Ideas of Palestine

As the British made their exit out of the lands that would be Israel, many Arabs had to deal with a new colonial power through the Jews. The Jews began to take the land that the British had given them out from underneath Palestinians who had called this place home. This week’s readings gave a small idea of how people dealt with what they called Nakba or “catastrophe” that the Palestinians experienced as they fled or forced to leave their lands by the Jewish during the Palestinian War. These events had great effects on the people who lived it and the people who still live in these areas today.

In Ghassan Kanafani’s “Returning to Haifa”, we here the story of a man and his wife, Said S. and Saffiya, returning to the house they used to call home before being forced to leave. It was then that they discovered that their young son that they were forced to leave behind was finally revealed to be alive after twenty long years (pg. 165). Although they found their son, he was not the person that they thought he would be. He was no longer a Palestinian, he was Jewish and a military man now. The resulting conversation was very enlightening for both parties as they realized that the homes that they wanted no longer existed and that the only way to bring back any form of it was through a war, that words would no longer be enough. Said even ends the conversation with “You two may remain in our house temporarily. It will take a war to settle that.” With this, he and his wife leave and with a new kind of vigor that his son truly died and that that man was not his, he feels himself wanting his other son to join the resistance even though originally he did not want this to happen (pg.188) This new idea of getting back the homeland of Palestine was revived in him.

The other reading, Return to Half-Ruins: Memory, Postmemory, and Living History in Palestine by Lila Abu-Lughod, we see Abu-Lughood’s father’s return to the place of his birth through many trials and tribulations that people had to face to get back to their old homes. The most striking part about this was at the very end of the chapter. A man interviewed by Al-Jazeera was speaking about his thoughts of the forced investigations by the Israeli forces who guarded the checkpoints in the town he returned to. He said that “I do not feel bitterness at all I feel, rather, that the Israeli presence is a challenge to us” (pg.101). This was in contrast to most of the people mentioned in both sections in that instead of seeing the Jewish forces as a threat, he just saw them as a challenge, just something him and his people, the Palestinians, must overcome in order to achieve what they wanted, especially if they ever wanted to return home. The man goes on explaining that they should have never left the area, that they, the Palestinians, should have stayed and made the best of what they had, even if it was going to be under Jewish rule. This mans thoughts captivated me in that he is the first person as far as I could tell in both sources to propose, not separate states or separate people, but that they should find a way to coexist in this land and that Palestine needed to work to get there land back peacefully.

When the British left and let the Jews and Arabs alone to their own devices, it did not take long for both sides to strike the other to reclaim the land they believed was theirs. The Palestine’s were forced off their ancient lands by the Jews, lost their homes and a lot of what made their culture. However, in the end, both parties should have found a way to coexist in this area or at least agreed to stay on their own lands. If neither side can become like the man Abu-Lughood mentioned in her book, then the fighting will not stop.