Post World War II, many Holocaust survivors and displaced Jews in Europe were without homes and felt as if they could never escape anti-Semitism. These Jews were enticed by the already-existing Zionist movement, a movement that believed that Judaism was not only a religion but a nationality that deserved a state, so Zionists were working towards the creation of a Jewish state and quickly moved to Palestine and created Israel. They chose this area because it holds historical weight in the religion and is seen as the “promised land”. Although seen as a solution for this large group of people and the fulfillment of the Zionist movement, this land was already filled with people who had been living there for much longer. This sparked the wider Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that is still being dished out today. The basic question of this conflict is less about religion as it is about area: who is entitled to the land? Native Palestinians? Zionist Jews? In 1947 the UN attempted to take control of the situation and planned to divide the region into Israel and Palestine, causing the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. This war left Israel with more land, causing over 700,000 Palestinians to flee their homes and became refugees of surrounding Arab countries; this exodus is called “Nabka” literally meaning ‘catastrophe’.
In Ghassan Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa, he offers a story of a Palestinian couple’s (Said and Safiyya) experience in the Battle of Haifa in 1948 and Nabka as told from flashbacks twenty years previous as they travel through the newly-opened border between Israel and Palestine. This perspective explores the personal suffering behind the decades-old Middle Eastern conflict from both an Israeli and Palestinian perspective, as opposed to the broader ideas of the conflict as a whole. Seeing such a personal account and understanding some of the deep feelings that just one family experienced brings the issue in an entirely new light as Kanafani writes, “He hadn’t counted on the memory coming back full of the same insane turmoil that rightfully belonged only to the actual moments of the experience itself” (Kanafani, 156). It is revealed that Said and Safiyya’s son, accidentally left in Haifa during the battle as a four-month old, was raised in their original home as an Israeli by Israeli parents and later joined the Israeli army, which raises deep moral conflicts in his parents and eventually leads Said to condone a war to take back Palestine.
Can the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever be resolved? Both nonviolent approaches, like boycotts and UN intervention and violent approaches, like the Six-Days War in 1967 and bombings, haven’t seemed to create a happy medium between these two states. The issue keeping the two sides from working on an actual solution is the failure to see the others perspective. Obviously both sides feel entitled to a safe state, free from ideological conflict and warfare. Perhaps soon they will see each other as equals and keep the millions of innocent people out of violence and displacement.
Ghassan Kanafani, Returning to Haifa (2000)
Lila Abu-Lughod, “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), 77-106
I thought that Said’s and his son’s story raised an interesting question about culture. Said seemed to think that his son might just recognize him after he had been raised Jewish and had considered himself Jewish. It brings up the question weather culture is more nurture rather nature.
So long as the bitter feelings within Israel in regards to Nabka between Zionists and exiled Palestinians I do not think there will be compromise, not in our life time at least. The UN has been less than useful, using ambiguous information and certain vocabulary that incite more arguing and conflict from both sides. As you mention this is such an important topic to both sides and both are extremely emotionally invested that I do not seeing either side budging or compromising.
War is something that should always be a last resort. If only everyone could have sat down and discuss their ideas of Israel and find a compromise that could have helped both peoples. But, like many things, hindsight can only get you so far and the situation has and is quickly moving too far to stop the possible fighting. What do you think should happen to prevent these future conflicts from looking at the past?