01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page i About this book The war of 1948 is known to Israelis as the “War of Independence”. But for Palestinians, the war is forever the Nakba, “The Catastrophe”. The conflict led to the creation of the state of Israel and resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society by Zionist forces. Approxi- mately 90 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees. The minority of Palestinians – 160,000 – who remained behind, are one of the main subjects of this book. Many of them were forced out of their homes and became second-class citizens of the state of Israel. As such, they were subject to a system of military administration between 1948 and 1966 by a government that confiscated the bulk of their lands. For the Palestinians, both refugees and non-refugees, the traumatic events of 1948 have become central to Palestinian history, memory and identity. Moreover, in recent years Palestinians have been producing memories of the Nakba, compiling and recording oral history and holding annual commemorations designed to preserve the memory of the catastrophe, while emphasising the link between refugee rights, identity and memory. In the absence of a rich source of Palestinian docu- mentary records, oral history and interviews with internally displaced Palestinians are a critical and natural source for constructing a more com- prehensible narrative of their experiences. This collection is dedicated to the memory of Edward W. Said (1935– 2003), whose voice articulated the aspirations of the disenfranchised, the oppressed and the marginalised, and whose message was humanist and universal, extending beyond Palestine to touch wide audiences. 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page ii 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page iii Catastrophe Remembered Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said (1935–2003) Edited by Nur Masalha Zed Books LONDON AND NEW YORK 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page iv Catastrophe Remembered was first published by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA in 2005 www.zedbooks.co.uk Editorial Copyright © Nur Masalha 2005 Copyright © Individual Contributors 2005 Cover designed by Andrew Corbett 1 Set in 10 ⁄2/13 pt Garamond by Long House, Cumbria, UK Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Press Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 The right of Nur Masalha to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 All rights reserved A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library US Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 1 84277 622 3 (cased) ISBN 1 84277 623 1 (limp) 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page v Contents Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgements x Foreword: Edward W. Said, Scholar-Activist NASEER H. ARURI xi Introduction NUR MASALHA 1 Part I • Evolving Israeli Policies and Indigenous Resistance 1 Present Absentees and Indigenous Resistance NUR MASALHA 23 2 The State of Israel versus the Palestinian Internal Refugees HILLEL COHEN 56 3 Patterns of Internal Displacement, Social Adjustment and the Challenge of Return NIHAD BOQA’I 73 4 Forced Sedentarisation, Land Rights and Indigenous Resistance: The Palestinian Bedouin in the Negev ISMA’EL ABU-SA’AD 113 Part II • Palestinian Oral History and Memory 5 “A Muted Sort of Grief ”: Tales of Refuge in Nazareth (1948–2005) ISABELLE HUMPHRIES 145 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page vi 6 Kafr Bir’im WILLIAM DALRYMPLE 168 7 The Nakba, Oral History and the Palestinian Peasantry: The Case of Lubya MAHMOUD ‘ISSA 178 8 Unrecognised Villages: Indigenous ‘Ayn Hawd versus Artists’ Colony ‘Ein Hod JONATHAN COOK 197 9 The Nakba in Hebrew: Israeli-Jewish Awareness of the Palestinian Catastrophe and Internal Refugees EITAN BRONSTEIN 214 PART III • Human Rights and International Protection 10 The Real Road Map to Peace: International Dimensions of the Internal Refugee Question ILAN PAPPÉ 245 11 International Protection and Durable Solutions TERRY REMPEL 260 Index 292 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page vii Notes on Contributors Professor Naseer H. Aruri is Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Trans-Arab Research Institute (Boston), and a member of the Board of Directors of the newly estab- lished International Institute of Criminal Investigations (The Hague). He is a member of the Independent Palestinian Commission for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights, and a founding member of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights. He was also a member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch/Middle East, 1990–1992, and a three- term member of the board of directors of Amnesty International, USA, 1984–1990. His latest book is: Dishonest Broker: The US Role in Israel and Palestine (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003). Professor Isma’el Abu-Sa’ad is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Ben-Gurion, Beer Sheba. He is the author of many articles on the Palestinian Bedouin of the Negev. His co-edited books include The Influence of Settlement on Substance Use and Abuse among Nomadic Populations in Israel and Kenya (Nirp Research for Policy Series 7) (2002) and The Future of Indigenous Peoples: Strategies for Survival and Develop- ment (2003). Nihad Boqa’i is a leading expert on the Palestinian refugees and inter- nally displaced persons and a researcher at the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem, Palestine. Eitan Bronstein is Chair of Zochrot (zochrot means “to remember” in Hebrew), the only Israeli organisation that campaigns to raise awareness of the Palestinian Nakba in both Jewish society and Israeli schools. 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page viii viii • Catastrophe Remembered Zochrot also posts signs on the sites of destroyed Palestinian villages. Dr Hillel Cohen was born in Jerusalem in 1961. He covered Palestinian affairs for the Jerusalem-based Hebrew magazine Kol Ha’ir (1992–99). He was Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London (2002–03) and Research Fellow at the Truman Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998–2004). He has a PhD from the Hebrew University (in 2002) and an MA from the same university on the Palestinian internal refugees in Israel. He is currently teaching in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Hebrew University. His book Present Absentees (in Hebrew) was published in 2000, and an updated version was published in Arabic in Beirut in 2003. His book An Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism 1917–1948 (in Hebrew) was published in Jerusalem in 2004. Jonathan Cook is a writer and freelance journalist living in Nazareth. He has contributed to, among other publications, the Guardian (London), International Herald Tribune (Paris), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris) and Al- Ahram Weekly On-Line (Cairo). William Dalrymple is a Scottish writer and historian. His book White Mughals won the Wolfson Prize for History 2003 and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN History Award. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. From the Holy Mountain, his acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern homeland, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his writings about India, The Age of Kali, was published in 1998. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his “outstanding contribution to travel literature”. 01_Masahla prelims 28/7/05 2:28 pm Page ix Contributors • ix Isabelle Humphries is currently studying for a PhD at St Mary’s College, University of Surrey, on the Palestinian internal refugees in Galilee. She has an MA in Middle East Politics from Durham University and has worked for three years with Palestinian NGOs, and as a freelance writer, on both sides of the 1967 border. Dr Mahmoud ‘Issa is a Palestinian refugee from the village of Lubya, Galilee, and is currently based in Denmark. He worked for the Danish Refugee Council as a Counsellor and Senior Researcher. He is also the author of many articles on the oral history of the Palestinian refugees. Dr Nur Masalha is a senior lecturer and the Director of the Holy Land Research Project at St Mary’s College, University of Surrey, as well as the editor of Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal. His books include: Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–-1948 (Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); The Palestinians in Israel: Is Israel the State of All Its Citizens and “Absentees”? (Haifa: Galilee Centre for Social Research, 1993); A Land Without a People (London: Faber and Faber, 1997); Imperial Israel and the Palestinians (Lon- don: Pluto Press, 2000); and The Politics of Denial (London: Pluto Press, 2003).