Consider This from NPR - Palestinian Family Stays Connected To Their Home Village, Long After Its Destruction

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

The state of Israel turned 75 this week. For many Israeli Jews, it's a moment of celebration - the nation was established as a homeland and refuge from the persecution they have faced throughout history.But in the war surrounding Israel's founding, the majority of Palestinian Arabs were permanently displaced from their homeland.Palestinians call the anniversary of Israel's founding "The Nakba", an Arabic word that translates to "the catastrophe." And many say the catastrophe is not history, it is ever present with the Israeli military occupation.NPR's Daniel Estrin tells the story of how one Palestinian family stays connected to their home village, decades after it was destroyed. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. This week, the state of Israel turned 75, but Israel was born out of conflict. The United Nations voted to split Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. Arab leaders rejected the proposal. Arabs were a majority, but allocated less than half of the territory. The day after the UN vote, fighting broke out between Arab and Jewish militias. And on May 15, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, one of Israel's founding fathers, announced to the world the birth of the state of Israel.

This is an archival recording of him reading Israel's Declaration of Independence. Palestinian-American Rashid Khalidi is a Middle East historian and author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. The idea was to go and found a nation state which would be a Jewish state, a Jewish majority state, a Jewish sovereign state. Israel was established as a homeland for Jews, a refuge for a people who faced persecution throughout history, including the Holocaust just a few years before. But in the war surrounding Israel's founding, the majority of Palestinian Arabs were permanently displaced from their homeland, leaving their homes behind. For them, the day is referred to as the Nakba, an Arabic word which means the catastrophe. For Palestinians, it represents the destruction of their society, the loss of the right to self-determination, and the expulsion of most

of them, and the expropriation of the property of most of them. That's why it's a catastrophe for Palestinians. Consider this. Many Palestinians say that their Nakba isn't just history, but an ongoing catastrophe punctuated by the violence of an entrenched Israeli military occupation. After the break, we'll hear how one Palestinian family stays connected to their home village decades after it was destroyed. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. It's Tuesday, May 16th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time, mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Yesterday, for the first time, the United Nations commemorated the Nakba, saying it should serve as a reminder of the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people. While that recognition was a diplomatic victory for Palestinian leaders, NPR's Daniel Estrin reports that Palestinians still seek the right to return to the lands that they lost so many years ago. It's a demand that's so sensitive, it still drives the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians today. A Palestinian family turns on some music, spreads open a blanket, and barbecues next to the ruins of

their village that Israel destroyed many years ago. Several Palestinian families are here doing the same. Up a hill, 35-year-old Nael Abderrahman picks a wild herb for tea. This is my home, actually. Why do you come here? To remember our village, To remember our home. This longing is at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state.

That sparked fighting between Arab and Jewish militias. Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948. Regional Arab armies invaded. Israel won the war the next year. By then, the vast majority of the Arabs there had fled or were expelled. Their homes were given to Jewish immigrants or were destroyed.

Palestinians call it the Nakba, the catastrophe, and many of them call it an ongoing catastrophe. This family's village, Yalo, was destroyed by Israel not in 1948, but in the 1967 war, one of the last Palestinian villages entirely depopulated and destroyed. 45-year-old Reem Rub walks me down the nature trail that was her father's old village road. Wow, this is where your grandfather's house was? Yeah. There's a berry tree, there's a pomegranate tree next to her grandfather's old house. What's no longer here today is mapped out in her mind.

She points, here's the Abu Rub family home, the Abd al-Rahman family. Here's the mosque. Here's the village graveyard. Today, her extended family lives in a West Bank refugee camp. Many of them need a special Israeli permit to make this kind of visit to their old village. Today, it's a popular park with a forest planted over the ruins. She says her father's generation was scared after being expelled and had no confidence to fight for their rights. Today, she says, the younger generation asks, why do I live in a crowded place in the West Bank when I have this land? She says, today Israel is stronger than us. They have weapons.

They have relations with countries around the world. But we have belief in God. She believes Palestinians will return to their destroyed villages and rebuild them. I asked Nael Abdelrahman. Do you actually think one day you will come back here? We hope that. His brother Mohammed says, the truth as we see it, it's hard or impossible to come back. But with God's help, we will.

Israel says this is a red line. The return of Palestinian refugees would spell the end of the Jewish state. Israel even has a law that allows the government to penalize any organization that commemorates Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning. As the displacement feels continuous for Palestinians, Israelis continue to wrestle with the history of the Nakba in new ways. These are cold village files. Quite astonishing. Israeli historian Shai Chazkhani wrote Dear Palestine, a book about the 1948 war.

He took me to an Israeli archive and showed me a recently discovered trove of intelligence documents that Zionist forces compiled in the years leading up to Israel's founding. Hundreds of Palestinian villages documented in meticulous detail, villages Israel later destroyed. One of the major questions that historians still sort of grapple with was whether or not there was a blueprint for the depopulation of Palestine in 1948. Did the Zionist forces had planned throughout the 1940s to basically expel or cause a massive fleeing of the Arab population in 1948. Those village files are an indication that certainly members, high-ranking members, may have entertained the thought that they will have to

conquer these villages. And so these are these files. Of course, they also, for us historians, are this amazing remnant of those villages that were indeed expelled and of which we don't know much about. There's been controversy recently about how to handle these kinds of documents. Israeli media have covered cases of defense officials removing documents from archives and classifying them, reportedly saying they could stir up unrest. I would say that what they're mostly concerned of is the actual remnants and story of Arab Palestine that is contained in these files, right? You know, that people would read them, that scholars would write histories that resurrect a civilization that once existed here and was essentially almost entirely destroyed. The heritage of that place is gone.

Today, millions of Palestinians live stateless with the violence of an entrenched Israeli military occupation. Israel has had its most ultra-nationalist government in history, with far-right ministers who have called to erase a Palestinian village and campaigned to encourage Palestinians to leave. Some Palestinians say they fear a second Nakba and say their role is simply to stay put and prevent another historic displacement. It's haunting, this book. Haunting to read. Another way the history of the Nakba stays alive is in books. 40-year-old Mahmoud Muna runs the educational bookshop in Jerusalem. His father-in-law lost his home when Israel was founded in 1948.

On his bookshelves, Muna sees a new trend in what Palestinians are writing about today. Writings that's not necessarily about memory, but about political solutions. He says Palestinian thinkers are not exploring the two-state solution like they did 30 years ago. That's the compromise that the U.S. still supports, where Israelis keep the land they captured in 1948, and Palestinians get their own state in the territories Israel occupied in 1967. In the absence of that outcome, many Palestinian writers today are imagining a one-state future, together with Israelis. Muna says this will take mutual recognition of each other's histories.

The Israelis need to acknowledge that they have responsibilities for the displacement of the Palestinian people and the killing and creating the Palestinian refugee issue. And for the Palestinians, we need to also acknowledge that the Jewish people have roots in this place and have reasons of belonging to this place. It's a very huge step from both sides, but I think it is essential to be taken. That's the future he imagines. The present he describes as injustice for Palestinians and what many Palestinians call a continuing catastrophe. The memory of the Nakba is my past,

and it's an important part of my family history. But it's just my family history. It should not be dictating the future generations. And now the Palestinians are continuing to live the continuous Nakba, if you like, or the continuous conditions that were resulted in the major events of 1948. And therefore, it's unfair to ask them to move on from it at this point. But the day when there is a solution, the day when there is a political solution to this conflict that is based on self-determination, on justice and fairness and equality and whatever that gives the Palestinians the prospect for a better future, I think there has to be a national process for the Palestinians

to liberate ourselves from the past tragedy and to try to look at the future as a better place to be in. That was NPR's Daniel Estrin reporting from Jerusalem. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Somers. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography.

Kauffman.org Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at Carnegie.org