An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba

by Doctor Nahla Abdo

  Soon after my father was murdered my grandmother found herself thrown into a new battle with the Israeli authorities. Keen to assist the settler who murdered my father to cover up and avoid punishment for his crime, the Israeli authorities refused all petitions to put the settler on trial. Instead they put my grandmother under heavy pressure to accept a settlement. The authorities sent messengers to warn my grandmother that unless she accepted a Sulha, leaving the settler free of any criminal prosecution by law, she would be expelled from her land and her remaining children would be murdered.

  The Sulha was an ancient tribal tradition which later became a traditional customary form of Arab dispute resolution. Sulha was never understood or practised as a substitute for the enforcement of state criminal laws under Ottoman, British or Israeli occupation. Moreover, it was not credible to suggest that Sulha formed part of the traditions of newly settled prominently Western Jewish society in Palestine.

  My grandmother believed that the Sulha would allow her family to live in peace and on that basis reluctantly agreed. To conclude the Sulha, a group of notables drawn from Saffourieh’s refugees came to our house together with a few Israeli officials and members of Moshav Tsipori settlement, none of whom my grandmother had met before. After they left, she discovered an amount of cash hidden under one of the mattresses in the sitting room. She took the money to Mahmoud Afifi and asked him to return it to the settlers. Afifi apologized, saying he could not return the money as it formed part of the Sulha. Mahmoud warned my grandmother that they would kill her family and drive her out of her home and land. Seeing no alternative, my grandmother invested the money in a small piece of land next to our land and registered it in the names of my sister and me. My family have left this piece of land uncultivated until this day. Once the Sulha was imposed on my grandmother, the settler who murdered my father moved on to Haifa.

  My beautiful and long-suffering young mother, Radeyah Mou’ed, was arguably the person most affected by my father’s tragic murder. She became a widow at twenty years of age, left with two baby daughters. Soon after this tragedy my mother moved to live with her mother Deya, also widowed, and her young brothers and sisters, who had become refugees in Nazareth. As a young widow, she found herself subject to social rules which obliged her a year later to marry to her cousin Akram Mou’ed. Cultural and succession issues arising out of my father’s murder eventually caused a rift between my father and mother’s respective families. My grandmother, Radeyah Abu Elne’aj, took my sister Khadra and me under her care. It was 1955 and I was then only a year old. As a result of the arrangement, neither I nor my sister saw our mother again until 1985.

  ONGOING DISPOSSESSION

  Meanwhile, the Israelis continued their attempts to evict my family from their house and lands in Saffourieh.

  They erected a pig farm close to our house, intending my family to become trapped between the pig farm and the Mushav settlers, thereby causing us to leave. In building the pig farm, the settlers had violated the tenets of the Jewish religion and traditions, which do not consider pork to be Kosher. The pig farm spread a vile stench and released a stream of stinking waste that was diverted on to our land, destroying our family’s vegetation and infesting the area with insects and rodents.

  The Jewish owners of the pig farm later dug a waste pool on our land, which caused further clashes with my family. The memory of my father’s murder remained on the surface and my grandmother was worried that the farm owners might kill her remaining two sons. She asked her sons not to engage in any confrontations with the farm owners and stay far away from the farm. My family commenced several legal actions against the pig farm owner, which were lengthy and expensive, almost bankrupting my family. Despite receiving a court order in our favour, the settlers continued to dig on our land time and time again.

  My family suffered other provocations. On one occasion, the settlers in Saffourieh sent tractors to repeatedly plough parts of our land. My grandmother would try to convince the tractor driver not to plough her land. Whenever he refused she threw herself in front of the tractor to stop him. My sister Khadra, my cousins and I would watch with sadness, anger and disbelief. Other provocations were carried out by the Youth Brigade groups in the Israeli army (the Gadnaa). The Gadnaa would cross from the middle of our cultivated land wearing heavy boots during their training exercises, damaging the vegetables or other crops. They would also steal cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

  I attended school in Nazareth with my sister and my cousin. We would wait on the main road near our house for the one bus working on that line, which served many villages. Its route started from Sakhnin village, passed through Shefa-’Amr and ended in Nazareth. This bus was frequently behind schedule or did not stop because it was full. So we would try to stop the bus taking Jewish children from Moshav Tsipori to schools in Afula and Nazareth I’llit (the settlement built in upper Nazareth in 1957). The Moshav was at that time too small to have its own school. However, the Moshav bus never stopped for us unless the driver was an Arab. When we had the rare chance to board the Moshav’s bus, we would be attacked by the Jewish settler’s children. They called us names in Hebrew which we only understood later. Some of the insults they used were “Aravim Melokhlakhim”, meaning “dirty Arabs”, and “Araboushim”, meaning “Arab rats”. I learnt the meaning of these insults from my uncle. Muhammad-Yaser. Eventually, that bus would never stop for us regardless of whether the driver was a Jew or an Arab. It was understood that the drivers were instructed not to stop. Many times we were obliged to walk five kilometres to and from school.

  I used to return home from school for lunch and rush out to the fig tree at the back of our house. There I would pick delicious Ghezali figs, put them between two flat biscuits, press them into a fig sandwich and eat it. I used to cry under the fig tree, and call for my father and beg him to come back. But there was never any reply. I would always go back home very angry.

  One day I found a guest called Muhammad Rashid Sleiman, who was known as Abu Mahmoud, had come to visit us at home. His donkey was tied outside the house and he sat chatting with my grandmother. She asked me to say hello to him. I refused and hid myself behind her back. My grandmother apologized to Abu Mahmoud, saying “Please pardon Amina, she is unusually upset and does not want to speak to anyone”. Abu Mahmoud replied “She has every right to be angry after what they did to her father”.

  Abu Mahmoud was the uncle of Fahimah, the wife of my uncle Muhammad-Yaser. He visited us regularly after finishing work in the Mushav Tsipori settlement. Abu Mahmoud was a middle-aged man with wide blue eyes, slightly humpbacked, and had a blond beard and moustache mixed with white hair. He wore traditional Palestinian clothes and looked anxious. Abu Mahmoud’s land in Saffourieh had been confiscated and granted by the Israeli authorities to an Eastern European settler named Sando, who then sadistically employed Abu Mahmoud to cultivate his own land. Sando built his own house on the ruins of Abu Mahmoud’s house.

  Abu Mahmoud would confide in my grandmother about his internal suffering from having to work on his own land for Sando. One day he was asked by Sando to plant citrus trees in the plot which used to belong to him. He tried to convince Sando to give up the idea because the type of soil on that particular plot was not suitable for citrus trees. Abu Mahmoud carried lifelong experience in land cultivation inherited from his father and ancestors about the nature of their land. Sando refused to listen to his advice.

  Abu Mahmoud was obliged to follows Sando’s dictate, planting the trees and irrigating them in vain. The trees later died. I recall Abu Mahmoud repeating how he had told Sando, “This is my land and I know it very well”.

  My grandmother would urge Abu Mahmoud to look for work elsewhere and used to say to him “How could you bear working in your confiscated land?” Abu Mahmoud would reply, “I get comfort while working in my land and smelling its soil, especially after I became a refugee in the nearby village of I’llut”. She used to call Fahima and ask her to prepare a cup
of Arabic coffee for her uncle. Abu Mahmoud would murmur “Every time I remember my confiscated land I lose the appetite to eat or drink”.

  Abu Mahmoud was not the only Saffourian to work on his own confiscated land. The settlers employed many Saffourians who had become internally displaced refugees in Nazareth, many of whom I know personally. I would listen carefully to their sad stories during their visits to my grandmother.

  Before 1948 we had neighbours close to our house who during the Nakba became refugees in Lebanon and Syria. Their houses were demolished. However, their groves of different fruit trees, especially pomegranate, and their corresponding water wells, remained on their confiscated land. I played with other children in these groves, climbing trees, watching the birds and animals and throwing stones into the wells to measure their depth. I would enjoy the sound of the stones hitting the water. I used to tell my grandmother about my adventures in those groves, and she would recount the names and stories of her neighbours who had lived and worked in these beautiful groves. She spoke with sympathy about her good-hearted and well-mannered neighbours; simple people who respected each other. Sometimes she accompanied me to those groves to identify the ruins of the destroyed houses and to tell me the names of their owners.

  Saffourieh’s groves of pomegranate trees were very famous in all parts of Palestine. For me these groves were my little paradise. We woke up one day to the noise of Israeli bulldozers deployed to uproot all the trees in these groves and bury the water wells. The Israeli’s destroyed the habitat in which the beautiful birds and animals lived. They destroyed my paradise. The uprooted fruit trees were heaped to one side, loaded up on trucks and taken away. Later, tractors came and ploughed the bare land. The scene was grotesque and shocking for me as a child, for which I still feel a deep sadness. I remember seeing many of the internally displaced Saffourian refugees in Nazareth gathering to watch that sad scene, collecting logs for their stoves, while the Israeli settlers stood on the other side relishing the destruction of the groves and the pain it caused.

  My father’s murder was not something that could be forgotten for long, and we were reminded of it again after an attack on my uncle Saeed. During the period of military rule imposed on the Palestinians inside Israel until 1966, Saeed was severely beaten up by a patrol of the Israeli Military Police while they were passing by Saffourieh. As a young girl I was shaken to see my uncle Saeed lying in bed with serious injuries all over his face and body. The patrol passed by him while he was waiting on the main road for the bus to go to Nazareth. After being beaten up in an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack, Saeed was thrown to the side of the road. I recall he spent a long time in bed recovering.

  The Israelis never ran out of ideas of how to visit misery upon my family. The Saffourieh settlers began gradually imposing themselves on my family, by making regular visits. My grandmother would always receive them in a proper manner, serving them food and drinks in accordance with customary traditions of Arab hospitality. One of those settlers was an Iraqi Jew bearing the Arab name Abu Khader. He spoke Arabic with an Iraqi dialect. Years later in 1974, when I went to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem I was introduced to an Israeli student called Rinna from Moshav Tsipori. She was amazed to hear that I was from Saffourieh and asked “How could it be that there was an Arab from Saffourieh. There are no Arabs in Saffourieh”. I asked her about her family and she eventually told me her father was an Iraqi Jew. I immediately said, “I know him he is Abu Khader, the only Iraqi Jew in Saffourieh”. It was clear Rinna did not take kindly to my association or the encounter. We never met again.

  Another settler called Shlomo also visited my family. He carried a pistol on his waist and was sometimes accompanied by his wife. During one visit my great grandmother, Amina, started crying and begging Shlomo to help return her only son Muhammad from Damascus. My two uncles held her back and my grandmother explained, “Oh dear mother, Shlomo is only a settler. The decision on this matter is in the hands of big powers not individuals”.

  During a further visit, my uncle Saeed was nearly killed by Shlomo. This time Shlomo was carrying a rifle and instigated a provocative conversation on a political topic. He spoke nervously and aggressively and did not tolerate my uncle Saeed’s views. Shlomo then physically attacked Saeed, drawing his rifle and aiming to shoot Saeed. My grandmother and my other uncle, Muhammad-Yaser, who at the time was busy shearing the sheep, tried to stop Shlomo. During their tussle Shlomo shot a round in the air. The shot frightened all of us, me included. My grandmother often repeated that she had lost half of her life during that incident.

  I can never forget the sad stories that I used to hear during my childhood from other Palestinians about their experiences at the hands of the Israelis. I recall the story of a woman named Mayyasa from the village of I’llut, which suffered a horrific massacre by the Israelis, during which Mayyasa’s husband was killed. As a child, I would beg my grandmother to let me stay with my aunt Yosra in Nazareth. This was after she married Taha Muhammad Ali, who would later became a well-known poet and writer. My aunt Yosra was a well-mannered, friendly and loving person. She helped me and my sister Khadra greatly. Yosra was highly skilled in cooking, baking cakes and making sweets. She shared this skill with her neighbour Mayyasa, Hayat, Mayyasa’s daughter, and her sister in law Sabah who used to live in the same house. Yosra could speak to Mayyasa out of a wide window in her house which overlooked Mayyasa’s courtyard. When the window was open they would chat casually in her courtyard, sharing coffee and sweets.

  Yosra introduced me to Mayyasa, “This is Amina, my niece. I told you about her and her sister. Their father was killed by the Israelis”. Suddenly Mayyasa started crying, telling Yosra about the murder of her husband and other residents of I’llut, as one of many massacres committed against the Palestinians in 1948. I will never forget Mayyasa’s description of I’llut’s victims; inflated bodies left in the fields as nobody dared to bury the bodies out of fear of repercussions from the Israelis. Mayyasa spoke of how she had escaped with her daughter Hayat and her son, seeking refuge in Nazareth close to my aunt’s house. Mayyasa’s story was added to the thick file of oral histories from the Palestinian Nakba which I carry with me and which is lodged deeply in my memory.

  In 1977 I submitted an application for a passport to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. I was told that I was not a citizen of the country, despite being born six years after the establishment of Israel and bearing an immutable family past spanning hundreds of years, at least, on our land in Palestine., I was told by an Israeli Ministry of Interior employee, who had recently immigrated from somewhere in Europe, that I was not a citizen and had no right to obtain a passport unless I applied for naturalization. I was in total shock and disbelief upon hearing this. It was like reliving my family’s catastrophe again. I became very angry and exclaimed to the officer in charge “What are you talking about, my family has existed on this land since the creation”. My words did not help and did not explain my case. I understood that I belonged to the category of Palestinian residents in Israel referred to by the Israeli authorities as “Present Absentee”. This category of residents was created to define the legal status of Palestinians who escaped the war in 1948 and had returned to their homes. The Israelis applied this law even to the children of those returning Palestinians. After many visits to the Ministry of Interior to submit the application for naturalization, I was granted a passport. I was told that the passport would serve me for one year only, because I was a newly naturalized citizen, and so I would have to renew it every year. I felt very angry after discovering that the Israelis did not recognize me or a vast number of Palestinians who remained on their land, instead considering us as absentees. I realized that the 1948 Nakba was in fact ongoing and affecting all Palestinians wherever they lived. I cried like never before and wanted to shout out loudly for the world to hear.

  It was clear for me that the Israeli authorities do not recognize the existence of the Palestinian people and do not want to
make peace with them. I realized that we should resist their aggression and expose their crimes and lies. The Palestinians are not able to carry on this task in their own; they need help from the international community.

  APPENDIX:

  Petition by Palestinian notables to the Israeli government, condemning the murder of Ahmad Qablawi (my father)

  10

  The sons and daughters of Eilaboun

  HISHAM ZREIQ

  During the filming of my documentary The Sons of Eilaboun, in the spring of 2006, I interviewed more than twenty people who had witnessed the events of the Nakba in Eilaboun. I also conducted other interviews with historians, such as Ilan Pappe, on the same subject.1 To my amazement, I found the testimonies of all the people to be almost identical concerning the main events; the difference was basically in some individual experiences of those interviewed. The following text is based on the interviews, along with consultation of Israeli Defence Forces documents, and particularly the report of the United Nations Truce Supervision Observers (UNTSO) on the massacre in Eilaboun.

  The interviews were very intense and emotional, and some people cried when they spoke about their lost loved ones. I was also amazed to find this traumatic event continued to affect and touch the people strongly after over fifty-eight years.

  The massacre in Eilaboun is but one example of what Palestinians suffered through the policies and tactics of “Plan Dalet”, developed by the high command of the Israeli Army to rid the future State of Israel of its Arab inhabitants who were considered by Israel as a threat.2