little boy in the gardens

Dear friends,

I’ve been back in Palestine for just under a week now, and tomorrow will begin a busy month of work. Since I’ve been back, the most common question I’ve gotten from Palestinian friends, colleagues, store owners, and taxi drivers is, “Who’s going to win, Clinton or Obama?” When I explain that this is only the primary, most people seem to have a small inkling of that, but most of them have never heard of McCain. They seem quite informed, however, about the Democrats, telling me that they used to think Obama might be better but now he keeps talking about how Israel is an important friend of the US’s and that he will continue to support Israel.

I’ve been surprised at the number of people who seem to have taken Bush’s recent visit to Israel as a real slap in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think the president of the world’s only superpower should be unabashedly celebrating Israel’s creation while Palestinians’ mourn and resist the ethnic cleansing of their people. But it was not at all outside of the realm of what I would expect of Bush. Apparently some people here expected at least a surface-level acknowledgment of the Nakba on his part.

The owner of the local music store near my Ramallah apartment mentioned Bush to me, and then thanked me for being here in Palestine at this time. He said it’s important that foreigners be here around the time of the 60^th anniversary of the Nakba. “For Israel,” he said, “it’s a happy occasion. But for us it’s a tragedy. I left a part of me behind 60 years ago. I look like myself, but it’s only my body. My mother, my grandmother, all my family are buried in Jerusalem, and now I can’t go there anymore. Somewhere inside me there’s still a little boy playing in the gardens of Jerusalem. I miss him.”

Until soon,
Hannah

No Time To Celebrate - Action photos

Dear friends,

For the past few months, I have participated in a nationally coordinated campaign of Jewish people commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) and honoring 60+ years of Palestinian resistance. At http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/ you can get a small taste of some of the actions that have been happening. If you are interested in planning your own action or event, there are resources on this site. You can also sign the petition if you haven't yet done so and you feel it's appropriate for you.

I have mostly been involved in events in Philadelphia. You can see a video, photos, and a report at http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/local-actions/philadelphia/

For my friends in Palestine: These actions are only a beginning. We know that we need to do much much more and are committed to working with you for as long as you ask us to. Looking forward to seeing you all in Palestine very soon!

Salamaat,
Hannah

The following Palestinian villages were occupied and/or destroyed this week (May 18-25) in 1948: al-Kabri, al-Nahr, al-Tall, Umm al-Faraj, 'Arab al-'Arida, 'Arab al-Safa, al-Ghazzawiyya, Jabbul, al-Khunayzir, Khirbat Umm Sabuna, Khirbat al-Zawiya, al-Jammama, al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya, al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya, al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya, Khirbat al-Manara, al-Sawamir, al-Tantura, al-Safiriyya, Indur, al-Maghar, Sarafand al-'Amar, 'Ammuqa, Lazzaza, al-Manshiyya, Qaytiyya, al-Zawiya, al-Zuq al-Fawqani, al-Salihiyya, al-Mansura, Mallaha, al-Khisas, Harrawi, al-Dawwara, Baysamun, 'Arab Suqrir, Kawfakha

Source: www.palestineremembered.com

the revolution will be reported in the jewish advocate

Dear friends,

Thanks to those of you who wrote to the Jewish Advocate last week in support of my article
(http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions2/?content_id=4644). The editor says he has never gotten so much response (both positive and negative) as he did with this article. I'm so excited to see this conversation be opened in a mainstream, and when it comes to this issue, right-wing Jewish community. There are three relevant things in this week's Jewish Advocate, and I encourage you to engage and respond in order to keep the conversation open, to show the Jewish community and beyond that there is not consensus (Jewish or otherwise) on this issue, and perhaps even to cause some ambivalence in people who have never really questioned the fundamentals but whose values otherwise might point them in this direction if only given a little push.

1. This week's online poll states: "In light of last week's Leading the Way column, do you think it's helpful for the American Jewish community to talk about and/or acknowledge the issue of who has the right to certain land in Israel?" I know, on one level an absurd question, on the other hand, let's all vote yes! :) www.thejewishadvocate.com (poll at the bottom in the middle)

2. There are letters to the editor (all 5 are about Israel/Palestine, the last 3 are specifically in response to my article): http://thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/letters_to_the_editor/?content_id=4685
My suggestion: write a letter to the editor in response! editorial@thejewishadvocate.com

3. There's an editorial that starts well (by stating that my opinions are both widely supported and widely criticized) and then goes on to state as fact a lot of disgusting myths and stereotypes (so brace yourself): http://thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/editorial/?content_id=4680
My suggestion: write a letter to the editor in response! editorial@thejewishadvocate.com

Pick whichever inspires you (if any), and let them know what you think! It's so rare that we're able to talk about the fundamental issues of 1948, Zionism, and refugee rights in these spaces - let's see how long it can last! Also, while you should reference what you're responding to when you write, I think the most effective thing to do is to make this a bigger discussion than just about my article - so please write about the issues themselves, rather than about me or my opinions. I have a few of my own thoughts about different kinds of effective responses, so if you're stuck or are just interested, feel free to write and ask me. But for now, take it away!

And, in case any of you are still reading and haven't yet taken a look at the No Time to Celebrate pledge, please do: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate If you sign the pledge you'll receive an e-mail pretty soon with suggestions of Nakba-related actions to take this spring.

Thanks, all!

Love and resistance,
Hannah

No Time To Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakba

Dear friends,

I am so excited to be sharing with you the important effort outlined below. Please take a look, and for all the Jewish people out there, please consider signing this pledge and forwarding it to others. There are more of us than we know - let's show that to ourselves, to mainstream Jewish communities, to the Palestinian people we work in solidarity with, and to the world.

I'm also heartened to let you know that the Jewish Advocate, Boston's Jewish newspaper that is certainly not known for its support of Palestinian rights, has published an editorial that I wrote as part of a column reserved for young people's opinions. You can read it at http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/opinions2/?content_id=4644 and if you feel compelled to write them a letter (to potentially keep the issue in the paper longer), please do.

Okay, now for the campaign and pledge...

Calling all Jews of Conscience!
Join "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"

"NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba" is a campaign organized by anti-Zionist Jews from around the U.S. and Canada to coordinate and make visible Jewish response to Israeli Independence Day celebrations and Jewish participation in commemoration of the Nakba. We invite you to join us in this effort:

1. Sign the NO TIME TO CELEBRATE statement and pledge of action (text below). Go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/ to sign! All signatories will be sent additional information about how to get involved in the campaign.
2. Participate in NO TIME TO CELEBRATE's call for coordinated actions across North America by organizing an action or event in your city, such as peaceful disruption of Israel celebration events or Jewish participation in Nakba events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement. Please contact notimetocelebrate+localaction@gmail.com to let us know what you are planning and to request resources/ideas for action compiled by the campaign.
3. Incorporate the Nakba remembrance Haggadah supplement into your Passover Seders. E-mail notimetocelebrate+haggadahsupplement@gmail.com to request the supplement be sent to you once finalized.
4. Take action in other ways to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba; about the colonial nature of Zionism; and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
5. Spread the word about "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"! Pass this call on to your organizations, friends and family.

In solidarity with 60+ Years of Palestinian Resistance to Zionism,
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
notimetocelebrate@gmail.com
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/

******************


NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
Statement and Pledge of Action

This May, Israel will mark 60 years of statehood. In cities across the U.S. and Canada, major Jewish organizations will sponsor celebrations of "Israeli Independence Day." Meanwhile, Palestinians around the world will mourn 60 years since the Nakba – Arabic for "catastrophe" – of 1948. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and made more than 800,000 Palestinian people refugees in order to create a Jewish state in a land where the majority was not Jewish. This does not deserve to be celebrated.

Today the Palestinian Nakba continues. In order to maintain Israel's artificial Jewish majority, the Israeli government has continued campaigns of ongoing displacement, violence, and occupation. Inside of the 1948 borders of Israel, Palestinian citizens are denied equal rights to Jews under the law. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are denied access to land, water, healthcare, and other basic resources. Palestinians throughout historic Palestine experience international isolation, economic devastation aided by the erection of a 730-kilometer wall, and continued closures and invasions including the current horrific siege of Gaza. Today there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the world, all of whom are denied their internationally recognized Right of Return to their homes and land. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this "right" to "return" given to us by Israeli law.

In addition to 60 years of occupation and dispossession, this anniversary marks decades of creative and powerful Palestinian resistance to Israel's violence. With this statement, we support this struggle, which is so often ignored or vilified in the U.S. media.

As Jews committed to justice, we imagine an "independence" that does not depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the displacement of indigenous people. As North American Jews, we refuse to celebrate the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Palestinian lives and communities funded by U.S. foreign aid. There has never been Jewish consensus around Israel: not in 1897, not in 1948, and not today. We reject the notion that we have been chosen to displace others. We support Palestinian people's right to return, individually and collectively, to the homes they lost in 1948 and in the violent decades since then.

In response to these historical events and a call from Palestine to mark their significance, we refuse to celebrate "Israel 60." We will take action to make our shared position clear and visible. In cities across the U.S. and Canada this year, we pledge to participate in and to support:

• Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;
• Peaceful disruption of these events;
• Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement;
• Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover Seders;
• The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
• Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.

Together, we stand with Palestinians in mourning 60 years of al-Nakba and in honoring 60 years of vibrant resistance.

Nahr el Bared and the right of return

February 13, 2008

I left Lebanon more than a week ago and am only now starting to find words. I have never before been in a place that has seen so much war. Occupation, yes. Injustice, yes. Death and destruction and uncertainty, perhaps. But something felt different about Lebanon. I have not wrapped my mind around it enough to feel confident that what I write will accurately represent my own thoughts, let alone the actual situation. But I do want to tell you about Nahr el Bared.

You may have heard of Nahr el Bared, one of the Palestinian refugee camps in the north of Lebanon, when the Lebanese army almost completely destroyed it this past summer. All of the residents were forced to leave, made refugees for at least the second time, and most people are still forbidden by the army from returning. I visited the area with a friend who has spent a lot of time there. We stopped first at Bedawi refugee camp, where many of Nahr el Bared's residents are living inside the UN schools (because of this, the schools have been closed since the beginning of the school year). I have never seen such obvious displacement. People have reconstructed a sort of life in this school, with different families in different rooms, or often many families in one room with a tarp separating them. All their belongings are there, with makeshift closets and bureaus for clothes and small ovens to cook food. The schoolyard is full of clotheslines and small stores sell snacks at the base of the school. Life almost seems normal, the setting completely absurd. I could blink and imagine the people back in their camp, or even in their villages that they have not seen since 1948.

I think about my association with the word "refugee." It should, by definition and by international law, be temporary. And yet my experience with refugees has been with Palestinian people in West Bank refugee camps, relatively developed communities where people have been living for 60 years and which are not entirely dissimilar to the towns around them, with the exception of the narrow streets and fewer services. I realize that "Palestinian refugee" to me has been a stationary, permanent identity. This does not reflect justice or people's desires, but it does reflect a certain current reality. Not so in Lebanon, and most of all in the displaced communities of Nahr el Bared residents.

When we arrived in Nahr el Bared itself, it was like a ghost town. A deliberately created ghost town, virtually empty of people and full of shelled and collapsed homes. We stood on a roof near the entrance. To the left was a beautiful snow-covered mountain, to the right the Mediterranean Sea, and in the center thousands of empty, destroyed homes. The teenage boys who had invited us to the roof are among the few families who have been allowed back into the camp. "Even Israel doesn't destroy like this, does it?" they asked, as they watched their new pigeons fly in circles around the house. I thought of Rafah (Gaza), the only place I have been that resembles the destruction of Nahr el Bared. But even the destruction of Rafah was not of this scale.

We walked around the camp, which I dare to call beautiful in many ways. A river runs through the middle, and the camp is on the sea. There is more green than I have ever seen in a refugee camp. My friend described to me how Nahr el Bared is one of the more traditional camps, that many communities find themselves resisting with weapons or giving up altogether, but here the resistance has been in the preservation of culture and traditions, like wedding rituals at the river.

Again, I could blink and imagine the camp as the vibrant community that it was until May. And I could feel a taste of pre-1948 Palestinian life that I have only occasionally felt while walking through the lands of destroyed villages with Nakba survivors themselves.

A small block of temporary UN housing holds a few hundred people. We walked through the area, gathering a small entourage of children as we went. "Where are you from?" a little girl asked one of us. "Chicago," responded one of the members of our group. "I'm from Saffourieh," said the girl. I turned around and asked her, "From where?" I wanted to make sure I had heard right. This young girl had given the name of a destroyed village inside present-day Israel that not only has she never been to, but I have. While some of Saffourieh's residents apparently fled to Lebanon, others fled only a few miles away and currently live in Nazareth. I have visited the land with some of these people.

At the only public clinic in the camp, we met a man who told us he was the last doctor to leave the camp and the first to return. The clinic is open 24 hours a day, and the staff work as volunteers. They barely have money for medicine.

We began to talk with the doctors, and it turns out one of them is originally from Saffourieh as well. Which is to say that his parents were displaced from Saffourieh in 1948. He has never been. We told him that we had been there, and he began to ask questions: "What does it look like?" "What do the Israelis call it now?" "Do people live there?" We told him what we know. "If only I could go…" he said. When we left, he said he hopes to see us again, next time in his village of Saffourieh.

We walked out of the clinic, trudged through the mud away from the destruction and towards the checkpoint at the entrance of the camp. Refugees are refugees, I thought, people displaced from their communities by force. Whether they have carried this identity for a few months or several decades, whether they have been displaced once or twice or many times over, their right to return is sacred. Whether to Nahr el Bared or to Palestine, the choice to return should be theirs. Because, unfortunately, I can blink and imagine their settings transformed as many times as I want, but it is no more effective than clicking my heels together and wishing them home.

For more on Nahr el Bared, including photos, visit http://electronicintifada.net/lebanon.

For my RSS feed: http://hannahinpalestine.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

The End of Israel

December 10, 2007 (International Human Rights Day)

The End of Israel

I am feeling optimistic about Palestine.

I know it sounds crazy. How can I use “optimistic” and “Palestine” in the same sentence when conditions on the ground only seem to get worse? Israeli settlements continue to expand on a daily basis, the checkpoints and segregated road system are becoming more and more institutionalized, Israel is holding 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners illegally in Israeli jails, Gaza is under heavy attack and the borders are entirely controlled by Israel, preventing people from getting their basic human needs met.

We can never forget these things, we can never forget the daily suffering of the people, and yet I do dare to say I am optimistic. Why? Ehud Olmert. Let me clarify. Better yet, let’s let him clarify:

"The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights. As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

That’s right, the Prime Minister of Israel is currently trying to negotiate a “two-state solution” specifically because he realizes that if he doesn’t, Palestinians might begin to demand, en masse, equal rights to Israelis. Furthermore, he worries, the world might begin to see Israel as an apartheid state. In actuality, most of the world already sees Israel this way, but Olmert is worried that even Israel’s most ardent supporters will begin to catch up with the rest of the world.

"The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," he told Ha’aretz, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."

Perhaps Olmert is giving American Jews too much credit here, but he does expose a basic contradiction in the minds of most American people, Jewish and not: Most of us, at least in theory, support equal rights for all residents of a country. Most of us do NOT support rights given on the basis of ethnicity and religion, especially when the ethnicity/religion being prioritized is one that excludes the vast majority of the country’s indigenous population. We cannot, of course, forget our own history of ethnic cleansing on this continent. But we must not use the existence of past atrocities to justify present ones.

I am optimistic not because I think the process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Israel/Palestine is going to end tomorrow, but because I can feel the ideology behind these policies beginning to collapse. For years the true meaning of political Zionism has been as ignored as its effects on Palestinian daily life. And suddenly it is beginning to break open. Olmert’s comments last week are reminiscent of those of early Zionist leaders who talked openly of transfer and ethnic cleansing in order to create an artificial Jewish majority in historic Palestine.

“We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force to guarantee our own right to settle in those places – then we have force at our disposal.” – David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, 1937

So this idea of a “two-state solution” a la Olmert, which I would argue provides neither a “state” nor a “solution” for the Palestinian people, is the new transfer. It is no longer popular in the world to openly discuss expulsion (though there are political parties in Israel that advocate this), but Olmert hopes that by creating a Palestinian “state” on a tiny portion of historic Palestine, he can accomplish the same goal: maintaining an ethno-religious state exclusively for the Jewish people in most of historic Palestine. His plan, as all other plans Israeli leaders have tried to “negotiate,” ignores the basic rights of the two thirds of the Palestinian population who are refugees. They, like all other refugees in the world, have the internationally recognized right to return to their lands and receive compensation for loss and damages. This should not be up for negotiation.

So why am I optimistic? Why do I think Olmert will fail, if not in the short term, at least in the long term? There are many signs.

The first and most important is that Palestinian people are holding on. Sometimes by a thread, but holding on nonetheless. Despite the hope of many in Israel, Palestinians will not disappear. They engage in daily acts of nonviolent resistance, from demonstrations against the Wall and land confiscation, to simply remaining in their homes against all odds. Young people are joining organizations designed to preserve their culture and identity. Older Palestinians have said to me, “We lived through the Ottoman Empire, we lived through the British Mandate, we lived through Jordanian rule, and we will live through Israeli occupation.” This too shall pass.

In Israel, it seems that within the traditional “Zionist left,” Jewish Israelis are beginning to have open conversations about the exclusivity of Zionism as a political ideology, and are questioning it more and more.

In the United States, I have been traveling around speaking to groups about Palestine, and they get it. Even those whose prior information has come only from US mainstream media, when they hear what is actually happening, they get it. When we explain the difference between being Jewish (a religion or ethnicity), Israeli (a citizenship), and Zionist (an ideology), people understand.

Does Israel have a right to exist? people ask. What does that mean? Do countries really have rights, or do people have rights? The Jewish people have a right to exist, the Israeli people have a right to exist, but what does “Israel” mean? Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people. It is not a state of its citizens. It is a state of many people who are not its citizens, like myself, and is not the state of many people who are its citizens, like the twenty percent of its population that is Palestinian. So if we ask a Palestinian person, “Do you recognize the right for there to be a country on your historic homeland that explicitly excludes you?” what kind of response should we expect?

So when Olmert warns that we will “face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights” and that “the state of Israel [will be] finished,” I get a little flutter of excitement. I think of the 171 Palestinian organizations who have called on the international community to begin campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel until Israel complies with international law. This is already a South African-style struggle, and we outside of Palestine need to do our part. Especially those of us who live in the US, the country that gives Israel more than $10 million every single day, must take responsibility for the atrocities committed in our name and with our money.

Ultimately, this is our role as Americans. It is to begin campaigns in our churches, synagogues, mosques, universities, cities, unions, etc. It is not to broker false negotiations between occupier and occupied, and it is not to muse over solutions the way I have above. But one can dream. And as a Jewish American, I know that while it might be scary to some, while it will require a lot of imagination, the end of Israel as a Jewish state could mean the beginning of democracy, human rights, and some semblance of justice in a land that has almost forgotten what that means.

Thank you to Anna Baltzer, my fellow traveler, for ideas and conversations that have led to this article.

Small victories

Sept 12, 2007

Dear friends,

Both Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah will start this evening. Tomorrow morning the West Bank and Gaza will change their clocks back an hour; Israel will do it next week (and the US not until early November). The weather is getting slightly cooler, at least here in Ramallah. Each day the news seems to get worse – more Israeli invasions into Jenin, Nablus, Gaza, and even Syria this week than usual – and there are Abbas and Olmert on the front page of every paper here talking about peace. It’s hard for people not to be skeptical.

One recent victory can give us hope, or at least a nice celebration. Bil’in, the village that has come to exemplify recent Palestinian nonviolent resistance, won a huge court victory last week. After two and a half years of weekly demonstrations against the wall, the Israeli high court ruled last week that the route of the wall in Bil’in is illegal, and that the purpose of it is not for security but for land annexation. Of course, the same decision legitimized most of the settlement that is built on Bil’in’s land, ruling against only the small part that is being expanded upon right now. Still, it is a huge victory. A practical one for those farmers whose land will be saved, and a symbolic one for the rest of the village and all of Palestine.

I attended the weekly demonstration after the decision, which was more of a celebration. Instead of chanting and marching, people were singing and dancing. Mustafa Barghouti was sitting on the shoulders of another man, dancing and holding a Palestinian flag. Salam Fayad (the acting Palestinian prime minister) made a brief appearance with his entourage of bodyguards. One larger man was being held up by two other men, dancing around with an Israeli newspaper whose cover was about Bil’in.

The day after the decision I asked a few friends in the north if they had heard. Some had, some hadn’t. One said excitedly, “They deserve it.” Another friend in the south said, “Bil’in and Budrus are the best villages in Palestine. Nobody here in the Bethlehem region is even fighting at all.” Which, of course, isn’t true, but the persistence of the weekly demonstrations in Bil’in (and Budrus before that, as well as a few other villages) seems to have paid off somewhat. Most of the court victories so far, of which there have only been a handful, have been in places where the wall was not yet complete; here, theoretically, the army will take down the wall and move it closer to the Green Line.

In any case, these reactions might be the most exciting part for me. I half expected the cynicism I am so used to around here. When I heard the decision, I myself asked, “Will they really take it down?” And then even if they do, it’s only being moved a little, etc. But the fact that the usually cynical friends I spoke with were truly filled with nothing but respect for the people of Bil’in was heartening, and gave me a glimmer of hope that this might serve as inspiration for others (and, legally, as a precedent). For more on Bil’in (including a lot of great footage and photos): www.bilin-village.org.

My personal victory of the week, resulting in a slightly smaller celebration, was smuggling three friends an hour away to the sea, where they hadn’t been in years (the 18-year-old had never been at all). As soon as we crossed into ’48 (Israel), one friend began pointing at open fields and hills on the side of the road and in the distance, naming each village that we passed. His own ancestral village that his parents were expelled from in 1948 is about 15 minutes from his home, but across the Green Line and therefore forbidden to him. He angrily and passionately talked about the Jews living there now, having no idea of the history of the place. Many of the Arabic names are completely erased from the map; the ones that are not have been Hebraized.

We arrived in my other friend’s village a few minutes later, one that has been both Hebraized (the name) and Judaized (the population). The mosque, school, and one old house still stand. Other buildings have been destroyed and a new Israeli town/settlement sits there. We passed through the “Do not enter” sign on the fence surrounding the mosque, waded through trash, and climbed to the top. We looked out over the land. “Look at that old woman,” my friend said, watching a woman who was watching us from her porch in the distance. “There she sits happily on her porch, no worries, sitting in front of her house on this beautiful land, no checkpoints…”

We drove slowly through the village so we could stop and pick fruit from old trees as we saw it – pomegranates, pomelos, olives. We left the village and continued to the sea. Every time I drive inside ’48, I look to both sides and wondered how I could have ever come and not known the history. Remains of buildings from 60 years ago get transferred in the Israeli narrative to “Roman ruins” as though the past 2,000 years did not happen.

I see all the open space and say to my friend, “They say there’s no room for refugees to return.”

“Of course there’s room,” he responded. “There’s room for all the Palestinians and all the Jews in the world to be here, living side by side.”

We arrived at the sea, where Palestinians and Jews were swimming side by side. One man started talking to us in Hebrew until he realized my friends were Palestinian and then he switched. This happened several times throughout the day, as Yaffa is largely a Palestinian city (although the Israeli government continues to demolish Palestinian homes there and shift the demographic, though all of the inhabitants have Israeli citizenship).

We swam for hours, ate food, got sunburned, had fun, and then returned to the refugee camp.

Someday my friends will have the choice of whether to return to their refugee camp or not, whether to stay in Yaffa, return to their villages, move abroad, etc. Until then, I will do my best to continue to give them brief glimpses of their land when they ask.

Someday there will be no wall running through Palestine, stealing land and separating people. Until then, the Palestinian people will continue to resist, with solidarity from Israeli and international friends.

Ramadan karim, shana tova, and happy fall to all,
Hannah