I’ve been reading the blog entries that Palestinian-American writer and activist Nehad Khader has been posting about her first-time visit back to her grandparents’ homeplaces (here, etc.)
Amazing, heartfelt writing. (HT: Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss.)
Nehad writes:
- I have never felt a more bizarre sensation for intense saddness and simultaneous ecstacy. I was a returnee, and having eaten from the fruits of the land felt like I was taking back what was mine. I also completely put down my guard and found myself laughing while tears rolled down my eyes. I always said I would return to Umm el Zeinat and rebuild, but now I know I will. I’ve had lots of thoughts that I need to comb through and understand. I’ve been preparing for this moment my entire life, and now that its happened I cannot wait for it to happen again. My village is there and it still exists, with a few folks left behind to take care of it until we can all reunite.
In the grand Zionist plan my brother and I were supposed to have forgotten this land. We should not have known that we are from Umm el Zeinat, we should not have stepped foot on it ever again. But in some small way we– and millions like us– have punched a very large hole in the Zionist plan. I had a wonderful conversation today about this with Amin Mohammad Ali, shop owner and brother of Palestinian poet Taha Mohammad Ali in Nazareth. I will write more about this conversation, but I realized that although I am in the “green line” and what is known as Israel proper, the Palestinians here are me and I am the Palestinians here.
Also, see her post about the Palestinian embroidery exhibition she put on in Philadephia before she left on her trip.
New Jewish immigrants to Israel from around the world are all given– in addition, of course, to instant citizenship, the right to reside in the country endlessly, and generous baskets of social benefits– a set of experiences, carefully stage-managed by the state’s Ministry of Absorption, that is supposed to make them feel as though they are coming “home.”
There is not one iota of stage-management in Nehad’s experiences, or of artifice in her reaction to them.
It is intriguing to me how nowadays, Palestinians with western passports are among the most privileged of Palestinians, being abe to travel much more freely among the many places of Palestinian residence– inside Israel, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the OPTs, Gulf countries, etc– than most of the Palestinians who still live in the Middle East.
Indeed, once you get to Gaza or the West Bank, the ability of Palestinians residing in those occupied areas to travel freely to visit close relatives in other places of Palestinian dispersal become almost zero.
Nehad was able to go to Syria, where she had spent her early years in the huge Yarmouk refugee camp. She went to Jordan (and of course found relatives there, too)… and now she’s in Israel.
The experience of being a Palestinian refugee today really is very different from what it was in, say, the 1950s. It’s true that Nehad and other Palestinians with western passports are among the luckiest, regarding the ability to travel. But nowadays, even many Palestinians living in Gaza or Lebanon, in the very worst of all the circumstances faced by Palestinians, can keep in some touch with relatives in other places through the internet, Skype, etc.
True, it is still nowhere near the degree of connectedness that people in rich and middle-income countries are coming to take for granted. But it’s a lot more connectedness than Palestinians had with each other in earlier decades… And of course, this has consequences.
One has been to keep a keep rich and textured sense of Palestinian-ness alive in all these places of dispersion. Another has been to make it just about impossible, in this century, to think of “splitting” the Palestinians currently resident in the OPTs from those of their brethren– including yes, in every family there, close family members– who have been forced to stay in the diaspora.
Thus, the rights, claims, and needs of the diaspora Palestinians cannot simply be ignored in the peacemaking, which is what the Israelis have always wanted– and what US diplomacy over the past 16 years essentially aimed at, too.
The Zionists have just about finished with their massive project of “gathering in” their people. The Palestinians’ roughly parallel project has not yet begun to be implemented.
Ben Gurion said the old will die and the young will forget. Well, one out of two isn’t bad.
My village is there and it still exists, with a few folks left behind to take care of it until we can all reunite.
Well, so much for the ethnic cleansing, what is it the Zionist didn’t have time to repopulate in 60 years?
although I am in the “green line” and what is known as Israel proper, the Palestinians here are me and I am the Palestinians here.
And so much for the issue being 1967 and the so called occupation. It ain’t so, they want to replay 1948.
Very moving, people expelled from Arab countries don’t visitation rights, and in Ucraine they built sports complexes over the mass graves of their victims. We are all refugees, she is one of the lucky ones at that.
Of course the issue of the diaspora Palestinians will have to be addressed. Presumably, they will be given a right to return to their country, Palestine. Not Israel.
So long as anti-peace activists insist on undoing the state of Israel, there will be no peace.
You bring up a good point, Titus.
There is the matter of the Jewish-Arabs that were victims of Ben Gurion’s self-described “cruel Zionism”, which included deliberate trickery and terrorist bombings against jewish targets in Baghdad. Gurion’s motive was to look to Islamic countries for Jews who could provide cheap labor, for the land gained from the forcible eviction of Palestinians.
Moreover, the long-simmering Arab-Israeli dispute and Israel’s military actions in the name of the “Jewish people” have all but virtually destroyed what was once a thriving Jewish-Arab community. Today, only remnants remain. It was, of course, in Israel’s interest to strengthen the Jewish foothold in Palestine by ingathering Jews from the Arab world.
I myself have a Jewish-Arab-American friend, originally from Syria. She is an Israeli-American dual citizen. Pictures adorn her family’s house of the old life in Syria.
All of this came about as a result of Zionism and its Jewish-European invasion of Palestine.
Pirouz, if you can find out from your friend specifics about their home in Syria and business if they had one I can try to locate it and take photos for them of what it looks like now. That would be a fun project for me.
The old “Jewish Quarter” in Old Damascus is now a very mixed neighborhood of Christians and Muslims. I have three good friends who live there, two are Christians and the third is Muslim. I met them separately in different situations, and then found out they were all neighbors and friends, so the four of us get together from time to time. That is an odd thing about Damascus. These coincidences seem to be very common, and it seems to be a rule that if you meet someone once you are very likely to run into them again in a completely different place than before. It is odd how that works.
Pirouz and Shirin, yes, for every Palestinian story there a similar one on the other side. Helena covers only one side, and ain’t out of ignorance. If you really care about these stories there is nice one just today about the other Naqba in Iraq:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804474895&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Worth reading, just some snippets, and please Helena this is right on topic so please resists the temptation to chopp it off:
Meanwhile, another refugee story – the history that Linda Menuhin represents – is far from familiar.
FROM 1948 to 1970, 850,000 to a million Jews fled or were expelled from Arab lands. Many of these forgotten refugees were members of ancient Jewish communities that predated Christianity. More than a few were wealthy, powerful and successful. Nearly all of them left their homes with little more than the shirts on their backs, leaving behind houses, bank accounts, investments, personal treasures and their means of livelihood. They resettled, mostly in Israel. From then until now, they have received no reparations, no inventory of their lost possessions and virtually no consideration in negotiations for Middle East peace.
….
[edited for length]
Israel has made offers of limited ex gratia return, and these offers have never been accepted, because they do not allow the demographic submergence of the Jewish state. 3rd country returnees represent an important albeit ambiguous element, because these are people who return to an imagined land, since they enter the State of Israel on a European or North American passport, and Israel retains sovereign control over the territory and can prevent them from becoming a security risk in at least some cases (except for the UK-born Tel Aviv pub bombers.) The question is whether a symbolic healing process of interaction with the land will suffice, or whether people like Nehad need self-immolation in the pub, or that of others, to convince themselves that justice is served. The prescient Palestinian naturalist and lawyer Raja Shehadeh argued against “pornography of the land”, but he possesses a rootedness in Ramallah that 1948 Palestinians outside Israel/Palestine do not. Zionism functions partly as day-tripping pilgrimages for some Diaspora Jews who do not really intend to give up their Diaspora location, citizenship, and affiliation, the question is whether Palestinian nationalism can function in that way, with the abandoned village as a symbolic locus alone, or whether Mike’s Place and murder-suicide are the real locus and content of Palestinian nationalism. That 90% of infiltrators returned on various errands rather than terror in the period 1949-56 gives some cause for hope.
the term “infiltrator” seems an odd one to apply to somebody returning to their home, as does “errand” for the act of doing so. Perhaps you still need help with your English, Eurosabra?
Bernard G: Perhaps. Unannounced civilian cross-border transit was a high-risk affair in both directions. Hanna Ibrahim’s short story “Mutasalilun” (sorry no diacritics) uses the term, so we can assume that it was in use, at least ironically, among Israeli-Palestinians. From what we know of the military government period (1949-1966), returnees who succeeded–people whose entry was concealed and their discovery delayed–were issued ID cards and (demographically) subsumed in the category of Israeli-Palestinian citizens who had changed locations within Israel. Up to 250,000 people fall into that category, 100,000 are assumed to have come across the Green Line. I do know that cases split all sorts of ways, with some deportees having been resident in Israel for up to a year, years in some cases, and some “naturalized’ infiltrators concealing themselves only a few weeks or months. There is little data and there obviously was no coherent policy. It is one example of the State of Israel being presented with a lot of Palestinian faits accomplis.
I don’t know any other term than “errand” to describe trips of brief duration meant to retrieve farm implements, harvest crops, or visit relatives. “Mission” is far too military, the overwhelming DOMESTICITY of the goals is striking if one looks at the (vast majority of) cases from 1949-early 1950.
Nehad’s account is really moving. It strikes me how strong and overwhelming that attachment to place and ‘home’ can remain in the midst of exile, dislocation, as well as such a concerted effort to make her and her brethren feel that this place is not hers/theirs. It’s powerful and heart-wrenching.
And, to you cold hearts out there who pour your indifference on this story, do you realize how pathetic you sound to those who don’t share your jingoism? Maybe be if you attempted to deal with the specificity of a blog post’s content, it would help. The endless tit-for-tat, ayayayai. Crimes against Jews and Israelis do not render the (on-going) dispossession of the Palestinians OK or acceptable, this is a basic ethical point that seems totally lost on you guys.
“I don’t know any other term than “errand” to describe trips of brief duration meant to retrieve farm implements, harvest crops, or visit relatives.”
how about “returning home”?
“I don’t know any other term than “errand” to describe trips of brief duration meant to retrieve farm implements, harvest crops, or visit relatives.”
how about “returning home”?
Ah, Titus wants to pursue the hasbaristas’ longstanding diversion of saying, “Yes, but the Jews from Arab countries were also expelled and suffered”– with the strong implication (stated or unstated) that therefore the Palestinians’ suffering doesn’t matter and their claims need not be addressed by Israel.
I do not deny for a moment that many Arab Jews suffered greatly in the aftermath of Israel’s creation. Who was the author of that suffering? NOT the Palestinians. It was, rather, some combination of the Arab states that took some actions against them and the Zionist envoys who also, as we know, undertook acts deliberately deisgned to encourage them to flee rather than stay. And it was the Zionist envoys who then provided the logistics for the international trek required to get them to Israel.
Most Arab Jews who found they needed to leave their Arab homelands and had the financial means to go to places other than Israel, did so. Many North African Jews went to France, Iraqi Jews to London, etc. The low-income ones who ended up in Israel were treated in an often humiliating way and sent to remote areas to replace the Palestinian laborers who’d been expelled.
So yes, all these Arab Jews have claims of some standing against those responsible for their uprooting in those years. Those claims would be against the Arab states and the Zionist movements. The ones against the Arab states have certainly started to be collected and surveyed– by Michael Fishbach and many others.
But it’s not a directly reciprocal process with the Palestinians. The Palestinians’ claims, financial as well as political, are against Israel. And meanwhile, there is an urgency to addressing the Palestinian refugees’ claims, given the continuation of their suffering until today and their intense, continuing vulnerability to further harm.
One key additional factor is the provision of the UDHR that states that every person has the right to leave the country of her/his birth and to return to it. This element of individual/family choice is also important in considering these cases.
“and the Zionist envoys who also, as we know, undertook acts deliberately deisgned to encourage them to flee rather than stay.”
Can you link me to a source so I can learn more about this?
“The ones against the Arab states have certainly started to be collected and surveyed– by Michael Fishbach and many others.
But it’s not a directly reciprocal process with the Palestinians.”
But it is an issue that needs to be addressed in negotiations and peace proposals which other Arab countries are involved in, such as the 2002 Arab peace proposal.
And what about the Jews from the Jordanian side of Palestine after the 1948 war? What about their property? Actually, some of the settlements are on them currently, but then there is the whole Jewish population that lived in Hebron that somehow disappeared in 1929.
“And meanwhile, there is an urgency to addressing the Palestinian refugees’ claims, given the continuation of their suffering until today and their intense, continuing vulnerability to further harm.”
To that issue, Israel has to deal with West Bank Palestinians the most, but those in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, some of their suffering is caused by legislation in those respective countries which discriminate against ethnic Palestinians. As the UDHR provision you mentioned, the refugee ‘host’ countries see no responsibility to integrate the refugees since they ‘should’ be in Palestine, and they don’t even consider those 1st and 2nd Palestinians born on their soil as their own.
With your twisted logic Helene we can make the case that the Arab countries that uprooted their Jewish population were causants of Palestinian displacement by said uprooted population.
Not sure if that gives Palestinians a claim against Arab states but it makes for an exquisite paradox, compounded by the refusal of so many Arab countries to absorb the resultant refugees.
T.
PS: Repeating the word hasbarista against anybody arguing against your single minded propaganda is beyond childish. You define what you are or want to be, let me define what I am or want to be.
That “twisted logic” doesn’t follow at all from what Helena said, can you read? I think of “hasbarista” as a fairly descriptive term for people like you. Isn’t it a self-description for Israeli propogandists? There’s a hasbara manual after all…
I would wager that more Mandate-born Palestinians by far have been repatriated to Israel and received Israeli citizenship than Jews of Arab lands by their native countries. Nor have any Jews of Palestine received Arab citizenship of any kind following their removal from what became the Jordanian-occupied zone of Mandate Palestine. So Israel’s total stonewalling has actually returned about 200,000, 100,000 by de facto acceptance of infiltration and 100,000 by family reunification program, plus or minus a margin of error caused by double-counting of people who came both ways at different times. So Israel is actually the leading practitioner of Palestinian ROR, and with Jordan, the 2nd leading state granting citizenship to Palestinians in numerical terms.
This is inadequate since the ROR demand is that Israel accept anyone meeting the UNRWA definition, and vanish from the face of the earth as a state and polity.
One of the obscure elements of the end of French Algeria was that Sahrawi Jews who had never held French citizenship–even the attenuated form granted to Muslim Algerians after 1948, allowing residency in France–had to receive it in 1962 when their Algerian Muslim brothers decided to continue their condition of statelessness. I think this sort of thing is what the PLO Charter’s handling of Palestinian Jews implies, with its fixation on the Balfour Declaration, and I think the current State of Israel has been both more realistic and more generous than any of its competitors. If Hamas proposes “rocks and trees” and the PLO that it will honor succession via the claimant’s previous personal holding of Ottoman citizenship, then there is no comparison.
Okay, there are a few whackjob Neturei Karta Palestinian-Jewish honorary citizens of the PA. But by and large Israel has accepted returnees on a scale that no Arab state besides Jordan has contemplated in its treatment of either its own Jews or Palestinians–and Jordan has only extended those benefits to Muslim Arabs. And Morocco is still the leading Arab state in terms of Jewish citizenship, with 3,000-5,000.
Warren,
I read and seen no manual, don’t work for anybody, just viscerally react to the verbal lynch that Helena and others want to perform here day in and day out. When the mob lynch victim defends himself she calls names like hasbarista.
You want names, Warren, fine you are an Arabsbarista. Great, we have made great progress in slapping you a name you didn’t ask.
The relevance of my post is very simple. Helena’s latest playbook (The Arabsbarista playbook) says that the Palestinians are 100% victims of the European Holocaust displacement.
The data I bought up, in a direct human narrative, is that the argument is wrong. Arab countries also participated in the displacement and creation of refugees, so it is not only on Europe’s shoulder. If Helena cannot even concede that, then there is nothing we can agree on.