Forgotten: a rediscovery of Israel’s buried Palestinian history

Reading Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson is like walking through a cemetery without headstones: the absence of memory is as loud as what’s remembered. It is a book of quiet Palestinian rebellion, of resisting erasure not through confrontation, but through careful attention: to place, to story, and to what lies just beneath the surface.

The authors guide us across through pre-1948 Palestine — what is now Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — not to lecture, but to notice. They trace the contours of a land shaped by grief, love, and, above all, complexity. They visit abandoned shrines, razed villages, forgotten tombs. In each, they ask: What do we remember? And what do we choose to forget?

In Chapter 5, they search for the tomb of Nabi Ukkasha, a 7th-century companion of the prophet Mohammed whose grave is believed to lie in the heart of West Jerusalem, not far from Jaffa road on Rehov Haneviim, and just a stone’s throw from Aroma café and light rail tracks.

I, too, went looking for this site, after reading the book, and what I found startled me. Like the authors, I saw a minaret, a mosque and an ancient domed mausoleum with a similar design to that of Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem. Yet since they wrote the book two years ago, something had changed. Not only was there no acknowledgement of Nabi Ukkasha, now there are Hebrew signs proclaiming the “Tomb of Benjamin,” surrounded by Hebrew prayer books, , menorahs, and tzedakah boxes. The Islamic identity of the tomb had been replaced with a single narrative asserting itself over another.

How did this happen?

It started quietly after October 7, 2023, when security concerns led the IDF to severely limit access to Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. That site is sacred to many Jews, especially around the anniversary of Rachel's death. Rachel Imenu died giving birth to Benjamin—and because some believe Benjamin also died on the same date, his yahrzeit is commemorated together with hers.

So, when Rachel’s Tomb became inaccessible, groups of Hasids from Breslov began gathering at this Muslim tomb in central Jerusalem, claiming it was in fact Benjamin’s burial place. A reference in Sefer HaYashar, a medieval Jewish text, says Benjamin was buried "opposite the Jebusite" — which some interpret as Jerusalem. That was enough to begin reshaping the site’s story.

There are five graves in the tomb. The central one has a black cover, which now reads, “Benjamin, son of Issac and Rachel, while the other four are white and are labelled for Benjamin’s sons: Bela, Becher, Ashbel, and Huppim. Many haredi Jews now gather to kiss the tomb and to pray for everything from good health to desirable marriages. 

But this transformation wasn’t done with historical research, archaeological support, or interfaith dialogue. It was done through physical takeover. Fake official signs now appear in the same typesetting and design used by the Jerusalem Municipality. And neither the city nor the Israel Antiquities Authority stopped it. Some say they even enabled it through inaction.

There’s a painful irony here. Because if we’re honest, the story of holy site appropriation in this land is not one-sided.

Jews know what it means to lose access to sacred space. The Temple Mount — Judaism’s holiest site — is now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Jews may visit but not pray there.

The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where our biblical ancestors are buried, was converted into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the 7th century, and today is physically divided, with Jewish and Muslim sections guarded by soldiers.

Rachel’s Tomb — where Muslims once prayed in a space they called the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque — has now been fortified and claimed almost entirely by Jewish worshippers.

Even the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus is contested: Jews believe it houses the remains of the biblical Joseph, while some Muslims claim it is the burial place of a local sheikh. Each of these sites contains layers — stories laid on top of one another like sediment, shaped by devotion, conquest, and myth.

But Forgotten is not about keeping score. It is about asking what happens when one story denies the legitimacy of another, when history is not shared, but seized.

In the final chapter, Shehadeh and Johnson stand before the new Simon Wiesenthal Centre Museum of Tolerance, built atop the historic Mamilla Cemetery in the western part of the city, where generations of Jerusalem’s Muslims were buried.

“As we looked up at the forbidding façade of a building supposedly dedicated to tolerance, it became clear to us that confronting the denial of the experiences of the other, as well as connections – lost, remembered, present and threatened – are what unites our explorations throughout this book.”

It’s a searing line. Because true tolerance demands more than slogans. It requires the courage to acknowledge someone else’s sacredness, even when it overlaps with our own.

And yet, this book is not hopeless. It is, in many ways, an ode to the resilience of memory. Trees still grow where villages once stood. Byzantine ruins peer out from the soil. A qasr (meaning castle in Arabic), thought to be lost, gleams in the afternoon sun. In a land constantly at risk of forgetting, Shehadeh and Johnson remind us that not everything disappears. Some truths linger, waiting to be seen again.

Reading Forgotten left me with a deep ache, but also a sense of duty. Not just to remember what was, but to honour it. To protect what remains. To build a future where our sacred stories can coexist, rather than compete. In a land that too often demands loyalty to a single truth, Forgotten dares to hold many.

We owe this place, and each other, no less.

Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson was published by Allen and Unwin in March 2025.

Raja Shehadeh will be speaking about this book at the Sydney Writers Festival via video on Friday May 23.