Published by Americans for The Link Middle East Understanding, Inc. Volume 31, Issue 5 December, 1998 “Write your own history!” That was the mandate delivered last February by Edward Said of Columbia University to students at Palestine’s Bethlehem Dear NPR News... University. And he offered them an example: Each time I check my BY ALI ABUNIMAH E-mail, I find copies of E-mail sent by a young Palestinian to <[email protected]> radio stations, TV reporters, and newspaper editors, commenting Crossing the River on their coverage of the Palestinian issue. In his effective, I don’t know if I had expected to hear an appropriately electronic way, said Said, this man, Ali Abunimah, is writing his evocative soundtrack of the sort that accompanies own history every day. dramatic moments in movies. I remember being For the past four months, I too have been checking my E-mail each day in anticipation of Ali’s intensely aware only of the peeling sound of tires on perceptive, well-honed responses. concrete and the strains of the narrow metal Nor am I alone. By word of modem, as it were, Ali now has over 200 on his ‘cc’ list. Even bridge as the bus carried us across the River Jordan. NPR News interviews him! When we asked Ali, a September 6, 1996, was a day I had waited for and researcher at the University of imagined for most of my 25 years. Chicago, to write for us, he noted that it’s one thing to type a 100- word reply and quite another to It was the day I entered Palestine. turn out a 10,000-word article, something he had never The Sheikh Hussein crossing between Israel attempted. Consider it an and Jordan, far to the north of Amman and “attachment,” we suggested, a postscript to all those hundreds of Jerusalem, is supposed to resemble a “normal” E-mails that explains why a person devotes a chunk of his international border where tourists cross as a time each day to what appears to be an exercise in frustration, if not matter of routine. It has bureaux de change and a futility. That’s the story we wanted to “download” in this issue. mural of giant doves emblazoned with the Rod Driver (Link, July-August words “Peace, Shalom, Salaam.” But it is a 1998) did not win the Rhode Island primary. But he did win. parody of a border. The other passengers and I See page 14. John F. Mahoney were merely pretending to be tourists with Executive Director our single-entry tourist visas granting us The Link Page 2 AMEU Board of Directors dialect of Arabic.” Jane Adas After a thorough examination of Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. my clothes, batteries, razor blades, Atwater, Bradley & Partners, Inc. books (I made sure to bring several of Henry G. Fischer (Vice President) Curator Emeritus, Dept. of Egyptian Art my favorites by Edward Said, as I had Metropolitan Museum of Art just heard that the Palestinian Bonnie Gehweiler Authority had banned them), and a lot Coordinator, Bethlehem 2000 Project of questions, I was asked to proceed to John Goelet passport control. Grace Halsell Writer “Where are you going?” the Richard Hobson, Jr. woman asked. Vice President, Olayan America Corp. “To Jerusalem,” I replied. Nell MacCracken Consultant “How long do you plan to stay in Robert L. Norberg (Vice President) Israel?” Hon. Edward L. Peck “I do not plan to spend any time Former U.S. Ambassador in Israel. I shall spend all of my time in Lachlan Reed President, Lachlan International Jerusalem and the Occupied Talcott W. Seelye Territories.” Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria This elicited only a glare, and a Donald L. Snook warning: “Do not exceed 14 days or Jack B. Sunderland (President) Ali Abunimah President, American Independent Oil Co. you will not get another visa.” L. Humphrey Walz —Photo by Henry Leutwyler As soon as we got to Jerusalem, I Associate Executive, H.R. Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast asked Zaki to take me to Lifta, my mother’s village. Lifta was a town of Miriam Ward, RSM 14-day visits. As the bus bounced across the Professor, Religious Studies approximately 8,000 people located Mark R. Wellman (Treasurer) metal bridge as though on a rusty spring just to the northwest of Jerusalem, not Financial Consultant mattress, the watchtowers and machine gun far from Deir Yassin. It was one of the posts reminded us where we were going. first Palestinian towns to be attacked AMEU National Council As soon as we stepped off the bus, I was by Zionist forces in late December Hon. James E. Akins, Isabelle singled out by the Israeli police, who all 1947. By January 1948, the residents Bacon, William R. Chandler, David looked identical in fashionable Oakley had fled the frequent terrorist attacks S. Dodge, Barbro Ek, Paul Findley, sunglasses and crew cuts. My cousin Zaki, in and sought shelter with friends and Dr. Francis H. Horn, Dr. Cornelius his early sixties, was allowed to go through the B. Houk, O. Kelly Ingram, neighbors on safer ground. regular line with the other passengers, mostly Moorhead Kennedy, Ann Kerr, My grandfather took his family to John D. Law, Prof. George older Palestinians with Jordanian or Israeli stay in the Baq’a neighborhood of Lenczowski, John J. McCloy II, citizenship coming or going to visit relatives Jerusalem—until the massacre at Deir David Nes, C. Herbert Oliver, and lives left behind on the other side of the Yassin. “Then we left,” my mother George L. Parkhurst, Marie river. says, and—like all who tell this story— Petersen, John J. Slocum, Dr. John I was taken aside to a metal trestle table adds, “We didn’t think we would ever C. Trever, Don W. Wagner, Jr. where all my belongings were laid out. The see our home again.” My mother’s Israeli officer addressed me in heavily family went to Jordan, which proved AMEU Staff accented, incomprehensible Arabic. He barked to be a safe haven. Because my John F. Mahoney, Executive Director an order several times, to which I could only grandfather owned property in the respond with bafflement. Finally, exasperated, West Bank and Jordan, the family was AMEU (ISSN 0024-4007) grants he pointed at his sunglasses. “Ah!” I said in able to get back on its feet, despite the permission to reproduce material from The Hebrew, “you want me to remove my loss of everything they had in Lifta Link in part or in whole. We ask that credit sunglasses!” I took them off, and he spoke now and West Jerusalem. be given to AMEU and that one copy be sent to our office at 475 Riverside Drive, in Hebrew, “A Jordanian who speaks Hebrew? Lifta was built on a steep incline. Room 245, New York, New York 10115- That I have never seen.” “Don’t be so 0245. Tel. 212-870-2053; Fax 212-870- Much of the upper village, where my 2050; E-mail <[email protected]>; Web site: surprised,” I answered entirely untruthfully, mother’s family lived, has been <http://members.aol.com/ameulink>. “most of us speak it. It is just like an easy The Link Page 3 demolished or incorporated into Jewish West Jerusalem. He is on his way home from the Israeli settlement of Jewish families now inhabit the finest houses. The lower Ramot in the West Bank, just north of Lifta, where he and village remains derelict, but largely intact, waiting for its many other Palestinians do construction work in order to inhabitants to return and finish what they were doing the feed their families. Amazed by the coincidence, we greet day they left 50 years ago. Marked by a sign erected by him gratefully. He offers to drive us to Battir, my father’s the Israeli Committee to Protect Nature, a rocky path village near Bethlehem, where my relatives have leads down into the village, winding among empty prepared a feast for my first homecoming. houses and long grass. High above, the Israelis are Over the next few days, Brahim would be our guide, building an overpass, and the entrance to Lifta is a and I would learn much about the system of roadblocks staging ground for construction crews and bulldozers. and pass laws that prevents Palestinians from entering Lower Lifta is uninhabited except by the crickets and the Holy City. “Nseena al-Quds” (“We have forgotten lizards that never left. In the center is a waterhole where what Jerusalem looks like.”), my aunt says later as we sit young Orthodox Jewish men come to swim, away from on her porch in Battir, eating fruits, drinking tea, and prying eyes. watching Jerusalem’s lights blink on in the twilight. No one bothers me that day as I climb down, leaving I try to remember my emotions on that day. It Zaki waiting at the top of the slope, where the taxi had wasn’t the sadness or anger I had expected. I felt no dropped us off. It is intensely hot. I try to stay out of hatred, even toward the Israelis enjoying a picnic and a sight, and clamber among the ruins and the brush, the swim in what had once been the center of Lifta. Coming rusty oil cans and tattered plastic bags. Inside many of across them enjoying a private moment, I had felt myself the houses that still have roofs are the charred remains of the intruder. We all are instilled with a sense of propriety campfires and the debris left behind by squatters.