Reflections on Al-Nakba
REFLECTIONS ON AL-NAKBA To most Palestinians, 1948, the year of al-Nakba, is theformative year of their lves. This is true irrespective of age, background, or occupation, or whether the person is a refugee or not, or lives in Palestine or the diaspora. On thisfiftieth anniversary of al-Nakba, JPS asked a number of Palestinians of different generations and walks of life to write short pieces on what this event has meant to them. In JPS's letters of invitation, the "guidelines" suggested were to avoid political and historical analysis in favor ofpersonal reflections. The following are the results. MAMDOUH NOFAL Mamdouh Nofal was born in Qalqilya, Palestine, in 1944. He has held a succession of high military posts in the Palestinian movement. In Tunis as of 1988, he was a member of the Higher Coordinating Committee for the intifada. He participated in the Madrid Conference in 1991, served on the Higher Steering Committee for Palestinian Negotiations, and is a member of the PLO Central Committee. Permitted by Israel to return to Palestine in March 1996, he lives in Ramallah. He is the author of two books (in Arabic) on the peace process. The closest I can come to explaining what 1948 means to me, and how it affected the path I took in life and the choices I made, is to tell about grow- ing up in Qalqilya, on the frontline with Israel. When the dust of 1948 settled, Qalqilya itself had not been occupied, fall- ing in what came to be called the West Bank. But it had lost more than 90 percent of its agricultural lands, its main source of livelihood, which were now farmed by the Jewish colonies across the railroad tracks that had once linked Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt and which now formed the border with the newly created State of Israel.
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