Kelcey, Jo;
Irfan, Anne;
(2025)
Rescuing the UNRWA Archive: Saving Palestinian History amidst the Gaza Genocide.
History Workshop Journal
, Article dbaf024. 10.1093/hwj/dbaf024.
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Abstract
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has entailed extensive attacks on Palestinian heritage and history, including institutional archives which preserve historical documents, like that of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). In this article, we trace how a small team of UNRWA staff successfully resisted these attacks by rescuing the agency’s archival materials and transferring them out of Gaza. We situate their efforts within the decades-long context of Palestinian resistance against Israeli erasure of their national history. In the process, we also engage with broader questions about the meaning, ownership, and preservation of archival collections.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Rescuing the UNRWA Archive: Saving Palestinian History amidst the Gaza Genocide |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/hwj/dbaf024 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbaf024 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of History Workshop Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Arts and Sciences (BASc) |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214779 |
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