Baqqara and Ghaname of Palestine: A saga of displacement

Baqqara and Ghaname of Palestine: A saga of displacement

Once upon a time, they lived in the north of Palestine in two villages situated on a gently sloping volcanic outcrop on the southern edge of the al-Hule plain overlooking it to the north. They were settled Bedouins who cultivated land and relied on livestock for their daily living occasionally migrating in summer time to mountain areas escaping the heat of the valley. Their land was registered in the Ottoman and British mandate official books and they regularly paid taxes to the government in office.

Kirad al-Baqqara and Kirad al-Ghaname were first expelled from their villages in 1948. The history of the tribes appears to be quite complex with people moving back and forth over the border between Syria and the newly established state of Israel various times. They were also internally displaced in Israel and were finally expelled to the Syrian Golan in 1956. During the 1967 war they were displaced again and most of the remaining tribe members now live close to Damascus.

Nevertheless, it was only in late 2003 that approximately two thirds of the 7,000 tribe members were finally considered to qualify as refugees according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).(1) The Agency had consistently turned down their applications on the basis that their displacement and dispossession resulted from the 1956 war rather than 1948 and were thus not eligible for registration.(2) The journey in search of a verification of this argument unravelled the long story you are about to read.

Movement pattern between 1948 and 1956

During the war of 1948 Syrian forces occupied the area west of the Jordan River including the village of Kirad al-Baqqara. On the other hand, Kirad al-Ghaname falling to the west of it remained under the control of Jewish forces. However, a few weeks earlier, in mid-March 1948, a Haganah massacre in the neighboring village of al-Husseineya led to the temporary evacuation of Kirad al-Ghaname. The following month, on 22 April, it was temporarily evacuated again. One of the Ghaname villagers, Abu Salim Khawalid said in his testimony:

“the soldiers ordered us to leave the village that very night, and threatened that if we did not leave, they would do to us what was done to the inhabitants of al-Husseineya village. We knew that the Jews had slaughtered dozens of them like sheep. We were absolutely panic-stricken.”

Ghaname inhabitants became displaced and remained away from their village for a year and a half in Syrian territory before returning to their villages on 20 July 1949 after the signing of the truce agreement between Israel and Syria.

The area containing the villages now became a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) created by the 1949 Armistice Agreements and its inhabitants were under UN supervision.

It is important to note at this instance that this DMZ is closely associated with Israel’s diversion of the river Jordan and the draining of the Lake Hule. The scheme of diversion of the waters of the upper Jordan involved the building of a canal to tap the Jordan River waters just below Jisr Banat Ya'coub Bridge in the DMZ.

This was the prevailing situation till 30 March 1951 when the Israeli government decided to continue the Lake Hule draining and irrigation project despite a UN negotiated temporary halt of these actions. The Israelis were keen on asserting their sovereignty over the DMZs through a variety of measures including the transfer of Arab civilians from the area to Israeli territory proper.

How to Circumvent the Law – Israel and the Jewish National Fund

On 26 January 2005 Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ruled that the Israel Lands Administration cannot discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in the marketing and allocation of the land it manages, even lands belonging to the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The ILA has managed JNF-owned land since 1961. Until now, ILA bids for JNF owned land have been open to Jews only. According to Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara,

“On the one hand, the decision is positive, since the AG concurred with Adalah's argument that the ILA's policy of marketing and allocating JNF owned lands through Jewish-only bids is discriminatory. However, on the other hand, the AG also decided that whenever a non-Jewish citizen wins an ILA tender for a plot of JNF-owned land, the ILA will compensate the JNF with an equal amount of land. This allows the JNF to maintain its current hold over 2.5 million dunums of land or 13 percent of the total land in Israel. Adalah opposes this process, as it involves the transfer of state-owned lands to the JNF – an institution which publicly acknowledges that its land policy is discriminatory.”

Bids for JNF-owned land in the North and the Galilee have been frozen since 20 October 2004 when the JNF announced the freezing of new and existing tenders in these areas, pending a hearing date or the issuance of a further decision by the Supreme Court. In order to circumvent the decision and maintain the JNF, however, the ILA will transfer additional land to the JNF if any ILA tender for land owned by the JNF is won by a non-Jewish citizen.

UN Human Rights Treaty Body committees have previously called upon Israel to review its relationship with the JNF and other para-statal Zionist agencies (See, “Jewish National, National Institutions and Institutionalized Dispossession,” Majdal 24) which discriminate against Palestinians. The Committee on Social Economic and Cultural Rights has observed:

“A State party cannot divest itself of its obligations under the Covenant by privatizing governmental functions. The Committee takes the view that large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of of that property to [the World Zionist Organization/Jewish agencies, and its subsidiaries,including the JNF] by definition would deny the use of these properties to non-Jews. Thus, these practices constitute a breach of Israel's obligations under the Covenant.” (E/C.12/1/Add.27)

Source: Adalah News Update, 28 January 2005.

On 24 April 1951, the Israeli army ordered the Ghaname people to leave their village for a few hours and head toward the nearby Baqqara under the pretext of a forthcoming fight. After gathering the two tribes, curfew was declared for 48 hours. Immediately after the curfew ended, trucks transported the tribes to Shaab, which was then an almost deserted village near Acre, and they were ordered to settle in the empty houses. When they expressed desire to return to their villages, another curfew was declared for 3 months. After 6 months, UN forces were able to enter Shaab and the people were given the choice either to remain there or return. They were asked to sign a document the military governor had brought if they wished to return. This in fact was an offer of either accepting or not Israeli identity. Some of them signed and returned; others refused to sign and remained in Shaab. They filed suit to join those who returned. www.remont-kvartirspb.com

Despite a consequent UN Security Council resolution (UNSC 93, 18 May 1951) calling on Israel to stop draining the marshes and allow the Palestinians to return to their homes in the DMZs, Lt. General William E. Riley, UN Truce Supervision Organization Chief of Staff, reported to the Security Council that efforts to return expellees were prevented by the Israelis.

In July 1951, a letter of complaint was sent by Atty Elias Koussa to the Minister of Justice. According to this letter, Israeli army officers had come to Shaab shortly before the visit of the UN delegation scheduled to investigate the situation of the evacuees. The officers requested from the representatives of the evacuees to tell the UN people that they were satisfied with their conditions. “However, when the UN delegation arrived accompanied by the Israeli officers, the evacuees told them the truth about their current situation and demanded to be returned to their villages. Once the UN officers had left, the Israeli officers returned, beat and tortured them and took revenge, because ‘they had forgotten the advice given to them.” Advocate Koussa demanded an investigation - if it ever happened, its results are unknown. The residents of the DMZ remained in Shaab.

Yosef Nahmani - director of the Jewish National Fund’s branch office in Tiberias responsible for land purchases and infrastructure development for new Jewish settlements - thought the situation of the Kirads now appropriate to send agents to their landowners to check the possibility of purchasing land and moving them to Trans-Jordan or alternatively an exchange of land in order to receive other plots in Israel in place of their lands in the DMZs. His agents found the Kirads in Shaab in very dire condition with no food, water or money. They thus found that there was no point in negotiating so long as conditions were so poor. Agents were resent after a month with a mandate to offer permanent resettlement in Shaab and to sell or exchange their lands. Shortly after, Yehoshua Palmon, the Prime Minister's advisor on Arab Affairs opposed any land purchase deals with the Kirads on the basis that such an expenditure was superfluous as the landowners had already been kicked out of the land which had de facto become Israeli government property.

Many Kirads however returned to the DMZs. In a Report dated 6 January 1955 by the Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine to the Secretary-General on complaints concerning the observance of the General Armistice Agreement between Israel and Syria, General Burns reports that when he visited in December 1954 he found the Baqqara and Ghaname living in miserable conditions in tents and mud huts with no schools or medical facilities and they could not circulate without getting a pass from the Israeli police each time. The mukhtars indicated they wanted to go to Syria. Burns went to Damascus and discussed the matter with the Syrian authorities who confirmed they would not permit the Baqqara and Ghaname to enter Syria. Burns says the Israelis made the villagers an offer to exchange their lands for others beyond Nazareth. This would have removed them from the “strategically sensitive DMZ where they were an embarrassment as the Israelis admitted in moments of frankness.” The villagers refused. Moreover, Burns also reports that the Syrian government on June 12, 1954 wrote to him saying; “Israeli terrorist activities against the Arab population of Baqqara and Ghaname are continuing. A large part of this population was obliged in desperation to take refuge near the bridge of Banat Ya’coub and to request admission to Syria. Clear proofs of this policy of harassment and evacuation directed against the Arab civilian population of the central DMZ can easily be furnished on request.” Also on July 4 1954, the Syrian government also related the story of “a high Israel military officer visiting the two villages of the Arab population of Baqqara and Ghaname said to the Arab population:’ You must do one of two things, either become Israel nationals or leave the zone, your land your houses and your property and go to an Arab country.”

All the remaining Kirads were finally expelled by Israel in 1956, the majority crossing over to Syria and a small number joining their relatives in Shaab.

The villages in the DMZs were then destroyed and ploughed over.(3) It was then proposed to those still in Shaab to sell their lands in exchange of expropriating the lands of the original absentees of Shaab. None accepted the offer.(4)

This was in fact part of a general Israeli policy of preventing return or resettlement of refugees in abandoned villages on grounds of security and Jewish settlement needs.

The Israeli ‘solution’ was that refugees who had already found shelter villages should be absorbed there. This absorption consequently should be facilitated by means of a mechanism which would eventually become a cornerstone of government policy: since also in the villages which remained many people have left, the abandoned lands of these people should be leased to the refugees who have found shelter there, and not to the original villagers.

In practice, none of the abandoned villages were resettled. Lands of refugees both externally and internally displaced were transferred under state authority.

With the Suez campaign of 1956 Israeli troops under Sharon seized the opportunity and succeeded in expelling all the remaining Palestinians in and around Hule among other areas. Apart from those internally displaced in Shaab, all the remaining Baqqara and Ghaname tribe members and their descendants are now living on Syrian territory.

It may be a tale of displacement, of dispossession; a symbol of Israeli policies of expulsion, of land expropriation, of water draining; a struggle over border delimitations, of demilitarized zones and a debate over refugee recognition and protection. On the whole, a captivating account revealing the politics of the region since 1948. But it remains mainly and foremost the sad story of a loss of ‘Home’ to some of the many that have been displaced since 1948 carrying their homes within them wherever they go. And even though almost six decades on they now hold official documents of the United Nations recognizing them as refugees, they still remain displaced, dispossessed in search of an illusive justice.

This article is based on a report presented by the writer to the UNRWA Field Office in Damascus in 2003. The writer wishes to thank Dr. Lex Takkenberg (Director of the Syria Field Office) who facilitated and supervised the internship as well as UNRWA staff who provided much appreciated assistance. The writer also wishes to thank Dr. Salaman Abu Sitta (independent researcher), Dr. Ghazi Falah (University of Akron) and Terry Rempel (Badil) for their assistance during the preparation of the report. Shahira Samy is Teaching Assistant at the University of Alexandria, Egypt and a PhD candidate at the Politics Department, School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies, University of Exeter, UK.

Endnotes
 (1) The Syrian government had repeatedly been urging UNRWA to reconsider its position in respect of the unregistered tribe members and now that the Agency had once again reopened its doors for registration since 1993, the Agency decided to reopen the Baqqara and Ghaname dossier.
(2) Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
(3) It is not quite clear whether they were destroyed in 1951 or 1956.
(4) Their original lands are now part of Israeli settlements and it is estimated that some 20% continue to live there as internal refugees whereas the rest have taken refuge in Syria.