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“Present
Absentees”
Refugees Still
Living in 1948 Palestine
As
part of the entire Arab-Palestinian people, we wish to declare: The
refugee issue is the heart of the Palestinian cause and the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict… We state with a loud voice that
there will be no just solution without a solution of the issue of
the refugees and the internally displaced. The National Committee
for the Rights of the Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel
A
decade ago, Palestinian refugees remaining inside the borders of
1948 Palestine came to the collective realization that their right
to return was not on the international agenda. Negotiations at
Madrid 1991 failed to acknowledge the struggle of thousands of
Palestinian refugees who were given Israeli citizenship in 1948, but
are classified by the Jewish state as “Present Absentees.” The
situation for Palestinian refugees living inside Israel is not
simply a question of demanding minority rights, but is part of the
wider conflict, and thus must be addressed as part of a resolution.
Isabelle Humphries reports for Islam Online from the destroyed
Galilee village of Saffuriyya.
Saffuriyya
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*Saffuriyya
in 1931
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Saffuriyya,
larger than the nearest district town of Nazareth, was famous in
Roman times as “Sepphoris” with the remains of a coliseum still
visible today. Today the hill of Saffuriyya is covered with a pine
forest planted by the Jewish National Fund and commemorating such
random events as Guatemalan Independence Day. Daher al-Umar’s
somewhat dilapidated fortress still stands, but it is no longer
surrounded by a Palestinian village. The Israeli settlement of
Tzippori nestles in the hills, welcoming tourists to visit its
historical Roman paradise, with no acknowledgement of the recent
history of the ethnic cleansing of a whole village.
Israeli
forces occupied Saffuriyya on July 15, 1948, a village with over
4000 Palestinian residents and 55,000 dunams (a dunam is
approximately 1/4 acre) of land. Many of the residents fled to camps
in the south of Lebanon or farther afield. However, a fact that is
often ignored by media and negotiators alike is that numerous
residents found themselves living just a few kilometers away.
Classified by the state under the oxymoron “Present Absentees,”
the people of Saffuriyya built what they believed would be a
temporary life on the edge of Nazareth. They were given Israeli
citizenship, but while their existence was recognized, their right
to the land was not.
“I
Was Born Under That Tree Over There”
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Traditional
village visitations in holidays
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Umm Ahmad points across the field to the tree marking the spot where
she was born. The tree is the marker because the building is no
longer there. Umm Ahmad spends everyday sitting by her husband in
the fields of Saffuriyya as he tends the crops. Both are from the
village, but Abu Ahmad is paid as a wage laborer by Jewish farmers,
and does not benefit from the fruit of the land. Every night they
must return to Nazareth just two kilometers away.
For
decades the couple have come to work on the land, sheltering from
the hot midday sun under a small nylon awning. Last week, the
Israeli antiquities police tore down their shelter, because the
Palestinians were deemed to be sitting too close to the ancient well
of Saffuriyya.
Ziad
Awaisy pointed through the locked gate and beyond the trees to the
place where his family used to live. Awaisy’s immediate family is
one of a significant number who ended up in exile just a few
kilometers away in the neighborhood of Saffafra on the edge of
Nazareth. He, along with other refugees, has been organizing a
festival for the residents of Saffuriyya. Needless to say, it is not
being held in the original village.
The
festival organizers decided to make a video recording the stories of
their grandparents and those that remember before 1948. “We
brought people back here to the site to film their reactions,”
explained Awaisy, “and one Romanian living here came over to us.
He started accusing us of trying to set fire to his house. But when
we talked further, I saw that it was not this that he was afraid of.
Looking at us, he was afraid that we wanted to come and take back
our homes.”
The
“internal” refugees are struggling to keep their issue on the
agenda, as part of the wider campaign for the right of return.
“Our issue symbolizes the core of ethnic discrimination and of the
violation of Palestinian national rights,” states the National
Committee. “Raising awareness for the issue of the internally
displaced on the local and international level will spread awareness
of the historical international responsibility for one of the most
critical issues which will never be outdated.”
Finishing
the Job?
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Remains
of a mill (1987)
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Israel
mistakenly believed that the residents of Saffuriyya, as part of
100,000 Palestinians in total who were able to remain in the 1948
borders, would simply drift away, or decrease in number. In the
current climate, Israeli politicians and Zionist demographers are
openly admitting that they were wrong. Now numbering around a
million and representing 20% of the Israeli population, Palestinian
citizens are a real threat to the Zionist ethnic project.
The
topic of transfer becomes an increasingly acceptable subject for
mainstream politicians and historians in Israel. This month, the
so-called new historian Benny Morris caused an outcry among
Palestinians who had once welcomed his history, which questioned the
Zionist version of Al-Nakba (the catastrophe – Arab reference to
the 1948 displacement). “One wonders what Ben-Gurion - who
probably could have engineered a comprehensive rather than a partial
transfer in 1948, but refrained - would have made of all this...
Perhaps he would now regret his restraint,” wrote Morris in an
article in the UK Guardian, Oct 3. “Perhaps, had he gone the whole
hog, today’s Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place,
with a Jewish state between Jordan and the Mediterranean and a
Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan.” Such rhetoric from
Israelis once believed to be radical reinforces the fears of those
who believe that Israel is pursuing a second Nakba, both for
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and those, like Umm Ahmad,
still living at the heart of 1948 Palestine.
Isabelle
Humphries is a British freelance journalist and Development
Director at Sawt Al Amel (Laborer’s Voice), an organization
supporting Palestinian workers inside Israel. She has an MA in
Middle East Politics and is also a freelance writer for the Cairo
Times. You can reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk
*Photos courtesy of
www.palestineremembered.com
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