Dreams and Nightmares

(Extracts)

They are still refugees today, more than fifty years after that Palm Sunday of 1948 when I left Jafa, Palestine with my parents and ten other families in the back of a truck. Today, they still cannot go back to their families’ land. They continue to be denied the right of return to their homes, their property, their orange groves and olive trees. They continue to be denied compensation for the victimization, abuse and suffering they endured for over half a century. At times they wonder whether the world even recognizes that they were victims of the territorial ambition and military superiority of another people.

I left home the first time with my family because we wanted to escape violence and the threat of brutality. We had little choice but to leave Jafa and become Palestinian refugees. I left home the second time because I wanted to escape the threat of imminent intellectual brutality, and to escape a place where those in power had no respect for the individual’s right to liberty and human dignity. I left Ramallah, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, because I was looking for a better life with better opportunities and hope. I had to leave. I had dreams, while I was at the Friends, of going to college in America one day and perhaps becoming an engineer. I had dreams that I would succeed and return some day to help the same people that my father had helped with their flour mills, their olive presses and pumping systems, to help them bring water from the ground to irrigate their farms and orange groves. At that time it was just a dream, so far fetched and unrealistic. I had to be awakened by the cruel reality of being a Palestinian refugee. But somehow, and against the odds, I made it through the political and social turmoil without any physical scars. I made it through high school. I made it to America. I made it through college, I became an engineer and I provided for my family in a way that I never dreamed that I could. I am satisfied with what I found and proud of what I did. Yet the nightmare persists.

Something basic is missing from my dream. It is that part of the dream that I shared with my father, and with his generation for peace and harmony among Christians, Moslems and Jews in Palestine, the holiest of the lands. It is that part of the dream to have the right to human dignity, the right to return to our home and to have a place that we (Christians, Moslems, and the Jews of Palestine) all call home. It is that part of the dream, reconciliation with the Jews of Israel, which has turned into a nightmare.

Today, I cannot go back to my homeland, Palestine, simply because I am not a Jew. Perhaps my faith is not good enough for those in power in Israel. I can visit there, but only because I am a citizen of the US, and even then with difficulty because of where I was born.

There may be someone in this world who can rationalize what the state of Israel and its supporters are doing. There may be someone who can explain to me and to millions of Palestinians why I, a Palestinian born in Jafa, Palestine, cannot go live there simply because I am not a Jew. There may be someone in this world who can explain to me why a Jew from Poland, Russia, America or Ethiopia, who never lived in Palestine, can go live there because that person is a Jew. What logic can explain and justify that? Is it Jewish logic? Is it Christian logic? Is it American logic? No logic can even begin to explain or rationalize what Israel is doing. Jews have been the victims of shameless racism by the western world, which based its victimization on race and religion. By virtue of their beliefs, the Jews had not done any wrong and did not deserve victimization. Palestinians have not done any wrong either; they were victimized by the Jews who immigrated to Palestine armed with religion and the same racist beliefs that had been used against them for centuries. They had only one objective, that of dispossessing the Palestinians and taking away their homes and their land, refusing to share, simply because they were not Jews. It is true that the Jews had their own dreams, but they never stopped to consider, and until now do not acknowledge, the suffering that they have caused the Palestinians in the process of implementing their dreams for a home in Palestine. Most of the Jews, Zionists and otherwise who supported Zionist objectives, rationalized their actions by convincing themselves that Palestinians were not a people; they simply didn’t exist. Some even went farther and believed that even if Palestinians existed, they did not deserve Palestine and, therefore, they could be justifiably ejected from their homes. They convinced themselves that Palestine was a “land without a people for people without a land.” Today, the land without a people, after more than fifty years, has over five million of its people dispersed throughout the world, most of them living as refugees still in the squalor of the camps.

No logic can justify the unqualified support that the western world, especially western Christians, continue to give to Israel, regardless of what crimes Israel and their military commit in the name of religion and “security.” Many western Christians perhaps don’t know that they are supporting the concept of a racist state based on religious discrimination. They perhaps don’t know that they are condoning injustices against innocent Palestinians: the injustice of collective punishment, torture, assignment of guilt by association, deprivation of basic liberties and human rights, and most of all hatred and prejudice. Nothing, not even the Holocaust experienced by the European Jews at the hands of the Nazis, can justify the victimization of another people. Is the uprooting of a whole nation, the Palestinians, from their homes and the land where they had lived for thousands of years, a victimization and abuse of a nation? Is it as bad as actions intent upon exterminating a nation? The answer is relative.

The Palestinians and Israelis negotiate, in one form or another, for the destiny of the Palestinian people and the destiny of the Israeli people, one from a position of weakness and desperation and the other from a position of physical strength, intransigence and moral weakness. How can they negotiate when the field is not level? How can there be peace, even if there will come a peace agreement, when the two sides do not consider the other side as equal. How can they negotiate when one side has all that it needs and the other has nothing? How can they negotiate when one side is fighting for the livelihood and the basic rights of its people and the other is fighting for the right to import more people and house them on property confiscated from the other? What results can such negotiations bring about? Unless they treat each other as equals with equal rights, unless they accept and respect each other, there will always be hatred regardless of the political state of affairs, regardless of whether there is a peace treaty and regardless of the decades that may pass.

One more time, the Palestinian people have been misled, this time not by the Egyptian Gamal Abdul Nasser, or the Arab Kings or the Ba’th Arab Socialist Party, but by their own Palestinian leaders and the leaders of Israel. Some of them are the same leaders who misled them during the confrontation with Jordan, during the human catastrophe in Lebanon, and now in the Palestinian heartland. Their leaders agreed to a land-for-peace deal, but did not read the fine print and did not exchange any guarantees. They knew nothing about negotiation and were taken for a ride by a worthy opponent. Every time they reviewed part of what they agreed to, they were told that their interpretation was wrong. Whenever they asked for implementation, they were told that they had misunderstood. Whenever they asked that their people’s human rights be respected, they were told that their human rights were part of the final negotiations. How does one negotiate for basic rights guaranteed by all principles of decency? The worst part was that whatever was agreed to was effectively abrogated whenever a new Israeli Government came into being or whenever the Israeli military ruled that the Palestinians had “misbehaved.” The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was too anxious to take control, to exercise control over the Palestinian people, leading them to agree quickly to terms they neither understood nor their people accepted. The PNA railroaded their people. Once again, the Palestinians had been sold a bill of goods.

One of the tragic consequences of the policies of the state of Israel has been the change in the religious demography of the Holy Land. The demography continued to change with the influx of Jews from Europe and America. They forced non-Jews out of their ancestral homes to make space for Jews from other parts of the world and who had never lived in Palestine. Before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank when I lived in Ramallah, the population of the West Bank, especially Jerusalem and its surroundings, which included Ramallah, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and the many Christian villages around them, had a high percentage of Christians. This may come as shocking news to most western Christians who, like most Saudis, believe that there is no such thing as Christian Arabs. The Israeli military occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza clamped down harder and harder on the Palestinian population with their unchecked policy of purposely uprooting the population, making things unbearable for them and nudging them to leave. They were unaccountable to anyone in their implementation of such policies, for they had been sheltered from any internal criticism by the Zionist propaganda, and from external criticism by their intransigence and the indifference to human rights abuses by the successive administrations in the United States. They have been sheltered by the threat of labeling anti-Semite anyone who vocally criticized Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. The Palestinian population was unable to deal with the Israeli military reign of terror, regardless of their patriotism or their commitment to their country. Most of the Palestinian population was desperately incapable of making a change in their living conditions, having no place to go outside the West Bank or Gaza. However, a small percentage was able to make a choice between staying and leaving. One choice for these was to stay in the living hell called the West Bank and Gaza. The other choice was to leave to the neighboring Arab countries, the United States, Canada, Latin America or Australia, in the interest of protecting their families from the Israeli tyranny and their Defense Force’s physical, moral and emotional abuse. Unfortunately this small percentage which was able to leave was predominantly Christian. They were the same Christians whose ancestors lived in the Holy Land for thousands of years dating back to the advent of Christianity. They were not converts from Islam as some may think. They may have even lived there since before Christianity, perhaps as Jews, and may have been converts from Judaism to Christianity. I don't believe there has been a census counting the percentage of Christian Arabs in the Holy Land, but if one were held today, the Christian world ought to be shocked and ashamed of the findings. Just as the Christian world is to blame for their complacency during the unspeakable horrors that the Jews experienced at the hands of the Nazis, so is the Christian world to blame for standing by and doing nothing about the suffering of the Palestinians or the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. It is the Christian world’s complacency that made an endangered species out of the Holy Land Arab Christians. While the whole world is to blame for their flirting with the Israeli military policy of terror in Palestine, it is the Christian world alone that is to blame for the loss of the Palestinian Christians. The western world’s silence and its military and financial support to the Israeli military, mainly driven by guilt of the horrors of the Holocaust, resulted in the Palestinian Christians’ exodus. As many of my Christian countrymen have said, the churches in the Holy Land may soon become museums; there may be no one to worship in them should the exodus of the Palestinian Christians continue unabated. The Christian world remains silent, and Christian Americans remain silent. Does not evil flourish when good people do not dare to speak out?

This is one part of my dream that turned into a nightmare. By the judgment of the Israelis, I have been condemned to have no right to return to my home. I have been condemned to have no right to return to the home my father built in Jafa, a home where we never had a chance to live. Should I have to convert to Judaism to regain the right to return to Palestine? Is that the nature of fanatic racism practiced by the state of Israel? A state which insists on being all things to all Jews; it wants to be a Jewish state, a democratic state and it wants to live in peace with its neighbors, irreconcilable contradictions.

The basic question remains, however, what should the Palestinians do? Should they negotiate for peace? Should they surrender their hopes and dreams to the intransigence of Israel and the apathy of the world community toward their struggle? Should they all become terrorists and commit suicide on the streets of Jewish neighborhoods? They should go for peace! Yes, I am convinced that they should. But they should demand peace with dignity, or there shall be no peace. The Jewish settlements in the Palestinian heartland should be dismantled and the land returned to the Palestinians, or there shall be no peace. The military roads built to divide the West Bank and isolate the Palestinian heartland into small heterogeneous pockets should be surrendered to the Palestinians, or there shall be no peace. Israel should surrender the entire West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem to the pre-1967 borders, or there shall be no peace. It is easy for Israel to camp in the Palestinian’s backyard, confiscate land, bring Jewish immigrants from all over the world to live on the stolen land, and then accuse the Palestinians of rejecting peace. Israel, the government, continues to behave as a victim even when they are the aggressors preying on the Palestinians, treating them as a military opponent or enemy.

The words of many Jews, however, remind me of the tolerance and truth that my father always talked about. The memory of my father often reminds me of how Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews can see and understand the suffering that the other has endured, just like the pain which my father, Salim, and the three Jewish Smerling sons shared for many years. Like many Jews, I too understand the anger and rage on both sides, but I also do not condone the lethal violence on either side, especially the collective punishment and violence employed by a powerful state and its mighty Israeli Defense Forces, the most sophisticated and armed military in the Middle East, against civilians.

I also believe that the Palestinian leadership should define, once and for all, their people’s practical aspirations and commit to a total peace once these aspirations are met. They can not continue to mislead their people. The Palestinian people should expect a life as decent and dignified as the life of the Israeli Jew, but not more or less. The Palestinian people should commit not only to live in peace with the Israeli Jews, but also to protect the Jews as much or even more than they would protect the Palestinian Christians or Moslems, once their liberties are regained and their aspirations are met. This absence of honorable peace for both sides is another part of the dream that turned into a nightmare....

Since we, the Palestinians, left our homes in Jafa, Haifa, Ramallah, Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine, we all went through the rigors of life with a mix of hope and bitterness. We had hope because those who had power or sought power misled us with their rhetoric. They convinced us that the “struggle” for Arab Unity and Social Justice was a worthy cause, deserving of our perseverance and sacrifices, and would culminate in the ultimate triumph for justice for the Palestinian people. Some of us are bitter because those Arab rulers who were in positions of power tried, with immeasurable success, to manipulate us into helping them achieve their latent, petty objectives and hidden agendas which had nothing to do with their, and our, expressed goals. We could not see through them or their desperate attempts to gain power for themselves, not to be shared with anyone else. We could not see that their short, intermediate and long-term goals were one and the same, to cling on to the power that they had gained, or were about to gain, and make sure that it was theirs alone. We were naïve. We were manipulated into believing that we shared power that we really never possessed....

Like most Palestinians, I too am disappointed and feel cheated of a life that could have been times better for me, for my family and for the whole Palestinian people. On the other hand, I feel fortunate and blessed. My nationality did not make things easier for me during my years of growing up, in Palestine and outside. I am, and I am sure all Palestinians are, proud of who and what we are. I have no doubt that I am among the most fortunate Palestinians who at least have a passport to travel on, in lieu of the so-called “travel document” that labels them “citizenless.” I have no doubt that I am among the most fortunate Palestinians, who have an opinion to express without fear of retribution and persecution. I have no doubt that I am among the most fortunate Palestinians who have all of the basic individual human rights and civil liberties.

What saddens me the most, however, is not what happened to us in those days. It is the bill of goods still being sold by the same power mongers to those who still live in political turmoil throughout the Arab world, especially in the West Bank and Gaza. When will the power hungry stop their shameless campaign of manipulation? Although I have faith in our people, my faith in their leaders has long been dead because their values seem to have long since fallen by the wayside.

In spite of it all, the nightmares have not offset my dreams. No, they have not. I have learned, by necessity, to make the best of any situation regardless of the hand dealt by fate, and so have most Palestinians. I am fortunate for what I found, for what I did and what I now have. I now want to go home. Those moderates in Israel who understand where I am coming from must also understand that I, a Palestinian refugee, like most Palestinians, want peace with honor and dignity. I want to have the right to my home, and I want to have the simple right to go back to Palestine before the New York Jew, the Russian Jew or the Ethiopian Jew, who never lived in a land called Palestine. That will be the fulfillment of my ultimate dream and my father’s dream, when like my father before me, I can live with Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, Christians and Moslems, with peace and honor for all.