The significance of the project

View an excerpt from The Nakba Archive: a documentary report on Google video

This is in several ways a unique moment for such a study of the creation and transmission of Palestinian histories in exile. As the living ranks of the 1948 generation continue to thin, the cultural value placed on their narratives by communities within the Palestinian diaspora continues to rise. Histories of 1948 are being ceaselessly re-filtered through the radically unstable lens of the current situation, and narration is accordingly motivated by the need not only to make sense of and transmit a traumatic past, but also the attempt to take hold of and give shape to an imminently uncertain present and future.

Since it was first conceived, the Nakba Archive has been a collaborative endeavor which has been jointly run by a collective of Palestinian researchers in Lebanon and academics from Harvard and the UK. The methodology has not only provided much needed training and employment opportunities for Palestinian refugees living in the camps in Lebanon, it has also given them the chance to document this crucial period of their history on their own terms. The sense of empowerment that the archive has generated among participants has undoubtedly been one of the most important aspects of our work.

This video archive will serve both a archival and pedagogical role by recording the collective memory of this passing generation of eyewitnesses, as well as functioning as a public act of witness to the legacy of 1948 and its continuing impact on the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon. The archive is intended not as a passive repository, but as a cultural, historical and political resource for future generations of Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and in the diaspora, as well as providing an important audio-visual record for scholars and researchers working in the field. It is our hope that the material collected will help to fill out the picture both for the lay public and the professional media. It will also enable the victims of this conflict to document its complex legacy in their own terms.