2020 | Building Peace through Heritage
conflict . The Israeli and the Palestinian memories of 1948 represent opposite versions of the history , in this sense recognizing one would challenge the other .
The curatorial work done for the exhibition “ 1948 ” wishes to undermine the approach by which the memory of the Nakba has to compete with the memory of the Independence War . Two different memories of pain can be recognized in the same public context and the dialogue between the two can construct new productive memories instead of neutralizing one another .
In this essay , I have exposed the dilemma regarding the two opposite narratives of conflict : the Nakba ad the Israeli War of Independence . I have argued that both are part of National Narratives which clash with one another . I have raised the question of whether it is possible to bridge the gap between these two different memories , employing memory work appealing to shared experiences of trauma and pain .
The researched is based on the case of the exhibition “ 1948 ” which took place in the museum of Haifa and exposed works by both Palestinian and Israeli artists who share their emotion of pain regarding the conflict over the land . I have argued that since the birth of the state of Israel , Museums had the responsibility of creating a National Narrative that would legitimize the connection to the land . Nevertheless , in recent years , curators of National Museums took upon the task of destabilizing the official state narrative in order to create a counternarrative that would be a ground for a possible conflict resolution .
I have built my argument based on the text on Nora and Halbwachs , giving a background on the terms of Memory and Collective Memory . Through the work of Sontag , I described in which way the Israelis and Palestinians felt challenged by the other side ’ s memory and therefore became immune to the other ’ s pain and how the two different memories of pain almost never appear together in the public sphere because they would challenge one another . I then discussed the case of the exhibition in Haifa , using the terms of Foucault I argued that the curators built a Countermemory that aimed to undo the silenced voices of history in order to undermine the unity produced by the official history and challenge the accepted narrative . Finally , through the work of Rothberg , I argued that the curatorial work done in the exhibition aims to dispute the assumption by which different experiences of trauma cannot be recognized in the same public sphere . I argued that in his work , the artist replaces Competitive Memory with a Multidirectional Memory , which is productive and create dialogue which might settle a ground or a possible conflict resolution .
I personally believe that the curatorial work made by Dr . Hamra and Inbal Dror Lax is part of a bigger movement developed in Palestine and Israel , by which artists and curators are taking part in creating a common ground , based on memory-work and shared experiences , aiming to make other memories relatable and therefore opening the museum spaces for intercultural dialogue . This could be a fundamental part in a possible conflict resolution .
List of images : Figure 1 The Israel Museum , https :// www . imj . org . il / en / collections / 73486 , ( accessed : 31 / 03 / 19 ). Figure 2 The Israel Museum , https :// www . imj . org . il / en / collections / 403452 , ( accessed : 31 / 03 / 19 ). Figure 3 Levne , Angela . ( 2012 ). Midnight East , https :// www . midnighteast . com / mag /? p = 17889 , ( accessed : 31 / 03 / 19 ). Figure 4 Haifa Museum , https :// www . hcm . org . il / eng / Exhibitions / 6513 / 1948 , ( accessed : 31 / 03 / 19 ). Figure 5 Riba , Naama . ( 2018 ). In Controversial New Exhibit ‘ 1948 ,’ Fusing Palestinian and Jewish Narra-
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