Refugee Lands
Israel Hosts Albanian Refugees on Palestinian Refugee Lands
(based on BADIL Press Release 16/4/99)
Since NATO bombs began raining down upon Yugoslavia, Palestinian refugees have stared incredulously at CNN correspondents drumming up sympathy on the half-hour for the ethnic Albanians from Kosova who have been driven from their homes. While clearly empathetic for the Albanian refugees' plight, where has the West's compassion been for the last 50 years, they exclaim, since the founders of the State of Israel oversaw the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 of their towns and villages?
To add insult to injury, Israel transported, with great fanfare, 117 ethnic Albanians to shelter in an Israeli kibbutz-one built upon the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian village. Kabara was a scenic village on the Mediterranean coast located 30 kilometers south of Haifa. According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi's book 'All That Remains,' 572 Palestinians lived in Kabara in 1931. Following the purchase of hundreds of acres of village lands by Jewish settlers, a 1944 census counted only 120 Palestinians.
While the details of Kabara's destruction are unclear, Khalidi writes that "[Kabara] was probably occupied during the second campaign [by Zionist troops] to 'clear' the northern coastal plain of all Arab communities." This campaign ran from April until the first half of May-that is, before the outbreak of the war between the newly declared State of Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israelis shoved rubble from the destroyed village onto a nearby hill and in 1949 built Kibbutz Ma'agan Mikha'el, which this week took in the refugees from Kosova.
"After the Holocaust, the Zionist movement can't stand
on the sidelines when a people is being uprooted and goes through
this trauma."
Eli Eyal, senior official at the World
Zionist Organization. (UPI, 26/5/99)
To Palestinians, there is little difference between the Serbian campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosova and the policy that Israel has pursued regarding Palestinians. Before 1948 Palestinians owned most of the land and were the majority population in what became Israel. Today Palestinians constitute less than one-fifth of Israel's population and are relegated to the status of second class citizens, forbidden from owning land on over 90% of Israeli territory.
Israel's policy concerning expelled Palestinian refugees and
their descendants - who today number around five million - has been
to completely block them from returning to their homes. Israeli
Knesset Debate on Kosova
MK Shimon Peres: "what is going on in the settlements is ethnic
confusion." Turning to Rechavam Ze'evi, a former Labor party member
and founder of the Moledet party, which favors the "transfer of
Palestinians," Peres continued: "Don't generate ethnic confusion so
that we don't have to implement ethnic cleansing."
Rechavam Ze'evi: "I learned that from you [in the Labor movement].
You perpetrated a forced transfer. You should be ashamed to raise
the subject." Ze'evi went on to note that the NATO intervention set
a "dangerous precedent." "Couldn't it happen here, too, in a
different variation today or tomorrow?"
(Settlement Report, Foundation for Middle East Peace, Washington,
DC, May-June 1999)
Israel has likewise ignored numerous United Nations resolutions
upholding the Palestinians right to return. Neither Israel's ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians nor its refusal to allow their return,
however, has ever provoked sanctions by the West, let alone the
threat of bombing.
Israel has sought to justify its prevention of Palestinians' return in part by claims that there is simply no room left in the country. This argument is belied by Israel's absorption this decade of a million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and now again by its readiness to accept ethnic Albanians. (See also demographic arguments by Abu Sitta, al majdal, issue no. 1)
It is not just many Palestinians who see Israel's reception of the Albanian refugees as little more than a public relations stunt. According to the liberal Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Albanians' arrival in Israel was part of "an ostentatious mission jointly planned by the government and the Jewish Agency to coincide with the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day." The same article records that the Jewish Agency went to great lengths to find volunteers among Albanian refugees in Macedonia willing to fly to Israel. An agency representative walked from tent to tent in a refugee camp calling with a megaphone on people to sign up for refuge in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the refugees at the airport and, presenting each with an "absorption basket" of $7,500, promised that those who wished to remain in Israel could do so.
Israeli public relations stunts of this kind are directed not only at international public opinion, but are necessary to calm fear and confusion in Israel itself. The western rhetoric used to justify the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, such as the denouncement of ethnic cleansing and the legitimacy of international law, has struck deeply into the Israeli psyche.
Israelis commonly live in calm denial of the fact that the
Jewish state derives its existence from the ethnic cleansing of the
indigenous Palestinian population and the ongoing refusal of
Palestinian refugee return. "Are we the Kosova Albanians or the
Serbs in this game?"; "Will NATO strike us next?". Questions of
this kind, taboo in Zionist Israel, have become the subject of
public discussion. The invitation to host Albanian refugees in the
lands of Palestinian refugees is an irony aimed at re-sealing the
Pandora's box in Israel.
Depopulation Information
Date Depopulated: 30/4/48
Reason for Exodus: Expulsion by Zionist forces
Population 1948: 139
Palestinian Private land:
- 1,001 dunms cereal lands
- 47 dunums forests and uncultivable land
Palestinian Public land:
- 2 dunums citrus & banana
- 20 dunums irridated land
- 3,309 dunums forests and uncultivable land
- 520 dunums roads and railways
Jewish private land
- 3,487 dunums
Registered Refugees 1998: 648
Total Refugees 1998: 855