This article was first published in February 2016
On signs overlooking the ancient Mediterranean port of Jaffa – once the largest city in historic Palestine – visitors can read about more than a millennia of town history in up to four languages. None of these is Arabic. In the city centre’s clock tower square, constructed by the Ottomans in 1900, a commemorative plaque in Hebrew meanwhile evokes in readers “the Memory of the Heroes who Fell in the Battle to Liberate Yafo.” Indeed, there is little in today’s Jaffa to indicate to the outsider that the region was once home to some 800,000 Arab Palestinians, 95 per cent of whom were displaced by Zionist military forces in 1947-48 with the declaration of the state of Israel. Likewise, on highways leading out of the city, the terrain’s Palestinian past can be seen progressively elided in roads signs which now designate towns with Hebraised names – Jerusalem no longer “al-Quds” in Arabic script, but “Urushalim.”
