The international newspapers are full of yesterday’s events. Most reports are similar in nature to the ones that I included yesterday, or rather, the links to them. This evening instead of reiterating yesterday’s news, the first three items are perceptive commentaries.
The first of these, Ben White’s “Palestine Nakba: Forever a memory,” furnishes historical detail important to understanding why Palestinian feelings about the Nakba run high. White points how wrong Ben Gurion was in believing that when the old generation died out, the Nakba would be forgotten.
In item 2 Matthew Cassel reminds us that ‘never is a refugee’s right to return brought into question==accept when the refugee is Palestinian.’
And in item 3 Richard Falk is critical of Israel and of the world for not forcing Israel to behave differently as regards the refugees.
In item 4 Joel Greenberg updates us on the events on May 15.
Item 5 reveals IOF conduct at the protest at Qalandia.
Item 6 furnishes a few links to videos on the events on the 15th.
The remaining items do not deal with yesterday’s events.
Item 7 contains 2 episodes in Amos Gvirtz’s ‘Don’t say we didn’t know’
Item 8 informs us that Israel, under pressure, has agreed to pay the PA what Israel owes it.
Finally, I leave you on a pleasant note. Akiva Eldar tells us about how children in an Arab-Jewish school learn each other’s narrative. Whether eventually there will be a single secular country with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, or if we end up with 2 states—a first step to reconcilliation and understanding is knowing and feeling each other’s narratives,
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Al Jazeera,
May 15, 2011
Palestinian Nakba: Forever a memory
On 63rd anniversary of Israel’s foundation, the Palestinians’ “catastrophe”, the occupying state dashes hope of justice.
Many Palestinians fled their homes in 1948, taking only their door key with them. It has since become a powerful symbol of refugees’ right to return, even though most of the buildings have long since been destroyed – or had Israeli families move in [GALLO/GETTY]
Palestinians around the world are marking the anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe that occurred when the state of Israel was established in 1948.
The scale of the devastation was overwhelming: four in five Palestinian villages inside the borders of the new state were ethnically cleansed, an act of mass dispossession accompanied by atrocities. Around 95 per cent of new Jewish communities built between 1948-1953 were established on the land of expelled, denationalised Palestinians.
Referring to these refugees, Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously said that “the old will die and the young will forget”. In fact, rather than “forgetting”, the Nakba has become one of the central foundations for activism by Palestinians – and their supporters – around the world.
Why is the Nakba such a strong framework of analysis and action? Because rather than being an isolated historical event, it is an ongoing process of dispossession and colonial settlement. Over 60 years ago, actions taken by Israel’s military and policies adopted by the legislature were designed to effect the transfer of land from Palestinian to Jewish ownership, removing as many of the former as possible.
Since then, right up to today, this is the same logic at work in Israel’s regime over Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Just recently it was revealed that Israel had denied residency rights to 140,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, in what Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz described as a “demographic policy” whose “sole purpose is to thin out the Palestinian population”.
One of the mechanisms Israel used to expropriate Palestinian land was the British Mandate-era “Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance”. In 2010, the Knesset passed an amendment to this law that “confirms state ownership of land confiscated under this law, even where it has not been used to serve the original confiscation purpose”. The Nakba is not finished.
The Nakba continues as Bedouin Palestinian citizens watch their homes demolished to make way for Jewish settlement and forests, and as Palestinians are kept off 77.5 per cent of the Jordan Valley, part of what Human Rights Watch has called a “a two-tier system for the two populations”. This continuation of policies informed by the “spirit” of 1948 (in the words of Gideon Levy) is how Palestinians understand what is happening to a fragmented population, from al-Arakib to the hills of the West Bank.
A Nakba-shaped analysis is a corrective to the discourse promoted through the official peace process, a framework of “negotiations” between “two parties” over a territorial “conflict”. Liberal Zionists too, ignore the Nakba – beyond patronising displays of “empathy”; they need the Green Line of 1967 “so as to render all that lies beyond it as temporary conquest”, exempting them from having to confront “the historic legacy” of the ethnic cleansing in 1948.
The centrality of 1948 is being embraced as part of a language and mode of resistance by Palestinians around the world. The fight of Palestinian citizens of Israel as a discriminated, segregated minority has evolved over the years – from emphasising “rights” to challenging the very legitimacy of a Jewish state. The BDS call, endorsed and driven by Palestinians under military occupation, aims to bring an end to the injustices that began with the Nakba.
This is what makes the Israeli government, and its apologists, so nervous: they know that 63 years on, contrary to Ben-Gurion’s prediction, not only have subsequent generations of Palestinians remembered the Nakba, but their ongoing struggle for justice and equality is now understood and supported by growing numbers around the world.
Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer, specialising in Palestine and Israel. His first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, was published by Pluto Press in 2009, receiving praise from the likes of Desmond Tutu, Nur Masalha and Ghada Karmi.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
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2. The Guardian,
16 May 2011
Palestinians in Lebanon, at the lonely end of the Arab uprisings
Never is a refugee’s right to return brought into question – except when that refugee is a Palestinian
Matthew Cassel guardian.co.uk, larger | smaller Article history
Lebanese soldiers patrol next to Palestinian refugees during demonstrations to mark the 63rd anniversary of Nakba Day at the Lebanese-Israeli border in Maroun al-Ras, 15 May 2011. Photograph: Hassan Bahsoun/EPA
Climbing up the mountain to reach the Palestinian right-of-return protest in Maroun al-Ras in south Lebanon on Sunday felt a bit like being back in Tahrir Square.
The thousands of mostly Palestinian refugees were smiling as they joked about the strenuous climb, and helped each other up the mountain to reach the site where they were going to stage their demonstration. Some knew it could even be dangerous, but that didn’t matter as much as the rare opportunity to join together and call for their rights.
The small elevated Lebanese village just overlooking the border with Israel became a massive parking lot as buses carrying Palestinian refugees and Lebanese from across Lebanon converged for a protest commemorating what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé calls the “ethnic cleansing” by Zionist militias of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes in 1948 – what Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba”, or catastrophe. Large buses had difficulties reaching the top of the mountain, and rather than wait, protesters chose to make the half-mile climb by foot.
Men and women, young and old, secular and religious, were all present. This was the first time in 63 years that Palestinian refugees would go to the border in their tens of thousands and call for their right to return home. For most, it was their first time even seeing the land that they’ve grown up hearing described in precise detail through the popular stories of elders old enough to remember life in what is today considered Israel.
The Israeli regime not only keeps under occupation more than 4 million people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and limits the rights of more than a million Palestinian citizens of Israel, it also denies more than 5 million refugees the fundamental right of return to the place they were forced to flee.
While Palestinians have always protested against Israeli occupation, this year, inspired by the wave of uprisings across the Arab world, Palestinians called for their own protests on 15 May, the day they commemorate the Nakba.
In Lebanon, a rally didn’t go as planned. Soon after speakers began addressing the crowds in Maroun al-Ras, thousands of Palestinians broke off and headed down the opposite side of the mountain – through land littered with Israeli landmines – towards the fence on the border. There they called for their right to return, climbed and placed Palestinian flags on the fence, and many began throwing stones at soldiers they couldn’t even see.
Israel is showing itself to be no different to the infamous despotic Arab regimes in its willingness to use brutal force against people demanding their rights. This was clear yesterday when more than a dozen were killed and hundreds injured in Lebanon, Syria’s occupied Golan Heights, and in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, 10 were killed and more than 100 injured, including Lebanese soldiers, when Israel opened fire on protesters at the border fence.
The number of refugees at the fence would have been even greater had the Lebanese army not set up a blockade halfway down the mountain preventing thousands of others from joining the protesters below.
The role of the Lebanese army in preventing Palestinians from protesting against Israel represents what many refugees in Lebanon believe is a main hindrance in order for them to return. In Lebanon, refugees live with few civil rights, many in refugee camps enclosed by barbed-wire fencing and army checkpoints. Last year, thousands protested in Beirut calling for rights in order to return.
Sunday’s protest wasn’t ended by Israel’s force but by that of the Lebanese army. After hours at the fence, Lebanese soldiers moved in and began firing their M16s in the air non-stop, creating a stampede of frightened protesters who sprinted back up the incline. People fell on top of each other, some hurled themselves to the ground to seek cover. As the crowd continued rushing up the mountain, the army fired teargas until all were gone.
Taking a break near the top, I met two young men sitting side by side. They asked me to photograph them – one was Lebanese and the other a Palestinian refugee – to show that it wasn’t only Palestinians protesting for the right of return.
I asked Mahmoud, the refugee from the Ain al-Helweh camp, what he thought of the Lebanese army, which at that point was still shooting in the air. He told me: “They’re just like the Israelis. Both of them are stopping us from returning home.”
I pointed out that the Israelis were killing people at the fence and asked if he thought he could return by protesting. “Let [the Lebanese army] give us the chance, and let’s see what happens.”
The fight with the Lebanese army highlights the complicated journey Palestinian refugees must take to achieve their rights. Not only this, but yesterday there were only a handful of international journalists covering the important demonstrations, and many commentators don’t see the refugees’ struggle as legitimate. Never is a refugee’s right to return to the lands he/she was forced to flee brought into question, except when that refugee is a Palestinian. Often the fate of the Israeli regime is raised when considering the rights of Palestinian refugees. Yet when Egyptians, Libyans and others took to the streets in the Arab world, it wasn’t a concern for the justice-supporting international community what became of the regimes they battled against. In many cases, internationals have even joined in calls for their ousting.
Yesterday Palestinians climbed back down the mountain and into their buses to return to more than a dozen refugee camps, unrecognised “gatherings” and other areas around Lebanon. After 63 years in exile, it’s time that the same international solidarity offered to the various people in the Arab world be offered to Palestinian refugees in their battle for freedom.
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One of the many signs of the growing worldwide movement in support of the Palestinian struggle for their rights under international law and elemental morality is the increased awareness of the Nakba. On this 63rd anniversary of the catastrophic Palestinian experience since 1948 when an escaping and expelled 760,000 Palestinians (now this dispossessed population has grown to 4.7 million; the 160,000 Palestinians who managed to stay behind in what became Israel now number 1.3 million) there is an encouraging sense that the destiny of the Palestinian people has entered a more hopeful phase: the Arab Spring, combined with earlier political developments in Turkey and Lebanon, have shifted the regional balance toward a greater identification with the Palestinian people and their just claims under international law and morality; the growing BDS worldwide campaign has extended the symbolic battlefield in the Legitimacy War against Israeli occupation, and related policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, barrier wall, blockade, settlements; the decision by the recently unified Palestinian leadership to seek acknowledgement of Palestinian statehood in the United Nations this September opening possibilities for further motivating the international community to live up to its responsibilities to address Palestinian grievances that have gone unanswered for these 63 years of UN endorsement of the valid establishment of Israel, despite it being a colonial settler state imposed on and carved out of historic Palestine; new signs of activism among the Palestinians living under occupation and in exile; the manifest and deplorable double standards involved in supporting the violent imposition of a No Fly Zone on Libya, which is in reality an effort to achieve regime change on behalf of a rebel insurgency of unknown character, while refusing to protect the people of Gaza who have severely victimized by a total blockade that has lasted almost four years, a massive case of deliberate and criminal collective punishment outlawed by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Against such a background the ongoing mobilization of public engagement on behalf of Palestinian rights should enlist all persons of conscience throughout the world, a populist dynamic that is happening and should intensify in the coming year. From this perspective it may soon be the case that the annual observance of the Nakba will be treated as the first truly global holiday the world has known.
Despite these developments there is no indication whatsoever that the Israeli leadership or public has any interest in achieving a sustainable peace or that it is prepared to desist from its expansionist and annexationist approach to the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are a few lonely Israeli voices calling for justice to the Palestinian people. For instance, Gideon Levy calling on Israel to teach ‘a different heritage lesson,’ that of the Nabka. Writing in Haaretz (15.5.2011) Levy writes, “Not only is it possible to permit the Israeli Palestinians to commemorate the day of their heritage and express their national and personal pain, something that should be self-evident, but also to teach us, the Jews, the other narrative..Only on the day that the pupils in Israel also learn about the Nabka, will we know that the earth is no longer burning under our feet..”
The Nakba is of course a day of grievance and resolve for all Palestinians including the several million living in refugee camps for decades in the countries surrounding Palestine and other millions in exile throughout the region and the world. A sustainable peace must realize the rights of all Palestinians, and must be broader and deeper than ending the occupation or establishing a Palestinian state. Palestinian representation to be legitimate and effective must keep faith with this wider Palestinian reality, and not confine its political program to a territorial imaginary. Just as the Palestinian solidarity movement is without boundaries so must be the campaign to achieve full realization of all of the rights of the dispossessed Palestinian people.
To live under Israeli occupation or as refugees for a day is difficult, for a week is unendurable, but to do so for decades is intolerable beyond words of outrage and empathy. We cannot grasp the enormity of this ordeal merely by underscoring the fact that Nakba occurred 63 years ago and that the added cruelty of the occupation started in 1967. Only the existential experience of being on the ground in occupied Palestine or visiting refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria can begin in a modest way to impart an understanding of the suffering and insecurity that is a daily reality of all those so confined, and even this can give rise to a false consciousness of ‘knowing.’ Those that visit can leave, those subject to regimen cannot, and that makes all the difference!
Below is the text of a press release issued in my capacity as Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, and released under the auspices of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva.
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The UN human rights expert on the 63th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba
Geneva — On May 15 2011 the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Mr. Richard Falk, marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophic beginning of the Palestinian tragedy of dispossession and occupation, with the following statement.
“Since the Nakba on 15 May 1948 Israel has continuously confiscated Palestinian land in order to build illegal settlements and populate them with Israeli citizens. It is astonishing that no one in the international community has stepped forward, after 63 years, to coerce Israel to comply with international law. Israel’s legacy of ethnic cleansing continues and even accelerated.
“The construction of the Wall inside the West Bank results in an additional 12% of land confiscation and demolition of Palestinian homes, in flagrant defiance of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.
“This past week seven Palestinian families in the West Bank village of al-Walaja received demolition orders. This is a reminder that the Nakba continues. Israel’s pursuit of what it calls ‘facts on the ground’ consistently forces Palestinians to abandon their homes, lands, and lives, creating a reality better understood as virtual annexation.
“This is a particularly notable Nakba anniversary, as it coincides with the release of information confirming that Israel secretly revoked as many as 140,000 residency permits of Palestinians between 1967 and 1994. This is not only another violation of Israel’s obligations as the Occupying Power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is also a glaring example of several sinister schemes that Israel has employed over the years to rid historic Palestine of its original inhabitants, in order to make space for Israeli citizens.
“The international community needs to take urgent action to compel Israel to end its confiscation and occupation of Palestinian land.”
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4. Washington Post,
May 15, 2011
Israeli troops fire at Palestinian protesters on borders, killing at least 12
JERUSALEM — Thousands of Palestinians marched from Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank toward Israeli border positions on Sunday, hurling rocks and surging across one frontier before the Israeli army opened fire, killing at least 12 people and injuring scores.
The marches, which brought the protest culture of the Arab Spring to Israel’s doorstep, marked an unprecedented escalation of the annual demonstrations on the anniversary of the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the demonstrators were challenging “the very existence of Israel” and, in nationally broadcast remarks, pledged that the country was “determined to defend our borders and sovereignty.”
Palestinians commemorate Israel’s founding as al-Naqba, or the catastrophe, marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the war that followed Israel’s declaration of independence.
The coordinated protests on Sunday were organized using many of the social media tools that have propelled revolts in Arab countries in recent months, and the message they carried, of Palestinian demands for the right to return to their ancestral homes, struck a raw nerve among Israelis, who have been watching the popular uprisings with concern that they could strengthen groups hostile to Israel.
Some Israeli officials pointed a finger at Syria and its ally Iran, accusing them of instigating the protests to deflect attention from the deadly repression of the anti-government demonstrations in Syria.
The Israeli army’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said Syrian and Lebanese troops had failed to hold back the demonstrators, who had arrived in busloads from Palestinian refugee camps.
The most serious incident was on the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, where thousands of protesters gathered on the Syrian side and hundreds flooded into the Israeli-held territory after flattening the border fence. Scores entered the Druze village of Majdal Shams, gathering in the central square, where they raised Palestinian flags.
“We cannot put up with this anymore. We are demanding our right of return,” said Muhammad Umran, 35, from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria’s capital, Damascus, who spoke by telephone from Majdal Shams. “We are not afraid,” he said, adding that his family was originally from a village near the city of Safed.
Another protester, Muhammad Suleiman, also from the Yarmouk camp, said by telephone that the crowds had passed through minefields and planted Syrian and Palestinian flags on an Israeli army jeep vacated by troops during the rock-throwing melee. The empty jeep was visible in television broadcasts from the scene.
Israeli troops opened fire to drive back the protesters, killing two, according to Israeli officials and Syrian television, which said that more than 100 were injured. The Syrian Foreign Ministry described the Israeli actions as “criminal acts.”
Soldiers later rebuilt the fence, and by nightfall nearly all the protesters were returned to Syria, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.
On the frontier with Lebanon, 10 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded, the Lebanese army said, when Israeli troops opened fire at a crowd of protesters that broke away from a larger demonstration and hurled rocks over the border fence near the village of Maroun al-Ras. The Israeli army said its forces fired warning shots when dozens of protesters tried to breach the fence and enter Israeli territory.
Hundreds of Lebanese troops, United Nations peacekeepers and riot police officers had been deployed in the border area, but there was also a presence of the guerrilla group Hezbollah, whose activists organized entry to Maroun al-Ras and handed out Palestinian flags, the Associated Press reported. Images from the scene broadcast on Hezbollah television showed mourners carrying the bodies of youths on stretchers through the crowds.
At the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, hundreds of protesters marched on a border crossing with Israel, and Israeli troops opened fire to drive them back.
Palestinians reported that the Israelis fired several artillery shells as a warning and then used gunfire to disperse the crowd. More than 100 people were wounded, according to local emergency services.
The army said soldiers had fired at the legs of rioters who hurled rocks at the troops and vandalized the border crossing.
In a separate incident along the Gaza border, Israeli troops fatally shot a Palestinian man who the army said was trying to plant explosives at the border fence.
At the Qalandia crossing between the West Bank and Jerusalem, stone-throwing youths battled soldiers for hours after a march by several hundred people was dispersed with tear gas. Palestinians reported that dozens were injured by rubber-coated bullets. A large rally was held in the central square in neighboring Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority. In Jordan, security forces used tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators, preventing them from reaching the border with Israel, the Reuters news agency reported.
Inside Israel, where security forces were on high alert for possible violence, a truck driven by an Israeli Arab plowed through a crowded street in Tel Aviv, hitting several cars, crashing into a bus and killing a motorist. The police said that the driver claimed it was an accident, but that they were investigating whether the incident was a deliberate attack.
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in the West Bank contributed to this report.
People rally to commemorate the Nakba at al-Manar Square in Ramallah, West Bank [Jon Elmer]
The Qalandia checkpoint and crossing is a massive security terminal built into Israel’s concrete separation wall dividing Ramallah from Jerusalem and the southern West Bank, and is a frequent flashpoint for protests.
On Sunday, as simultaneous demonstrations throughout the region commemorated the 1948 displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel, Israeli forces crossed the barrier into the Palestinian refugee camp of Qalandia and fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at hundreds of demonstrators who responded with stones in a day-long battle.
Palestinian medics evacuated dozens of people who succumbed to the heavy use of tear gas, including many in the nearby refugee camp not involved in the demonstrations.
“I have not seen this many casualties in one day since the Second Intifada,” said Dr Sami Dar Nakhla, director of the field hospital. In total, more than eighty protesters received treatment, of which twenty were hospitalised – including three paramedics.
Dr Dar Nakhla said he found evidence of the army using new and brutal forms of crowd control.
“This teargas is toxic, it is the first time I have seen it. It is causing fits, seizures and unconsciousness,” he declared.
As many as 40 people were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets, according to reports, and there were numerous violent arrests.
In the late afternoon, undercover Israeli units dressed as Palestinian demonstrators – and at least one dressed as an elderly woman – turned on the crowd and made a series of dramatic arrests at gunpoint as Israeli troops advanced in an unsuccessful bid to end the protest.
Sunday’s Nakba Day commemoration included protests elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in Palestinian refugee communities in neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.
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6. The Guardian,
May 16, 2011
Palestinians clash with Israeli troops at borders – video
Protests to commemorate Nakba, or the ‘day of the catastrophe’ 63 years ago, when Palestinians were displaced, turn violent as Israeli forces fire on protesters, killing at least 13
On Wednesday, 11th May, 2011, Palestinian farmers from Fur’ata, co-ordinating with the army, went to plough their land, situated half a kilometre from the outpost Havat Gilad. Settlers from Havat Gilad came and started throwing stones at the farmers. Instead of repulsing the attackers, the soldiers arrested two Palestinians on the allegation that they had tried to run over one of the attackers with a vehicle.
One of those detained was released within an hour. The other was released on bail two days later.
On Wednesday, 11th May, 2011, government representatives under a police escort demolished homes in several Bedouin villages in the Negev: in Umm Ratam they demolished a shed, injured three people and arrested one. In El-Ghara a home was demolished. In El-Zarnuq two homes were demolished. An animal shed was demolished in El-Bahir. The forces continued on to El-’Araqib and demolished the village for the 24th time!
Bowing to international pressure, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz confirmed a statement issued by a Palestinian official on Sunday that he would renew the transfer of millions of dollars in suspended tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority.
“For the last two weeks, we gave the PA a yellow card,” the finance minister said Sunday night, “but we decided to renew the revenue transfers after we got confirmation from the Palestinians that no money will be transferred to Hamas or to terrorist operations.”
Steinitz added that “Israel reserves the right to stop the transfer of revenues once again if in the next few months Hamas will become part of the Palestinian government.”
Earlier this month Israel had blocked the routine handover of about 300 million shekels ($88 million) in customs and other levies it collects on behalf of the Palestinians after Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas struck a unity deal with Hamas, his Islamist rivals.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said at the time he would only allow the transfer after receiving guarantees the money would not reach Hamas, an Islamist militant group who runs the Gaza Strip and whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction.
Before Steinitz issued his statement, an official in Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s office said they had been informed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Middle East envoy Tony Blair that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approved the transfer.
An aide to Steinitz, who as finance minister oversees the funds, said he had “received some clarifications” in recent days, but that the money had not been transferred.
Fayyad had sought international intervention to prevent the Israeli measure. The PA is also heavily dependent on aid from donors including the United States, which has said its future assistance will depend on the shape of a new Palestinian government, expected to be formed under the unity agreement.
Netanyahu said the Palestinian unity deal was a blow to peace efforts.
The tax transfers provide the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, with $1 billion to $1.4 billion annually. Palestinian officials said they would not be able to meet their commitments, including paying salaries, without the funds.
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9. [Whether eventually there will be a single secular country with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, or if we end up with 2 states—a first step to reconcilliation and understanding is knowing and feeling each other’s narratives, Dorothy]
Haaretz Monday, May 16, 2011
Latest update 02:39 16.05.11
On remembrance and hope for peace and equality
How sad it is to watch irresponsible adults, Jews and Arabs, developing expertise in the building of walls of alienation, fear and prejudice while children at Bridge Over the Wadi bilingual school learn tolerance and hope.
When the siren sounded in the elementary school courtyard last week, Tamar and Lin, both nine years old, were holding hands. The pupils, all wearing white shirts, stood silently. Their teachers shed tears. The teacher, Sabrine, conducted the ceremony with great emotion. At one point, they sang “Tears of Angels,” and released kites. The principal quoted Mahatma Gandhi, who said that wherever people follow the principle of an eye for an eye, everyone is blind – and then added “we’ve decided not to be blind.”
Tamar is my oldest granddaughter; Lin is an Arab girl. The two of them study at the bilingual school, Bridge Over the Wadi, in Kafr Kara, in the Wadi Ara area. Sabrine is a Palestinian-Israeli. The school’s principal, Dr. Hasan Agbaria is an educator whose personality is a combination of serene cordiality, intellectual integrity and courage. This is his first year at Bridge Over the Wadi – and the first year that the school, located in the heart of an Arab village, conducted a memorial ceremony for those who fell in Israel’s war with the Arabs. Agbaria has dared to do what Jewish principals before him at the school did not do before. In the past, the pupils were sent home before the siren sounded. But together with his colleagues on the staff, and in consultation with parents, he came up with a detailed plan of activities for the national holidays of the two peoples.
In a letter sent to parents, the school’s administration wrote: “Last week we devoted time to exposing pupils to, and studying, the events that occurred in 1948. The pupils studied the two narratives, the Palestinian and the Israeli, while displaying respect for the other and listening even at moments of disagreement, and contradiction [between the narratives]. The learning was based on our belief in the importance of knowing the past, and becoming acquainted with the other side, so that we can live together in the present, and guarantee a better future.”
Yesterday, when media outlets incessantly reported about the security forces’ preparations for “disturbances” on Nakba Day, Jewish and Arab pupils at Bridge Over the Wadi united to honor Palestinian memories. Less than a week after they stood together to honor the fallen in Israel’s wars, Jewish and Arab teachers alike asked that everyone become acquainted with the people and places on the other side of the conflict, which has yet to end.
The activities were conducted under the shadow of the new legislation that threatens to cut government allocations to any institution that dares to refer to Israel’s Independence Day as a day of mourning. But Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will not find even a trace of offense in this activity; it is utterly devoid of malice and lacks any reference, heaven forbid, to a day of mourning.
The pupils were exposed yesterday to the stories of villages that were abandoned in Wadi Ara. The information was conveyed via biographies of persons who lived in the region, and by memorializing their names both verbally and in drawings. The youngsters learned to express their feelings, criticism and longings also, in part, by reading poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. They studied works rendered by Palestinian caricaturist Naji al-Ali that have become iconic images in his people’s struggle for independence. The children also were asked to come up with their own protest, on any subject that came to mind, and to present it in songs and cartoons. They concluded the activities by stressing the longing for a better future, one of peace and truth.
Agbaria did not conceal his pride. “There is nothing more moving, during the current period, than seeing our children at Bridge Over the Wadi severing themselves from national and language-related differences, and connecting with a shared sense of humanity and with the ostensibly simple concepts of fraternity and solidarity.”
At this oasis of sanity at Kafr Kara, parents, teachers and pupils proved that our own narrative can be honored, without invalidating the other narrative. They taught and learned that the Palestinian memory can be cultivated, without repressing our own memory.
How sad it is to watch irresponsible adults, Jews and Arabs, developing expertise in the building of walls of alienation, fear and prejudice. In contrast, how inspiring it was to see Tamar and Lin, two girls who with their own small hands held the keys to equality, reconciliation and hope
