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Little did we know, when we decided to offer a
workshop on Palestinian family history and genealogy to our women’s
group in the Summer 2005 School of Communication, that less than a
year and a half later, we would find ourselves making history.
Originally intended to spice up our offerings aimed at communicating
Palestinian identity, the 15 hour workshop conducted by Leyla Zuaiter
was so well-received, we decided to make genealogy and family history
a plank of our Values and Identity Program. Leyla, who had been
researching her own Iraqi and American family history for eight years,
was initially reluctant to give the workshop due to the dearth of
easily accessible internet resources, but decided to go ahead and see
what could be done. Another look at the Internet not only confirmed
the lack of resources but showed how the material available was very
far from representing the Palestinian identity—in fact seemed
deliberately seeking to promote negative stereotypes. A search closer
to home, particularly the Bethlehem area however, proved that though
there was more material than expected, it was scattered, not
well-known, and not easily in available. Furthermore, it was in
Arabic, making it inaccessible to many Diaspora Palestinians. Amazed
by the fascinating history of Bethlehem families, she wanted to share
her findings with Diaspora Bethlehemites who seemed to be searching in
vain on US-based genealogy sites, and AEI agreed to her proposal that
she devote a section of AEI’s website to this subject, despite the
fear that it might strain its resources—a fear which turned out to be
well-founded. But then Development Director Dr. Toine Van Teeffelen
forwarded an email from his fellow anthropologist, Dr. Rosemary Sayigh
about a website-in-the-making. The site, called
Palestine-family.net,
was a visually appealing, top-of-the-line website allowing
Palestinians all over the world to directly submit their material and
to find each other, Leyla knew that this was what we had been looking
for. Although she had hardly completed her website, she encouraged us
to form a partnership with Palestine-family.net, thus combining
technological sophistication with local knowledge.
The experience in making the site, underlines
just how revolutionary Palestine-family.net is. Leyla’s lack of
website savvy caused many headaches for AEI, AEI’s patient webmaster,
George Maria, and herself.
Palestine-family net removes all these technical obstacles and allows
one to focus on the content, rather than the form. One need not take
the time to plan out one’s contributions in advance, because one can
submit more, or change those one has already submitted at any time. It
is not all or nothing as it is with other websites.
Though we have kept Leyla’s site as it is, since it will take quite
some time to transfer or copy its contents to PFN, the site will
remain “as is” with no updating, or checking for broken links and the
like and serving as an example of “Before.” Since you are here, we
encourage you to explore it—and then compare it to “After” on
Palestine-Family.net. Enjoy your explorations. We hope to see your
contributions soon!
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