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sp; PART V
Documenting Nakba narratives from the Gaza Strip and the Shatat
12
The young do not forget
MONA AL-FARRA
The slogan “A land without a people for a people without a land” was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Israeli war against the Palestinians during 1948, symbolized by one day, 19 May 1948, is known as Youm al-Nakba (the day of the Nakba/catastrophe). During 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled (and some fled under bombardment), while hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed or depopulated. Those refugees today number about 6 million people.
When I started interviewing some Nakba eyewitnesses in Gaza and listening to their stories, I felt the need to begin by reminding the reader of one of the Zionist myths claiming that Palestine “was a land without people for a people without a land”. I also remembered and would like to share the reader with Golda Maier’s famous statement: “There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed” (Maier [1969] 2002) or that of David Ben Gurion’s: “The elderly will die and the young will forget” (Ben Gurion [1948] 2002).
The memories and stories of Gazan refugees defy Israeli leaders’ wishes and hopes and assert our history and experiences as Palestinians. Thus, despite almost seventy years of dispossession and brutal attacks, we are keeping our history alive.
I believe oral history is very important to keep the Nakba stories alive, especially for the next generations, to find out more about the truth of what happened in 1948 to Palestinian civilians whose lives were shattered and are still looking for justice after all those years. Our struggle against the injustices of big colonial racist powers is about justice and our human rights.
This chapter is based on a total of five interviews: some conducted by me and others by close family members of the interviewed. It is further consolidated by my own memory of my parents and other family members who experienced the Nakba.
THE PAST IS LIVED IN THE PRESENT
As I was listening to the stories, especially about the day of leaving, I could not help remembering 19 July 2014, during the recent Israeli offensive on Gaza. It was four in the morning. After several hours of artillery shelling and air raids on the Alshagaiyya area to the east of Gaza, I started hearing a loud noise coming from people. I saw women, men and children, cars and carts, leaving from the east to the centre of Gaza for safety. Hundreds of thousands of people – roughly 200,000 ‒ were forced to leave under the intensity of the Israeli shelling. During that day hundreds were either killed or injured, and the whole area was cleansed of its residents. From my house, during that night, I was able to see the frequent movement of ambulances heading to the Shagaiyya, taking the injured and killed to the hospital.
As I rushed to the hospital, I saw injured people lying in the corridors of the hospital, waiting to be seen and treated. It was a bloody day with massive casualties. It was very difficult for the surgeons to deal with the number of casualties, and I think no hospital in any other country could have handled such a number at once.
Gaza town became full of the displaced families, who fled to the town centre, the hospitals, schools and various other streets for shelter. Those who left their homes that night, returned after the ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli army, to find their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed. This scene brought to my mind the memory of the 1948 Nakba. The only difference is that whereas the Gazans of the 2014 Israeli attacks stayed in their homeland, although waiting weeks, months and even until now to leave the hospitals or schools and return to their homes, those of the 1948 Nakba are still waiting
To me, the occupier is the same and the colonial power is the same. The only change is that it became more powerful with the modern, more lethal weaponry.
TESTIMONIES OF GAZAN REFUGEES
Growing up in Gaza, I heard many stories about the Nakba from my refugee classmates, transmitted to them by their parents and grandparents. One of those stories was that of my friend Fadwa Takash’s family. Here is what her grandmother, Sadikka Takash from Sdood said:
The bombing and shooting was too fierce … so close and terrifying. We left Sdood in a hurry. The maklooba [traditional Palestinian dish] was ready to be eaten, so I wrapped it in a hurry in a blanket to stay warm. I took the keys and left with the children, while they were shooting, thinking we will be back … We never were.
Fadwa continued: “We were never allowed to return. It was a big war, what happened in 1948 was a process of ethnic cleansing.”
The following oral history interview with Basma Moailqe Abedazeez Abu Moailqe, born in 1931, was conducted by her granddaughter, Amal, aged twenty-five. Basma is a Bedouin who lived between Bir Al-Sabe’ and Gaza in the Naqab, but was registered as a Bir Al-Sabe’ resident. Here is her testimony:
Before 1948, life for us Bedouins in the Naqab was very natural, and we were content with our life and were happy to stay there. My family’s agricultural land was divided into long stretches/strips of fields, divided between the smaller families, and each strip or area had its own name (often the name of the cultivating family). We used to plant grains, like wheat, barley and corn, in the beginning of the season. Then, after the harvest, we grew melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelons, and okra. We also grew grapes, olives, figs, almonds, and pomegranates.
Everybody worked the land, and each field had special vegetables or fruits. We all worked on the land. Workers also came from Gaza and Dair Albalah to work on our lands.
One year before 1948, our tribe decided to build a school for their children and hired a teacher to educate the children until grade six.
But the war started and the Nakba befell us and we started to leave under the heavy shelling against us.
We left our village at the beginning of summer, immediately after the wheat and barley harvest. We stored the grains in the barns. The barns were full. When we were forced to leave under the shelling, we took nothing out of our groves or barn. We left the greens and grain and the hasad (harvest) … the place was full.
Before we left, maybe one year before we left, we began to watch new settlers starting to build a settlement next to our area east of the Almanshiyya area. There was a stone quarry for building and a phosphorus industry, already prepared by the British and the Zionists. Our men sensed the sneaky presence of the strangers, and confrontations started between them and the strangers. The settlers trespassed on our fields, trying to go further. For about ten days there was fire exchange between us and the settlers. Then a battle started and the settlers got more arms … and more firing, until the settlers were able to enter our land and kill our men and animals.
As I remember, during the last day the shooting was so fierce like heavy rain.
We were forced to leave for a safe area, to the west, for the safety of women and children. We were thinking of getting back when the fighting stops. We moved to the west of our land in Burage Abu Mideen and Basboos, not too far away from our land ‒ [the area is now part of Gaza Strip].
I remember we left in a midday during summer … we left under the thunders of the bombs.
We stayed there hoping to go back. But after one year of constant moving from one area to another, the UN began to enter, and brought food and clothes, and started some schools. We had nothing. Some of our men tried to go back to bring food and grains to feed their families, or sell it in Gaza, but many of them were killed or injured … those who succeeded to enter our land found the barns either empty or burnt.
After three years, the UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] built camps and housed us in different areas. We were housed in Maghazi, not far away from the new borders. I could look, past the border, and see our home, but I was unable to go there or live there anymore.
The following testimony is by Gomaa Ibrahim Abu Shomar (ninety-seven), originally from Beit Teema village, and currently living in Deir al-Balah refugee
camp. The interview was recorded by his son, Tawfiq Abu Shomar:
My father is ninety-seven and still remembers the details of the Nakba, and life in Palestine before the Nakba. This is how my father describes his village, Beit Teema: “Our village is 20km away from Gaza. In the village there are Roman ruins. It was a peaceful small place with about 1,000 inhabitants who were mainly farmers”.
Tawfiq’s father believes that he is living a long and healthy life because of his life during his early youth. As a young boy in Beit Teema, Tawfiq’s father recalls:
I enjoyed eating healthy vegetarian food off the land, olive oil, dry figs, grapes, thyme and sage herbs. I still feel nostalgia for the fragrances of orange and lemon blossoms as well as basil and mint. My life in Beit Teema was beautiful. We, my son, were forced to leave our village under the heavy shooting and artillery bombs and sounds of airplanes … all these made us leave looking for a safe place. We headed south-west to the unknown on foot, we stopped many times and in various places. We were not alone, but with thousands others, from our village and the nearby villages … we escaped death by a miracle. We tried to avoid the shooting … we would stop and then continue toward the sea with no food. We left everything behind us, the homes, the barn, the cattle. We only brought with us a few things on the donkey’s back. You [my son], were a year and a half old in your mother’s lap. She was afraid to put you on the donkey’s back, afraid to leave you away from her. She wanted to protect you.
Before we left the village we could see the settlers throwing inflammable sticks on the wheat fields, and on villagers’ homes which were made of clay bricks and straw. We could see the fire and burning fields from a distance. Your grandfather refused to leave the village and the house. He stayed in our house.
When we arrived in Deir Albalah [refugee camp] I was thinking we will go back after the ceasefire. We never expected that we will stay away from our Palestine until now [close to seventy years later].
They [The Israelis] insisted on throwing us away and forced us to leave … they killed whoever stayed there. What they say about the Arab troops asking us to leave our homes has no truth, they forced us out of our homes.
An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba Page 34