A White Lie
Page 17
FEBRUARY
Ariel Sharon is elected as prime minister on February 6 and refuses to continue negotiations with Yasser Arafat at the Taba Summit.
AUGUST
Abu Ali Mustafa, the General Secretary of the PFLP, is assassinated on August 27 by an Israeli missile shot by an Apache helicopter through his office window in Ramallah.
2002
MARCH
The Beirut Summit, held over March 27 and 28, approves the Saudi peace proposal.
MARCH–MAY
On March 29, Israeli forces begin Operation “Defence Shield,” Israel’s largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 war.
2003
APRIL
The quartet of the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations propose a road map to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, proposing an independent Palestinian state.
SEPTEMBER
Mahmoud Abbas resigns from the post of prime minister on September 6.
2004
JULY
On July 9, the International Court of Justice issues an advisory opinion that the West Bank barrier is illegal under international law. The United Nations had also condemned the construction of the wall as “an unlawful act of annexation” on September 3, 2003.
NOVEMBER
Yasser Arafat dies at the age of 75 on November 11 in a hospital near Paris, after undergoing urgent medical treatment since October 29, 2004.
2005
JANUARY
On January 9, 2005, Abbas wins the Palestinian presidential elections by a wide margin.
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER
Israel disengages from Gaza and removes its settlements from the Gaza Strip, but retains effective control over air, sea, and land access to the Strip.
2006
JANUARY
Ariel Sharon is incapacitated by stroke on January 4. He dies on January 11, 2014, having never emerged from his coma.
On January 25, the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, wins the Palestinian elections and beats Fatah, resulting in an international and Israeli boycott of the new Palestinian government and imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip.
2007
NOVEMBER
On November 27, the Annapolis Conference, for the first time, establishes a “two-state solution” as a basis for future talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
2008–2009
DECEMBER 2008–JANUARY 2009
Israel launches a twenty-three-day war on the Gaza Strip on December 27.
2012
NOVEMBER
Israel launches an eight-day offensive on the Gaza Strip on November 14.
On November 29, the UN General Assembly passes a resolution granting the state of Palestine non-member observer status, an upgrade that allows the Palestinians to join UN bodies, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), to investigate war crimes in Gaza.
2014
JULY
On July 8, Israel launches a fifty-one-day offensive on Gaza.
2017
DECEMBER
US president Donald Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6. The move is condemned by most of the world in a vote at the UN General Assembly on December 22.
2018
AUGUST
On August 29, the US State Department ends aid to the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, reversing a policy of support by every US president since it was created about seventy-two years ago as a cornerstone of US support for stability in the Middle East.
MARCH
Mass protests start in the Gaza Strip on March 30 (better known as The Great March of Return), calling Israel to lift the eleven-year illegal blockade on Gaza and to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their villages and towns from which they were expelled back in 1948.
MAY
The US moves its embassy to Jerusalem on May 14 and protests sweep the Gaza Strip met by violent repression from Israel, resulting in the deaths of at least 60 and the injury of 2770 Palestinians in Gaza.
2019
MARCH
On March 25, US president Donald Trump recognizes the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied in 1967, as part of Israel.
NOVEMBER
On November 18, the US says it no longer considers Israeli settlements on the West Bank to be illegal.
2020
JANUARY
On January 28, the US administration reveals the “Deal of the Century,” also called “Peace to Prosperity,” a plan that jettisons the two-state solution—the international formula proposed to end the Arab–Israeli conflict. The plan, widely described as an attempt to get Palestinians to trade in their political demands for economic benefits, fails to acknowledge major political issues such as the occupation, the siege of Gaza, illegal settlements, and the refugees.
Notes
PREFACE
1. Phrase borrowed from Rosemary Sayigh’s work Voices: Palestinian Women Narrate Displacement, online book, Al Mashriq, 2005/2007, https://almashriq.hiof.no/palestine/300/301/voices/.
2. Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), 154.
FOREWORD
1. Matthew Hughes, “Women, Violence, and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39,” The Journal of Military History 83 (2019): 500, https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/17614/5/FullText.pdf.
2. Ibid, 501.
3. As cited in ibid.
4. As cited in ibid., 502.
INTRODUCTION
1. UNRWA, “Where We Work, Gaza Strip,” https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip.
2. BADIL, Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2016-2018, Vol. IX (Bethlehem, Palestine: BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights), https://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/90-2019/5013-pr-en-231019-55.html.
3. Salman Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2016), ix.
4. Ibid.
5. Mahmoud Darwish, “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words,” Middle East Report 154, September/October 1988, https://merip.org/1988/09/those-who-pass-between-fleeting-words/.
6. Eóin Murray, “Under Siege,” in Defending Hope: Dispatches from the Front Lines in Palestine and Israel, eds. Eóin Murray and James Mehigan (Dublin: Veritas Books, 2018), 30.
7. UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees 2006: Human Displacement in the New Millennium, April 20, 2006, https://www.unhcr.org/publications/sowr/4a4dc1a89/state-worlds-refugees-2006-human-displacement-new-millennium.html.
8. United Nations, Gaza in 2020: A Liveable Place?, August 2012, https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/file/publications/gaza/Gaza%20in%202020.pdf. See also Bel Trew, “The UN Said Gaza Would be Uninhabitable by 2020 – In Truth, It Already Is,” Independent, December 29, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-protests-hospitals-who-un-a9263406.html; Donald Macintyre, “By 2020, the UN Said Gaza Would be Unliveable. Did It Turn Out that Way?” The Guardian, December 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/28/gaza-strip-202-unliveable-un-report-did-it-turn-out-that-way.
9. Pinhas Rosenbluth, “The Jewish Right to Israel: An Ethical Approach,” in Who Is Left? Zionism Answers Back (Jerusalem: The Zionist Library), 197.
10. Mark LeVine, “Tracing Gaza’s Chaos to 1948,” Al Jazeera, July 13, 2009, https://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/2008525185737842919.html; Salman Abu Sitta, “Gaza Strip, the Lessons of History,” in Gaza as Metaphor, eds. Helga Tawil-Souri and Dina Matar (London: Hurst and Company, 2016), 90.
11. LeVine, “Tracing Gaza’s Chaos to 1948.”
12. Ilana Feldman, cited in ibid.
13. Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 416.
14. Ihsan Khalil Agha, Khan Yunis wa shuhada’iha [Khan Younis Martyrs] (Cairo: Markaz Fajr Publishing, 1997).
15. Abu S
itta, “Gaza Strip, The Lessons of History,” Palestine Land Society, 2016, http://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/2016/gaza-strip-the-lessons-of-history.
16. Helena Cobban, “Roots of Resistance: The First Intifada in the Context of Palestinian History,” Mondoweiss, December 17, 2012, https://mondoweiss.net/2012/12/roots-of-resistance-the-first-intifada-in-the-context-of-palestinian-history/.
17. CJPME, “Israeli Colonies and Israeli Colonial Expansion,” Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, (CJPME) Factsheet Series No. 9, 2005, https://www.cjpme.org/fs_009.
18. Zena Tahhan, “The Naksa: How Israel Occupied the Whole of Palestine in 1967,” Al Jazeera, June 4, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/06/50-years-israeli-occupation-longest-modern-history-170604111317533.html.
19. Cobban, “Roots of Resistance.”
20. The New York Times, “Israel Declines to Study Rabin Tie to Beatings,” July 12, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/12/world/israel-declines-to-study-rabin-tie-to-beatings.html.
21. A phrase often used after the signing of the Oslo agreements. “Political Economy of Palestine,” Institute for Palestine Studies, https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/ar/node/198424.
22. Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return, 317.
23. Edward Said, cited in Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return, 187.
24. Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return, 299.
25. James Bennet, “Arafat Not Present at Gaza HQ,” New York Times, December 3, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/international/arafat-not-present-at-gaza-headquarters.html.
26. Ghada Karmi, “‘The Worst Spot in Gaza’: ‘You Will Not Understand How Hard it is Here’ Until You See This Checkpoint,” Salon, May 31, 2015, https://www.salon.com/2015/05/31/the_worst_spot_in_gaza_you_will_not_understand_how_hard_it_is_here_until_you_see_this_checkpoint/.
27. Ghada Ageel, “Gaza: Horror Beyond Belief,” Electronic Intifada, May 16, 2004, https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-horror-beyond-belief/5078.
28. Dennis J. Deeb II, Israel, Palestine, and the Quest for Middle East Peace (Maryland: University Press of America, 2013), 36.
29. Mark Tran, “Israel Declares Gaza ‘Enemy Entity,’” The Guardian, September 19, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/19/usa.israel1.
30. Indeed, the announcement in early 2020 of the Trump–Netanyahu “deal of the century” now seems to have made Israeli unilateralism a mainstay of US foreign policy in the Middle East. For more details, see Avi Shlaim, “How Israel Brought Gaza to the Brink of Humanitarian Catastrophe,” The Guardian, January 7, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine; Shlaim’s article was also published under “Background and Context,” in Journal of Palestine Studies 38, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 223–39, doi:10.1525/jps.2009.xxxviii.3.223.
31. Ghada Ageel, “Introduction” in Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2016), xxx.
32. Ibid., xxvi.
33. Oxfam, “Timeline: The Humanitarian Impact of the Gaza Blockade,” Oxfam, 2020, https://www.oxfam.org/en/timeline-humanitarian-impact-gaza-blockade.
34. For details, see Sara Roy, “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development,” Journal of Palestine Studies 17, no. 1 (Autumn, 1987): 56–88.
35. Shlaim, “How Israel Brought Gaza to the Brink.”
36. “World Bank Warns, Gaza Economy is Collapsing,” Al Jazeera, September 25, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/world-bank-warns-gaza-economy-collapsing-180925085246106.html.
37. Eva Illouz, as cited and discussed in Ghada Ageel, “Gaza Under Siege, The Conditions of Slavery,” Middle East Eye, London, UK, January 19, 2016, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-under-siege-conditions-slavery.
38. Ghada Ageel, “Where is Palestine’s Martin Luther King? Shot or Jailed by Israel,” Middle East Eye, London, June 26, 2018, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/where-palestines-martin-luther-king-shot-or-jailed-israel.
39. Bel Trew, “The UN Said Gaza Would be Uninhabitable by 2020—In Truth, it Already Is,” The Independent, December 29, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-protests-hospitals-who-un-a9263406.html.
40. David Halbfinger, Isabel Kershner, and Declan Walsh, “Israel Kills Dozens at Gaza Strip,” New York Times, May 14, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-palestinians-us-embassy.html.
41. Mahmoud Darwish, “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words.”
42. Edward Said, “Invention, Memory and Place,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W.J.T. Michell (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 250.
43. Jonathan Adler, “Remembering the Nakba: The Politics of Palestinian History,” Jadaliyya, July 17, 2018, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/37786.
44. Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World Publications, 2006), 231; Pappe attributes this term to Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
45. As cited in John Randolph LeBlanc, Edward Said on the Prospects of Peace in Palestine and Israel (New York: Palgrave MacMilllan, 2013), 44.
46. Sonia Nimr, “Fast Forward to the Past: A Look into Palestinian Collective Memory,” Cahiers de Littérature Orale no. 63–64 (January 2008): 340. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/clo.287.
47. For more details, see Peter M. Jones, “George Lefebvre and the Peasant Revolution: Fifty Years On,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 3 (Spring, 1990): 645–63.
48. Oral History Association (OHA), “Oral History Defined,” OHA, https://www.oralhistory.org/about/do-oral-history/.
49. Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 25, https://tristero.typepad.com/sounds/files/thompson.pdf.
50. Alistair Thomson, “Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History,” The Oral History Review 34, no. 1 (2007): 52–53.
51. As cited in Ramzy Baroud, “History from Below” (PHD dissertation, Exeter University, United Kingdom, January 2015), 28.
52. Rosemary Sayigh, “Oral History,” 193.
53. Sherna Berger Gluck, “Oral History and al-Nakbah,” The Oral History Review 35, no. 1 (2008): 68.
54. Ibid., 69.
55. Malaka Shwaikh, “Narratives of Displacement in Gaza’s Oral History,” in An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba, eds. Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha (London: Zed Books, 2018), 16, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329130803_Narratives_of_Displacement_in_Gaza’s_Oral_History_2.
56. Edward Said, as cited in “The Role of the Public Intellectual,” Alan Lightman, MIT Communications Forum, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/legacy/papers/lightman.html.
57. Sayigh, “Oral History,” 193.
58. Edward Said, “On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Salman Rushdie (1986),” in The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Self Determination, 1969–1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 126.
59. PalestineRemembered.com, “Nakba’s Oral History Interviews Listing,” https://www.palestineremembered.com/OralHistory/Interviews-Listing/Story1151.html.
60. Ahmad Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, “Introduction: The Claims of Memory,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, eds. Ahmad Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 3.
61. As cited in Lightman, “The Role of the Public Intellectual.”
62. Rosemary Sayigh in Maria Fantappie and Brittany Tanasa, “Oral Historian Rosemary Sayigh Records Palestine’s Her-Story in Voices: Palestinian Women Narrate Displacement,” September 20, 2011, W4, https://www.w4.org/en/wowwire/palestinian-women-narrate-displacement-rosemary-sayigh/.
63. Isabelle Humphries and Laleh Khalili, “Gender of Nakba Memory,” in Nakba, 209.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 223.
66. Sayigh, Voices: Palestinian Women.
67. Fatma Kassem, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories
and Gender Memory (London: Zed Books, 2011), 1.
68. Ibid., vi.
69. Sayigh, The Palestinians.
70. Sayigh, Voices: Palestinian Women.
71. Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return, 155.
72. For more details, see Ghada Ageel, “Where is Palestine’s Martin Luther King?”
73. UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (UN Human Rights), The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Gaza Protests, UNOHCHR, February 28, 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24226&LangID=E.
1 CHILDHOOD DAYS
1. The annotations in this and the following chapters have been provided by the editors to add context to the story and are not the narrator’s words. In addition, although the narrator’s story has been translated, her thoughts and opinions herein are her own and are expressed in her words.
2. In August 1897, the first Zionist Congress in Switzerland issued the Basel Programme “to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.” It also established the World Zionist Organisation to work to that end. For more details, see Mahdi F. Abdul Hadi, ed., Documents on Palestine, Volume I, From the Pre-Ottoman/ Ottoman Period to the Prelude of the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference (Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 1997), 11–14.
3. On July 24, 1922, the League of Nations Council approved the Mandate for Palestine, and on September 29, 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came officially into force. See Walid Khalidi, ed., All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), 573; Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1982).
4. For details, see Roza I.M. El-Eini, Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine, 1929–1948 (London: Routledge, 2006); Sayigh, The Palestinians.
5. Al Azhar Al Sharif (or Al Azhar) is one of the world’s oldest universities. It was founded in Cairo in AD 970 by the Fatimid Dynasty. For over a millennium, it has been a highly respected centre of Islamic and Arabic language learning. Other old Arab universities include Al Zaytounah (Tunisia, 734 AD), the Qarawiyyun in Fez (Morocco, 859 AD), and Al Mustansiryah (984 AD) in Iraq.