NARA Seeking to Preserve History in the Middle East

Allen Weinstein

Whenever and wherever possible, the National Archives promotes the importance of preserving and managing important national records—an essential element in building and sustaining a democratic form of government while creating a candid account of a nation’s history.

Developing archival skills and a recordkeeping focus in the Middle East is a major goal of joint efforts by me and Ian Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada. We traveled to Israel earlier this year and met separately with officials of the Israel State Archives and the Palestinian National Archives to discuss their collaboration in archiving and preserving the records of their shared heritage. We discussed their respective archival needs, especially for practical records management training for their staffs, and we elicited pledges of interest in cooperating with the U.S. and Canadian national archivists.

The National Archives’ work in this area has grown out of meetings with Wilson and other members of the global records management and archival community over the past two years. The history of these two archives is quite different. The Israeli State Archives was established in 1949, one year after the State of Israel was founded. The Palestinian National Archives was established in the late 1990s, after the Palestinian National Authority was formed in 1994.

While in the Middle East, we were able to identify collections that jointly document aspects of the history of Israel and of the Palestinian people, which include rare and fragile Palestinian newspapers from the early twentieth century and selected records from the Turkish and British mandate period. All are eligible for digitization so that they may be accessed on the Internet.

I am now pleased to report that progress is being made in this program. Earlier this summer, archives and records management officials from both Israel and the PNA joined me and Mr. Wilson in Ottawa. There, for the first time, these officials sat down together to discuss archival issues, even those on which they might disagree. There was preliminary agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians on preserving the records in which both have an interest. A draft Memorandum of Understanding mentioned these goals:

• Digitize and make available to everyone newspapers published in Palestine during and prior to 1948. These newspapers are held in a variety of places in Israel and would be digitized by a joint Israeli-Palestinian team and placed on a public web site.
• Survey and digitize photographs documenting pre-1948 cultural life of Mandatory Palestine. As with the newspapers, these photographs would be digitized and placed on a public web site.
• Survey and digitize records from the British Mandate and Ottoman period (now in the Israel State Archives), which for the most part document matters involving Palestinian Arabs.
• Set up records management and archival training programs for staff from the Palestine National Archives and the Israel State Archives.
• Form a nonpartisan team of archivists and records managers to inspect and inventory the records seized by Israeli forces from the Orient House in August 2001. The Orient House was the administrative center of Arab Jerusalem; it was closed by the Israelis after bombings in 2001 that were attributed to the Palestinians. Israel has since rejected repeated requests to return these records.

One of our principal tasks now is to find financial resources for these activities—not an easy task at this time.

We are encouraged by this progress with Israel and the Palestinians and pleased that our efforts may help to support eventual full access to the records. The National Archives’ efforts in the Middle East are a part of its international outreach programs.  We have strengthened our relationships with the world’s other great democracies, and we have expanded training programs to aid less developed nations in improving their archival and records management practices.