ABSTRACT
This contribution draws on the works of memory theorists like Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann, Pierre Nora and Paul Connerton, as well as on phenomenological theories of landscape as lieux de mémoire by Christopher Tilley and Tim Ingold. The demolished Palestinian village, Lubya, serves as an example of an unforgettable memory site. Israeli military forces attacked and occupied Lubya in 1948, and its inhabitants forced to leave the village, to become part of the worldwide Palestinian diaspora. Like other Palestinian refugees, they exploited memories about their village of origin to construct their identity in the diaspora. Such memories are a problem for official Israel because the memory of individual villages has become integrated within the broader discourse of the Palestinian nakhba, a powerful Palestinian counter-narrative, which is structurally similar to, and hence negates, the dominant Zionist master narrative, providing legitimization to the modern state of Israel.
