A01=Meron Benvenisti
arab
arab israeli conflict
arab villages
Author_Meron Benvenisti
cartography
Category=JBSR
Category=NHG
Category=RGCP
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnic cleansing
exodus
expulsion
gaza strip
geography
hebrew names
historical memory
history
holy land
immigration
islam
israel
israel palestine conflict
jewish homeland
jewish state
judaism
landscape
maps
middle east
negev
nonfiction
palestine
place names
religion
religious conflict
religious sites
restoration
sacred places
terrorism
violence
war
zionism
Product details
- ISBN 9780520234222
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Feb 2002
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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As a young man Meron Benvenisti often accompanied his father, a distinguished geographer, when the elder Benvenisti traveled through the Holy Land charting a Hebrew map that would rename Palestinian sites and villages with names linked to Israel's ancestral homeland. These experiences in Benvenisti's youth are central to this book, and the story that he tells helps explain how during this century an Arab landscape, physical and human, was transformed into an Israeli, Jewish state. Benvenisti first discusses the process by which new Hebrew nomenclature replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins in Eretz Israel/Palestine (his name for the Holy Land, thereby defining it as a land of Jews and Arabs). He then explains how the Arab landscape has been transformed through war, destruction, and expulsion into a flourishing Jewish homeland accommodating millions of immigrants. The resulting encounters between two people who claim the same land have raised great moral and political dilemmas, which Benvenisti presents with candor and impartiality.
Benvenisti points out that five hundred years after the Moors left Spain there are sufficient landmarks remaining to preserve the outlines of Muslim Spain. Even with sustained modern development, the ancient scale is still visible. Yet a Palestinian returning to his ancestral landscape after only fifty years would have difficulty identifying his home. Furthermore, Benvenisti says, the transformation of Arab cultural assets into Jewish holy sites has engendered a struggle over the 'signposts of memory' essential to both people. "Sacred Landscape" raises troublesome questions that most writers on the Middle East avoid. The now-buried Palestinian landscape remains a symbol and a battle standard for Palestinians and Israelis. But it is Benvenisti's continuing belief that Eretz Israel/Palestine has enough historical and physical space for the people of both nations and that it can one day be a shared homeland.
Meron Benvenisti was deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1971 to 1978, and is currently a columnist for Haaretz, Israel's largest newspaper. He is the author of Conflicts and Contradictions (1986) Intimate Enemies (California, 1995), and City of Stone (California, 1996).
