According to the report, carried by the +972 Magazine, Israel’s “State Archives” declassified secret documents last summer including documents which are more than a century old; however, he said, 300,000 documents which predate the creation of Israel’s regime remained classified.
The very existence of the 300,000 classified files—their names, dates, and origin within the state bureaucracy—had been kept a secret, until now, the report said, noting that one-fifth of the files, deemed too sensitive still by the regime, were excluded from the disclosure.
“There were many people who were concerned about the opening of this catalog,” Israel’s State Archivist Yaacov Lozowick said in a statement accompanying the release.
Shalev noted that the oldest of these documents, which remained classified, titled “Parker Report” dates back to 1821. In addition, there are 125 classified documents dating back to the 19th century and about 2,000 documents from before the Nakba (Catastrophe) Day of 1948.
We cannot access the files so that it is impossible to say why they are still classified over 70, and in some cases, nearly 200 years later, he added.
Amongst the documents are files on Deir Yassin and Kfar Qasim, the two most notorious massacres carried out by Israeli forces.