Entre négligence et secret: Entreprises archivistiques en Palestine

This article analyses and compare the archives of missionary educational communities in Jerusalem and of the waqf of the city of Hebron to illustrate the difficulties but also the interest encountered in the process of building a Palestinian archival heritage. These documents constitute potential Archives, thought of as such, and which are timidly beginning to be practiced as such, despite political tensions. The cooperation and intervention of external actors seem necessary to give another dimension to these sources and to strengthen the contacts between the actors of their conservation and archive professionals.
A restoration/digitisation campaign will undoubtedly allow wider consultation of the documents (first by those involved in conservation and only later by students, historians and visitors) while ensuring their conservation. However, two "dangers" appear: on the one hand, the patrimonialization process, a potential threat for certain archives, then frozen and decontextualized. On the other hand, access to these long jealously guarded archives could have consequences for the way history is written, giving rise to, in the words of Jean-Marc Berlière, "neopositivist mirages and vertigo".