and a current member of the Israeli Government Names Committee, noted:

Abin mamaki na Isra'ila, al'ummar da ke komawa ƙasarta ta dā‒sabuwa, ba shi da kwatanci. Al'umma ce da ke sake sabunta sanin ƙasashenta, kuma a nan ilimin kayan tarihi (archaeology) yana taka muhimmiyar rawa. A cikin wannan tsari, ilimin kayan tarihi wani ɓangare ne na wani tsari mafi girma da ake kira Yedi'at haAretz, wato sanin ƙasa (kalmar Ibrananci ta samo asali ne, mai yiwuwa, daga kalmar Jamusanci Landeskunde) … Baƙin haure na Turai sun sami ƙasar da suke jin, sabanin hankali, duka dangantaka da baƙo a cikinta. Ilimin kayan tarihi a Isra'ila, wata jiha ta musamman (sui generis), ya zama hanyar kawar da ɓacin rai da keɓewar sababbin 'yan ƙasa. (An nakalto daga Said 2004: 46)

The Israeli phenomenon, a nation returning to its old‒new land, is without parallel. It is a nation in the process of renewing its acquaintance with its own lands and here archaeology plays an important role. In this process archaeology is part of a larger system known as Yedi’at haAretz, knowledge of the land (the Hebrew term is derived most probably from the German Landeskunde) … The European immigrants found the country to which they felt, paradoxically, both kinship and strangeness. Archaeology in Israel, a sui generis state, served as a means to dispel the alienation of its new citizens. (Quoted in Said 2004: 46)

Israeli historians, biblical scholars, archaeologists and geographers, Meron Benvenisti argues in Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, have reinvented and reconstructed a history and chronology of ancient Palestine based on Israeli identity politics, so as to emphasise the Jewish connection to the land, adding designations such as the Biblical, Hasmonean, Mishnaic, and Talmudic periods. From the ‘early Muslim’ period onward, however, they adopted the nomenclature of the ‘conquerers’ chronology’, since in this way it was possible to divide the approximately 1,400 years of Muslim-Arab rule into units that were shorter than the period of Jewish rule over the Eretz Israel/Palestine (which lasted at most for 600 years), and especially to portray the history of the country as a long period of rule by a series of foreign powers who had robbed it from the Jews – a period that ended in 1948 with the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. It was thus possible to obscure the fact that the indigenous Muslim Arab population was part and parcel of the ruling Muslim peoples and instead to depict the history of the local population – its internal wars, its provincial rulers, its contribution to the landscape – as matters lacking in importance, events associated with one or another dynasty of ‘foreign occupiers’.

The Israeli historians, biblical scholars, archaeologists and geographers, Meron Benvenisti argues in Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, have reinvented and reconstructed a history and chronology of ancient Palestine based on Israeli identity politics, so as to emphasise the Jewish connection to the land, adding designations such as the Biblical, Hasmonean, Mishnaic, and Talmudic periods. From the ‘early Muslim’ period onward, however, they adopted the nomenclature of the ‘conquerers’ chronology’, since in this way it was possible to divide the approximately 1,400 years of Muslim-Arab rule into units that were shorter than the period of Jewish rule over the Eretz Israel/Palestine (which lasted at most for 600 years), and especially to portray the history of the country as a long period of rule by a series of foreign powers who had robbed it from the Jews – a period that ended in 1948 with the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. It was thus possible to obscure the fact that the indigenous Muslim Arab population was part and parcel of the ruling Muslim peoples and instead to depict the history of the local population – its internal wars, its provincial rulers, its contribution to the landscape – as matters lacking in importance, events associated with one or another dynasty of ‘foreign occupiers’.

(Benvenisti 2002: 300)

(Benvenisti 2002: 300)

Duk da cewa kallon mulkin mallaka da masana tarihi da masu nazarin al'umma na Turai da Arewacin Amurka ke yi wa tsoffin ƙasashen mulkin mallaka na Yamma ya fara sake nazari cikin zurfi tun shekarun 1960, Isra'ilawa sun zaɓi ƙarfafa al'adar mulkin mallaka da tarihin masu kafa mazauna (settler-colonial) a Falasɗinu–Isra'ila. A Isra'ila, koyaushe akwai ɗokin "tunanin Littafi Mai Tsarki", kuma haɗuwar tonon binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki da mamaye ƙasa ta Yahudawa masu kafa mazauna koyaushe yana bayyana sosai, amma ya fi bayyana bayan mamayar 1967. Haka kuma, ilimin binciken kayan tarihi na Littafi Mai Tsarki a Isra'ila ya kasance a tsakiyar siyasar asalin Sahyoniyanci ta ɓangaren boko da ayyukan masu mamaye ƙasa na Isra'ila – yawancin Yahudawa masu bin addini a Isra'ila a da da kuma yanzu ba sa damuwa da sakamakonsa (Elon 1997: 38). Meron Benvenisti ya lura cewa masana Birtaniya, Amurka da sauran masana da ke nazarin tarihin kayan tarihi da tarihin tsoffin yankunansu na ƙetare sun fara sake nazarin halayen da suka yi tasiri a zamanin mulkin mallaka. Sun amince da manyan murdiyar da aka shigar cikin tarihin yankunan sakamakon ra'ayoyin Turai, suna watsi da ko goge ragowar tarihin 'yan asalin da kayan al'adunsu. Bayan wannan nazari, an yi nazari tare da maido da wuraren tarihi na Amerindiyawa, Aborigines da 'yan Afirka na asali, kuma an rubuta sabon tarihi mai mai da hankali kan tarihin halitta na waɗannan yankuna, wanda a baya ya zama ƙaramin bayani kawai a tarihin mutanen Turai. Isra'ilawa, akasin haka, sun zaɓi ci gaba da al'adar mulkin mallaka tare da ƙananan canje-canje kawai ... Hukumar Kayan Tarihi ta [Isra'ila] ta san wuraren tarihi guda biyu kawai a tsohuwar Jaffa: "Gidan Biuim" (gidan farko na wannan rukunin farkon majagaba na Sahyoniyanci a ƙasar, a 1882) da ginin farko na makarantar sakandaren Ibrananci ta farko ('Gimnasiya Herzeliyya') na [Sahyoniyanci], waɗanda aka ayyana su a matsayin "kayan tarihi" bisa ga Mataki na 2 [na Dokar Kayan Tarihi ta Isra'ila ta 1978]. Tabbas babu wani wurin tarihi mai daraja ga Falasdinawa da aka ayyana a matsayin kayan tarihi da doka ta kare a karkashin dokar Isra'ila.

While the colonial attitudes of European and North American historians and social scientists towards former colonies of the West has begun to be re-evaluated critically since the 1960s, the Israelis have chosen to consolidate the colonial tradition and settler-colonial historiography in Palestine–Israel. In Israel, there has always been an obsession with ‘biblical memory’ and the convergence between biblical excavations and Jewish settler-colonisation has always loomed large, but became most pronounced after the post-1967 conquests. Furthermore, Israeli biblical archaeology has remained central to secular Zionist identity politics and Israeli settler activities – most Orthodox Jews in Israel were and still are indifferent to its findings (Elon 1997: 38). Meron Benvenisti observes that British, American, and other academics engaged in the study of the archaeology and history of their former overseas colonies have begun to reevaluate the attitudes that prevailed during the colonial period. They have admitted grave distortions that were introduced into the history of the colonies as an outcome of Eurocentric attitudes, ignoring or erasing remaining traces of the natives’ past and their material culture. In the wake of this evaluation, Amerindian, Aborigine, and native African sites were studied and restored, and a new history was written, focusing on the organic chronicles of those regions, which had been a mere footnote in the history of the European peoples. The Israelis, by contrast, chose to maintain the colonial tradition with only minor changes ... The [Israeli] Antiquities Administration is aware of only two sites in Old Jaffa: the ‘Biuim House’ (the first home of this group of early Zionist pioneers in the country, in 1882) and the first building of the first [Zionist] Hebrew High School (‘Gimnasiya Herzeliyya’), which have been declared ‘antiquities’ in accordance with Article 2 [of Israeli Antiquities Law of 1978]. Of course no structure ‘of historical value’ to the Palestinians has been declared as a protected antiquity under Israeli law.

(Benvenisti 2002: 304–305)

(Benvenisti 2002: 304–305)

Kewaye da Urushalima, Asusun Kasa na Yahudawa ya dasa dubban eka na dazuzzukan itatuwan fir, dazuzzukan da aka yi nufin su boye ƙauyukan Falasdinawa da aka rusa, tare da ƙirƙirar sabon shimfidar wuri na makiyaya irin na "Littafi Mai Tsarki", da kafa sabon tunanin al'umma, da kuma ba da ra'ayin wani shimfidar wuri na Littafi Mai Tsarki "na asali" mara iyaka, inda itatuwa suka kasance tun zamanin da. Amma wannan "shimfidar yanayi" wani yanayi ne da aka tsara a hankali don boye filayen ƙauyukan Falasdinawa da aka kwace tsari, da lalata gonakin zaitun da aka noma, da tsarkake kabilanci na Nakba. Manufar da ke ƙasa ita ce a ɓoye wuraren ƙauyukan Falasdinawa da hana duk wani noma a filayen ga waɗanda ba Yahudawa ba. Masu gine-gine na Isra'ila, Rafi Segal da Eyal Weizman, suna sharhi kan mazauna Isra'ila da kuma kafa shimfidar makiyaya ta Littafi Mai Tsarki, sun rubuta:

Around Jerusalem thousands of acres of pine forests were planted by the Jewish National Fund, forests which are both intended to camouflage destroyed Palestinian villages and fashion a new pastoral ‘biblical landscape’, create a new collective memory and give the impression of an ‘authentic’ timeless biblical landscape in which trees have been standing forever. But this ‘natural landscape’ is a carefully constructed scene to camouflage the systematically expropriated land of Palestinian villages, the destruction of cultivated olive groves and the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba. The underlying intention is to obscure the locations of the Palestinian villages and prevent any cultivation of the land by non-Jews. The Israeli architects Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, commenting on Israeli settlement and the creation of a pastoral biblical landscape, wrote:

A cikin kyakkyawan hoton yanayin makiyaya, wanda yake cikin tunanin al'adun mulkin mallaka, kallon kyawun karkara koyaushe ana yinsa ta cikin tagogin zamani. Sha'awar komawa daga birni zuwa karkara tana sake tabbatar da darajar rayuwa mai sauƙi kusa da yanayi … sake ƙirƙirar kyawawan wuraren yanayin Littafi Mai Tsarki ya zama shaida ga tsohon da'awar mallakar ƙasa. Sha'awar yanayin ƙasa don haka tana aiki a matsayin al'ada ta al'adu, wadda ta hanyarta ake samar da asalin zamantakewa da al'adu. Duk da haka, a cikin wannan hoton akwai wani mummunan sabani: abin da ke sa yanayin ya zama 'na Littafi Mai Tsarki' ko 'na makiyaya', wato mazauna na gargajiya da noman terraces, gonakin zaitun, gine-ginen dutse da kasancewar dabbobi, Falasdinawa ne suka samar da su, waɗanda sababbin mazauna Yahudawa suka zo su maye gurbinsu. Duk da haka, mutanen da suka zo suka noma 'gonakin zaitun kore' suka sa yanayin ya zama na Littafi Mai Tsarki, da kansu ana cire su daga wannan hoton. Falasdinawa suna nan don samar da kyawun wurin, sannan su ɓace … Idon da ke ganin 'yanayin makiyaya na Littafi Mai Tsarki' ba ya yin rajistar abin da ba ya so ya gani; wata keɓancewa ce ta gani wadda ke neman keɓancewar zahiri. Kamar wurin wasan kwaikwayo, hoton yanayin za a iya ganinsa a matsayin wani yanayi da aka gyara, wanda masu aikin mataki marasa ganuwa suka haɗa … Abin da ga gwamnati ke nufin tsarin sa ido da ke neman lura da Falasdinawa, ga mazauna shi ne taga zuwa yanayin makiyaya wanda ke neman goge su. Matsugunan Yahudawa suna ƙara wani bayanin ƙasar latitude a kan yanayin da ke akwai. Mazauna saboda haka suna iya ganin wasu matsugunai kawai, su guje wa na garuruwan Falasdinawa da ƙauyuka, kuma su ji da gaske sun iso 'a matsayin mutane ba tare da ƙasa ba zuwa ƙasar da ke da mutane'. (Segal da Weizman 2003: 92)

In the ideal image of the pastoral landscape, integral to the perspective of colonial traditions, the admiration of the rustic panorama is always viewed through the window frames of modernity. The impulse to retreat from the city to the country reasserts the virtue of a simpler life close to nature … the re-creation of the picturesque scenes of Biblical landscape becomes a testimony to an ancient claim on the land. The admiration of the landscape thus functions as a cultural practice, by which social and cultural identities are formed. Within this panorama, however, lies a cruel paradox: the very thing that renders the landscape ‘Biblical’ or ‘pastoral’, its traditional inhabitants and cultivation in terraces, olive orchards, stone buildings and the presence of livestock, is produced by the Palestinians, who the Jewish settlers came to replace. And yet, the very people who came to cultivate the ‘green olive orchards’ and render the landscape Biblical are themselves excluded from the panorama. The Palestinians are there to produce the scenery and then disappear … The gaze that sees a ‘pastoral Biblical landscape’ does not register what it does not want to see, it is a visual exclusion that seeks a physical exclusion. Like a theatrical set, the panorama can be seen as an edited landscape put together by invisible stage hands … What for the state is a supervision mechanism that seeks to observe the Palestinians is for the settlers a window on a pastoral landscape that seeks to erase them. The Jewish settlements superimpose another datum of latitudinal geography upon an existing landscape. Settlers can thus see only other settlements, avoid those of the Palestinian towns and villages, and feel that they have truly arrived ‘as the people without land to the land with people’. (Segal and Weizman 2003: 92)

Akwai wuraren shakatawa da yawa na tarihin Littafi Mai Tsarki da na ilimin kayan tarihi a Isra'ila waɗanda Hukumar Yanayi da Wuraren Shakatawa ta Isra'ila (Rashut Hateva' Vehaganim) ke gudanarwa, wata ƙungiyar gwamnati da aka kafa a shekarar 1998. Yawancin waɗannan wuraren shakatawa na "gadon ƙasa" na kayan tarihi (na Littafi Mai Tsarki da na Crusaders) an gina su ne a kan kufan ƙauyuka da garuruwan Falasɗinawa waɗanda aka lalatar a shekarar 1948. Yadda ake musanta gadon Falasɗinawa na da da na Musulunci na wannan ƙasa ta hanyar masana'antar gadon tarihi ta Isra'ila mai wuraren shakatawa na kayan tarihi yana bayyana sosai a yau a Saffuriyah ta Falasɗinu (wadda Isra'ila ta lalata a shekarar 1948) — masana'antar gadon tarihin da aka tsara domin mamaye abin da ya gabata a baya da kuma samar da sabuwar ainihin al'ummar Isra'ila ta zamani.

There are dozens of biblical and archaeological parks in Israel run by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (Rashut Hateva’ Vehaganim), a governmental organisation set up in 1998. Many of these archaeological (biblical and Crusader) ‘national heritage’ parks have been constructed on the ruins of Palestinian villages and towns destroyed in 1948. The negation of both the ancient Palestinian and Islamic heritage of the land by Israel’s heritage industry of archaeological theme parks is very much in evidence today in Palestinian Saffuriyah (destroyed by Israel in 1948) – the heritage industry geared towards both the retrospective colonisation of the past and the fashioning of modern Israeli collective identity.