Sixty years on, Palestinians mourn loss of homeland
Alistair Lyon; 8/5/08
While Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinian refugees mourn the 1948 Nakbeh (catastrophe) when they lost their homeland. Often ignored in Middle East peace talks, they cling to a “right of return”. Alia Shabati was 12 when she fled Jewish attacks on her village of Kabri, occupied a few days after Israel’s creation. Now a matron of 72, wearing a flowery blue dress and white headscarf, her memories of Kabri in today’s northern Israel are vividly intact, unlike the village, which was wiped off the map. “We had houses and land,” Shabati said in the living room of her modest dwelling in the alleys of Beirut’s Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp. “We had olives, grapes, prickly pears and dates. We had orchards and fields. Now what do we have? Nothing.”
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7722
Arab farmer dreams of return to lost village
Mehdi Lebouachera; 8/5/08
Standing on the roof of the old schoolhouse, Toomeh Maghzal looks over the green valley below at the ruins of the village of Biram which Arabs were forced by the Israeli army to abandon 60 years ago. “There used to be houses everywhere. We had orchards of olive trees, apple trees, vineyards,” says Maghzal, an 81-year-old Christian Maronite from the village. “Today, it is all in ruins.” Back on October 29, 1948, during the war that followed the creation of Israel, which marks its 60th anniversary on Thursday, the Israeli army entered the village of Biram which lies near the border with Lebanon. The 1,050 people residents, mostly farmers and Maronite Catholics, were forced to flee to the neighbouring village of Jish, but with the promise, never fulfilled, that they could eventually return to their homes. Israeli forces later bombed Biram. “They destroyed everything to wipe out our hopes of returning,” says Maghzal, still spry and with vivid memories of the village and its Christian Arab population.
See; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7702
Encapsulating a conflict
8/5/08
Today and all next week Israel will celebrate 60 years of independence and Palestinians will commemorate 60 years of tragedy. Little else so perfectly encapsulates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Should anyone be in doubt, 1948 lies at the very heart of this conflict. More important than resolving the illegal Israeli occupation of lands in 1967 is resolving the dispossession of one people to make room for another that occurred in 1948. Everything else is a footnote. Unfortunately, the comparatively easier problem of dealing with 1967 shows no sign of making headway, leaving the problem of 1948 a long way off from finding resolution. With Israeli PM Ehud Olmert under police investigation, his future seems uncertain. That will put back any potential (so far unseen) progress in the peace talks and will render agreement by the end of the year even more unlikely.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7706
Unprofitable negotiations to create the illusion that peace is sought
Michael Jansen; 8/5/08
It is significant that Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations take place this week while Palestinians will next week commemorate the “Naqbeh”, the catastrophe inflicted on their nation when Israel launched its war of establishment. The timing of these events is different because Israel relies on the Jewish calendar while the Palestinians count the beginning of their disaster from May 15, 1948, according to the Gregorian calendar adopted by the West, the geopolitical construct that inflicted Israel on the region. There is a great deal more to these events than the sight of Israelis in glad rags partying while Palestinians in black mourn their fate. The majority of Israelis care very little about the injustices the 1948 creation of Israel and its 1967 expansion have caused the native inhabitants of geographic Palestine. In a perceptive article about Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians, Jeff Halper, an Israeli academic who learnt to follow his convictions rather than the establishment line, made the points that Israelis refer to the Palestinians as “Arabs”, rather than the indigenous people of Palestine, do not use the term “occupation” for the regime installed in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (and the whole of Palestine for that matter), and insist that the decision whether to relinquish any territory to the Palestinians will remain with Israelis alone.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7707
Give the people what they want
8/5/08
With the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel on May 14, all sorts of opinions and public polls are being undertaken to determine the sentiments of, primarily, Israeli Jews on its past, present and future. One poll recently undertaken threw up some surprising figures - surprising, that is, to the hawkish elements in Israel. Despite claims by many politicians that peace with the Palestinians will eventually be achieved, it seems that 70 per cent of the population do not agree, and believe that peace will never be attainable between the two. This depressing scenario probably reflects a more realistic attitude to the various negotiations that have taken place, rather than the vague promises of an eventual successful outcome which has, over the years, failed to materialise.
See: http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/editorial_opinion/region/10211551.html
Tags: Anniversary, Israel, Refugees, Terrorism