Destruction That Can Be Studied: Israeli Archeology and the Abandoned Palestinian Villages

The war of 1948 caused a major change in the rural landscape of Israel/Palestine. Hundreds of Arab villages were emptied. Most of them were left deserted, gradually destroyed by forces of nature, but also by acts of destruction. The policy of destroying these villages was implemented constantly and by the entire establishment (including the IDF, the Jewish National Fund, and the Israel Lands Administration).
We publish here an exceptional document, a plan from 1964 by Avraham Eitan, then a young student and later director of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, to research the “destruction that can be studied” in these villages, as a means of comparison with ancient sites. This rare document—Israeli archaeology avoided public utterances on such issues—is important for understanding Israeli policies and the archaeologists’ professional and ethical positions when confronted with remains of the “other.”
During the 1950s the state ignored the archaeologists, who were not informed in advance about operations of destruction. The Israeli Unit (later Department) of Antiquities under Shemuel Yeivin tried to save ancient remains in the villages, often without success.
From 1965 to 1968 the archaeological bodies and the new Association for the Survey of Israel, under the Supreme Archaeological Council, quickly surveyed more than a hundred villages before they were destroyed, thus legitimizing the destruction.
The legal separation between the “ancient” past (pre 1700 AD) and the “recent” (post 1700 AD) became a means of separating one kind of past from another, “ours” from “theirs.” The same archaeologists, while upholding the ideals of modernity and scientific advancement, operated in two opposite directions: exposing meticulously, documenting, and publishing “our” distant past, while neglecting and destroying “their” more recent past.