Nakba -The Catastrophe

Today we travelled to Nazareth, in the north, and met with Palestinians who live within the borders of the state of Israel. They are known as “Israeli Arabs” or “Israeli Palestinians.” Unlike their brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza, they are Israeli citizens, so to some extent they are better off that those Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. However, they are nonetheless victims of systematic discrimination by Israeli authorities who want to completely eliminate any Arabs from the State of Israel. Although they are citizens, they are second class citizens. They face considerable discrimination in all walks of life.

We met first with Amir, a young Palestinian activist who spoke of the challenges of being an Arab in Israel. She documented various forms of discrimination that Arabs face in this Jewish state in every aspect of their lives from housing to education to freedom of movement to laws regarding who they can marry. When asked what she dreamed of as a solution to this intractable conflict, she said a one state solution, but that she believed the one binational state was the final end goal which would have to be arrived at in stages, with a two state solution as an interim step, to give the Palestinians time to become a self governing, autonomous body that could then move into a combined one state with Israel. She expressed no animosity toward Israeli Jews and a willingness to live together with them in this land, but was clear that she does not countenance their apparent mission to drive all Arabs out of this land. This is their land too and they are not going to be driven out by the Israelis. She is young and vibrant and committed to her work for human rights for Palestinians and she lives with hope in spite of the clear commitment by the Israelis to drive her people from their country.

In the afternoon we met with an Arab Israeli named Ali and a number of his friends from this area who took us on a hike through the hills of the Galilee to see Palestinian villages that were destroyed by the Zionists in May 1948 when the State of Israel was founded. May 15, 1948 is Israeli Independence Day but for Palestinians it is known as the Nakba, “Catastrophe” because it is the day thousands of them were driven, permanently, from their lands.

We first met with two older men, in their late 70s who were living in nearby villages in 1948 when the Zionists came to power. Mohammad and Abu Ahmed, both in their seventies remember vividly fleeing their villages knowing that the Zionists were on their way and fearing for their safety if they remained in their homes. They had heard of atrocities in other villages and knew that they needed to flee if they were to survive. They told us how they packed up a few belongings, just what they could carry, including the keys to their homes and, in the case of Abu Ahmed the papers showing his ownership of his land, and they fled. They expected that in a few weeks they would be able to return. They remember being told by the authorities at the time that they would be able to return, but that never happened. In fact what happened was that for fully two years they were simply refused permission to return to their village, and then in 1950 the State of Israel declared that the lands on which these villages had stood were state lands and the Palestinian residents of those villages were denied any access to their homes and villages. In fact, the villages were ultimately bulldozed by the Israelis. We walked through the rubble of what was once their village. We spoke to Mohammad and Abu Ahmed under a tree on the land that Abu Ahmed’s home had stood. They walked us all around the ruins of their village, from which we could see the Jewish settlement that now claims the land. The Israeli government is in the process of completely bulldozing the village to build a stable for cows to support a kibbutz nearby. Mohammad took us through the brambles and brush to the schoolhouse in which he had received his elementary education, which stands in ruins now in the shadow of the settlement and the construction site for the new animal stables. The old Muslim cemetery in which the ancestors of his village are buried is becoming a dumping ground for manure and other agricultural products. Next Tuesday, the former villagers are going before the High Court of Israel in Jerusalem trying to stop the desecration of these cemeteries. The complete commitment of these men to getting their land back was remarkable to me. The land means everything to them and so the right of return is a non-negotiable part of any reconciliation with Israel. I am learning that for the Palestinian people there is a primal connection with the land and with the village and being able to live in the place that your ancestors lived is a crucial piece of their sense of identity and wholeness. When I think of how we in the United States move around so frequently, how many of us move not only from our childhood home but often move several times during our adult lives, how, in fact, young people often dream of doing better than their parents, of moving to a new and better place, I realize that we have fundamentally different values with respect to home and land which can make the Palestinian commitment to their lost land sometimes seem overdone.

Our guide for the day, Ali took us to his home in Sikhrin for dinner. He has a tent in his backyard, called the Freedom and Culture Tent, where he frequently has gatherings of Palestinians and people working for Palestinian rights. His wife, Therese, is a Dutch woman who has become a resident of Israel. She spoke of the discrimination that Arabs face in this land and of the struggles they go through with the Israeli authorities. She and Ali have a beautiful home that they built themselves. They Israeli authorities refused to give them a permit to build so ultimately Ali built the home without the permit. He then got a demolition notice from the Israeli government. On the day of the scheduled demolition, several hundred supporters showed up and formed a human barricade around the house and the Israeli bulldozers ultimately went away. Ali and his wife live always in the shadow of the potential of the arrival of a bulldozer, although they think that the strong show of support they mustered the last time will make it less likely that the government will try again with them. They will go after people who are less well connected, who cannot muster the same amount of popular support. During our conversation we learned that Ali had spent 6 years in an Israeli prison. When asked why, the replied simply, “Political reasons.” His wife then said, “All Arabs in this country spend some time in prison, it’s just part of life here.”

I should mention that our dinner at Ali and Therese’s house was typical Palestinian hospitality. The food was plentiful and delicious – babaganoush, hummos, tabouli, flatbread, couscous with lentils, cole slaw, corn salad, grilled beef kabobs and chicken kabobs and a few other dishes that I didn’t have room to sample!! There was enough food for an army and we ate our fill and were almost too tired to get up and leave.

This has been a day for being immersed in the other narrative that accompanies the founding of the State of Israel. In contrast to the Israeli narrative of coming home to the Promised Land after the tragedy of the holocaust and years of wandering and persecution before that, this is a narrative of a people being stripped of their culture, their land and their identity for reasons that have nothing to do with them. The suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis and European Christians for centuries before that results in the annihilation of Palestinian villages and the peasant farming culture that goes with it, followed by years of systematic discrimination against people who were not responsible for the pain inflicted upon the Jews for centuries. It is indeed a “catastrophe.” I cannot help but think of the parallels in the Palestinian narrative to the narrative of the systematic annihilation of the Native Americans who inhabited the United States before the arrival of European immigrants. We too come from a country built on the blood of another culture and on the destruction of an indigenous people along with the taking of their land. When we criticize Israel for what they have done to Palestinians, I can’t help but think that we have to account for our own history as well. The words of Shehadeh Shehadeh, the Anglican priest I met on my first day here continues to ring in my ears – “God has provided enough for everyone’s need. God has not supplied enough for everyone’s greed.”