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October 30 - November 1, 2023
How insane that this young Israeli soldier of European descent has the power of letting me in or denying me entry into my own country, my ancestors’ homeland!
Did they know that every inch of Palestinian land has a story to tell, a story that is conveniently muted, or erased?
Did they need my permission, or my modeling? Were they not taught the vocabulary of emotions? Or were they never given an opportunity to express their feelings?
Another student talked about how the Israeli forces cut off the water supply and electricity, and that because of the curfew the Palestinians ran out of food.
Another student remembered that when the Israeli soldiers entered Ramallah he was at school and was terrified that they were going to bomb the school.
Could these experiences of violence, threat, and fear freeze, or delay their subsequent development, especially in the area of moral reasoning,
When you know you can count on your mother or father’s presence and unconditional love, you grow up able to function in the world with a sense of confidence and security.
Being ten in California means you’re starting to test your wings and fly out of the nest; but being ten in Ramallah means when you were five you experienced military curfews, military tanks in your driveways, and Israeli soldiers bashing at your door in the middle of the night and searching your house, only to lock you and your parents in one room for long hours.
later my brothers and I mastered the language and could have our own private conversations together, discovering how useful it was to know a language our parents couldn’t speak!
Before 1948, Jaffa was the largest and most prosperous Arab city in Palestine with a population of around 70,000. After the UN Partition Plan of 1947, however, Zionist forces terrified Jaffa’s civilian population into fleeing. By May of 1948 only 3,650 Palestinians remained in Jaffa.
Jewish immigrants moved into the vacated Palestinian homes and the remaining Palestinians are now boxed into the old ‘Ajami neighborhood. Most of Jaffa now stands derelict, unkempt, and in ruins.
I stood there wondering: were Israelis duped into believing that every monument, every building was for them or about them? Was the Arab presence, its population, art form, and monuments, to be wiped out to make way for a new version of Israeli history?
On the boardwalk a poster, hung from a lamppost, listed the chronological history of the town. Not once did it mention that Jaffa has been an Arab city. Erasure is a form of oppression.
The Israelis were willing to renovate this beach to keep the Palestinians away from the beaches of Tel Aviv.
Even after the destruction and depopulation of more than 500 Palestinian villages by the Israeli forces during the war of 1948, the cactus plants keep sprouting again and again, encircling the ruins of Palestinian villages. In Palestine, the cactus, sabir, stands for patience and resilience.
I closed my eyes to let myself hear and see the village as I imagined it must had been before 1948.
I found our village on a map of all the Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 by Israeli forces.
By the twentieth century Qula had about 1,200 inhabitants. It had been a substantial village. It had a mosque, several small shops, and a school. The village grew grains and the land that was irrigated was used for orchards.
On July 10, 1948, in a systematic campaign to depopulate the villages of Palestine to achieve the Zionist dream, Israeli armed forces drove out the villagers of Qula. In September of the same year the Israeli forces bulldozed the village, leaving it in ruins, and planted a forest of European pines to conceal its existence.
Al-Hayat, like other newspapers of the time, published a well-established national slogan to the Arab Palestinians, who felt pressured to sell their land to immigrant Jews: “Hafiz ‘ala aradikum” (“Preserve your land”).
the tensions which persist today are based on the same Palestinian fears that Israeli settlements will deprive them of their homeland and shatter their hopes for political liberation and equality.
My grandfather and Kalvarisky had put their lives at risk as in those days it was dangerous and unpopular to promote the idea of dividing Palestine into two countries. Today their idea would have been considered moderate and visionary.
As for the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba, we Palestinians commemorate the catastrophe, the loss of our homeland, while Israelis celebrate on that same day their independence from the British Mandate government and the creation of their homeland. So paradoxical!
At the checkpoint Israeli soldiers climbed onto our bus. The first soldier was carrying his M-16 weapon aiming it straight at the children who sat still, almost frozen.
I wanted to teach these bright students, tomorrow’s Palestinian professionals, how to problem-solve. It wasn’t enough to complain in life; they also had to figure out solutions.
“It’s so good to feel gratitude tonight because it’s really very hard to be grateful in Palestine when there’s so much injustice around us.”
This law applied to all Palestinians, or residents in Palestine, who left their usual place of residence in Palestine for any place inside or outside the country after November 29, 1947, the date of the adoption of the UN Partition Plan (which divided Palestine into a Palestinian state and an Israeli state).
As a result, over 700,000 Palestinians became refugees and were never allowed to return to their homes and properties, nor were they ever compensated for their losses.
Israeli families now live in these Palestinian homes. I wonder how they have come to terms with the tragedies imprinted in the stone walls and ceramic tiles.
Several houses still bear the initials of the previous Palestinian owners on their metal gates.
I wondered how the present Israeli owners go past the initialed gates each day only to be reminded that their house belongs to someone else.
We like to believe we are higher beings, moral humans, who know what is right and what is wrong, yet we are no better than certain animals. Did you know that some types of sparrows forcibly eject martins from their nests and then occupy them?
Rural Palestinians, whose whole villages were destroyed, had been less fortunate and were now living in crowded, impoverished refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, waiting to return home, waiting for justice to prevail.
The Greeks came—so did the Italians, British, French, Swedes, and Germans—and all established educational institutions and hospitals. This influx of different people and cultures helped create a diversity of thought, religion, and nationality.
However, when the Zionists came to this land their primary focus was to turn it into their own. From the start, theirs was a vision of displacing the local population,
The arrival of Zionism in Palestine was a menace to the Arab population of Palestine the way any foreign invasion would be for any other country. Yet, the world sat silently while Israel took Palestine,
But how can you create a Jewish state when most of the population is non-Jewish? You encourage massive immigration of Jews into the country; you take land, homes, and jobs; you place restrictions on the indigenous population;
which leaves my people with very few choices: one, emigrate to another Arab country or to the Western world because staying is a slow death; two, fight back and end up murdered by Israeli soldiers, or stuck indefinitely in the overcrowded Israeli detention centers and prisons.
I never imagined that eighteen hours later she’d take her last breath. There was one warning sign though—she was asking when her mother was coming.
“At least she died in Palestine and will be buried in Palestine. That’s what Papa would have wanted.”
Madiha’s ten grandchildren, ranging from six to seventeen, were waiting on the front porch. When they saw us arriving, they burst into loud sobs, holding onto each other.
Azzam, the oldest, cried loudly between his recitations. His legs and hands were shaking. Madiha had helped raise him since he was a baby.
A piece of my family history was under this ground; so was a piece of Palestinian history. Every time a Palestinian elder dies a little bit of Palestinian history dies as well.
For all those years, since 1948, the Palestinians have been holding on to their house keys as proof of their ownership, of their right of return, of the massive home robbery inflicted upon them.
They didn’t see themselves as victims and were convinced that the injustice dealt us would one day be redressed.
No matter how much people read about it, they cannot begin to imagine what it was like. We were not what most people in the world think of us. We were educated, accomplished, modern, and cosmopolitan.
Shortly after my return to Palestine, Israel imposed a very drastic blockade on Gaza. The Gazan people were deprived of electricity, medical care, and the most basics of needs.
Gaza is a small, poor, overcrowded strip of land on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, between Israel and Egypt.
The population is bursting at about a million and a half people, one million of whom were refugees who fled to Gaza as part of the Palestinian exodus in 1948.
The official ending of the British Mandate was to take place on May 15, 1948, and both the Arabs and Jews had the same ambitions in mind—to create their own state.
