Overview

"As a young man Meron Benvenisti often accompanied his father, a distinguished geographer, when the elder Benvenisti traveled through the Holy Land charting a Hebrew map that would rename Palestinian sites and villages with names linked to Israel's ancestral homeland. These experiences in Benvenisti's youth are central to this book, and the story that he tells helps explain how during this century an Arab landscape, physical and human, was transformed into an Israeli, Jewish state. Benvenisti first discusses the process by which new Hebrew nomenclature replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins in Eretz Israel/Palestine (his name for the Holy Land, thereby defining it as a land of Jews and Arabs). He then explains how the Arab landscape has been transformed through war, destruction, and expulsion into a flourishing Jewish homeland accommodating millions of immigrants. The resulting encounters between two peoples who claim the same land have raised great moral and political dilemmas, which Benvenisti presents with candor and impartiality. Benvenisti points out that five hundred years after the Moors left Spain there are sufficient landmarks remaining to preserve the outlines of Muslim Spain. Even with sustained modern development, the ancient scale is still visible. Yet a Palestinian returning to his ancestral landscape after only fifty years would have difficulty identifying his home. Furthermore, Benvenisti says, the transformation of Arab cultural assets into Jewish holy sites has engendered a struggle over the ""signposts of memory"" essential to both peoples. Sacred Landscape raises troublesome questions that most writers on the Middle East avoid. The now-buried Palestinian landscape remains a symbol and a battle standard for Palestinians and Israelis. But it is Benvenisti's continuing belief that Eretz Israel/Palestine has enough historical and physical space for the people of both nations and that it can one day be a shared homeland."

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Reviews

When peace finally comes to Israel, Benvenisti will be regarded as a moral and courageous thinker who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed before it became the fashionable thing to do. - Kirkus Reviews Benvenisti powerfully describes how Israelis have sought to obliterate all signs of the Palestinian past while Palestinians continue in their unrealistic fantasy of a return to a world that is no more. - Tikkun Equally informed by intelligence and remorse, Sacred Landscape is a passionate book that eludes easy categorization [and] represents a heroic effort to transcend derelictions of the past through its scholarly restoration. - Jerusalem Post The literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict is vast, but very little of it has anything new to contribute to a debate which usually amounts to no more than the reiteration of entrenched positions. Sacred Landscape is a refreshing exception to this. Here is an author who uses scholarship and knowledge of the land to make clear and uncompromising points. Benvenisti has produced an important work of lasting value. Its publication shows the strength and vitality of Israeli intellectual life. It is marked, above all, by an unflinching regard for truth, even the most inconvenient truths. - Hugh Kennedy, Times Literary Supplement

"""When peace finally comes to Israel, Benvenisti will be regarded as a moral and courageous thinker who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed before it became the fashionable thing to do."" - Kirkus Reviews ""Benvenisti powerfully describes how Israelis have sought to obliterate all signs of the Palestinian past while Palestinians continue in their unrealistic fantasy of a return to a world that is no more."" - Tikkun ""Equally informed by intelligence and remorse, Sacred Landscape is a passionate book that eludes easy categorization [and] represents a heroic effort to transcend derelictions of the past through its scholarly restoration."" - Jerusalem Post ""The literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict is vast, but very little of it has anything new to contribute to a debate which usually amounts to no more than the reiteration of entrenched positions. Sacred Landscape is a refreshing exception to this. Here is an author who uses scholarship and knowledge of the land to make clear and uncompromising points. Benvenisti has produced an important work of lasting value. Its publication shows the strength and vitality of Israeli intellectual life. It is marked, above all, by an unflinching regard for truth, even the most inconvenient truths."" - Hugh Kennedy, Times Literary Supplement"

Author Information

Meron Benvenisti was deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1971 to 1978, and is currently a columnist for Haaretz, Israel's largest newspaper. He is the author of Conflicts and Contradictions (1986) Intimate Enemies (California, 1995), and City of Stone (California, 1996).

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