[News] Palestine - 1948 Again, in Sheikh Jarrah
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Nov 10 11:25:33 EST 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/
November 10, 2009
1948 Again, in Sheikh Jarrah
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape
By ELLEN CANTAROW
"Disputed is a word often used about East
Jerusalem and homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Would the
international community have considered the homes
of American blacks attacked by the Ku Klux Kla as
disputed? Or those of Jews ejected by Brown Shirts in the early 1930s?
The rule of law exists to protect the victims of
war and occupation by imposing sanctions and
responsibilities on invaders. It is not to be
stretched for the convenience of the US at
Guantanamo, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Gaza,
or in East Jerusalem. Under the law East
Jerusalem and all the Arab homes it contains are
part of the occupied West Bank. Despite endless
palm-greasing, casuist apologetics, semantic
distortions and brute force, Israels
responsibilities towards the territories it
occupies remain articulated in the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949 and Chapter 5 of the 1907
Hague Convention IV. Occupying states are
forbidden to seize the land and property of those
they occupy, and forbidden to settle their citizens on occupied soil.
But Israel and its US patron have small regard
for legal niceties, instead preferring
Thucydides maxim: The strong do what they can,
and the weak do what they must.
* * *
Late afternoon, October 16, 2009. Nasser Ghawe,
46, barrel-chested, with an expressive face and a
ready smile, calls out to his little girl when
she strays too far down the street. Come here,
darling, he says, scooping her up in his arms
and cradling her. Were seated on plastic chairs
in the gathering dusk at one side of a street in
East Jerusalems Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The
mother watches tiredly as Nasser talks with us.
The usual courtesy cups of strong Arabic coffee
arent offered here; the family has none. For
nearly eleven weeks they have been living on the
street opposite the house that was theirs for 53
years. On August 2 Israeli soldiers threw them
out; minutes later, settlers from the violent
organization Kach (Thus, founded by the late
Meir Kahane), moved in and have been there ever
since. And so the Ghawes are once again refugees,
re-living a nightmare they had thought was buried
in the Nakba. They watch from the street as
settlers carry on life in their former home. When
we visited, a guard hired by the settlers picked
limes and gave them to one of the Ghawe women: I
am not against Arabs, he said, This is just my job.
In 1948 Ghawes grandparents fled from Ein
Sfarand near Lydda. Ein Sfarand was bulldozed
into the ground along with over 450 other Arab
villages. Pretty national parks and kibbutzim
erased any trace of the traditional Arab
architecture, agriculture and the rest of life
which once characterized Palestine. Hebrew names
Lod, for example, for Lydda - replaced the
Arabic ones. The Ghawes fled to East Jerusalem
where UNWRA (The United Nations Works Relief
Agency) housed them as refugees. In 1956 they
returned their refugee cards and rented a house
from a local Palestinian builder.
There they stayed in peace for nearly twenty
years. In the early 70s settler organizations
began trying to seize the homes of the Ghawes and
those of over two dozen other Sheikh Jarrah
families including the Hannouns who lived down
the street and around the corner. For 37 years
the families staved the settlers off in court. In
2006 the Ghawes were evicted but settlers didnt
move in; the Israeli police simply put locks on
the doors. The Ghawe family shattered the locks
and moved back in. The Hannouns put up a website
and appealed to the international community for
protection. According to one of the older Hannoun
children, 20-year-old Sharihan, some 1000
internationals came through to sleep in their
home, in much the same way as internationals now
come to help Palestinians with their harvests.
(The website -
<http://www.standupforjerusalem.org/>http://www.standupforjerusalem.org
gives essential historical background.)
When we visited, the Ghawe family was living on a
plywood platform under an improvised roof white
sheets stitched together and strung up on poles.
In the dim interior we could see mattresses and a
simple bed. Childrens drawings were tacked to an
improvised wall. There were also stuffed animals,
a TV set on a card table, a generator, and other
necessities of life small testimonies to the
familys efforts to impose some normality in the midst of lunacy.
That afternoon Sheikh Jarrah looked like
Williamsburg, Brooklyn settler men strolling
about in long black caftans, leggings, fur hats;
settler women in long-sleeved shapeless dresses,
wigs and hats. A special large enclosure had been
erected for the settlers holiday festivities,
its lights beaming across the area as dusk
descended. Many baby-strollers announced a race
to the finish with the arabushim. (The settlers
address Israels demographic problem
viscerally. Thirty years ago settlers from Gush
Emunim Bloc of the Faithful, the radical
right-wing spearhead of Israels drive to settle
the West Bank -- told me with pride that their
own large families would win against the Arabs).
In 1979 I reported from Kiryat Arba, a major Gush
Emunim stronghold. A settler interviewee
whispered with pride that Meir Kahane had an
apartment there. For the Gush settlers, Arabs
were at very least inferior. One woman said she
believed in a chain of being: on top, Jews.
Then, lesser human specimens. Then animals,
vegetables, minerals. Somewhere in the lower
reaches of lesser humanity were Arabs. Let them
bow their heads. If they wont, they should
leave, was a frequent Gush statement about the untermenschen.
At that time the Gush had just established a
squat in the former Hadassah Hospital in
Hebron. Miriam Levinger, the wife of the Gush
leader, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, said the squatters
were there to stay. Israel let them. Israels US
patron did nothing but continue its usual $3
billion annual largesse. Todays visitors to
central Hebron can observe the results: the
central Palestinian market lies emptied and
closed after years of settler pogroms. One of
many hate-filled graffiti reads: ARABS TO THE GAS
CHAMBERS. (For essential information about these
settlers see the late Robert I. Friedmans
Zealots for Zion, Rutgers University Press, 1992,
and Lords of the Land by Idith Zertal and Akiva
Eldar, Nation Books, 2005, 2007).
Thirty years ago Kach was considered a pariah
organization. (In 1988 Israel barred Kach from
elections because of Kachs stated desire to
expel all Arabs from Israel. In 1994 the US
declared it a terrorist group). Gush Emunim was
also considered lunatic fringe. But Labor and
Likud alike bowed to Gush demands, enabling
settlements like Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba and
Elon Moreh the rest of Israels West Bank
settlements (whole cities and red-roofed
California-style suburban sprawl) followed. The
lunatic fringe is now the mainstream, dominating
Israels armed forces and its political life.
* * *
Down the street and around the corner from the
Ghawes we found the Hannoun familys house. A
line of Israeli flags fluttered triumphantly
along the arch of its roof. A dark-green
synthetic material hung behind a crude fencing of
wire mesh, obscuring the entire front of the
house. Through tatters in the green fiber we saw
the settlers Shabbat candles glimmering.
20-year-old Sharihan Hannoun sat on a lawn chair
on the sidewalk with other family members. She
wore a black, long-sleeved sweater, jeans and
sneakers. A blue hijab framed a pleasant young
face with dark, arching eyebrows.
Sharihan said the army arrived at five in the
morning August 2nd. One of the police shoved a
gun through a window. He shouted, Open the
door! They break the door, said Sharihan,
broken everything they see, threw all the
tables, the chairs, and then come to me and hit
me with a gun. Even my little brother, they put a
gun in his back. My father say, Dont touch my
son, hes only eight years old. But they threw
my father and my little brother outside and then
go to my mom room. She say, Let me wear my
clothes, I cannot be in the street in pajama
[But] they refused. And they let her to walk on
the broken glass cause they broken everything
they see . . . I sat and I put my arms around the
door. [I said], This is my house, I will never
leave. But [the soldiers] body is strong. He beat me.
In the street, their cell phones and cameras
confiscated, the family watched as the soldiers
displayed their purity of arms: they tossed out
all the furniture. Then they began playing
football, something that particularly astonished
Sharihan. They didnt care. They kick us
outside, they eating my little brother chocolate
and playing football. My brother say, I want to
sleep in my house. And I cant do anything for him.
The day we visited, the family had been living
for two months and ten days on the streets, with
periodic help from relatives (bathing, toilet,
etc.) The Palestinian Authority put the family up
in a hotel during Ramadan, then refused to pay
anymore. On our visit, Sharihan had just returned
from her classes. How could she study in these
circumstances? A shrug: I study in the street. I
dont have another place. I have to study and,
like, have a normal life. I cant give up. If
they took my house it is not the end for me.
I returned four days later to record Sharihans
story. The next day she was to leave for the US
with other Palestinian representatives of Sheikh
Jarrah: all had been granted visas. Sharihan was
to be interviewed by press in the US, and also to
testify before the UN. Friends kept arriving to
say goodbye and wish her luck. Did she want to
stay in the US? I want to return to my country.
I want to open hospital, for old people. I think
everyone forget what the old people do when they
younger. And how did the exams go? She beamed: I am second in my class.
* * *
Days after our visit, the settlers danced in
triumph in front of their victims while the
latter banged pots and pans to make them leave.
<http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=234466>http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=234466)
The Jerusalem municipality has approved plans by
Florida billionaire Irving Moskowitz, to build
twenty apartments in Sheikh Jarrah.
[<http://middleeastprogress.org/2009/07/debating-jerusalem/>http://middleeastprogress.org/2009/07/debating-jerusalem/
] The settler organization, Nahalat Shimon
International, also filed plans this past August
with the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission to
demolish Palestinian homes and build a 200-unit
settlement. On Nablus Road, not far from Sheikh
Jarrah, I saw that one Arab street name had been
whited out. All that was left was a Hebrew name
at the top of the sign, and the English one at the bottom.
Ellen Cantarow, a Boston-based journalist, has
written from Israel and the West Bank since 1979.
This article is part of a series, Heroism in a
Vanishing Landscape, about non-violent
Palestinian resistance to Israels occupation.
She can be reached at <mailto:ecantarow at comcast.net>ecantarow at comcast.net
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