“It’s ironic that Israeli and Palestinian memories of the Past are based on a history of disastrous contacts with European cultures in the Holocaust and the Crusades” – Sandra Scham
“I recently saw [Shimon] Peres on TV and for a period of time he was muttering the ‘right’ things – or at least things I didn’t violently disagree with – but at one point in the questioning he became exasperated and talked about Palestinian history as being ‘recent’ and to some extent invented and implied that there was really no such thing.
It seems to me that if Peres is talking like this there isn’t much hope for any other politicians to acknowledge the ‘presence’ of the Palestinian past. To me the Haram al-Sharif is of great historical and archaeological interest. To a Muslim, it is these things and much more. To a fanatic Jew, it is in the way of the ‘third temple’. To many Israelis, it is simply irrelevant.
I think it would be good if we could make a very strong statement about the importance of getting people to understand the different meanings of the past. Israelis will often say that Palestinians have no understanding of the Jewish attachment to the ‘Temple Mount’ and they even speculate that any work done by the Waqf [the Muslim religious trust] there is to ‘wipe out’ the Jewish presence. However, it seems to me that if these people want someone to respect the place for what is not in evidence, that is, the ‘Temple’, Israelis need to be more honest about acknowledging what is in evidence there – that is, stop referring to the area as the ‘Temple Mount’ exclusively and stop presenting it on maps and in tourist literature overlaid by those fantasy transparencies of the temple” – Sandra Scham
“My training in archaeology helped me to realize the importance of Palestine to world civilization. Palestine formed the stage for important historical and Biblical events of the Old and New Testaments. In an area of no more than 6500 square kilometers, the Palestinian Territories encompass some of the most important sites in world heritage. This is the land of Jerusalem, Jericho and Hebron, among the earliest known permanent human settlements. I think that the Palestinian people are the official guardians of this heritage, with the responsibility to preserve it for all nationalities.
As an emerging state, however, Palestine is not in a good position to do this. We have to develop a strategy which could satisfy the
demands of conservation, research, public access, tourism and perhaps most crucially, religious and political sensitivities. I think that we have a role to play in providing a framework to maximize the enjoyment of the region’s heritage, both for the Palestinian people
and for visitors from abroad. This includes the study of history and archaeology of Palestine and encouraging the dissemination of knowledge through access to sites and provision of educational material” – Adel Yahya
Heritage and Reconciliation
Sandra Arnold Scham and Adel Yahya
Journal of Social Archaeology 2003; 3; 399
http://jsa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/3/399