An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba

by Doctor Nahla Abdo,Nur Masalha

  Within less than two months, the Arab space had been further reduced. On 1 July 1948, the Haganah commanded that all the Arabs who remained in Haifa should be grouped together in Wadi Nisnas “ghetto”. The command did not include non-Arab foreign residents, hence the outrage and objection of the original residents. Still, despite the objection of the Palestinians and the Temporary Arab Committee, and although the neighbourhood suffered severe lack of water and electricity, the decision was implemented in less than a week.44 In November 1948, it was decided that the remaining Palestinians still living outside Wadi Nisnas should be transferred to the ghetto.45

  Subjectification of the colonizer’s archives

  The original residents of Haifa returned to a reality in which they were detached from the Arab world and from the surrounding villages. The city they had known had been destroyed; though not subject to formal military government, they found themselves under systematic surveillance and control that applied to all the Palestinians who remained in their homeland (Sa’di 2014; Cohen 2010; Lustik 1980).

  The Palestinians who had survived in Haifa shared with me comprehensive details of the circumstances of their daily lives, before and during the Nakba, but not their daily life experiences in the city following its occupation.

  Interviewees were asked to share the effect of the new reality on their lives; how did daily life change and how was it to return, or to stay, while almost everything had changed: landscape, community life and social bonds. Additionally, they were asked to portray how they adjusted to the new daily reality of settler-colonialism.

  Almost without exception, interviewees refrained from going into everyday experience and did not share their ordeals during that time. I needed to understand what prevented urban Palestinians who had stayed in their homeland from sharing this side of their story. What does this “silence box” mean about individual memory and collective memory? And what does it tell us about the military government imposed on the urban Palestinians?

  Before answering these questions, and in the absence of daily life experience in the testimonies, I will draw a picture of the urban Palestinians’ daily lives under military government based on counter-readings (Penelope 2010) of the Zionist archival documents and periodicals of that time. I argue that these resources, while historicizing the victory achieved by the colonizer, provided an indication of the indigenous daily life, and the details that the Palestinian memory chose to efface. Reports of “Shai-Arab” unit46 include detailed information regarding the checkpoints in the city and the way borders operated: “all passers-by had to go through these checkpoints. The Jews could pass, while the Arabs and the foreigners were interrogated. If found ‘eligible’, they were allowed to pass”.47 Other documents refer to the restrictions imposed on the movement of Haifa’s original residents and the number of requests filed to the “communication bureau” to leave the ghetto.48

  The colonizer’s press provides an additional source for understanding the reality experienced by the Palestinians at that time. Despite the objectives of the Zionist press reports, mostly written to glamorize the image of the newly established system, a critical review of them provides a description of the Palestinians’ reality in Haifa at that time, and helps in solving the “absence box”.

  In a report published in Davar newspaper, on 6 May 1948, the journalist describes his visit to Haifa, and mentions the checkpoints and the permits. He reports:

  This is the checkpoint of the Hebrew military government, through which the Arabs pass. They all hold crossing permits issued by the Haganah in Arabic and Hebrew. The permit includes details of the residence place and the regions they are allowed to move in. On the margins, it is indicated whether the permit holder is allowed to have any luggage.

  One can learn about the difficulty of obtaining a permit, and the attitude of the “guidance” bureaus towards the Palestinians, from a report published in Al HaMishmar newspaper:

  The permit issuance is not easy. Sometimes it requires waiting for a long time, and involves indecent attitude towards the Arabs in the bureaus. Some treat them properly, but others show resentment towards them [the Palestinians]. Even when looking for weapons, the executive bodies do not make any effort to prevent damage to the property. Let alone the thefts committed in the Arab localities.49

  The archival documents provide information regarding the control and surveillance techniques and the ways “Good Arabs” (Cohen 2010) were shaped through facilities being granted to those who were “loyal”. They simultaneously divulge methods of resistance adopted by the Palestinians. As indicated in one report of the “communication bureau”, dating back to the beginning of September 1948, “the villagers are freely moving between Isfiya and Daliyat al-Karmel. The Druze buy vegetables from the villagers (from Ijzim village) and sell them in Haifa after they get official permits. We should reduce permits issuance, except for some who demonstrate loyalty to us”.50

  This provides insight into the daily life of Palestinians in Haifa following its occupation. This is of utmost importance, especially considering its absence from the testimonies of Haifa’s residents.

  The ongoing Nakba and the “silence box”

  For Palestinians, the Nakba is still deep-rooted in the present existential condition of every individual, affecting multiple aspects of their lives (Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007: 10). Recent Palestinian work on historicizing the Nakba legitimized narrating life before the Nakba and the Nakba itself. However, accounts of the everyday lives of the Palestinians who stayed in their homeland following the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinians) are still being muted.

  The trauma of the Nakba was immediately followed by the military government, which interfered in every aspect of the daily lives of the Palestinians. Palestinians were subject to systematic surveillance and control that has lasted long after the military government was officially ended (Sa’di 2014).

  In some cases, as in the cities, Palestinians were evicted from their homes and were concentrated in one Arab neighbourhood “ghetto”. Some of them lived, and still live, literally in other Palestinians’ houses (Palestinians who became refugees).

  Auerbach (1971) argues that remembering the past depends on having a detached perspective in the present through which one can look at one’s past (Auerbach 1971). Palestinians, who are still living the dispossession and the destruction of their city and community, find it hard to narrate their “past”, as this past is neither distant nor yet over (Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007).

  Additionally, the small number of Palestinians who stayed in Haifa made remembering more complicated. Following Maurice Halbwachs’ (1992) work, historians and cultural theorists largely agree that individuals remember, through dialogue with others within social groups. To remember, one needs others with whom one will be able to tell the story, to think collectively. When the urban society has vanished, family members have been split apart, and the “site of memory” has been changed dramatically, thinking collectively or socially and recollecting memory becomes almost unimaginable.

  Furthermore, in recent decades Palestinian social historians, sociologists, activists and artists have been politicking the collective memory of the Nakba as a major means of Palestinian cultural resistance and the struggle for self-determination (Masalha 2012). Concentrating on the Nakba of 1948, despite its importance, has left less room for individual and collective memory of the continuing Nakba, especially for the Palestinians who stayed in their homeland.

  As indicated in the first part of this chapter, the interviewees talked of precise details of their daily lives in Haifa before the Nakba. They mentioned their neighbours, school friends, the shops where “almond candies” were sold, the places where the women bought goods for the weekly reception, the best tailors, the fabric shops and the places these fabrics were imported from. They remembered the places of entertainment, the coffee shops, the nightlife and Café Central.

  They also shared details of the Nakba: the murder of the priest in the churchyard an
d sobbing over dropping a shoe while climbing into the refugees’ boat: “I remember that incident as if it happened today; I cried because these were my brother’s shoes, and I was afraid he would be angry with me”, Samira said.

  On the other hand, none of them “remembered” the daily life during military government: not the permit lines, or the checkpoints; Umm Nour, for instance could not recall how she got the permit to travel to Nazareth Hospital in order to study nursing. Nor could Abu Emile recall who helped him get the permit for a job in the Kibbutz.

  Zerubavel (1996) argues that “Remembrance” is socially constructed and is filtered by social environment. Memory, she asserts, is regulated by social rules of remembrance that tell us what we should remember and what we can or must forget (Zerubavel 1996: 286).

  Examining everyday life under the military government regime in Haifa shows the absurdity and complexity of the day-to-day reality of survival, a reality that challenges the binary of heroism and weakness, collaboration and resistance, alienation and familiarity.

  Soon after the war, settlers ceased to be external (Esmeir 2007), and the military government facilitated permanent settlement in Palestine. New settlers also lived in Haifa, and some of them settled in the Arab “ghetto”, where they occupied the territory and space of indigenous Palestinians, including living in refugees’ houses. They became the privileged “neighbours” with whom Palestinians were compelled to interact daily.

  While settlers were enjoying freedom of movement and did not need permission to work, matters relating to Palestinians’ ordinary lives, such as job search, doctor’s visits and attendance at weddings or funerals outside Haifa, or outside the ghetto’s borders, necessitated dealing with the Israeli authorities.

  This, combined with the denigration of the individual, made narrating their stories very painful. The procedure of seeking permission, as shown earlier, had involved maltreatment on the part of the soldiers in the “guidance” bureaus and at checkpoints.

  Palestinians have had to regularly seek the settlers’ approbation for conducting their everyday lives. They have had to discipline themselves, and to act “correctly” in order to be permitted freedom of movement.

  National narratives usually make the past seem more complete and comfortable than it was, through nostalgia for an idealized and pastoral past and by reluctance to expose complicity, culpability and collaboration (Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007). Consequently, the memory of the reality of daily life during the unofficial military government in Haifa, apart from its individual psychological aspects, might be perceived as a disfigurement of Palestinian collective memory.

  While not challenging the collective memory, and at the same time protecting themselves from their memories’ ghost, Haifa’s indigenous Palestinians omitted the memory of the military government and concealed it in a “silence box”.

  In recent decades, oral history has presented a very important methodology of decolonizing hegemonic history. By exploring the history and voices of suppressed or marginalized narratives, it constructed alternative histories and memories (Masalha 2012: 211; Sayigh 1979). However, investigating hidden substance and concealed content of colonized groups has not been addressed.

  CONCLUSION

  The military government period cannot be deemed a transient event in the lives of Palestinians. It has had a great impact on them and shaped their relationship with the Jewish state.

  The absence of the city from the Palestinians’ life has greatly contributed to deforming the development of Palestinian society in Israel. Moreover, the marginalization of the survivors’ stories has contributed to silencing a significant episode in the history of the Palestinian people.

  The presence of the “silence box” which contains stories of personal humiliation still produces fear among this group of Palestinians, who still endure the unpleasant feelings of surveillance and control in their relationship with the colonial system.

  It took the Palestinians a long time to open the Nakba defeat box. Despite being a very painful memory, Arab and Palestinian researchers have played a major role in opening this box by conducting interviews with survivors of the Nakba, and documenting the Nakba’s events from their perspectives, through the studies and through cyberspace.

  Due to the absence of such studies and of an oral history regarding the experiences of the Palestinians who remained in their homeland after the occupation, Palestinians’ experiences during the military government remained outside the history of the Palestinian people; they kept them hidden in the “silence box”, not daring to share them.

  NOTES

  1The term “absent box” is inspired by Elias Khoury’s recent novel: Awlad el-ghetto. Esmi Adam (The Children of the Ghetto. My Name is Adam), 2017.

  2An operation started on 1 April, aiming to build a road from the coastal city of Tel Aviv to inner Jerusalem. During this assault, many Arab villages were destroyed and occupied, until the battle of Al-Qastal, which took place on 11‒13 April (Khalidi 2005).

  3That enhanced the confidence of the Jewish leadership regarding its ability not only to take over all the areas allocated to the Jewish state by the United Nations, but also to conduct ethnic cleansing there. For further information on Plan Dalet, see Khalidi (2005).

  4The Deir Yassin massacre had a significant impact on the Palestinians who heard of the massacre, which claimed the lives of ninety-three victims, thirty of whom were children (Pappe 2006). This had increased fear and caused many to flee, fearing similar massacres.

  5The offensive was first directed towards Tiberias, which fell on 16 April (Tiberias was occupied during operation Yiftach that aimed to cleanse Eastern Galilee of Arabs and to establish a connection between Tiberias and Safed). This was followed by Haifa’s fall on 22 April, which had had a further significant impact on morale in the other Palestinian cities. It did not take long until Safed’s occupation on 29 April, in addition to the Arab Jerusalemite neighbourhoods. The city of Acre fell on 6 May, followed by Yafa’s occupation on 13 May.

  6The state Archive, Minorities’ Statistics, File No. 3554/15, Document No. 0801, “A table summarizing the number of the Arab civilians in the Arab localities between 1946‒1948/49”.

  7The State Archive, Minorities Statistics, File No. GL-15/3554, Document No. 273/0801.

  8The reported number of Palestinian Arabs remaining in Ramallah was 1,549 out of 16,380 in 1946, while the reported number in Al-Lydd was 1,056 out of 18,250 in 1946. The State Archive, Minorities’ Statistics, File No. GL-3554/15, Document No. 0801.

  9It was started on 8 November 1948 and completed in February 1949, following the occupation of the Galilee (letter from the bureau of the Prime Minister’s advisor and entitled “Arabs in Israel-Estimates”, 13 May 1953. The State Archive, Minorities’ Statistics, File No. GL-3554/15.

  10This modification was probably conducted for different reasons: the inaccuracy of the first survey conducted a few months following the Nakba or due to the refugees who fled to the cities from other parts of the country, in addition to the return of some Palestinians during that period.

  11The cleansing efforts excluded Nazareth, where the population of 1,949 increased from 15,540 to 16,800, as the city hosted refugees coming from nearby villages.

  12Following the declaration of the Partition Plan, the Arab Higher Committee advised local leaders in the Palestinian villages and cities to establish national committees. The Arab Higher Committee prepared a binding system for these committees, through which they should operate under the supervision of the Higher Committee, and within the framework of the National Charter (Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim 2005).

  13The military operation during which Haifa was occupied was called Operation Misparayim, after the military plan that aimed to “dismember” the Arab city, separating each part of the cities from the two others. Later, the name was changed to “Be’our Hamets” (removal of leavened bread), since it was conducted on the eve of Passover. This naming refers to the removal of leavened brea
d, preceding Passover, following God’s command, which forbade Jews to eat leavened bread during the Jewish exodus from Egypt. According to Jewish customs, search for leavened bread is conducted in Jewish houses the night before Passover, and if found, it is collected and burnt the next day, before noon. The occupation of Haifa was of military significance, since it was a meeting point between the eastern and southern lines of the Jewish settlements. Moreover, it was the most important harbour in the Eastern Mediterranean after Alexandria, and was the terminal point of the oil pipeline from Iraq. It was also a key communication centre for rail and road transport (Khalidi 2008: 6).

  14It was also the result of the Anglo-Zionist collusion that was continued even after the fall of the city (Khalidi 2008).

  15In 1764‒1765, the governor of acre, Dahir al-Umar, laid waste to the older hamlet of Haifa al-Atiqa, located some one and a half miles to the west of the modern site, and transferred the population to a new site, which he had surrounded by a protective wall (Seikaly 2002).

  16While the period from 1922 to 1931 witnessed a 41.1% increase in the Arab population of the cities, the increase in the Arab population in Haifa during that period was 46.1% higher.

  17All names of the interviewees have been changed to protect their confidentiality, unless stated otherwise.

  18The most important being “al-Nafā’is al-’asriyyah” (The Modern Treasures) of Khalil Beidas; “Al-Carmel” of Naguib Nassar; “Al-Nafir” of Elia Zakka; and “Al-Zahra” of Jamil al-Bahri (Al-Bahri 1922).

  19Haifa had had a national theatre group called “Al-Carmel actors group”, headed by Iskandar Ayoub Badran. The “Institute of Arab Music” was also established in Haifa, under the management of musician Saleem al-Hilu. Halim al-Roumu pursued his musical education there.