Excavating Zion: Archaeology and neighborhoods” and “revitalizing” the Nation-making in Palestine/ landscape – a narrative of the redemption of the nation and its national territory. What Peige Desjarlais she didn’t mention is that the archaeological park and its “Jewish neighborhoods” were In a recent article in Time Magazine, readers built on illegally occupied land in the center are encouraged to reformulate any negative of the Palestinian town of where, for conceptions they might have about Jewish Palestinian residents, this “revitalization” settlers in the occupied West Bank. The equates to a process of continued article’s author insists that: colonization and dispossession. The guide’s “Sitting around their kitchen table, narrative erases, from both history and the with grandchildren's plastic toys landscape, the past and current existence of scattered on a deck beyond sliding- the Palestinian people and the violence of glass doors, the Katz family doesn't their displacement. However, archaeology in look or sound militant. Indeed, to the “” produces more than American ears, their version of the narratives of the “redemption” of territory national narrative sounds rather assumed to be Jewish by Biblical right; it familiar...How did communities start also participates in producing this territory out in the American West? With one as a material reality. log cabin. When we bought this land, The City of David Archaeological it was a rocky hillside. Look what it Park is part of a larger nation-making looks like today” (Burleigh 2009:3). project, which imagines its boundaries as The narrative is indeed familiar, conjuring Greater Israel – the land between the Jordan images of the American nation-building River and the Mediterranean. This territory frontier, and the resulting “civilization” of we know today as Israel was built on the the wild, “empty” spaces of the American ruins of Arab Palestine during al-Nakba (the West (Tsing 2005). The two examples are Catastrophe), the term used by Palestinians also similar in what they erase, namely, the to describe the destruction of their society in history and current occupancy of the land by 1948, when three-quarters of a million 1 other people. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from

The pioneer narrative of the 1 Ethnic cleansing is a crime under international law, “civilization” of frontier land is integrated defined as the intention to create an ethnically into guided tours at the City of David homogenous territory through the expulsion of an Archaeological Park in occupied East ethnic or religious group. It is often related to, but , run by a militant settler not the same as, the crime of genocide. The United organization by the name of Ir David (Emek Nations defines acts of ethnic cleansing as the “separation of men from women, the detention of Shaveh, n.d.). Last year, while travelling men, the explosion of houses” and repopulating through Palestine with a friend, I joined one homes with another ethnic group. Israeli historian such tour through the Archaeological Park. Ilan Pappe (2006), like other members of the dubbed The tour guide stopped on a hill overlooking “new historians”, counters the dominant Israeli the Palestinian houses of Silwan and pointed narrative that the Palestinians fled voluntarily or out Jewish biblical and historical sites to the under the orders of Arab leaders of surrounding group of mostly young, Jewish-American countries. His study of Israeli military archives tourists. She praised Ir David for its work in reveals a deliberate and systematic plan by the Zionist militias to ethnically cleanse the Arab re-populating the area with “Jewish population of Palestine by occupying villages and

1 their homeland and some 530 Arab villages settlement. This article proposes that Israeli were destroyed and depopulated along with archaeological practices not only help to other urban centers (Qumsiyeh 2004:). A reproduce these narratives, but also society descended from people who settled participate in the inscription of the national the region as far back as the Canaanites territory as Jewish, and the consequent (Qumsiyeh 2004) was destroyed in a matter dispossession of the Palestinians. Israeli of months in the process of making the archaeological practice produces not just borders of the Jewish state. historical narratives but the “facts on the ground”3 (Abu el-Haj 2002a, 6), which are Indeed, the borders of Israel are vital to colonial expansion. made most obviously and violently through wars (in 1948 and 1967), conquest, and I will begin by demonstrating what I colonial settlement. However, nation- mean by a “nation-making project” and making projects also come into being describing the particularities of the Jewish through a variety of social, cultural, and nation-making, or Zionist4 project using institutional practices, like archaeology, tree-planting as an example of an which not only help to maintain the “everyday” technology of nation-making. A “imagined community” of the nation, but second part will examine how Israeli also participate in the production of the archaeological practice participates in national landscape. It is my contention that it producing the “national territory” as Jewish, is within these practices of Jewish nation- and in dispossessing the Palestinians, 2 making that Israeli archaeology should be employing the examples of Zionist properly situated. archaeology during the British mandatory period 5 and in East Jerusalem following the This paper will demonstrate that 1967 occupation.6 archaeological discourse and practice in Palestine/Israel is intertwined with a nation- making project of settler colonialism that contains both spatial and temporal

dimensions. This project primarily serves to 3 invent a link between the ancient Israeli past “Facts on the ground” is an expression used to refer to Israeli settlements in the West Bank which, and the modern Israeli state, presenting though illegal under international law, by their very colonization as a “return” to “the homeland” existence create a territorial foothold in the West through familiar narratives of frontier Bank. Abu El-Haj (2002) argues that archaeological practices create similar “facts on the ground” in Israel and the West Bank. driving out the population through either the threat 4 Zionism is a political ideology/movement initiated of military force or the commission of massacres. in late 19th century in Europe, aimed at the creation 2 In Israel citizenship and nationality are distinct. of a Jewish state. Israeli citizens do not have Israeli nationality but are 5 Following WWII the League of Nations divided the instead defined through Israeli law as either Jewish, former Ottoman territories among European Arab or Druze. The state of Israel is not a state of its imperial powers as “mandates.” Britain ruled in citizens (of which 20% are Palestinians who Palestine from 1917 until the end of the mandate on remained within the borders after the 1948 war) but May 14, 1948. of the “Jewish nation” consisting of all Jewish people 6 Following the 1967 war between Israel and regardless of whether they live outside the borders neighboring countries, Israel began a military of the Israeli state. Access to land, housing, occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West acquisition of citizenship and marriage, among other Bank and Gaza where the government began things, are defined by nationality and not citizenship. building Jewish settlements.

2 Producing the “Nation” white men to democracy” (Tsing 2005:31). Challenging conceptions of the The idea of the frontier played an important nation as natural or primordial, scholars of role in the making of Vancouver’s Stanley nationalism like Eric Hosbawm (1990) and Park, where natural spaces were imagined as Benedict Anderson (1991) emphasize that wild and empty, and made to reflect this nations are modern constructs, historical image through the removal of indigenous phenomenon, and not the expression of inhabitants and the traces they left on the organic entities. Nations must be produced, landscape (Mawani 2007). These natural brought into being, and then constantly spaces and the cold climate in general were reproduced through symbolic acts of said by Canadian politicians and public nationhood. Anderson (1991:224) asserted figures to produce a “hearty race of northern that the rise of print-capitalism made people”, and a system of moderate laws and possible the development of a monoglot7 balanced government (Mawani 2007:718). press, which fostered a sense of belonging to Prior imaginings of the frontier were an “imagined community”; imagined integrated into the Canadian context, and because most of the members will never combined with racialized theories of meet each other but “maintain in their minds climatic determinism and protectionist the idea of their communion”. In Europe, environmentalism. A national project was according to Anderson, print capitalism was produced through articulations with one of the factors that contributed to the travelling knowledge. genesis of an imagined nation, helping to delineate its boundaries and expanse, Like the Canadian example, other represented by a territory and a sovereign- national projects involve particular state. combinations of nation-making techniques, determined in the specific historical context Nations are also made through of each project. The next section will engagement with ideas, theories and review the historical context in which Israel knowledge produced outside the national was produced as a nation-state in order to boundaries, or what Tsing (2005:7) calls better understand the Jewish nation-making “knowledge that moves.” Despite the project, and the way this project engages appearance of bounded-ness, nation-states with the “travelling theory” of the frontier. are never entirely national projects. The frontier is an example of “knowledge that Producing a settler-nation in Palestine moves” – it is not an indigenous or natural The roots of modern Israel lie not in category but a “travelling theory” that the Middle East but in Europe. Zionism, a arrives carrying visions of past frontiers, political movement aimed at the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, was born and invoking the American Wild West or the th “dark” Latin American frontier (Tsing developed in Europe in the late 19 century, 2005:30-31). and was supported by Europe’s leading imperial power at the time: Britain. The Canadian nation-state, for Through the Balfour Declaration of 1917 example, was imagined and realized through Britain promised to assist the Zionist engagement with the American nation- movement in establishing a Jewish state in making frontier, which was said to “inspire Palestine – where, at that time, a mostly Muslim and Christian Arab population co-

7 existed with a small Jewish minority. Monoglot refers to the spread or use of one (Engler 2010). When World War I ended dominant language

3 and Britain occupied Palestine under the territories (Syria’s Golan Heights and guise of the League of Nations mandate Egypt’s Sinai desert), expelled system, the Zionist project was given the approximately 300,000 Palestinians (half of concrete support to begin colonization them refugees uprooted for the second time) (Engler 2010). Throughout the British and began a process of colonization that mandate, which lasted until 1948, the British continues to the present (Qumsiyeh 2004). government allowed hundreds of thousands At present, approximately 501,856 Israeli of European Jews to settle in Palestine settlers live in the occupied West Bank and establish towns and cities, and lay down the East Jerusalem (B’Tselem 2011). military, economic, cultural and social institutions of their future state (Masalha As evident in the historical record 2012). Though immigration was at times and numerous UN documents (United limited to avoid Palestinian revolt, Britain Nations, n.d.) the Israeli national territory was steadfast in its support for what it saw was established through military force and as a bastion of the British Empire in the settler colonialism, not only during 1948 and Middle East (Finkelstein 2012). 1967 but through an ongoing process of land expropriation and displacement between and Following the Second World War, following these two historical junctures. Britain turned the “question of Palestine” Colonialist discourse was extolled through over to the United Nations, which decided assertions about the “backwardness” and on a partition that was categorically “treacherous nature” of the Arab, and unfavourable to the Palestinians, who through the idea and practice of “transfer” of collectively owned over 90% of the land the native population – all common tropes of (Engler 2010:26). In the months leading up European colonial discourse and practice to the expiration of the British mandate on (Said 1978:4-6). The idea of the May 14, 1948, Zionist militias unconquered frontier was integrated with systematically expelled a quarter of a Zionist national dreams to form the core million Palestinians (Pappe 2006:) and slogan of the Zionist movement: “a land physically erased hundreds of their villages without a people, for a people without a (Falah 1996). When Israeli statehood was land” (Said 1978:4). Palestine was declared on May 15, 1948 a war broke out described by early Zionist leaders as between Zionist troops and surrounding “empty” or “naked” land that “the Jews Arab countries, during which the former alone are capable of rebuilding” (Said occupied 78% of Palestine, a much larger 1978:5). European colonial discourse area than allocated by the United Nations adapted to the particularities of the Zionist (Qumsiyeh 2004:). By that time at least project (which claimed that colonization was 750,000 (Takkenberg 1998:) Palestinians simply “a return”) and formed an important had been expelled from the newly declared part of the discourse of nation-making. state of Israel with most becoming refugees in the remainder of historic Palestine (Gaza Understanding how colonial and the West Bank) and neighbouring discourse was adapted to the particularities countries (Feldman 2008). of the Zionist project necessitates understating the specificities of Jewish When war broke out again between nationalism. Like other nationalist Israel and neighboring Arab countries in movements, the Israeli national narrative 1967, Israel occupied the remainder of seeks to construct a shared history (although historic Palestine along with other Arab only for its Jewish population), develop a

4 myth of origin that traces the roots of the projects of “reversing soil conservation” and modern nation to noble forbearers, and the restoration of “deteriorating, non- describe the development of the nation’s productive agricultural lands” are today history in terms of a “golden age” and a focused on the Negev region (Jewish “dark age” when the nation was ruled by National Fund, n.d.), home to a significant foreigners (Coakley 2004:546-8). Coakley Bedouin Arab population. The Negev, in the (2004) identifies a specific kind of Zionist colonial narrative and imagery, is the nationalism of which Israel is a prime new frontier of denigrated land, the example: the myth of destiny of the national cultivation of its “deteriorating” landscape territory, the idea that the nation is entitled another act of redemption that will solidify to re-establish the greatness of the golden its position as part of the Jewish nation. age by re-conquering territory it once held. The violence and the subsequent settlement The planting, like direct land of the land that Palestinians had been appropriation, was justified as an act of expelled from could be justified not as an act return, as the JNF claimed to be re-planting of colonial brutality because, according to trees mentioned in the Bible and therefore Zionist discourse, “in contrast to colonial restoring the landscape of an earlier Jewish projects elsewhere, this was simply a nation presence on the land (Long 2008). Frontier returning home” (Abu Al-Haj 2002b:34). myths in the Zionist context are not just about “empty land” but land seen as While the expulsions during the deteriorating under the care of other people, 1948 and the 1967 war were key instruments to be redeemed and restored to its original in this (re)conquest of the “national fecundity through its incorporation into the territory” there were other practices of Jewish nation. This restoration was also nation-making at work. Tree-planting offers seen to redeem human subjects, as the act of one such example of how the Zionist project planting for new immigrants was tied to the is enacted through everyday practices. Long restoration of the ancient Hebrew spirit of a (2008) examines the discourses and material citizen-planter who is fit, strong, and rooted practice of the (JNF) in nature, and who stands in contrast to the (an Israeli parastatal agency developed in passive, weak and spiritually degenerative 1901 to aid in the Zionist settlement of exile (Long 2008). Palestine) arguing that the conceptual and physical landscapes that the JNF produces Tree-planting also played a vital role through aforestation work to demarcate an in creating the “facts on the ground” that Israeli nation-space and dispossess the helped to determine the proposed boundaries Palestinians. between a Jewish and Arab state. Areas already developed and planted by the JNF The JNF website describes Palestine were included as part of the Jewish state in during the British mandate as “fallen”, these proposals, including the 1947 Partition “empty”, “godforsaken land”, and as a Plan (Long 2008). Tree-planting as a “desolate place” containing only “barren practice of delineating a Jewish national hills and abandoned rocks” (quoted in Long geography continued after 1948, as forests 2008:65). The organization refers to early planted on the ruins of Palestinian villages Zionists as “pioneers of the State” who were depopulated during the ethnic cleansing of able to perform “agricultural and botanical 1947-8 prevented the return of refugees. In miracles” and “triumph” over two millennia the occupied territories following the 1967 of “neglect” (quoted in Long: 2008:65). JNF war, aforestation served to dispossess

5 Palestinians of both private and public land I will explore the role of Israeli (Long 2008). One example is the archaeology in the production of these new construction of “Canada Park” (funded by national environments, and of narratives that the Jewish National Fund Canada through attempt to connect the modern landscape tax-deductible donations) on the ruins of the with the biblical one, using two examples. Palestinian villages of ‘Imwas, Yalu, and The first involves archaeological discourse Beit Nuba, whose residents were expelled and practice during the development of during the 1967 war (Guttman 2005). Zionist archaeology in the pre-state or mandatory period, and the other in post- It is through these practices that the 1967 occupied East Jerusalem. These two contours of the Jewish nation begin to examples were chosen to argue that emerge, and colonial settlement was archaeology has been consistently complicit facilitated and justified, cloaked in the with the Zionist project, and that the seemingly innocuous practice of tree- increasing power of the Israeli state allowed planting and familiar frontier myths. for archaeology to take a much more overtly Archaeological practice in Palestine/Israel is settler-nationalist role. During the mandate implicated in this project, employing similar period Zionist archaeology had to contend discourses and techniques of dispossession. with British rule and was limited in scope and in its ability to create new places and Excavating the Jewish nation: objects. However, this power increased archaeological practice and landscape greatly in the period between 1948 and transformation 1967. Post-1967 archaeology in Israeli It may seem counter-intuitive to occupied East Jerusalem offers the most imagine tree-planting and archaeology as dramatic example of the confluence of belonging to the same category of “everyday settler-colonial nationalism and practices of nation-making.” In fact, Israeli archaeologist Ronny Reich recently insisted archaeological discourse and practice. that the era of nationalist archaeology in Re-signifying the landscape during the Israel has ended, displaced by the power of British Mandate the scientific method (in Yas 2000:). Beginning in the 1920s the Jewish However, archaeology does not exist in a Palestine Exploration Society began holding vacuum but is, in Lynn Meskell’s (2002:2) public lectures on archaeology, sponsoring words, “deeply imbricated with socio- field trips, and conducting several small political realities.” Similar to JNF excavations (Silberman 1999). By the end aforestation projects, archaeological practice of the decade they excavated tombs in produces both narrative of nationhood and Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley, some in inscribes the national territory as Jewish. partnership with the Hebrew University and Many scholars have documented the role of the Palestine Department of Antiquities archaeology in constructing the “imagined (Silberman 2001). In later periods, the community” of the nation and the “myth of a Society excavated Galilean Jewish cities golden age” (for example Trigger 1984; such as Tiberius, Bet She’arim, Bet Yerah, Meskell 1998; Kohl 1998; Diaz-Andreau and a number of synagogues (Abu Al-Haj 2001), while Abu Al-Haj (1998) has 2002b). Archaeology during the British explored the way that archaeology helps to mandate was not just an academic pursuit, produce new environments and new but a popular “national-cultural” one as well landscapes. (Abu Al-Haj 2002b:36). It was seen by Jewish archaeologists as part of a project of

6 land “redemption” which must involve the kibbutz movement8 and elements of the recovering the “roots” of a Jewish past in Zionist Labour movement, made the ascent Palestine (Abu Al-Haj 2002b:37). to the top of the Masada the culmination of a military initiation ritual, with the symbolic Besides the public lectures and field importance of the site only increasing after trips, the Jewish Palestine Exploration the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 Society also recruited Jewish volunteers to (Silberman 1999). help with digs due to both lack of funds and the national significance of involving the It is through these early public in archaeological practices (Abu Al- archaeological excavations (and nationalist Haj 2002b). It was not only the land that rituals like climbing the Masada), that could be redeemed but the volunteers as material culture was reconfigured into well, much like the transformation of Jewish objects of national significance and settler subjectivities through the act of tree- landscapes emerged as “historical locales” planting. Ben-Zvi of the Palestine through which particular historical Exploration Society explained that the narratives of Palestine as the “land of Israel” volunteer program was a way that “each were made visible (Abu Al-Haj 2002b:40). Jew” could become acquainted with “the Thus archaeology was one of the means homeland” and learn to value history and through which the nation began to emerge in historical objects (in Abu Al-Haj 2002b:36). concrete form, saturating the Palestinian landscape with symbols of Jewish-ness. It One site that gained extensive was not the individual archaeological sites in significance in the recovery of “roots” and isolation that helped to realize the goals of nationalist subjectivities was the Masada the national discourse, but the way the sites where, according to the Jewish historian together mapped the Jewish homeland onto Josephus Flavius, 960 Jewish men and the landscape as a whole, creating a “spatial women committed suicide in 74 C.E. rather biography” of Jewish past and future than submit to the invading Roman armies presence (Abu al-Haj 2002b:51). (Silberman 1999). Under the British Mandate, British scholars focused on the This mapping of a Jewish homeland Roman history of the site (Silberman 1999), was aided by the fact that during this time integrating the Masada into the larger scale archaeology became an academic discipline of a past empire whose “great civilization” and a legitimate scientific pursuit (Kohl was continued in the British Empire. The 1998). In this context, the process of place- Masada was a site of competing territorial naming in Palestine was presented as a visions. However the significance of the scientific endeavour, as a historical Masada for the Zionist movement increased collection of “correct” names and not an as the mandate progressed. In the late 1920s ideological practice. Developing place- the Masada became a site visited by Zionist names took the form of fact collecting, the youth groups, rising in the coming years to a recording of the locations and details of site of communal ritual. In the 1940s the archaeological sites of Jewish significance Palmach (a military elite unit or striking which would appear like so many dots force in the Haganah, the predecessor of the marking sites of ancient Jewish presence. Israeli Defense Force), under sponsorship of Greater Israel appeared through the

8 A Kibbutz is a collective agricultural community usually based on Zionist and socialist ideals.

7 connecting of these dots through both time landscape was the site of contested spatial and space, part of a cartographic project of and temporal visions. However, with the map-making or nation-making (Abu Al-Haj creation of the Israeli state in 1948, the 2002b). The most comprehensive project of institutional, material and ideological power archaeological involvement in naming to re-signify the landscape grew places was the cooperation between the exponentially. The effects of this new Jewish Palestine Exploration Society and the power can be observed in East Jerusalem British government in generating a list of following the Israeli occupation of 1967. Hebrew place names for settlements and villages in Palestine (Abu Al-Haj 2002b). Archaeology in East Jerusalem The naming committee headed by Ben-Zvi Jerusalem was occupied in two wars, insisted that these Hebrew names must be the western part became part of Israel during “scientifically” and “historically” accurate, the 1948 war, and the eastern part was based on the work of Jewish historians and occupied during the 1967 war. In recent archaeologists who had discovered the years, East Jerusalem has become the focus names that “belonged to the old country”. of the Israeli 1967 occupation and its This scientific rhetoric of an territorial claims (Silberman 2001). Israel “epistemological commitment to facts” was claims that Jerusalem is the “eternal capital crucial to presenting Jewish settlement in of the Jewish people” (Ir David, n.d.), Palestine as simply a process of national though its historical and religious return (Abu al-Haj 2002b:54). significance is shared by Christians, and Muslims. The most contentious area, known Moreover, Jewish archaeology, to Jews and Israelis as the including the generation of place-names, and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, contains involved a process of “bringing the past into the ruins of former Jewish temples and the the present” and creating a bond of revered Dome of Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. continuity (Cohen and Kliot 1992:659). An Israeli archaeologist interviewed by Nadia When Israel occupied the West Bank Abu Al-Haj (2002b:33) said of Jewish it illegally annexed East Jerusalem, Israelis: “they wanted to know about their including the revered holy sites (Abu al-Haj heritage...about each and every stone...An 1998). Israel calls this process the artifact, an inscription had the power to “unification” of Jerusalem (Greenburg bridge thousands of years”. Thus, 2009:39), while the United Nations has archaeology was constitutive of the affirmed in dozens of resolutions that East processes of realizing settler-nationhood, by Jerusalem is in fact illegally occupied and inventing a bridge between the golden age annexed by Israel (United Nations, n.d.). and the modern redemption of the land with Shortly after the occupation of East biblical names and archaeological sites, and Jerusalem the Israeli state began carrying in the process obfuscating everything that out archaeological excavations on the newly came before and in between. This occupied land, capturing the Palestine compression of past and present is what Abu Archaeological Museum and all its artifacts Al-Haj (2002b:51) refers to as making the and eventually making the site the “ancient-modern homeland”. headquarters of the Israeli Antiquities Association (Silberman 2001). The institutional power of Zionists to make an “ancient-modern homeland” was These archaeological excavations, limited during the British mandate, when the along with current archaeological practice,

8 involve the interrelated processes of tunnels” which ran underneath of the developing a national mythology of a property of the Supreme Muslim Council of “golden age” ending in a destruction righted Jerusalem. Evidence of cultural diversity by the modern rebirth of the nation, and and archaeological layers of non-Jewish physically recreating the landscape, history was systematically ignored. Instead resurrecting the past as a tool to realizing the archaeological evidence that favored a colonial project of the present. Nowhere is Jewish presence was produced and the construction of a Jewish golden age presented to tourists and Israelis who toured destroyed and “rightly restored” by the the newly-dug tunnels (Silberman 2001); Israeli conquest of Jerusalem more explicit tunnels which were constructed beneath the than in the archaeological practices in the houses of Palestinian residents of Silwan, “City of David.” The “City of David” was, who have suffered damage to their homes and is, the home to the urban area known to and a local mosque as a result (Hassan Palestinians as Wadi Hilwe, or the village of 2011). In 1996 Prime Minister Benjamin Silwan, an area where 90% of the population Netanyahu declared that the tunnels is Palestinian (Greenburg 2009). Visited by represented “the bedrock of our national Rabin in 1996, and later by Prime Ministers existence” and ordered that the northern Begin and Netanyahu, the area was named a entrance, lying in the Muslim quarter, be national archaeological park and was opened to allow for tourists to pass more marked as an important national symbol. freely. In the violence that ensued when The Jerusalem 3000 celebrations opened on clashes broke out between Israeli and the site by Rabin in 1996 referred to the Palestinians, hundreds were injured and 3000 years since King David’s reign, many killed (Silberman 2001:500). asserting the continuity of the site’s Jewish character (Yas 2000). This violence ushered in a new era of explicit religious-nationalism in The use of the biblical epithet “City archaeological practice in the village of of David” is attributed to archaeologist Silwan, which Israelis refer to as the City of Raymond Weill in 1920, though the term David Archaeological Park. At this time Ir was virtually unused before being David, an ultranationalist settler resurrected by Israeli archaeologists from organization “with the explicit goal of the Hebrew University who were conducting settling Jews in Silwan” took over the excavations in East Jerusalem from 1978 to management of the park (Pullman and 1985 (Greenburg 2009:38). These Gwiazda 2009:32). Ir David’s website tells excavations were only possible because of a visitors the story of its founder, David Be’eri massive re-signification of the landscape (David’le), the “undercover commander of following the 1967 war, when 12 areas of an elite military unit” who visited the site in Jerusalem covering a total of four thousand the mid 1980’s and was “inspired by the square meters were declared state lands and historical record of archaeological slated for excavation (Pullman and Gwiazda discoveries made in the City of David in 2009). The parcels of land were cast as recent years, and by the longing of the important sites of the Jewish past, despite Jewish people to return to Zion” (Ir David, the contemporary Palestinian villages that n.d.). The website goes on to inform visitors existed on those sites. that “today hundreds of Jewish residents live in the City of David and help form the The excavations involved clearing inspiring mosaic of the return of the Jewish out 448-meters of the “Western Wall People to their homeland and eternal capital

9 – Jerusalem” (Ir David, n.d.). The the Judaization9 of the landscape (making organization advertises tours on its website the demographic and physical landscape promising visitors who travel to the Jewish), turning nationalist images into underground tunnels of the city will “relive material reality. Laws that designate King David’s conquest of the Jebusite city archaeologically significant areas as heritage as described in the 2nd Book of Samuel” sites provide the legal cover necessary for Ir ending their tour at , “the David to expand Jewish settlements (Yas major water source for Jerusalem for over 2000). 1,000 years and where, according to the Book of Kings, Solomon was anointed This settlement expansion, and the Kings” (Ir David, n.d.). expansion and excavations of the associated archaeological park, has dramatically This narrative is propagated on mass transformed the landscape in an area of to the tourists and Israelis who visit the Silwan known to Palestinians as Wadi archaeological park, a number that has Hilwe, with a population of around 16,000 skyrocketed from 25,000 in 2001 to 350,000 Palestinians and 400 Jewish settlers. The in 2007 (Pullman and Gwiazda 2009). The site has been transformed from a series of site has become a sort of rite of passage for scattered excavation pits into an Israeli youth (Yas 2000) and the park archaeological park, a settlement, and an organizes Israeli army-sponsored tours for important national monument that attracts a just under 20,000 soldiers a year. According high volume of tourists (Pullman and to an Ir David spokesman, the tour is Gwiazda 2009). The transformation of a essential for the soldiers as they “suddenly Palestinian village into the archaeological understand why they are here, what they are park called the “City of David” involved the fighting for” (quoted in Emek Shaveh, n.d.). eviction of Palestinians, the demolitions of The tours arouse nationalistic sentiments Palestinian homes in the Wadi Hilwe and among the general public in Israel as well. Bustan neighborhoods, the building of Archaeologist Jeffery Yas took a tour Jewish settlements, violence by Israeli through the archaeological park, led by an Ir settlers, soldiers, and Ir David security David armed religious settler, which ended guards against the Palestinian population in the Siloam tunnel where the impassioned (B’Tselem 2010a) and an alarming number tour group broke into a chorus of of arrests of Palestinian minors in Silwan by “Yerushaleym shel zahav” (Jerusalem of Israeli soldiers and Ir David security Gold). It was then, Yas remarks, that he “realized the potential power of such a 9 viscerally exhilarating tourist itinerary” (Yas The Israeli government has pursued a policy of 2000:22). Judaization in Jerusalem, which involves manipulating the demographic and physical The construction of the history of landscape in order to turn Jerusalem into a Jewish the nation, the imagined Jewish community, City – culturally, demographically and politically. This project is similar to those pursued by the Israeli is used to arouse nationalist passions in government within its borders following the Israelis, validate the increasing settlement of expulsions of Palestinians in 1948. In the Galilee, the occupied East Jerusalem, and as the Ir David area with the highest concentration of Palestinians spokesman reveals, to sanctify the violence inside of Israel, the government implemented a of the occupying army by showing them project with the official name “Judaization of the “what they are fighting for.” Ir David Galilee”, involving both the demolition of archaeological practice also participates in Palestinians homes and significant subsidies for Jewish immigrants buying houses in the area.

10 (B’Tselem 2010a). The Israeli authorities how “the insertion of carefully selected and also use the of Silwan as a exposed archaeological finds is used as a sewage and waste drain basin for the Israeli means of authentication, a form of settlements that overlook it from the ridge restoration simultaneously embodying above, literally draining the negative preservation and restoration of the original externalities of the settlements and tourist and immutable meaning of a primordial centre into the neighbouring Palestinian relationship to the land established in the villages, which like other East Jerusalem Biblical era” (Pullman and Gwiazda villages suffer from minimal public services, 2009:33). It is a national, biblical narrative such as garbage pick-up, and neglect of told not only in stories or through material infrastructure (Yas 2000). remains, but in spatial terms as well, a space in whose construction Israeli archaeology is The irony of the imagery this neglect complicit. Not only was the site renamed and waste dumping creates - that of an the City of David, but archaeological unhygienic town strewn with trash heaps - practice helped to physically resurrect it, to is that Israel uses the very wasteland it produce the Jewish national territory. creates to justify its land acquisition. Ir David’s website insists that “when David Conclusion Be’eri (David’le) first visited the City of By examining archaeological David in the mid-1980’s, the city was in discourse and practice in Palestine during such a state of disrepair and neglect that the the British mandate and in Palestine/Israel in former excavations that had once been the post-1967 occupied East Jerusalem, I conducted were once again concealed have revealed how archaeology is complicit beneath garbage and waste” (Ir David, n.d.). in the Zionist settler-national project. I This is reminiscent of early Zionist argued that archaeological practice in designations of Arabs as unfit to exploit the Palestine/Israel is part of a spatial and land to its full potential, such as Reinhold temporal project that serves to produce a Niebuhr’s 1946 article in the Spectator in continuous link between the ancient Israelite which he described the Arab population as past and the modern Israeli nation-state, “miserable masses…in abject poverty” who justifying the creation of the Israeli state by would have incurred great benefits from the reference to the past and through familiar “technical and dynamic civilization which frontier myths. I also revealed how Jews would have helped to introduce” were archaeological practice participates in the it not for the ungratefulness the Palestinians constitution of the national landscape and showed in return for being colonized the consequent dispossession of the (quoted in Said 1978:6). Similar to JNF Palestinians. descriptions of neglected or denigrated land, Ir David spins a narrative of the redemption The role of archaeology in the “City of the uncultivated frontier as justification of David” is especially relevant, as new for the confiscation of Palestinian land and demolition orders were recently issued for the expansion of Jewish settlements. several Palestinian houses in Silwan (Wadi Hilwe Information Center 2013), and plans The settlements themselves are built are underway to demolish dozens of homes in physical overlap with the archaeological in the al-Bustan neighborhood in order to sites, designed in a neo-Biblical vernacular, expand the archaeological park (B’Tselem and often built as close as possible to 2010b). Archaeology in Silwan is, as material remains. Pullman and Gwiazda note Nicolas Dirks (1992:7) has suggested,

11 “transforming domination into a variety of effects that masks both conquest and rule.” B’Tslem. 2010a. Caution: Children Ahead - However, not everyone is taken in The Illegal Behavior of the Police by this masking. The Israeli archaeological toward Minors in Silwan Suspected organization Emek Shaveh has partnered of Stone Throwing. B’Tselem.org, with the Palestinian Wadi Hilwe http://www.btselem.org/download/20 Information Center, located only a few 1012_caution_children_ahead_eng.p hundred meters from the park entrance, to df (accessed February 25, 2013). offer a counter-narrative to the “City of David”, and alternative tours of Silwan. The Wadi Hilwe Center’s extensive collection of ——— 2010b. Jerusalem Municipality plans information booklets, maps, photographs, to demolish 22 houses in Silwan to and spent weapons casings used by Israeli build archeological garden. soldiers and Ir David security against B’Tselem.org, Palestinians, exposes the way the violence http://www.btselem.org/jerusalem/20 of dispossession is carried out through 100628_jm_municipality_plans_to_d everyday practices of nation-making like emolish_22_houses_in_silwan archaeology. This type of challenge to (accessed February 25, 2013). archaeological practices shows us that that varied techniques of domination and nation- ——— 2011. Land Expropriation and making also open up new sites of resistance, Settlement Statistics. B’Tselem.org, and new ways of resisting. June 28, http://www.btselem.org/settlements/s References Cited tatistics (accessed Febraury 25, Abu Al-Haj, Nadia. 1998. Translating 2013). truths: nationalism, the practice of Burleigh, Nina. 2009. Israeli Settlers Versus archaeology, and the remaking of the Palestinians. past and present in contemporary TimeMagazine.Com, July 27, Jerusalem. American Ethnologist http://www.time.com/ 25(3): 166-188. time/magazine/article/0,9171,191097 5,00.html (accessed November 30, ——— 2002a. Facts on the Ground: 2009). Pp. 1-3. Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Coakley, John. 2004. Mobilizing the Past: Society. Chicago: University of Nationalist Images of History. Chicago Press. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 10(1): 531-560. ——— 2002b. Producing (Arti) Facts: Archaeology and Power during the Cohen, Sarah B and Nurit Kliot. 1992. British Mandate of Palestine. Israel Place-Names in Israel's Ideological Studies 7(2): 33-61. Struggle over the Administered Territories. Annals of the Association Anderson, Benedict R. 1991. Imagined of American Geographers 82(4) : communities: reflections on the 653-680. origin and spread of nationalism. New York: Verso.

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