Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May-June 2008, pages 30-33

Voices of the Nakba

60 Years and Counting

	Yusef Al Hums holds a copper key to his home in Yibna (Photo M. Omer.)

“IF THEY PUT all the gold in the world within my hands and asked me to give away my home in Yibna, I would never give it away!” Yousef Al Hums forcibly asserts.

Born in 1932 and a teenager during al-Nakba—Arabic for “the Catastrophe”—he remembers everything about that fateful year from December 1947 to December 1948. Like most of the 750,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims forcibly removed, ethnically cleansed or massacred by Zionists including members of the terrorist Irgun and Stern gangs and the Haganah, predecessor to the Israel Defense (aka “Occupation”) Forces, Al Hums relives the days that transformed his life and made him a refugee in his own land. Keeping the oral history alive is essential, lest each new generation forget the atrocities and injustice visited upon them by gun barrel, fire and terror.

That history also symbolizes rejection of the systematic erasure of Arabic villages in name, each physically wiped off the map through terror and permanently made invisible by Golda Meir’s 1971 edict requiring that all approved maps in Israel never show the Green Line, never show Palestine, never show anything that would cause people to question the perceived and carefully crafted narrative essential to the Zionist myth.

Al Hums tells it and retells the history of the Palestinian people, a history going back over 4,000 years yet expunged from Israeli and Palestinian text books, narrative and conscience. He tells the stories to prevent collective amnesia and to minimize the obscuring of atrocities under non-indigenous evergreen forests reflecting the support of an unsuspecting Jewish Diaspora. Because he remembers, Al Hums, like all Palestinians who experienced al-Nakba, works to keep the truth alive.

In his hand he holds a copper key, a legacy of the home and the self-sufficiency he once enjoyed. In time, he will pass the key to his grandchildren, along with the stories of what once was and the freedom and dignity that can be again.  He explains the key’s significance to his grandchildren gathered around him—that it is “kept because if we can’t return to our homes today, then you are going to return to your grandfather’s home in Yibna village.”

Yibna is one of the 675 towns and villages the Zionists destroyed—350 of them BEFORE Israel became a state. After the residents were forcibly removed, fled from terror, or massacred, each town was razed or occupied and claimed on behalf of Jewish people worldwide. Later these same towns were either built over with villages for Jews only or hidden through the planting of evergreen forests under the campaign of “Plant a tree for Israel.”

The future leaders of the new state promised to treat as equals the 85 percent of the population who were not Jewish but whose families had lived in Palestine for centuries. Realizing the Zionist goal of a Jewish-only state, however, required that despite such promises, 750,000 people were ethnically cleansed and forced off their land into refugee and internment camps, where the fourth generation of survivors still live today. Those who stayed behind found themselves living under martial law, discriminated against, vilified and forced into poverty. All of this occurred within one year—and three years after the end of the Nazi holocaust, an event in Europe where, over a period of six years, martial law, ethnic cleansing and terror were used to force Jews and others who did not fit Nazi ideals into concentration camps. Palestinians now enter their 60th year of such treatment.

“Every day, I pray that if I die I will be buried on my land in Yibna,” Al Hums states. For him, his usurped land represents all that is important, second only to his love for his family.

Today he calls Rafah’s Yeban refugee camp home. He lives there with his two wives, seven children and a total of 50 grandchildren. With many gathered about him, he tells again of the days leading up to al-Nakba.

“Those days were the most beautiful days of my life,” he recalls happily. “Anyone needing support in our village could count on all the people to stand by him.”

Then, at age 15, everything changed for Al Hums. Holding up his hand, he shows the scars from an injury received from a British helicopter. At the time, the British still controlled Mandate Palestine. Following the riots of 1936-1939, when the Arab population rose up against their British rulers, unequal treatment under the law, and the continued influx of Zionists, the British disarmed the Arab population—but not only allowed the Jewish population to retain its arms, but proceeded to train them. From these fighters emerged the all-Jewish Haganah militia, as well as members of the terrorist Stern and Lehi gangs.

In that summer of 1947, the 15-year-old Al Hums married his first wife. Within nine months, life as he knew it would cease to exist.

Remembering that fateful day in May 1948, he says, “It pains me still today. It was around 2 o’clock [a.m.],” he recalls. “We all had to run after hearing the Haganah invaded Yibna in the middle of the night. We’d heard horrible stories about Deir Yassin and other towns. Pregnant women with their stomachs sliced open and babies taken out and killed by throwing them into water wells.”

One of Zionism’s enduring myths is that its forces were outnumbered and underdogs. In reality, by the time of statehood, Zionist forces numbered 60,000. These fighters were heavily armed with the latest weapons smuggled in from Europe and paid for with funds from the American Diaspora. As mentioned, they also had been well trained by the British.

Even with the addition of troops from Egypt, Trans-Jordan and Syria after May 15, 1948, (the Arab armies would not attack before Israel declared statehood), the combined Arab forces amounted to just over 20,000—a ratio of 3 to 1. Since, with the exception of Trans-Jordan’s elite guard, the British had largely prohibited Arabs from owning weapons, the majority of Arab fighters used outdated weaponry and were ill trained.

In his diary David Ben-Gurion, who led the Zionist forces, noted his awareness of this fact. The knowledge of their military superiority prompted the Zionists to push to acquire additional lands not allocated to the new state by the U.N. Partition Plan. By the end of the conflict, the Zionists had claimed 78 percent of Palestine for themselves, leaving just 22 percent for the Arabs—who constituted 70 percent of the population. A back channel negotiation with the king of Trans-Jordan ceded the West Bank to his control, and the Latani River in Lebanon, a prize water resource coveted by the Zionists, remained out of reach. Israel’s subsequent invasions of Lebanon in future decades sought to obtain this resource for the Jewish state. Only the rise of Hezbollah continues to prevent the Litani from constituting Israel’s northern border.

“At first Jewish groups arrived as guests in our homes,” Al Hums continues. “Some slept in our big two story house,” he adds, noting that his property once boasted 225 dunams of citrus, grapes, wheat and barley.

It has since been revealed through declassified documents that as early as 1937 Zionists took advantage of the Palestinian custom of hospitality to case out each village, document the number of men, arms and any escape routes. Typically, an agent would offer to buy out Palestinians for amounts well below market value. If the landowner sold, the land immediate became the property of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Once the land became part of the JNF, non-Jews were prohibited from owning or residing on it. Shortly after statehood, non-Jews would be barred from leasing, working on or traversing Jewish-only land, and Jewish landowners and businesses that refused to adhere to this policy often found themselves fined, terrorized or worse.

Most Palestinians refused these below-market offers. The Al Hums land, fully cultivated with a mill, was valuable. Menachem, the British Jewish man making the offer, warned Al Hums’ father that he had better take the offer, stating the Zionists would provide him with double the land in the Gaza Strip (at the time under Egypt’s control and not in their authority to give). Al Hums’ father rejected the offer. Six months later, British forces organized by the Araghona and Stern groups forced the family to leave, firing tank shells and using helicopter gunships. Zionists claimed the family’s farm for the JNF.

The Al Hums family escaped, carrying nothing but “this key to our house.” In the course of one night they went from being a prosperous, self-sufficient family to poverty-stricken refugees.

At the time, no one in the family understood what the word “camp” meant. Before too long, however, they would know only too well.

Asked if there had been any resistance to the Zionist military and terrorist groups, Al Hums says that a small group armed with farming implements, rifles and guns did attempt to stop the invasion. He was not part of the resistance, however, because the British military worked in concert with the Zionists, securing the area, closing all the roads and preventing exit. The only path out led to Gaza, so the new refugee family finally settled in Rafah.

For every Palestinian refugee, there is a memory and a history of an independent and proud life crushed into one of dependence. Although the Zionists destroyed most public records, a few Palestinian families can still prove their land ownership. Al Hums recalls a neighbor who, since he still possessed documents of ownership, was able to bring his bicycle and clothing to Gaza.

Al Hums has managed to see his property twice since 1948, first in 1976 and again in 2000. The first time he noted that the Israelis had destroyed the irrigation system and all of the equipment, rendering the fertile land nearly useless. By 2000, they had erased all indications of the once-prosperous farm.

“They took out everything and all is destroyed. I can tour the land on my feet, but this is ethnic cleansing not only of trees and land, but also of its people,” he says sadly.

“I am ready to offer my soul for my land and roots,” he states emphatically. “This is our land; Why would we give up on it? It is our right!”

By Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.