Abstract
Chaim Weizmann observed in a December 1945 letter to President Truman that ‘Palestine, for its size, is probably the most investigated country in the world’.1 Provoked by the Arab/Jewish conflict over Palestine, international commissions, private groups, and an interested public turned for guidance to scholars and thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines—from biblical scholarship, archaeology, theology, and history to various social sciences. Based on this work, the international community affirmed, through the Mandate, the legal and moral right of the Jews to ‘reconstitute’ themselves as a modern people in Palestine.2 The ‘re’ of ‘re-constitute’ was related to the ‘re’: ‘re-turn’ and ‘re-claim’. The ‘re’—suggests, of course, ‘again’—thereby validating widely held conceptions concerning the Jewish past and how it had significance for the contemporary world. In essence, the widely held assumption—found throughout the literature of the social sciences and humanities—that Jews had a deep and vital historical connection to the land was essential to asserting the right to resettle in it.3 It is with the rejection of this interpretation of the past and its contemporary implications that this paper is concerned.