Introduction: Collective memory and the palestinian experience

The essays in this book analyze the evolution of modern Palestinian collective memory and its role in shaping Palestinian national identity. No group identity exists without memory as its core meaning; the sense of continuity over time and space is sustained by remembering, and what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity. Every group develops the memory of its own past and so highlights its unique identity vis-á-vis other groups. These reconstructed images of the past provide the group with an account of its origin and development and thus allow it to develop a historical identity. The past the group prizes is domestic: the histories of foreign lands are alien and incompatible with its own past. National identity requires both having a heritage and believing it to be unique.¹.