59

May 15, 2007 at 6:08 am · Filed under Arabisms, Roba, Seriously

Today marks the 59th anniversary of the Palestinian exodus, the nakbeh, the great catastrophe. It is very difficult to write about something so personal yet so critical, for I am, after all, Palestinian. Both my paternal and maternal families have lived in Palestine for centuries, and save for my paternal grandmother, I cannot trace a single drop of none-Palestinian blood in me. My father was born and bred in Palestine, but the rest of my family, born after 1955, including my mother, were all born elsewhere and bred elsewhere.

Yet, elsewhere or not, Palestinian we remain.

In Arabic, Filasteen (فلسطين) has been the name of the region since the earliest medieval Arab geographers (adopted from the then-current Greek term Palaestina (Παλαιστινη), first used by Herodotus, itself derived ultimately from the name of the Philistines), and Filasteeni (فلسطيني) was always a common adjectival noun adopted by natives of the region, starting as early as the first century after the Hijra (eg `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini,[46] an ascetic who died in the early 700s).

Prior to the 1948 war, Palestinian Christians and Muslims were a two-third majority of the population of Palestine, who owned and operated 93% of Palestine’s lands. Today, in the UN’s area of operation, there are “officially” 4.9 million refugees as a result of the Nakba of 1948, 1 million of them have no form of identification other than an UNWRA identification card.

One of the founders of the State of Israel, Golda Meir’s, had said, “There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”

These 4.9 million refugees exist. I exist. I am Palestinian, my parents are Palestinian, my ancestors for centuries before me were Palestinian, and my children will be Palestinian.

Ultimately, for a Palestinian, memory really matters.

Related: 58

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  • http://3adoola.blogspot.com adel

    mon chapeau walla ya roba :)

  • Abo Fahem

    I have not respected a person as I respect you now , always remember
    لكل شعب وطن يعيش فيه
    إلا نحن فلنا وطن يعيش فينا

  • George Abdallah

    Yesterday, i opened up the family album…and I wept and wept…it never gets any better with each passing years. not with the horrible news and wars and killings. It’s a wound that only festers and gets infected.

    GO NASRALLAH! GO AHMDINAJAD! GO HANYIAH! To Jerusalem, Hifa, Yaffa, Askalaan, Lud, Nazareth, …

  • G.

    Hi Roba,interesting narrative in your post and maybe one day one can debate it with the mirror narrative.

    I seem to remember ages ago your mentioning in a post of your and your family’s visit to Haifa,israel and other places in Israel in the 1990′s?

    Hopefully you’ll will visit israel again or even come to Israeli university in Israel(there are a few Jordanian students at Israeli unis and colleges at this moment)

    Btw Lisa has a awesome video of some Israeli guys crossing the Sheikh Hussein border into Jordan and having a cool motorcycle trip in the Jordanian desert. There’s also some Arabic with a Hebrew accent.
    Here’s the link:
    http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/5/13/2946227.html

  • J

    “Hopefully you’ll will visit israel again or even come to Israeli university in Israel”

    An one more thing Roba. After the visit is over, make sure you leave Israel. You are not Jewish and as such you are persona non grata. But you are welcome to be a tourist. Come and spend your money in Israel and show the world that nothing is wrong. That expelled Palestinians are OK with this situation. Can’t we just get along.

  • http://Abedhamdan.com Abed Hamdan

    ابدعتي…

    فعلا..فلسطيين كنا وسنبقى…فليشربوا البحر

  • Onzlo

    Nice one G… But you forgot to include an offer to take Roba on a personal tour to her grandparents home village to show her how its been converted into cute artist’s colony, or perhaps a highway off-ramp?

  • http://zozo2k3.blogspot.com Yazan

    Ghaba nahar akhar, Ghab nahar akhar,
    Zadat ghurbatuna nahar, w ektarabat 3awdatuna nahar.

    life never stops putting salts on our wounds.

  • http://www.khobbeizeh.com/ mohammad

    amazing
    i loved your words. thanx :)

  • Austin

    Sympathetic as I may be to Palestinians…Golda Meier’s words ring a little true in my book, but perhaps too true for her own good.

    Why? Because the very idea of nationhood as alluded to in her quotation is a rather late development in human history, particularly in the Middle East.

    I suspect that if we could survey those living that lived between the Mediterannean and the Jordan River 200 years ago under Ottoman administration about self-conception, we would be hard-pressed to elicit answers that conjure “Palestinian” identity, culture, and collective memory. Rather, it seems that these are distinctly post-exile intellectual impositions on a past in danger of slipping out of reach.

    The irony is that I likewise suspect that Zionism functions in much the same way–an ex post facto nationalist narrative of the kind that became endemic in Europe in the 19th century.

    So let’s just throw nationalism and its corollaries in the rubbish bin of history.

    Not to say that refugees and their descendents don’t deserve justice, however.

  • http://halataha.jeeran.com 7ala

    Good one Ruba!

  • http://hilalchouman.blogspot.com hilal

    what’s happening is not good, but that does not affect my view to the major issue. It is a just case no matter how many “misatkes” are done in its name.

    btw, I got “hate” as an anti-spam word ! is it lways like that? :-)

  • http://omars2cents.blogspot.com Omar

    We will never forget..

    Amazing post Roba

  • Nick

    I’ve lived in Jordan and travelled in Israel and the West Bank. My thinking is that neither Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank are viable future states. Why do I say this? Look at future projections for water scarcity in the region in the light of global climate change – competition for environmental resources is going to make future conflict very likely.

    To me there is only one possible long-term solution, the one Edward Said advocated – a bi-national multi-faith state called Israel & Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. Interested to know what Jordanians thought/think of Said’s dream.

  • abofahem

    Dear Nick

    i believe that prior to setting dreams and solutions we have to acknowledge the problem , give Palestinians the acknowledgment they deserve , admit the history and then set to negotiate the solutions , Palestine has many resources that if have been used effectively will contribute in the uplifting of its economy and the regions economy , the availability of water resources , the ports that could be used to link Europe and Gulf area , the religious tourism are all in favor of prospect of Palestine, and even if not no one can take a way someone country , land and heritage , if Palestine was noting but a desert its our right to deicide if we want to live in it or not

  • Du Yisa

    Apparently memory isn’t important enough to include the fact that your people were displaced as the result of an openly genocidal war which you started. Too bad. Memory also apparently doesn’t include the fact that a large percentage of what became the ‘Palestinian’ ‘refugee’ population are in fact descendants of late 19th/early 20th century immigrants from what are now Egypt and Syria – a brief perusal of Ottoman and British censuses amply documents it.

    Apparently, memory also doesn’t include the following:

    No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘ Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”1

    Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:

    We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.2

    In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘ Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.3

    The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said, Palestine was part of the Province of Syriaand that, politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity. A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”4

    Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel’s capture of the West Bank.

    Notes

    1 Moshe Kohn, “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land,” Jerusalem Post, (October 18, 1991).
    2 Yehoshua Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977), pp. 81-82.
    3 Moshe Kohn, “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land,” Jerusalem Post, (October 18, 1991).
    4 Avner Yaniv, PLO, (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Study Group of Middle Eastern Affairs, August 1974), p. 5.

    Hey, I didn’t even include the original PLO charter – do you remember what it said about Palestine and Palestinian nationalism? You should, if memory is in fact important to your ‘people’.

    Go ahead, delete it. “Memory is important” indeed.

  • http://kuweifi.blogspot.com Tiger

    Du Yasi

    Well well well see I read this post and didnt comment on it and I wasn’t welling to comment or to add anything becoz am simply like the author a palestinian refugee and I put three lines under palestinian ….

    ur logic to debate is fine …..lets see the “—-” what you mentioned is as following:
    1.Palestine terminology is a media creation to support new arabian dectators that emerged after World War 1 and 2.

    2.There were no People living in palestine and actually they were bunch of refugees that were running away from othmanis.

    3.Palestine is a part of syria….(hmmmmmmm NOOOOOOO lebanon maybe but palestine never).

    4.you told the author that she is either twisting the facts or she has been decived all of her life.

    5.you mentioned a bunch of reffrences (why dont you just put an add for those guys and beg the readers to read for those zionist fashiost!!!).

    so let me ask you a question in the similar manner:

    Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the HELLL is Israel????then???

    1.there was no israeallis in lets call it as what you saying no man land “Palestine”.
    2.there is nothing even no one single reffrence before World War 1 or 2 mentioning israeal as a place,location,nation or even a bag ,a shoe a toothpaste or a brand name nothing zerooooooo.

    3.the temple or what is called the origin of israel ligitmate existance is not located in jerusalem city it is actually located near nablus city (west bank)in a place called Sammurah high lands which is the original terminology for jews who were living in palestine.

    4.Israeally citizens origins r based on their relegion which makes israeal the only the onlllllllllllllly state in the world that gives citizenship based on relegion not based on your origin or place of birth or even on immigration which make it the state of the art in racism.

    5.lets ask your question in a diffrent way was there something called america before?what is americans then??????no sir there is no such a thing even amiricans didnt live in amrica for more than 500 years .

    6.from all whats above lets call it I debated you with the same logic and I ll leave it to the readers to judge your kind of logic.

    now if you are ignorant and miss lead by your own historians let me put some points clear to your view:
    1.first of all there is nothing called syria,Lebanon,Jordan,Palestine….through allll history those 4 nations were gathered under the same naming they were called Al Shaaaam. full stop.

    2.These countries were under othmanee government who were rulling from egypt till iraq turkey and reached the borders of viena.

    3.The freedom of movement was valid for everyone there was no ariports,armies or anything all under othmanee ruler so they r actually a one nation

    4.After the Turks lost world war 1 with their allies and went bankropsee and were called the ill man of euroupe they started selling these countries to Britan ,france and others who were the new colonial imperial powers back then similar to USA.

    5.then there was something called Syches Beeko agreement to make 5 countries which is iraq,lebanon Syria,Jordan and palestine but the only country who were under direct british ruling was palestine all others were declared either as kingdoms or states but palestine was not declared by the british becoz they still wanted to control it due to its strategic location.

    6.Now due to palestine importance to arabs and muslims it was actually considered like Mecaa a place that everyone shares the right to belong to so you ll not find someone telling Mecca is a saudi it is actually a pure ARABIAN MUSLIM Land so everyone lived there in palestine and immigrated to and from due to its relegious and economical importance and it was an agricultural and businuess centre for centuries in the middle east.

    you know something after all I have to thank you for one thing you have indirectly high lighted why palestine have been stolen from palestinians and arabs simply becoz they started to think of it as palestinian land not arabic muslim or christian lands and becoz of our band intrepertation we lost our main cause so after all yes it is not a palestinian land it is an ARABIC land…..

    for the readers who reached reading till here thx for the efoort and sorry for writing that much but some either ignorants,miss lead or liars need to be viewed the right way….

  • http://al-arabiat.blogspot.com Mohanned

    Well first of all a nation that considers itself the prefered by god is not my favorite, A nation that is built on one relegion is not my favorite neither, A nation that treats people based on their race and give the “social” degrees is not my favorite, A nation where every human being is a soldier is not my favorite, If you combine all this you will get one nation in the world!!
    I remember watching MSNBC when Israel bombed lebanon, and this NBC guy called tucker decided to visit the beachs of tel aviv to see if people were afraid to go there, for his surprise he found some youth partying and drinking so he asked them about what they doing here? Their reply was and I quote “We are just partying because tomorrow we will be killing Arabs” The reporter was Shoked and said in sad voice” I leave it to you to decide who is the victim”

    More than 9 million palastenians didn’t come from mars!!So if we want to talk about history and nations we can tell by your numbers!What is it 30 million?

    This reply is intended for hate mongers who claim that no such thing as palastine existed!

  • http://www.7aki-fadi.blogspot.com/ 7aki Fadi

    Well Said Tiger…

  • http://mikemarcus.blogspot.com mike marcus

    It makes me so sad that Golda Meir speaks on behalf of my people, the Israeli Jews. Why is it that we veermently fight Holocuast denial and its supporters while denying the plain an obvious fact of the Nakba? Its almost like if you say something enough, it becomes true whatever the evidence.

    I’m personally sorry for the Nakba and its subsequent denial.