6. Formally Bir Al Saba’, it was renamed Beersheba after the State of Israel was created in 1948.
7. Unlike in Beersheba, where the population was mostly Bedouin, most Palestinian women in villages and cities didn’t cover their faces.
8. The title “Sheikh” is used to refer to Muslim scholars with a high level of Islamic knowledge and to those scholars who graduated from Al Azhar University.
9. Tawb refers to a traditional long embroidered gown with long sleeves worn by Palestinian women. Each Palestinian village had a particular embroidery pattern that distinguished it and its people from other villages.
10. Shash refers to a traditional Palestinian women’s long headdress, which covers the upper body to the waist. It is sometimes twisted and tied at the waist of a tawb like a belt.
11. Martyr, Al Shahid in Arabic, refers to someone who was killed or sacrificed his life for his country or for just causes.
12. The 1930 invasion of a plague of locusts in Palestine (covering an area one mile wide and fifteen miles long) is well documented. Trenches, pits, flame throwers, and a small army of soldiers were used to combat the invasion and to save orange and cotton crops. The eradication effort closed with a feast that included camel racing and celebrations. For images that document the feasting, see the article by Stefanie Wichhart, which discusses both the 1915 and 1930 locust plagues. “The 1915 Locust Plague in Palestine,” Jerusalem Quarterly 56 & 57 (2013): 29–39, Columbia University, Center for Palestine Studies, https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/JQ%2056-57%20The%201915%20Locust.pdf.
13. By the mid-1930s, the British Mandate had allowed in an alarming number of European Jewish immigrants (comprising about 30 percent of the population in 1936 compared to 9 percent in 1917), which laid the groundwork for the great Arab Revolt that lasted from 1936 to 1939. When the general strike, which lasted for six months, was declared at the start of the Arab Revolt, national committees were formed in every region of Palestine to fight the British and the Zionist militia groups, in order to stem the flood of Jewish immigrants, which threatened the survival and independence of the Palestinian people. By 1939, the British had quashed the revolution. For more details, see Abu Sitta’s book, Mapping My Return, 42; Rawan Damen’s 2008 documentary film, “Al Nakba,” Aljazeera, https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/films_main.html; and Khalidi, All That Remains, 574.
14. For details, see ’Abd al-Wahhab Kayyali, Wathā ’iq al-Muqāwama al-Filastīniyya al-’Arabiyya did al-Ihtilāl al-Britānī wa al-Zioniyya, 1918–1939 [Documents of the Palestinian Arab Resistance against the British and Zionist Occupation] (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1967).
15. This occurred throughout Palestine. See John Loxton, typescript memoirs in Private Papers Collection, Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, cited in A.J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918–1948 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 119.
16. The Al Mawasi area (two kilometres from Khan Younis) is a strip of land one kilometre wide that extends along the Gaza coastal road for a distance of twelve kilometres, from Deir Al-Balah to Khan Younis, all the way to Rafah. Among the agricultural sectors in the Gaza Strip, Al Mawasi is considered one of the most important, as the residents depend on agriculture as their only source of livelihood.
17. This story was recorded before the redeployment of Israeli settlements/colonies in the Gaza Strip in September 2005.
18. Al Hamidiyah is the most famous and oldest market, or souk, in Damascus. It was built in 1780 under the rule of the Umayyad Sultan Abdul Hamid, from whom the name of the market was adopted. Prior to the 2011 uprising, many world leaders visited the souk, including former president Bill Clinton, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the then Turkish prime minister (now president) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The past nine years of warfare, destruction, and displacement have shattered both Syrian society and the economy and slowed activities in the souk, which currently depends on the locals and some Arab visitors.
2 SCHOOL DAYS
1. On May 15, 1948, the British Mandate ended, and the declaration of the State of Israel came into effect, leading to the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian society. See Khalidi, All That Remains, 577.
2. For more details, see Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Ilan Pappe, The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700–1948 (London: Saqi Books, 2010); Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Boston: Beacon, 2006).
3. Refers to the proposal by UN mediator Count Bernadotte, on September 16, 1948, for a new partition of Palestine: an Arab state to be annexed to Transjordan and to include Negev, Al Ramle, and Lydda; a Jewish state in all of Galilee; the internationalization of Jerusalem; the return of or compensation for refugees. This was rejected by the Arab League and Israel. See Khalidi, All That Remains, 578.
4. From December 22, 1948 to January 6, 1949, the Israelis launched Operation Horev to drive Egyptians out of the southern coastal strip and Negev. Israeli military forces moved into Sinai, until British pressure forced their withdrawal. An Israeli attack on Rafah ended by ceasefire on January 7th. See Khalidi, All That Remains, 579. For more details on the December 25th battle, please see Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return, 91.
5. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, established by the UN General Assembly, based on Resolution 302 of December 8, 1949, to assist Palestinian refugees. See also, Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume I, 195 and 373.
3 MARRIAGE
1. The remains of a caravanserai built during the Mamluk period by the Arab Younis to rest his army, while travelling from the south to the north of Palestine to fight in the Crusades. Khan Younis is named after him.
2. On August 31, 1955, Israelis attacked the Khan Younis police station with orders to “kill as many enemy soldiers as possible.” They killed seventy-two and wounded fifty-eight. See Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 350.
4 MASSACRE
1. On November 2, 1956, Israelis occupied Gaza and most of the Sinai, attacked Qalqilya in the West Bank, and massacred villagers from Kafr Qassem. On March 8, 1957, Israel withdrew from Gaza and Sinai, and the United Nations Emergency Force moved in. See Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume I, 374.
2. The story was recorded in 2001.
3. See Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians (London: Verso, 2003), 55.
4. See Meron Rapoport, “Into the Valley of Death,” Haaretz, February 8, 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/into-the-valley-of-death-1.212390; Martin Cohn, “An Israeli General Reopens Old Wounds with Revelations About the Massacre of Egyptian PoWs,” Toronto Star, October 8, 1995; Richard H. Curtiss and Donna B. Curtiss, “Israel’s Hush-Up Machine in Action: Denying Story Israel Executed Egyptian Prisoners,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May–June 2007, 28–29; Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (London: Fourth Estate, 2005), 1132.
5. See Anis F. Kassim, ed., The Palestine Yearbook of International Law, 1998–1999, Law Volume 10, (Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, The Hague, 2000).
6. See Muhammed Magdy, “Egyptian Court Issues Verdict to Prosecute Israel,” Almonitor, February 3, 2017, http://al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/egypt-court-order-israel-soldiers-torture-wars-1.html and http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/21/world/egypt-says-israelis-killed-pow-s-in-67-war.html.
7. The Israeli army withdrew from Beit Hanoon in the Gaza Strip after it was occupied in 1948. See Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (London: Yale University Press, 2008); Ramzy Baroud, “For the Love of Egypt: When Besieged Palestinians Danced,” Global Research, March 3, 2011, https://www.globalresearch.ca/for-the-love-of-egypt-when-besieged-pa
lestinians-danced/24078.
8. For more details, see H.F. Ellis, “Reflections on Suez: Middle East Security,” in Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences, William Roger Lewis and Roger Owen, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 347–63; Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: US Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945–1961 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Fisk, The Great War, 1127–38.
9. See Yazīd Sāyigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997), 66.
5 OCCUPATION
1. Madeeha, the narrator, told us this story while we sat in this house with her in 2001.
2. See William B. Quandt, Fuad Jabber, and Ann Mosely Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (London: University of California Press, 1973).
3. On August 2, 1952, the Israeli Law of Nationality affirmed the Israeli Law of Return and legislated that resident non-Jews could acquire citizenship only on the basis of residence if they could prove they were Palestinian, or by naturalization. Palestinian Arabs remaining under Israeli occupation literally became foreigners in their own country, as proving residence was, in practice, often impossible to fulfil. Most Arab residents had no proof of citizenship, having surrendered their identity cards to the Israeli Army during or after the war. Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume I, 373.
4. On June 5, 1967, Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestine, Sinai of Egypt, and Golan Heights of Syria. See Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume I, 375.
5. For more details, see Abu Sitta’s book, Mapping My Return, 257–58.
6 BLACK SEPTEMBER
1. Black September was a bloody confrontation that took place in late September 1970 between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian resistance movement led by the PLO. The fighting lasted a week, until a truce was brokered under the leadership of Abd Al Nasser, who died shortly after, on September 28, 1970. See Said K. Aburish, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 227; Christopher Dobson, Black September: Its Short, Violent History (New York: Macmillan, 1974).
2. See John Bulloch, The Making of a War: The Middle East from 1967 to 1973 (London: Longman, 1974), 67.
7 1973 WAR
1. The October War began on October 6th, when Egypt and Syria fought to regain the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1967. See Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume I, 376.
2. A fortification line built along the eastern coast of the Suez Canal after the 1967 war to control the area, based on the idea of then Israeli Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. See Kimmerling, Politicide, 60.
3. On October 22nd, the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 338, calling for a cease fire and an immediate end to the fighting between Israel and the Arab countries. The following day, on October 23rd, the UNSC issued Resolution 339, confirming the ceasefire and directing that UN observers be dispatched to the front. On October 24th, the UNSC issued Resolution 340 to confirm the ceasefire—its third in less than four days. This was followed by shuttle diplomacy.
8 WAITING FOR THE CURTAIN TO RISE
1. This refers to the Palestinian–Israeli Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Authority (DOP), also known as the Oslo 1 Accord, signed in Washington on September 13, 1993. See Abdul Hadi, Documents on Palestine, Volume II, From the Negotiations in Madrid to the Post-Hebron Agreement Period (Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 1997), 145.
2. The Druze are a monotheistic, esoteric, ethno-religious group that originated in Western Asia. They are now found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan and elsewhere.
3. For details, see Alexander Mikaberidze, Atrocities, Massacres and War Crimes: An Encyclopaedia, Volume I (California: ABC-CLEO, Library of Congress Catalogue, 2013), 545; Kimmerling, Politicide, 156–57; David Harb, West Meets East: A Primer into the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (US: Xlibris Corporation, 2010); Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Ariel Sharon’s Troubling Legacy: Evaded Prosecution Over Sabra and Shatilla Massacres,” January 11, 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/11/israel-ariel-sharons-troubling-legacy.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN PALESTINE
1. The following works were consulted when compiling this chronology of events in Palestine: Walid Khalidi, ed., All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); 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); Said K. Aburish, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); PASSIA Diary 1999 (Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 1998); PASSIA Diary 2001 (Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 2000); Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006); Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006); Linda Butler, “A Gaza Chronology, 1948–2008,” Journal of Palestine Studies 38, no. 3 (2009): 98–121, doi:10.1525/jps.2009.XXXVIII.3.98; “A Lot of Process, No Peace: A Timeline of 20 Years of Post-Oslo Meetings, Agreements, Negotiations and Memorandums,” Perspectives: Political Analyses and Commentary from the Middle East & North Africa 5 (December 2013), 5–8; Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014); PASSIA Diary 2018 (Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 2017); “Palestine: What Has Been Happening Since WWI,” Al Jazeera, May 14, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/20085251908164329.html; Eóin Murray and James Mehigan (eds.), Defending Hope: Dispatches from the Front Lines in Palestine and Israel, (Dublin: Veritas Books, 2019); Chloé Benoist, “‘The Deal that Can’t be Made’: A Timeline of the Trump Administration’s Israel-Palestine Policy,” Middle East Eye, January 28, 2020, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/deal-cant-be-made-timeline-trump-administrations-israel-palestine-policy; Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020).
Glossary
’Abaya: Long, loose covering open at the front, traditionally worn by men, but recently has also come to mean a long, usually black covering worn by women.
Abu: Father (of); generally used with the name of a man’s firstborn son rather than his first name; e.g., Abu Ahmad is the father of Ahmad, his first son.
Al Mawasi: A one-kilometre wide area situated two kilometres from Khan Younis that extends along the Gaza costal road for a distance of twelve kilometres, from Dir Al-Balah to Khan Younis, all the way to Rafah. Considered one of the most important agricultural sectors in the Gaza Strip, as the residents depend on agriculture as their only source of livelihood.
Al Muntar: The highest place in Gaza, north-east of Gaza City.
Arqila: Traditional Arab water pipe, also called sheesha or narqila.
Beik: Beik or Bey is a Turkish title, and traditionally referred to leaders, rulers, or a man in a position commanding respect. It follows the name and is used generally with first names and not with last names. Used in modern Turkish language as a kind of honorific after a man’s first name, as a means of showing courtesy and respect.
Burnous: A long, hooded robe.
Diwan (pl. dawaween): Traditional men’s gathering place where the mukhtar of the extended family solved disputes, and where male guests were welcomed, ate, and slept.
Du’a’: Central to Muslim life and refers to supplication. It is an act of worship, of remembering Allah and calling upon Him for help.
Dunum: Measurement of land used in Palestine, equal to 1,000 m2 or 1/11 hectare.
’Eid
: Feast.
’Eid al Adha: Feast of Sacrifice to commemorate Ibrahim’s test of faith when he almost sacrificed his son Isma’il.
’Eid al Fitr: Feast to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
’Eqal: The black cord tied around the kofiyyah or hatta to keep it in place.
Fedayeen (sing. Feda’i): Resistance fighters. In this book, Fedayeen refers to those who left their families and homes and were organized and trained and became wanted men, as opposed to villagers and citizens who organized themselves to defend their land against enemy attacks.
Hajj: Literally means pilgrimage. It is the fifth pillar of Islam, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lifetime. Also used as a title to refer to a Muslim person who has successfully performed the Hajj to Mecca, or as an honorific title for a respected elder man.
Hatta: Traditional Arab men’s headdress; also called kofiyyah.
Hummus: Crushed chickpeas mixed with sesame paste, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and eaten with bread; a traditional dish of the people of Sham.
Intifada: Literally means shaking or shake off. The popular Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, which started on December 9, 1987 and ended in 1993 with the signing of the Declaration of Principles. The second, or Al Aqsa, Intifada started in September 2000 and ended in 2006.
Jalabiya (pl. jalabiyaat): Traditional Arab men’s dress of a long cotton gown.
Khan: (also caravanserai): A place where merchant caravans, or travellers and their animals rested overnight on their journey.
Sham: The Levant region, referring to the countries located along the eastern Mediterranean.
Maleem/Qersh: Small denominations of Palestinian currency; a qersh was equal to 1/100 Palestinian pound of the time (before the Nakba and the destruction of Palestine); maleem was 1/10 of a qersh.
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