New Directions in Palestinian Oral History

Introduction: the faces of Palestinian oral history

In different ways, these four books represent how Palestinian oral history is breaking new ground while continuing to document the nakbah (what is known as the catastrophe, the displacement of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs with the formation of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948).¹ The works under discussion highlight the emergence of a new generation of Palestinian scholars as well as the central role that women are playing in redefining Palestinian oral history. Notably, that includes Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel.

Despite some commonalities, these four books also diverge from each in their agendas, their uses of oral history, and their writing styles. For example, while both Esber and Matar are presenting Palestinian history, they tell that history quite differently. Using extensive documentary sources for the period leading up to the formation of the Israeli state in Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians, Esber uses oral history quotes from refugees to flesh out written archival sources by documenting the lived nakbah experiences of refugees.

By contrast, Dina Matar's What It Means to be Palestinian has both a longer historical sweep and presents a "personal history of Palestinians in their own words" (1). In other words, oral histories are the heart of her book. Like the cumulative impact of Studs Terkel's oral histories in Working, these relatively short narratives resonate with meaning. Kassem, too, focuses on meaning in Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory, using interview excerpts to illustrate how narrators shape their stories and the language they use.

It is more difficult to characterize the anthology Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel, edited by Kanaaneh and Nusair, because of the wide variation in both the disciplinary perspectives of the essays and their use of oral history. What is clear, however, is how personal status as Palestinian citizens of Israel drives many of the contributors' research agendas.

What these books have in common is the attention the authors pay to the oral history process, elaborating not only on their methods and the number and nature of their interviews but also addressing practical problems and various ethical dilemmas. The number of interviews they conducted varied from 20 to 135 and, as noted, their inclusion of oral history materials varies, from relatively short excerpts, to longer ones, to complete edited narratives. Regardless of their use, these books add an important new chapter to the development of Palestinian oral history.

Nakbah oral histories

More traditional than the three newly published works, Esber's book was published in 2008, when the sixtieth anniversary of the nakbah was the occasion for new publications. While providing historical context for the earlier period, Esber zeroes in on the civil war immediately preceding the formal declaration of Israeli statehood. The book is an exhaustively documented tome that primarily addresses the scholarly community. It will be of particular interest to those who have followed the debate about the creation of the refugees, particularly the work of Israeli "revisionist" historians Benny Morris and, more recently, Ilan Pappé.² Esber does an excellent job in presenting the debate for the nonspecialist in her introductory chapter.

Archived official interviews figure among the documentary sources for the chapters on the Mandate period, including the evolving British position on the partition of Palestine and that nation's ultimate withdrawal, as well as growing Zionist militarism. The detailing in this first third of the book, as later, is meticulous...