Reinterpreting the Historical Record: The Uses of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis
Publisher: 
Institute for Palestine Studies
Publication Year: 
2001
Language: 
English
Number of Pages: 
182
Abstract

This volume contains the first attempt to systematically analyze the contents of all the major and publicly available archival records pertaining to Palestinian refugees and to social science research and policy analysis. Collectively, these records cover the formative years of refugee registration (1948-1950); the administrative and family files of UNRWA; the computerized individual and family databases of UNRWA; and the property and map locational databases of Palestinian refugee property inside Israel. The seven chapters of the book, written by experts in their fields, deal with the uses and limitations of these records and with their relevance and utility to the ongoing negotiations on refugee repatriation, rehabilitation, restitution, and compensation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Salim Tamari is IPS senior fellow and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds.

He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent publications include: Year of the Locust: Palestine and Syria during WWI (UC Press, 2010); Ihsan's War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (IPS, Beirut, 2008); The Mountain Against the Sea (University of California Press, 2008); Biography and Social History of Bilad al Sham (edited with I. Nassar,2007, Beirut IPS); Pilgrims, Lepers, and Stuffed Cabbage: Essays on Jerusalem's Cultural History (edited, with I. Nassar, IJS, 2005) and Essays on the Cultural History of Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem (editor, IJS, 2005). Tamari has served as visiting professor, University of California at Berkeley (2005, 2007, 2008); Eric Lane Fellow, Cambridge University (2008); lecturer in Mediterranean Studies Venice University (2002-present); among other posts.

Elia T. Zureik is professor of sociology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Since 1992, he has been a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Refugee Working Group of the multilateral tract of the Middle East peace talks. He is currently completing a study of Palestinian returnees to the West Bank and is coediting an analytic bibliography on Palestinian refugees.