In My Mother's Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home

by Mona Hajjar Halaby

“Refugees are like seeds that scatter in the wind, and land in different soils that become their reluctant homes.”

Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law that passed in 1950 was the main legal instrument used by Israel to take possession of the land belonging to Palestinians who were expelled or fled the country due to war.

khosh-khash tree (Arabic for bitter oranges)

I cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians, or to any dispossessed or subjugated people.

Research suggests that people do not change in isolation, that in fact they need their community to believe in them in order to change.

Jaffa, the “Bride of the Sea” as it is called, because of its beauty and location on the Mediterranean.

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.

We dined at an Arab-owned restaurant by the water called “Al-’Ajuz wal-Bahar” (“The Old Man and the Sea”)—its title inspired by Hemingway’s novel.

We were struck by the incongruity of such luxurious facilities while the Israeli government did not give the Arab residents of Jaffa permits to renovate their homes or improve the infrastructure of their city. Segregation was the answer. The Israelis were willing to renovate this beach to keep the Palestinians away from the beaches of Tel Aviv.

However, following the war of 1948, Palestinian owners of these houses lost their properties because of the “Absentee Property Law” established by the state of Israel. 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). The law stated that Israel would confiscate Palestinian homes, land, and bank accounts if their owners left them for a country that was the enemy of Israel, meaning mostly Arab countries.

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. Their land, homes, and personal belongings were confiscated by the State of Israel.

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. At night what do they dream of? Can they make out the silent shadows on the walls, shadows of Palestinian families packing their suitca...

The Zionists may not have intended to create such a catastrophe for the Palestinians, but it has become a slow sociocide, 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. The Palestinians who have chosen to remain hold on with their fingernails to their land, to their culture and society. Some of them live in a catatonic state.

I’ve never had a problem with Jews having a homeland where they can live in peace and security and have equal rights, but I do have a problem when they deny the same to others.

Zionism, as an ideology, is a product of its time, the time Americans were finalizing the genocide of the indigenous population in America and when European powers colonized, exploited, and oppressed native people all over the world.

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. And yet how ironic that even though I have the legitimate symbolic keys to Jerusalem it was Ariela, my Israeli friend, who opened the doors for me.

My youth was very “fleuri,” as we say in French; it had many flowers. But sometimes between the flowers there are thorns.

Back in California, I was struck by how orderly life was. Traffic lights worked and were respected; pedestrians walked on sidewalks and not in the middle of the streets; people in shops waited in line for their turn to be served, and the world was quieter. No tooting horns; no church bells; no calls for prayer. It felt like a disconnected world, a silent world.

I thought of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War and how the Jews fought for their liberation. Isn’t Gaza allowed to do the same? Why is fighting back in desperation when inhumane measures are inflicted upon you considered immoral?

I am ashamed to be living in a country that advocates justice, democracy, and human rights, yet has been spineless, and even colluding, with the injustices inflicted on the people of Palestine.

Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories is illegal under international law, violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.