The personal stories of the natives of Palestine from before the creation of Israel seem to be unknown relative to the stories of the Jews who settled in what became Israel. It seems that because of the Holocaust in Europe, and the creation of a Jewish state in the years immediately following the end of World War Two, that the stories of the people that inhabited the region before Israeli independence are forgotten. They lost their territory and were forcibly removed, some forming the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). This organization and the actions that it took in the years following Israeli independence, did not when the Palestinian people widespread support amongst the United States or European nations. The subsequent violence and several wars amongst Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria have skewed the story line away from the Palestinian people and their individual stories and has instead focused it upon the statistics of refugees, the skill of the Israeli military, and the resilience of the Jewish people, not the resilience and suffering of the Palestinians. It was interesting to read about the experience of a Palestinian native of Haifa in the Kanafani reading to explore this usually unknown perspective.
I believe that the stories of the Palestinians have largely been ignored by the Western historians. Whether or not the reason for the lack of information is based on politics or not, it is hard to tell. However, I think it is important that we as historians gather the information from both sides of the Arab-Israeli dispute. I think that perhaps the PLO and their actions and classification as a terrorist organization may have made some historians reluctant to gather the stories of Palestinians.
I think that as Westerners, we see nothing wrong with what happened to the Palestinians. In reality, what happened to them is almost as bad as what happened to the Jews during World War II. They were pushed from their homes and persecuted just as Jews were during the Second World War. In “Returning to Haifa,” we are able to see the view from the other side. I think it is very easy to compare the issues of the Palestinians who returned to their homes with the Jews who returned to their homes following WWII.