After World War II, the Holocaust and the war itself had left millions of Jews without places to call home. Of course, the real place they called home, Israel, was already taken by the Palestinians. Many people focus on the efforts made by the Jews and international organizations to create the state of Israel, and create a place for these wronged, and oppressed Jewish people. What many people don’t talk about is the displacement of the Palestinian people who had already been living there before the state of Israel was created. The “solution” for the Israeli-Palestine conflict was to split the area into areas of Palestinian occupation, and Israeli occupation. Unfortunately, many Palestinians who had been living in the new Israeli territory were forced to abandon their homes and flee. Many of these displaced Palestinians, including Lila Abu-Loghod’s father, settled in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and other places around the middle east. Many of these Palestinians fled to the United States, and attempting to start a new life there. According to Lila Abu-Loghod, “Some were successful, financially and culturally; many generation later, still living in refugee camps that have become unsettlingly permanent. For them, memories of home were frozen.” (Abu-Loghud, Return to Half-Ruins, Pg. 78)
Many people discuss the Israeli right of return for Jewish people wanted to return to their home, but what many don’t realize is there is a fight to allow displaced Palestinians the right to return to their homes before the war. Israel fights this claim, saying it is a political claim, and not a right. Years after the war, Palestinian people were allowed to return back to their homes. Ibrahaim Abu-Loghud found his home time of Jaffa was different physically. There were several landmarks that were missing. Much of the area had been changed due to Israel taking over. When he first when home, he had to ask children for the name of a certain street. The children took him to that street, although the name of the street had been changed. From this, Ibrahaim “knew that Palestinian parents were still teaching their children the old names of things even as Palestine was being buried, erased, and rewritten by Israel.” (Abu-Loghud, Return to Half-Ruins, Pg. 84) In a similar account by G Kanafani, he was “turning his car at the end of King Faisal street (for him, the street names had never changed)…” (Kanafani, Returning to Haifa, Pg. 152) Even though Israel had taken over the area, the Palestinian people who lived there now were able to keep their culture alive. People don’t often think about how the Israelis coming into Palestine claiming it was their homeland too was an invasion of Palestinian culture as well.
While the Palestinian refugees had fled their home country, and had resettled in a different one for years, they still felt the need to return home to see what had become of it. Being forced out of your home in order to provide a home for a different group of people caused many refugees to develop a sense of pride in their ethnicity. This made them not want to return home while it was still under Israeli power. They did not want to simply submit and become Israeli and live under Israeli rule. They wanted their homes back.
When I was reading these articles I wanted to see more examples of how the land had changed. It seemed as if people felt the difference more than they saw it. In the “Returning to Haifa” article it Said was able to remember almost everything about his old neighborhood. I’m curious to see how much the land really changed over the years.
You offer a lot of great ideas here. Do Jews, an arguably displaced group of people Post WWII/Holocaust, or the Palestinians that they displaced, have more of an entitlement to the land? Is sense of “home” tied to the actual land or the memories and culture that the land gives them? Is culture taken away from a group of people who are forced out or do they maintain that cultural identity?
I had hear of the displacement of the Palestinians but I never really knew how exactly they were displaced. Because most Jews are not Zionists, do you think if the creation of Israel had happened today with all of the mass media we have, would it turn out similarly or would the majority of the Jews be against the conflict?
You touched on several important issues within this debate. I particularly focused on the last few sentences of your post where you talked about this need of the Palestinians to return to their homes but that there is a desire for a complete return to the old ways before 1948, not one in which they are subject to Israeli rule. I think that this gets to the heart of the matter for the Palestinians. Do they return to their home (if possible) with the understanding that everything around them has changed, or do they come to terms with this and resettle elsewhere? Is the essence of their “home” that they desire to return to based in the physical building or in the culture and way of governance that was there before 1948? If it is the latter, I suspect that Palestinians who return would be consistently disappointed.