Cautious Commemoration: Localism, Communalism, and Nationalism in Palestinian Memorial Monuments in Israel

In March 1998, the political leadership of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel was looking for ways to commemorate al-Nakba (“The Disaster,” in Arabic), referring to the war of 1948, during which about 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted and hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed. This leadership, organized in the Follow-Up Committee (FUC), nominated a Nakba and Steadfastness Committee (NSC) chaired by the author Muhamad Ali Taha. Among the Committee’s several initiatives, one gained front-page headlines in the Arabic media: a call for Arab municipalities to establish memorial monuments for the Palestinian martyrs (shuhada) of 1948. The decision to commemorate the Nakba provoked both explicit and implicit threats from the Israeli government. The Minister for Arab Affairs in Netanyahu’s government, Moshe Katzav (elected as Israel’s president in 2000), described the FUC’s decision as one that was “dangerous and might damage Jewish-Arab co-existence.” Minister of Interior Eli Yishai threatened to cut