Morag M. Kersel

Fractured oversight: The ABCs of cultural heritage in Palestine after the Oslo Accords

Palestine is a state in limbo—they lack full formal recognition as a sovereign land but possess a unique nation-state status that incorporates elements of a unified national consciousness and basic civil institutions albeit with limited autonomy. Palestine’s ambiguous political status is starkly illustrated by its convoluted territorial control, and nowhere is this more clearly attested than in the jurisdiction of archaeological sites and the display of artifacts in museums. The legislative colonial legacies of the Ottoman, the British Mandate, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, Israeli military orders, and the 1995 Oslo II Accords, which carved the Occupied Territories into a complex mosaic of areas—A, B, and C— have resulted in fractured oversight of heritage sites and objects. A case study focused on Herodium provides a fascinating lens for examining the efficacy of law and the administration of archaeological and object management in a contested landscape.

Beautiful, good, important and special: cultural heritage, archaeology, tourism and the miniature in the holy land.

Abstract Through an examination of representations of cultural heritage in miniature this paper tackles the recurrent question of how culture, the nation, and the past are presented to the public. Exploring how this is achieved at the microcosm of Mini Israel, an outdoor park midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where you can see it all small (Shapira 2003: 1), we conclude that Mini Israel offers visitors (foreign or local) what they want; an unthreatening version of the Holy Land, where differences in ethnicities, religions, and political groups are abridged in a pristine environment free from conflict and strife. At Mini Israel displays include the commercial, the contemporary, and the ancient, depicting what is beautiful, good, important and special (Shapira 2003: 2). We argue that the selection of sites in miniature is a reflection of tourism trends, financial motives, and visitor preference, rather than a reflection of facts on the ground.