Drora Harehuveni, Haganah Dispatch Driver, 1948.
The Haganah (Hebrew for “defense”) was the precursor to the state of Israel’s armed forces. It was a private Zionist military organization founded in 1920 and active until 1948, comprised of Jewish men and women (Britannica). Its purpose was to defend Jewish settlers in the British Mandate for Palestine, though they were ineffectively banned from doing so by the British government. The Haganah hoped that the territory they occupied would one day become a proper Jewish state, which it ultimately did with the founding of Israel in 1948. However, to get to that point, the Haganah faced an obstacle to their path: the presence of native Arab Palestinians throughout Mandatory Palestine who were unwilling to leave their homes and willing to fight to defend them. These Palestinians were also unwilling to make any concession toward the establishment of a Jewish state, and as such refused to agree to a 1947 United Nations plan which would have created one Jewish state and one Arab state to reconcile the differences of the two groups in the region. Throughout its existence, the Haganah for the most part successfully protected Jewish immigrants and put down Palestinian riots started in opposition to Jewish immigration and economic power. After decades of tense coexistence between this outlawed Zionist militia and Palestinians indignant at Great Britain’s complicity, the official creation of the state of Israel provided the catalyst for tension to boil over into perpetual resentful conflict. Palestinians who were deported or needed to flee from their homes to escape violence were sorrowful and angry at what their lives had come to under the rule of the Israeli government. Many Palestinians in small villages remained unmolested by Israeli forces, though numerous urban centers descended into chaos as power was transitioned to the Israeli government. One such location was the coastal city of Haifa in the northwest of the country, from which upwards of 50,000 Arabs fled in a panic in 1948 (Wikipedia). A heartfelt albeit fictional telling of one Arab couple’s flight from Haifa was published in 2000’s compilation of the works of Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine’s Children. Originally published in 1970, two years before Kanafani’s assassination by Mossad, the short story “Returning to Haifa” represents Kanafani’s reflection on his own experience being exiled from his native city of Acre during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In that story, husband Said and wife Safiyya, some 20 years after their abrupt departure from Haifa and regretful abandonment of their son there, return to the city to see how things had changed with the tacit goal of seeking out and reclaiming their long-lost son. Instead, they find their son has been raised by a Jewish couple in their absence, and wants nothing to do with his biological parents. In self-reflection, Said expresses regret at his refusal to let his second-born son join the Palestinian fedayeen guerillas, realizing that his own mistakes can only be solved the next generation’s efforts. The moral of the story, and Kanafani’s message to the reader, is that the fight for Palestine remains an ongoing battle and responsibility that sits on the shoulders of future generations to carry out. In contrast, some Palestinians hold a more cynical view of Palestine’s future– the fight has stalled and all that can be done now is expose the true scale of the damage done to the Palestinian people by Israel. American anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod is the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, her father, who made a life for himself in the United States after being exiled from his home. Abu-Lughod chronicles her father’s decision to return to his homeland and eventually resume living there in the book Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. As Abu-Lughod recorded her father’s observations of how Palestine had changed over time, she came to realize a theme. Productive factories which previously employed Palestinians now sat abandoned for decades. The sites of razed Palestinian villages now sit concealed by non-native evergreen forests. Military checkpoints now restrict travel between Palestinian communities. Abu-Lughod sees a more hopeless situation than Kanafani did. Where Kanafani acknowledges the experiences of his generation as part of an old way of life and hopes the future will offer a chance to repair the Palestinian identity, Abu-Lughod sees Israel as an oppressive state where the divide between Jews and Arabs is unjust and unsustainable. Kanafani, as represented in his story, held out hope that what was claimed by Israel could be easily reclaimed, but realized that the days of old were really gone. Abu-Lughod observed Palestine at a time when this was already painfully apparent– Palestinians live as second-class citizens as their past is left to die in silence. The two agree on this: Palestinians cannot simply reclaim their old way of life by physically returning to their lands. Israel owns their land and takes action to enforce their claim. This regional conflict stems from two irreconcilable views. 1) The Palestinians want to own the entirety of what was their land before World War I. 2) The Jewish inhabitants want to peacefully occupy the land they claim as Israel, but are willing to use oppressive force given the Palestinians’ refusal to give the land up. If you believe Zionism and the state of Israel’s formation were the direct result of the Holocaust and World War II, then so too was the creation of this conflict, which lasts to the present and is one of the greatest geopolitical problems in the world. Bibliography: Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Return to Half-Ruins: Memory, Postmemory, and Living History in Palestine,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, eds. Ahmad H. Sa’di & Lila Abu-Lughod, 2007. Britannica. “Haganah.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed October 26, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haganah. Kanafani, Ghassan. Returning to Haifa, 2000. Kluger, Zoltan. “A Haganah Dispatch Rider, Drora Harehuveni, on Her Motorcycle.” Wikimedia Commons, March 17, 1948. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Hagana_dispatch_rider,_Drora_Harehuveni,_on_her_motocycle.jpg. Shlaim, Avi. “The Debate about 1948,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27.3, 1995. Wikipedia. “Haifa.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, September 20, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa#1947%E2%80%931948_Civil_War_in_Palestine.
It is interesting that you present the possibility that “if you believe Zionism and the state of Israel’s formation were the direct result of the Holocaust and World War II, then so too was the creation of this conflict.” Zionism was not birthed out of the Holocaust, however, it did gain a lot of ground in its wake. Zionism was present throughout the entire first half of the century and was involved in the mandate system following World War I. The Palestinian conflict precedes World War II. Nonetheless, it is definitely a reality that the Holocaust and the invigorated passion for Zionism contributing to exacerbating the problem.
I found it interesting when you connected the two authors’ main points by saying that “Palestinians cannot simply reclaim their old way of life by physically returning to their lands”, I think that it is true that once a homeland is disrupted, it is hard to rebuild the feelings left with the physical land.
I too found your connection between the creation of Israel with the Holocaust and the Palestinian Conflict. No doubt that the Holocaust brought the Zionist struggle to more eyes and ears around the world, but as already stated the Zionist movement was created long before Hitler ever took power. That does propose a question that if the Holocaust had not had such a Jewish focus, could the outcome of the Zionist movement have changed?
I like how you point out how while Abu-Lughod and Kanafani agree on the ultimate fact that Palestinians cannot reclaim their old way of life by physically returning to their lands, they have wildly differing viewpoints/outlooks on what Palestine and its people’s future might look like. I also definitely do think that the holocaust and WWII were the causes for Israel’s creation (though not Zionism as a whole necessarily) and it definitely has caused a lot of issues. Is there any way to peacefully resolve this conflict? Even not peacefully? Palestinians I feel have a very good reason to be upset and their desire to resist is understandable, but Israel’s creation wasn’t for no reason. It’s obviously a very complicated subject and I am interested to see how it continues to unfold.
This was great the background was super in depth but also brief. I liked the conclusion that you drew about the realization of the inability to return to the old Palestine. That even if Palestinians were able to reclaim Palestine it would still be unrecognizable to generation of the Mass exodus.