Hebraization of Palestinian place names
Hebraization of Palestinian place names refers to the replacement of Arabic-language place names with Hebrew-language place names throughout different periods: Mandatory Palestine; after the establishment of Israel, following the 1948 Palestinian exodus and 1948 Arab–Israeli War; and subsequently in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967.
In some instances, the traditional Arabic place name was preserved in Hebrew, despite there being a different Hebrew tradition regarding the name, as in the case of Banias, and where, in classical Hebrew writings, the place is called Paneas. Municipal direction sign-posts and maps produced by state-run agencies will often note the traditional Hebrew name and the traditional Arabic name alongside each other, such as "Nablus / Shechem" and "Silwan / Shiloach", inter alia.
In certain areas of Israel, particularly mixed Jewish–Arab cities, there is a growing trend to restore the original Arabic street names which were Hebraized after 1948,
Early history
In the early biblical narrative of an Israelitic invasion of Canaan, the Israelites rarely imposed their names on the areas they are said to have taken possession of, accepting in most cases the pre-existing Canaanite toponymy. Many of the place names surviving in the Palestinian dialect of Arabic can be traced to Aramaic, the major language spoken by the predominantly Christian peasantry in that region at the time of the advent of Islam.C. R. Conder of the Palestine Exploration Fund was among the first to recognize the importance of analyzing Arabic place names in order to determine a site's more ancient Hebrew name. Conder's contribution was unique in that he did not eradicate the Arabic place names in his Survey of Western Palestine maps, but preserved their names intact, rather than attribute a site to a dubious identification. In his memoirs, he mentions that the Hebrew and Arabic traditions of place names are often consonant with each other:
The names of the old towns and villages mentioned in the Bible remain for the most part almost unchanged... The fact that each name was carefully recorded in Arabic letters made it possible to compare with the Hebrew in a scientific and scholarly manner... When the Hebrew and the Arabic are shown to contain the same radicals, the same gutturals, and often the same meanings, we have a truly reliable comparison... We have now recovered more than three-quarters of the Bible names, and are thus able to say with confidence that the Bible topography is a genuine and actual topography, the work of Hebrews familiar with the country.
Modern Hebraization efforts began from the time in the First Aliyah in 1880. In the early 1920s, the HeHalutz youth movement began a Hebraization program for newly established settlements in Mandatory Palestine. These names, however, were applied only to sites purchased by the Jewish National Fund, as they had no sway over the names of other sites in Palestine.
Seeing that directional signposts were frequently inscribed only in the Arabic language with their English transliterations, the Jewish community in Palestine, led by prominent Zionists such as David Yellin, tried to influence the naming process initiated by the Royal Geographical Society's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, so as to make the naming more inclusive. Despite these efforts, well-known cities and geographical places, such as Jerusalem, Jericho, Nablus, Hebron, the Jordan River, etc. carried names in both Hebrew and Arabic writing, but lesser-known classical Jewish sites of antiquity remained inscribed after their Arabic names, without change or addition. The main objection to adding additional spellings for ancient Hebrew toponymy was the fear that it would cause confusion to the postal service, when long accustomed names were given new names, as well as be totally at variance with the names already inscribed on maps. Therefore, British officials sought to ensure unified forms of place names.
In spite of this modern trend to Hebraize place names given in Arabic, Jews throughout all ages, whether in their public records or religious writings, have maintained the old appellations for Jerusalem and Hebron, preferring their older names over their newer Arabic designations, Al-Quds and Al-Khalil, respectively. One of the motivating factors behind members of the Yishuv to apply Hebrew names to old Arabic names, despite attempts to the contrary by the RGS Committee for Names, was the belief by historical geographers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, that many Arabic place names were mere "corruptions" of older Hebrew names. At other times, the history of assigning the "restored Hebrew name" to a site has been fraught with errors and confusion, as in the case of the ruin ʻIrâq el-Menshiyeh, situated where Kiryat Gat now stands. Initially, it was given the name Tel Gath, based on Albright's identification of the site with the biblical Gath. When this was found to be a misnomer, its name was changed to ʻTẹ̄l ʿẸ̄rānī, which, too, was found to be an erroneous designation for what was thought to be the old namesake for the site.
According to Professor Virginia Tilley, " body of scientific, linguistic, literary, historical, and biblical authorities was invented to foster impressions of Jewish belonging and natural rights in a Jewish homeland reproduced from a special Jewish right to this land, which clearly has been occupied, through the millennia, by many peoples." To which group Tilley was referring is unknown, but as early as 1920, a Hebrew sub-committee was established by the British government in Palestine with the aim of advising the government on the English transcript of names of localities and in determining the form of the Hebrew names for official use by the government. In 1925, the Directorate of the Jewish National Fund established The Names Committee for the Settlements, with the intent of giving names to the new Jewish settlements established on lands purchased by the JNF. The Jewish National Council, for their part, met in parley in late 1931, in order to make its recommendations known to the British government in Mandatory Palestine, by suggesting emendations to a book published by the British colonial office in Palestine in which it outlined a set of standards used when referencing place names transliterated from Arabic and Hebrew into English, or from Arabic into Hebrew, and from Hebrew into Arabic, based on the country's ancient toponymy. Many of the same proposals made by the JNC were later implemented, beginning in 1949 and later following 1951, when Yeshayahu Press established the Government Naming Committee.
JNF Naming Committee
In 1925, the Jewish National Fund established the Names Committee for the Settlements, led directly by the head of the JNF, Menachem Ussishkin.Meron Benvenisti writes that the Arabic geographical names upset the new Jewish community, for example on 22 April 1941 the Emeq Zevulun Settlements Committee wrote to the head office of the JNF:
Such names as the following are displayed in all their glory: Karbassa, al- Sheikh Shamali, Abu Sursuq, Bustan al-Shamali – all of them names that the JNF has no interest in immortalizing in the Z'vulun Valley.... We recommend to you that you send a circular letter to all of the settlements located on JNF land in the Z'vulun Valley and its immediate vicinity and warn them against continuing the above-mentioned practice old maps that, from various points of view, are dangerous to use.
Between 1925 and 1948, the JNF Naming Committee gave names to 215 Jewish communities in Palestine. Although sweeping changes had come over the names of old geographic sites, a record of their old names is preserved on the old maps.
Arabic language preeminence
By 1931, the destinational listings at post offices, signs at train stations and place names listed in the telephone directory, had removed any mention in Hebrew of "Shechem", "Nazareth," and "Naḥal Sorek", which aroused the concern of the Jewish National Council that the British Government of Palestine was being prejudicial towards its Jewish citizens. Naḥal Sorek, was a major route and thoroughfare when commuting by train from Jerusalem to Hartuv.1949: Committee for the Designation of Place-Names in the Negev
In late 1949, after the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the new Israeli government created the Committee for the Designation of Place-Names in the Negev Region, a group of nine scholars whose job was to assign Hebrew names to towns, mountains, valleys, springs, roads, etc., in the Negev region. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had decided on the importance of renaming in the area earlier in the year, writing in his diary in July: "We must give Hebrew names to these places – ancient names, if there are, and if not, new ones!"; he subsequently established the committee's objectives with a letter to the chairman of the committee:We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs' political proprietorship of the land, so also do we not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.
In the Negev, 333 of the 533 new names which the committee decided upon were transliterations of, or otherwise similar-sounding to, the Arabic names. According to Bevenisti, some members of the committee had objected to the eradication of Arabic place names, but in many cases they were overruled by political and patriotic considerations.
1951: Governmental Naming Committee
In March 1951, the JNF committee and the Negev committee were merged to cover all of Israel. The new merged committee stated their belief that the "Judaization of the geographical names in our country a vital issue". The work was ongoing as of 1960; in February 1960 the director of the Survey of Israel, Yosef Elster, wrote that "We have ascertained that the replacement of Arabic names with Hebrew ones is not yet complete. The committee must quickly fill in what is missing, especially the names of ruins." In April 1951, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Dr. Benjamin Maisler were appointed to the Government Naming Committee.Between 1920 and 1990, the different committees had set Hebrew names for some 7,000 natural elements in the country, of which more than 5,000 were geographical place names, several hundred were names of historical sites, and over a thousand were names given to new settlements. Vilnay has noted that, since the 19th century, biblical words, expressions and phrases have provided names for many urban and rural settlements and neighborhoods in Modern Israel.
While the names of many newer Jewish settlements had replaced the names of older Arab villages and ruins, leaving no traces of their former designations, Benvenisti has shown that the memorial of these ancient places had not been utterly lost through hegemonic practices:
Approximately one-quarter of the 584 Arab villages that were standing in the 1980s, had names whose origins were ancient – biblical, Hellenistic, or Aramaic.
the Israeli Government Naming Committee prohibits giving a name to a new settlement if its name cannot be shown to be connected in some way to the immediate area or region.