本著作将巴勒斯坦的多元文化身份与共同历史置于整个地区的漫长历史之中。它把巴勒斯坦历史放在近东和东地中海的古代、古典、后古典、中世纪、近代早期和现代历史的脉络中加以考察。其意图并非撰写一部在智识上超然疏离的历史，而是提供一部在社会、智识、文化和政治上都有所洞察、并积极介入的历史。在力图涵盖广阔历史跨度的同时，本书将自下而上的历史、社会记忆、文化身份与政治问题联系起来。

This work locates the multicultural identity and shared histories of Palestine in a very long history of the whole region. It locates Palestinian history in the ancient, classical, post-classical, medieval, early and modern histories of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. The intention is not to produce an intellectually detached form of history but rather to offer a socially, intellectually, culturally and politically informed and engaged history. While attempting to cover the vast span of history, this work links questions of history from below, social memory, cultural identity and politics.

这不是一部“民族主义史学”，也不是一部从圣经时代延续到当代、为“巴勒斯坦民族”服务的叙事。我完全清楚历史具有在当下建构民族或政治合法性的力量。然而，“民族”与民族主义都是现代的发明与建构，我对于在广阔的历史跨度上使用“民族”这一政治术语的效用，高度怀疑。当然，“民族发明”与想象的过程并不局限于现代巴勒斯坦或巴勒斯坦人。它是所有现代民族实体与群体的共同特征，也是民族主义以及民族国家的创立与维系中的重要成分。民族建构与“传统的发明”，是欧洲的一种典型做法：有选择地运用集体记忆，操纵民族与宗教过往中的某些部分，压制另一些部分，并将另一些加以提升和动员，其目的完全是功能性的，服务于政治目的；因此，被动员起来的记忆未必是真实的，而更多是政治上有用的（Said 1999: 6‒7）。现代民族建构与民族主义神话创造之间相互竞争的模式，已在Benedict Anderson（1991: 6, 11‒12）、Eric Hobsbawm（1990；Hobsbawm and Ranger 1996）、Anthony Smith（1971, 1984, 1986）和Ernest Gellner（1983）的著作中受到广泛的批判性重新审视。Hobsbawm关于欧洲民族建构与神话创造最全面的分析见于《1780年以来的民族与民族主义》。该书于1990年出版，副标题为“纲领、神话、现实”，探讨的是“传统的发明”、民族文化的创造，以及如何从民间历史与历史神话的混合物中建构民族认同（Hobsbawm 1990）。

This is not a ‘nationalist history’ or a narrative about the Bible to the present for a ‘Palestinian nation’, although I am fully aware of history’s power to create national/political legitimacy in the present. ‘Nation’ and nationalism are modern inventions and constructions and I am highly sceptical about the utility of a political term such as ‘nation’ across a vast sweep of history. Of course, the process of ‘national invention’ and visualisation is not confined to modern Palestine or the Palestinians. It is common to all modern national entities and groupings, and it is an important ingredient both in nationalism and in the creation and maintenance of nation-states. Nation-building and the invention of tradition was a typical European practice of using collective memory selectively by manipulating certain bits of the national and religious past, suppressing others and elevating and mobilising others in an entirely functional way and for political purposes; thus mobilised memory is not necessarily authentic but rather useful politically (Said 1999: 6‒7). Competing modes of modern nation-building and nationalist myth-making have received extensive critical reappraisal in the works of Benedict Anderson (1991: 6, 11‒12), Eric Hobsbawm (1990; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1996), Anthony Smith (1971, 1984, 1986) and Ernest Gellner (1983). Hobsbawm’s most comprehensive analysis of nation-building and myth-making in Europe is found in Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Published in 1990 with the subtitle Programme, Myth, Reality, his work is about the ‘invention of tradition’, the creation of national culture, and the construction of national identities from a mixture of folk history and historical myths (Hobsbawm 1990).

在《传统的发明》一书中，霍布斯鲍姆与特伦斯·兰格（1996：1‒14，263‒283）探讨了十九世纪中叶欧洲的社会与政治当局如何着手创造所谓古老的传统，他们通过提供虚构的过去记忆，为统治者与被统治者创造一种新的身份认同。

In The Invention of Tradition Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1996: 1‒14, 263‒283) explore the way social and political authorities in the Europe of the mid-19th century set about creating supposedly age-old traditions by providing invented memories of the past as a way of creating a new sense of identity for the ruler and ruled.

often，以色列自由派犹太学者（Sand 2009；Sternhell 1998；Piterberg 2001, 2008；Rabkin 2006, 2010；Ben-Zeev 2014；Greenstein 2014）批判了锡安主义的“民族主义发明”传统，以及这一“想象的传统”对犹太民族的影响，而非锡安主义对其主要受害者——巴勒斯坦土著居民——所造成的灾难性后果。

Often liberal Israeli Jewish scholars (Sand 2009; Sternhell 1998; Piterberg 2001, 2008; Rabkin 2006, 2010; Ben-Zeev 2014; Greenstein 2014) critique the ‘nationalist inventive’ traditions of Zionism and the impact of this ‘imagined tradition’ on the Jewish people, rather than on the catastrophic consequences of Zionism for its main victim, the indigenous people of Palestine.

但是，由于这种犹太复国主义的国家建构和传统的发明，属于欧洲“民族主义”利用集体记忆的典型做法，这种学术路径便将犹太复国主义归入欧洲民族主义发明与神话建构的“正常”传统之中。实际上，这种对犹太复国主义的“常态化”和“民族化”处理，正是犹太复国主义意识形态者一直以来所主张的。此外，犹太复国主义这些神话建构的策略，远非其最恶劣的方面。相反，若从下层看待犹太复国主义，即从其主要受害者巴勒斯坦原住民的视角出发，犹太复国主义便被置于一个截然不同的传统之中：它与现代欧洲的殖民定居、种族清洗、记忆抹除和文化灭绝等力量同属一类（Masalha 1992, 2012；Pappe 2006；Rashed et al. 2014）。

But since this Zionist nation-building and the invention of tradition was typical of European ‘nationalist’ practices of using collective memory, this scholarly approach places Zionism among the ‘normal’ European traditions of nationalist invention and myth-making. In effect this ‘normalisation’ and ‘nationalisation’ of Zionism is exactly what Zionist ideologues have always argued for. Also, these myth-making strategies of Zionism are hardly its worst aspects. By contrast, reading Zionism from below, from the viewpoint of its main victim, the indigenous people of Palestine, places Zionism within an altogether different tradition: among the forces of modern European settler-colonisation, ethnic cleansing memoricide and cultural genocide (Masalha 1992, 2012; Pappe 2006; Rashed et al. 2014).

此外,正如我在《圣经与犹太复国主义:发明的传统、考古学与巴勒斯坦-以色列的后殖民主义》(2007)和《犹太复国主义的圣经:圣经先例、殖民主义与记忆的抹除》(2013)两书中所论证的那样,作为人民历史的巴勒斯坦史,只能且也应当独立于《旧约》的叙事之外书写。这些著作还探讨了犹太复国主义如何通过广泛地运用和滥用圣经文本,来为其殖民计划及其自身的"历史主张"辩护。这一主题也在基思·惠特勒姆(Keith Whitelam)的开创性著作《古代以色列的发明:巴勒斯坦历史的沉默》(1996)中得到了探讨。本书并不打算重走这条道路,也不打算在惠特勒姆的出色工作基础上继续推进,他有力地拆解了以色列从圣经到独立的"历史延续性"叙事。本书的意图在于前行:恢复并叙述一部完全独立于圣经争论与圣经学术之外的巴勒斯坦历史。同时,尽管本书认为巴勒斯坦错综复杂的历史深深植根于古代近东和东地中海地区,但书中并不试图模仿犹太复国主义所宣称的巴勒斯坦那种漫长、"未中断"且整齐划一的历史。

Furthermore, as I have argued in The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel (2007) and The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (2013), Palestinian history as people’s history can and should only be written independent of the Old Testament stories. These works have also addressed the ways in which Zionism attempted to validate its colonisation projects and its own ‘historical claims’ through extensive uses and abuses of the biblical text. This theme has also been explored in Keith Whitelam’s seminal work, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (1996). This book is not designed to revisit that ground or build on Whitelam’s excellent work and his effective dismantling of a Bible-to-independence ‘historical continuum’ for Israel. It rather seeks to move forward by recovering and narrating a history of Palestine completely independent of the biblical debates and the biblical scholarship. Furthermore, while arguing that the complex history of Palestine is deeply grounded in the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean, there is no attempt here to mimic the Zionist claims of a long, ‘unbroken’ and neat history of Palestine.

相反,正如本卷所要展示的,巴勒斯坦多层次的遗产是一部风格杂糅、传统相互矛盾的历史;一部充满曲折转折、记忆与遗忘、压制与复兴的历史。

On the contrary, as this volume will demonstrate, the multi-layered heritage of Palestine is a history of mixed styles and contradictory traditions; a history full of twist and turns, of memory and forgetfulness, and of suppression and recovery.