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Paper short abstract

Examining Baram/Birʿam heritage landscape in Israel/Palestine, this study critiques hegemonic Zionist heritage narratives and explores how diverse communities perform and negotiate silenced histories within a layered landscape, highlighting the potential of contested sites for inclusive heritage.

Paper long abstract

Zionist historiography has long framed Jewish history as a linear and symbolic progression from biblical antiquity to the modern Zionist national project, producing a hegemonic narrative that underpins Israel’s national heritage landscape. Emerging in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe, this secular and Eurocentric interpretation has shaped official memory practices while marginalizing alternative historical trajectories, including those of Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Despite Israel’s cultural and historical diversity, national heritage policies continue to overwhelmingly privilege Zionist narratives, resulting in the systematic underrepresentation of non-hegemonic pasts in public space and contributing to ongoing social and cultural exclusion.

The research focuses on Baram/Birʿam National Park near the Israeli–Lebanese border, a site characterized by layered and competing histories. Officially, the park foregrounds archaeological remains of a Talmudic-era synagogue that reinforce a Zionist narrative of Jewish continuity. At the same time, the landscape contains unmarked Jewish pilgrimage sites associated with the burial of saints—often linked to Mizrahi religious traditions—as well as the remains of the depopulated Maronite village of Birʿam, including an active church, cemetery, and surviving structures. Together, these elements produce a heritage landscape shaped by intersecting religious, national, ethnic, and political identities. Through fieldwork with communities who maintain social, religious, and historical ties to Baram/Birʿam yet remain unrepresented in its official narrative, this study examines multiple heritage performances and their negotiation within a single site. In doing so, it highlights the potential of contested heritage landscapes to challenge dominant historical narratives and open possibilities for more inclusive heritage practices in Israel/Palestine.