Geographies of Displacement: Palestinian Village Histories

As a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, thousands of Arabs living in Palestine were displaced, and dozens of villages were destroyed. A significant portion of Palestinians began living as refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip. Palestinians called all these events the Nakba (catastrophe). More than 120 “village memorial books” have been published about over 400 Palestinian villages that were evacuated and largely destroyed during the Nakba. Today, these books are presented as evidentiary files that these villages, once inhabited by Palestinians, existed on the map.

Based primarily on ethnographic research and village books, "Geographies of the Displaced" examines how history is written, recorded, and debated. It demonstrates how the destroyed Palestinian villages and their histories affect the current lives of Palestinian refugees. Rochelle A. Davis seeks to answer what village histories and village books mean to Palestinians today and where they stand in their struggle.

Rochelle A. Davis is a faculty member at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.