Nakba: The turning point for all Palestinians

Israeli soldiers stand guard as Palestinians protest in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. (Reuters)
Updated 15 May 2019
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Nakba: The turning point for all Palestinians

RAMALLAH: As Palestinians worldwide mark the Nakba today, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, Sara Al-Hilwa clearly remembers the day that changed her life.

“My father came home with a truck. My parents had heard of the Deir Yassin massacre, and were afraid the Jews would come to us next. We took whatever we could, and drove off,” the 76-year-old said, as she sat at her current home — a simple bedroom in Al-Amari refugee camp, south of Ramallah.

Sara Al_Hilwa’s family was not alone as more than 710,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their villages and cities over the following days. Some fled to Lebanon and Syria, others to Jordan or Gaza. Palestinian society has never been the same since. Now, 70 years later, many still have makeshift lives in refugee camps all over the Middle East.

The uprooting is an open wound still for Palestinians. While doing academic research in the dense refugee camps in Gaza, Norwegian social anthropologist Dag Tuastad  noticed a pattern in how the communities had come to terms with their lost society: “Around two thirds of the refugees chose to marry people from their original village or city. 

“While families or clans are not so large in the refugee camps, decades later they still had a mechanism for maintaining their identity.”

Palestinian leaders promised the refugees the day would come when they would all be able to return home to what is today Israel. In  many Middle Eastern countries, such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, refugees endured discrimination, on the grounds that they were temporary residents. But after lifetimes spent in simple housing, devoid of hope, many refugees today feel manipulated by their leaders, and accuse them of selling them illusions.

“It is just empty talk,” said Hajjem Yousef Mahadi, a 74-year old refugee, also in Al-Amari camp, who came originally from the city of Lydda. After decades living as a temporary refugee, she no longer believes that she will ever return home. She, too, remembers the day she was uprooted.

What she did not know at that time is that her fate, alongside that of tens of thousands of others, had been sealed with a simple, dismissive wave of a hand. 




Sara Al-Hilwa, in Al-Amari Camp

After Lydda fell in July 1948, military commander Yigal Allon turned to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, and asked what do to with the local population. Ben-Gurion said nothing, but merely waved his hand in a wordless gesture that everyone seemed to understand. Soon Yitzhak Rabin, who was to win a Nobel prize later, wrote the formal order: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.”

Sara’s family was among the exodus from the city, embarking on a long march to the West Bank.

“We got on a cart, and a mule pulled us, slowly, with lots of others in front of us and behind us,” she said. The expulsion from Lydda, which is now next to Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, was one of the largest of the 1948 war.

The growing feeling among refugees today of having been sold illusions is understandable: Recent leaks from the official Palestinian negotiation teams confirm that the Palestinian leaders gave up demanding a return to what is today Israel.

According to the so-called Palestine Papers, a collection of 10,000 documents from the Palestinian negotiating team that were leaked to Al Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper in 2011, the Israelis and the Palestinians were negotiating the return of only about 10,000 of the around five million refugees to their homes.

For Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government minister, the Nakba is not only about the refugees. 

“The Nakba is the turning point for all Palestinians. Commemorating the Nakba is about taking a stand for resistance, and in particular for self-determination and statehood,” he told Arab News.

“For Palestinians, the Nakba is also a continuing affair that only started in 1948, but continued through 1967 and until today, with Jerusalem,” he said.

As Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, the US, under President Donald Trump, has moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“You see, it never ended,” Khatib said of the highly contested diplomatic move.

Now, 70 years on, a handful of the refugees are still around to tell their stories. While Palestinians still do not have their own state, museums have sprung up in the self-rule area of the West Bank dedicated to telling the Palestinian story, and keeping memories of the Nakba alive.

Just north of the Birzeit University is the Palestinian Museum, functioning like a national museum. Children are bussed from all over the West Bank to the $24 million complex. Currently the main exhibition shows hand-made embroidered clothes by Palestinians.

“Look, this is from Gaza in 1935, and you can see how the cypress trees are part of the embroidery pattern. You had a lot of cypress trees in Gaza,” said museum guide Hannah Eusheid. “This one here is from Hebron in 1920, with its famous grapes in the pattern,” she said as she showed us around the colorful exhibition hall.

Visitors hear how traditional embroidery was affected by the Nakba. People had less money, so it was harder tot get hold of the necessary fabrics. Today embroidery has become a visual symbol of Palestinian identity, often featuring in Palestinian nationalist posters.

“Through embroidery we see how the Nakba changed our society. There is no doubt, preserving the Nakba is part of the story,” she said.

For the elderly refugees, who once wore the embroidery, there is little chance of ever returning to the homes the patterns celebrate. While the Palestinian struggle for independence continues, this year’s Nakba commemoration has become a moment for introspection.

With a Palestinian state nowhere on the horizon, Palestinian leaders are seen as increasingly corrupt and disconnected.

“We haven’t had elections, we haven’t seen a renewal of our leadership,” Khatib said. The main problem, however, he said, rests with the Israeli side. 

The Palestinian leadership gambled on the peace process, which failed. The failure of the peace process created the gap seen today between the Palestinian leadership and the people.

There is no hope on the horizon. With war and tension in neighbors such as Syria, Iraq and Iran, Arab states seem less supportive of the Palestinians. For the first time since 1948, the Arab-Israeli conflict no longer seems to be the most urgent matter facing the Middle East. 

In the Al-Amari camp outside Ramallah, Sara’s son, Khaled, should have had a bright future. Strong and handsome, but the 40-year old is also jobless, having been shot not twice in the legs by Israeli soldiers.

He spends his days watching Palestinians in Gaza demonstrating by the border near Israel, seeing the young people running towards Israeli bullets.  As Israel has cut the Gazans off from the rest of the world, and Hamas runs an ever more oppressive regime, Khaled said he understands the protesters.

“The world must understand, these people have reached the point where death is better than life,” he said.


US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

Updated 4 sec ago
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US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

  • US has given Israel until Nov. 13 to improve humanitarian situation in Gaza
  • The letter calls for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza

WASHINGTON: Israel has informed the United States that it will open an additional crossing for aid into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday, as a US-imposed deadline looms next week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in the war-besieged Gaza Strip or risk the withholding of some military assistance from the United States, Israel’s biggest supporter.
They made the demands in a letter before Tuesday’s election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to give freer rein to Israel.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Israel, after recently reopening the Erez crossing, has informed the United States that they “hope to open an additional new crossing at Kissufim” in “the next few days.”
“We have continued to press them, and we have seen them, including in the past few days since the election, take additional steps,” Miller told reporters.
He stopped short of saying how the United States would assess Israel’s compliance with the aid demands.
In the letter, Blinken and Austin had urged Israel to “consistently” let aid through four major crossings and to open a fifth crossing.
Kissufim, near a kibbutz across from southern Gaza that was attacked in the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault that sparked the war, has mostly been in disuse except by the military since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The letter called for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza. Miller said 229 trucks entered on Tuesday.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has repeatedly pressed Israel to improve humanitarian aid and protect civilians, while mostly stopping short of using leverage such as cutting off weapons.
Miller said Blinken hoped to keep using the rest of his term to press for an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.


US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November
Updated 07 November 2024
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US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

  • The US has given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza
  • Letter calls for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza

WASHINGTON: Israel has informed the United States that it will open an additional crossing for aid into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday, as a US-imposed deadline looms next week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in the war-besieged Gaza Strip or risk the withholding of some military assistance from the United States, Israel’s biggest supporter.
They made the demands in a letter before Tuesday’s election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to give freer rein to Israel.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Israel, after recently reopening the Erez crossing, has informed the United States that they “hope to open an additional new crossing at Kissufim” in “the next few days.”
“We have continued to press them, and we have seen them, including in the past few days since the election, take additional steps,” Miller told reporters.
He stopped short of saying how the United States would assess Israel’s compliance with the aid demands.
In the letter, Blinken and Austin had urged Israel to “consistently” let aid through four major crossings and to open a fifth crossing.
Kissufim, near a kibbutz across from southern Gaza that was attacked in the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault that sparked the war, has mostly been in disuse except by the military since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The letter called for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza. Miller said 229 trucks entered on Tuesday.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has repeatedly pressed Israel to improve humanitarian aid and protect civilians, while mostly stopping short of using leverage such as cutting off weapons.
Miller said Blinken hoped to keep using the rest of his term to press for an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.


France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank

Updated 07 November 2024
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France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank

  • “France has been a driving force to establish the first sanction regime at the European level,” Barrot said
  • Barrot renewed France’s commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

RAMALLAH: France is mulling new sanctions on those enabling the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, regarded as illegal under international law, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on a visit to the territory on Thursday.
“France has been a driving force to establish the first sanction regime at the European level targeting individuals or entities, either actors or accomplices of settlement activities,” Barrot said after talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah.
“This regime has been activated two times already and we’re working on a third batch of sanctions targeting these activities that again are illegal with respect to international law.”
Barrot renewed France’s commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned settlement activities “threaten the political perspective that can ensure durable peace for Israel and Palestine.”
Before meeting Abbas, Barrot visited the adjacent town of Al-Bireh, where Israeli settlers set fire to 20 cars on Monday, damaging a nearby building.
After speaking with residents and local officials at the scene, Barrot noted that the attack took place in a part of the West Bank where the Palestinians were supposed to enjoy both civil and security control under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
“These attacks from extremist and violent settlers are not only completely inexcusable, not only contrary to international law, but they weaken the perspective of a two-state solution,” Barrot said.
Ramallah and Al-Bireh governor Laila Ghannam expressed outrage that settler attacks were “taking place in full view and hearing of the entire silent international community.”
“Perhaps today, with the visit of the French foreign minister, there will be a spotlight here,” she told AFP.
Speaking in Jerusalem earlier Thursday, Barrot said he saw prospects for ending Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon after Donald Trump’s re-election, citing the Republican’s “wish to see the end of the Middle East’s endless wars” as well as recent “tactical successes” for Israel.


Moroccan population grows to 36.8 million in 2024

The Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million since the last census in 2014. (AFP)
Updated 07 November 2024
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Moroccan population grows to 36.8 million in 2024

RABAT: The Moroccan population grew to 36.82 million by September 2024, according to the preliminary results of a national census, the spokesman for the government said on Thursday.
Compared with the most recent census in 2014, the Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million or 8.8 percent, spokesman Mustapha Baitas told reporters.
The number of households grew to 9.27 million by September 2024, up 26.8 percent compared to 2014, while the number of foreigners living in the country increased to 148,152, up 71.8 percent, he said.


Israel escalates attacks on Lebanon as strikes hit near Beirut airport

A rescuer and a member of the Malaysian battalion of UNIFIL treat a soldier wounded in an Israeli airstrike near Sidon. (AFP)
Updated 07 November 2024
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Israel escalates attacks on Lebanon as strikes hit near Beirut airport

  • Drone strike near Sidon kills three and injures Lebanese soldiers and UN peacekeepers
  • Former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s uncle and family members also killed

BEIRUT: At least 10 people were killed in Lebanon on Thursday in Israeli drone attacks on roads across the south, Mount Lebanon and Bekaa.

Former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s uncle and his family members were also killed by strikes in southern Lebanon.

In Baalbek-Hermel, dozens of victims were laid to rest. They died trapped under the rubble of several flattened buildings, some adjacent to the Baalbek Temple.

In the afternoon, an Israeli strike targeted Tyre.

An Israeli drone hit a car on the Araya road in Mount Lebanon, killing the driver, a 30-year-old woman, making her Israel’s first female target.

Doaa Mattar’s family said that they lost contact with their daughter at the time of the raid.

A relative said that Mattar had taken her friend’s car to drive her family from Beirut to Bhamdoun.

Her body was taken to Hezbollah’s Al-Rassoul Al-Azam Hospital, while two injured passersby — a man and his grandson — were transported to the Sacre Coeur Hospital.

Hours later, another Israeli drone targeted a car on the Awali River road at the entrance to the city of Sidon, south of Beirut.

The strike killed three people inside the vehicle, injured three Lebanese soldiers at a nearby checkpoint and damaged several cars, including a passing UNIFIL convoy bus.

It resulted in five minor injuries among Malaysian UNIFIL soldiers and two civilian injuries.

Meanwhile, Beirut’s southern suburb experienced a violent night of airstrikes that continued until the early hours of Thursday morning, targeting Haret Hreik, Burj Al-Barajneh, Tahwitat Al-Ghadir and Ouzai.

One of the strikes came close to a runway at Beirut airport, causing damage to facilities.

However, airport operations continued, with Middle East Airlines switching to alternative runways for landing minutes after Israel issued evacuation warnings.

All planes heading for Beirut landed shortly before midnight ahead of the Israeli-imposed deadline.

The airstrikes on the southern suburb of Beirut caused extensive damage to residential buildings, shops, schools, social facilities and health centers.

A week of relative calm in Beirut’s southern suburb was shattered as warning sirens caused recently returned residents to flee north.

Many families were forced on to the streets, waiting in their vehicles at a safe distance from the targeted areas.

The Israeli military claimed to have conducted precision strikes against Hezbollah command centers and military infrastructure in the Lebanese capital, according to military spokesman Avichay Adraee.

Israel’s systematic destruction of southern Lebanese towns continued with renewed intensity. Israeli forces reportedly rigged and detonated entire neighborhoods in the border town of Mays Al-Jabal.

Israeli warplanes conducted strikes on the outskirts of Yahmar Al-Shaqif near the Litani River, hitting the town center and eastern areas. The predominantly Christian town of Rmeish, whose residents have steadfastly refused to leave, was also targeted.

In Jbaa, located in the Tuffah region, airstrikes caused significant damage. A separate strike on Bazouriye killed four members of Nasrallah’s extended family, including his uncle, cousins and their grandson.

Reports indicate that Israeli forces used internationally prohibited cluster bombs in their targeting of agricultural fields.

The scope of destruction has reached unprecedented levels in Nabatieh, where medical facilities, businesses, institutions, warehouses and residential buildings have been severely damaged.

Footage shared on social media revealed that entire neighborhoods had been turned into rubble.

Violent clashes erupted on Wednesday evening between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces near Rmeish and Yaroun, opposite the Dovev settlement.

Exchanges of fire were also reported near Aita Al-Shaab when Israeli forces attempted to advance into Lebanese territory.

The death and injury toll continues to mount, with the Bekaa region alone reporting 60 casualties, with dozens wounded.

Scenes of mass burials echoed those from Gaza. Among the dead are multiple generations of families, including the Abu Asbar family, who lost parents, children, grandchildren and in-laws during a single Israeli strike.

The attacks have also threatened Lebanon’s cultural heritage, with damage reported near the historic Baalbek Castle complex and the century-old Al-Manshieh building, known for its cultural artifacts.

The Palmyra Hotel, which has hosted decades of Baalbek festivals, also sustained damage.

Baalbek Mayor Mustafa Al-Shall said: “The enemy is targeting poor and residential neighborhoods, and it did not spare archaeological, heritage and historical sites. The number of martyrs in Baalbek is very high.”

One Israeli strike targeted soldier Raed Dandash, born in 2003, as he was driving his car in the town of Talia, in the Bekaa.

An official statement said: “Along with Raed, the strike killed his sister Nathalie and his brother Mohammed, while their mother was seriously injured.”

Airstrikes hit new areas in northern Bekaa, including the towns of Fakeha and Harfouch, killing one.

Lebanon’s officials were shocked by the attacks that targeted the vicinity of Baalbek Castle.

Culture Minister Mohammed Wissam Mortada sent an urgent appeal to UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay through the head of Lebanon’s permanent mission to the organization, Mustafa Deeb, to “save the castle.”

Several MPs also sent a letter to Azoulay, calling on the international organization to “protect the common heritage of humanity.”

In the letter, MP Najat Saliba called for “the protection of historical sites in Lebanon, especially Baalbek, Tyre, Sidon and other valuable landmarks that are in grave danger due to the escalation of atrocities.”

She said: “These landmarks are priceless not only for our nation but for humanity. They are facing a growing danger with the escalation of the war. Their protection is a responsibility that needs to be assumed in order to preserve a part of human civilization that belongs to our common global and international heritage.”

One building destroyed by Israeli strikes bore an etching showing the year 1928. It was once frequented by French officers during France’s rule over the country.

The Israeli army announced that one of its soldiers “was killed in battles in southern Lebanon, while 60 Hezbollah members were killed during the past 24 hours.”

Hezbollah issued a statement calling on settlers in northern Israel to leave their settlements, warning that they had become become military targets.