Internally Displaced Palestinians Visit their Villages Memories, Identity and a Plan for Return
During the past few years, the Association for Defending the
Rights of the Internally Displaced Persons in Israel (ADRID), along
with local committees and other associations have organized a
series of visits to depopulated Palestinian villages. These visits
aim to raise awareness about the plight of the internally
displaced, but they also signify the importance of memory for
Palestinians who were expelled from their lands and country by
force.
Memory provides a link between the individual and the collective
experience. Return visits also reveal the importance of identity
and belonging to a particularly geographical place. This identity
continues to have an impact on displaced persons today. Visiting
depopulated villages is one method of resistance and protest
against involuntary displacement and against Zionist policies that
are based on the denial of the Nakba. It is a clear pronouncement
of participation in the struggle for return.
Since 1948 the Israeli establishment has considered displaced Palestinians who remained in the areas of former Palestine that became part of the new state of Israel as a threat. The Zionist movement did not set foot in Palestine solely to achieve military conquest and political succession, but also to attain a fundamental transformation in the geo-cultural makeup of the country in order to realize the Zionist program as 'an actual fact on the ground'. A consistent policy based on denying and ignoring the refugee issue, in general, and the internally displaced, in particular, is therefore only part of an ongoing process that aims to destroy the geographic, cultural and national connections of Palestinians to their homeland. As part of this process, the Zionist movement has been unable to tolerate excavation of antiquities that relate to Palestinian history and presence in the land, including the depopulated villages.
The history and current reality of internally displaced
Palestinians is distinguished by two interconnected aspects that
impose themselves on all issues relating to internally displaced
Palestinians today. The first relates to the fact that internally
displaced Palestinians are 'refugees' in their own country as well
as part of the rest of the Palestinian refugee community that was
expelled by Zionist forces in 1948. Internally displaced
Palestinians face the various implications (e.g. social, economic,
legal) of this status. The second stems from the 'blue' color of
their citizenship, that is, as Palestinians who remained within the
borders of the Hebrew State and attained its citizenship after the
Nakba, and the consequences of this reality, which entails daily
confrontations with the current political establishment that still
defines itself as the State of the Jews, including those who do not
reside in Israel. Internally displaced persons Palestinians thus
consider their struggle as a 'heavy weight' struggle for identity.
It is a struggle torn between a sense of refuge and exile inside
one's own country and the reality of a national minority that has
not relinquished its demands for their basic rights.
In this context, internally displaced Palestinians began to
conceive the 'depopulated village' as something more than just an
educational and a cultural project to enhance memory. Village
visits highlight the mixed sense of time in which internally
displaced live and the connection between the identity of refuge
and exile and a national identity that is still threatened by the
governing regime. The visits provide a concrete opportunity for the
internally displaced and their children to 'restructure' the
village in its original form by drawing upon the experiences of
others who were present in the village before displacement and
exile in 1948. During the visits the elder generation who were born
and grew up in the village recount stories, narratives, anecdotes
and jokes about village life before the Nakba. They point out the
locations of homes, neighborhoods and other important places in the
village. Ruins, stones, trees, plants and so on assist them in
identifying the various sites in the village. Oral history accounts
of village life symbolize the internally displaced person’s
commitment to their origins in the village and its importance to
their identity.
The return visits to depopulated villages embody the internally
displaced Palestinians’ ongoing demand to be able to return to
their villages. They are one of the most important mechanisms
related to the struggle for the right to return.
Nihad Boqai is a researcher at BADIL. The full report was
originally published in Arabic in Haq al-Awda (Issue 7), 2004.
Translation by Rana Mousa.