But in a sign of how far Israel still is from coming to terms with the
circumstances of its birth, this year’s march was forcibly broken up by
the Israeli police. They clubbed unarmed demonstrators with batons and
fired tear gas and stun grenades into crowds of families that included
young children.
Although most of the refugees from the 1948 war — numbering in their
millions — ended up in camps in neighbouring Arab states, a few
remained inside Israel. Today one in four Palestinian citizens of
Israel is either a refugee or descended from one. Not only have they
been denied the right ever to return to their homes, like the other
refugees, but many live tantalisingly close to their former
communities.
The destroyed Palestinian villages have either been reinvented as
exclusive Jewish communities or buried under the foliage of national
forestation programmes overseen by the Jewish National Fund and paid
for with charitable donations from American and European Jews.
There have been many Nakba processions held over the past week but the
march across fields close by the city of Nazareth was the only one
whose destination was a former Palestinian village now occupied by
Jews.
The village of Saffuriya was bombed from the air for two hours in July
1948, in one of the first uses of air power by the new Jewish state.
Most of Saffuriya’s 5,000 inhabitants fled northwards towards Lebanon,
where they have spent six decades waiting for justice. But a small
number went south towards Nazareth, where they sought sanctuary and
eventually became Israeli citizens.
Today they live in a neighbourhood of Nazareth called Safafra, after
their destroyed village. They look down into the valley where a Jewish
farming community known as Zippori has been established on the ruins of
their homes.
This year’s Nakba procession to Saffuriya was a small act of defiance
by Palestinian citizens in returning to the village, even if only
symbolically and for a few hours. The threat this posed to Israeli
Jews’ enduring sense of their own exclusive victimhood was revealed in
the unprovoked violence unleashed against the defenceless marchers,
many of them children.
Like many others, I was there with a child — my five-month-old
daughter. Fortunately, for her and my sake, we left after she grew
tired from being in the heat for so long, moments before the trouble
started.
When we left, things were entirely peaceful. Nonetheless, as we drove
away, I saw members of a special paramilitary police unit known as the
Yassam appearing on their motorbikes. The Yassam are effectively a hit
squad, known for striking out first and asking questions later. Trouble
invariably follows in their wake.
The events that unfolded that afternoon have been captured on mostly
home-made videos that can be viewed on the internet, including here (
http://www.youtube.
com/watch? v=Y-P4LI1ceGA). The context for understanding these images
is provided below in accounts from witnesses to the police attack:
Several thousand Palestinians, waving flags and chanting Palestinian
songs, marched towards a forest planted on Saffuriya’s lands. Old
people, some of whom remembered fleeing their villages in 1948, were
joined by young families and several dozen sympathetic Israeli Jews. As
the marchers headed towards Saffuriya’s spring, sealed off by the
authorities with a metal fence a few years ago to stop the villagers
collecting water, they were greeted with a small counter-demonstration
by right-wing Israeli Jews.
They had taken over the fields on the other side of the main road at
the entrance to what is now the Jewish community of Zippori. They waved
Israeli flags and sang nationalist Hebrew songs, as armed riot police
lined the edge of the road that separated the two demonstrations.
Tareq Shehadeh, head of the Nazareth Culture and Tourism Association
whose parents were expelled from Saffuriya, said: “There were some 50
Jewish demonstrators who had been allowed to take over the planned
destination of our march. Their rights automatically trumped ours, even
though there were thousands of us there and only a handful of them.”
The police had their backs to the Jewish demonstrators while they faced
off with the Palestinian procession. “It was as if they were telling
us: we are here only for the benefit of Jews, not for you,” said
Shehadeh. “It was a reminder, if we needed it, that this is a Jewish
state and we are even less welcome than usual when we meet as
Palestinians.”
The marchers turned away and headed uphill into the woods, to a clearing where Palestinian refugees recounted their memories.
When the event ended in late afternoon, the marchers headed back to the
main road and their cars. In the police version, Palestinian youths
blocked the road and threw stones at passing cars, forcing the police
to use force to restore order.
Dozens of marchers were injured, including women and children, and two
Arab Knesset members, Mohammed Barakeh and Wassel Taha, were bloodied
by police batons. Mounted police charged into the crowds, while stun
grenades and tear gas were liberally fired into fields being crossed by
families. Eight youths were arrested.
Shehadeh, who was close to the police when the trouble began, and many
other marchers say they saw the Jewish rightwingers throwing stones at
them from behind the police. A handful of Palestinian youngsters
responded in kind. Others add that the police were provoked by a young
woman waving a Palestinian flag.
“None of the police were interested in stopping the Jews throwing
stones. And even if a few Palestinian youths were reacting, you chase
after them and arrest them, you don’t send police on mounted horseback
charging into a crowd of families and fire tear gas and stun grenades
at them. It was totally indiscriminate and reckless.”
Clouds of gas enveloped the slowest families as they struggled with their children to take cover in the forest.
Therese Zbeidat, a Dutch national who was there with her Palestinian
husband Ali and their two teenage daughters, Dina and Awda, called the
experiences of her family and others at the hands of the police
“horrifying”.
“Until then it really was a family occasion. When the police fired the
tear gas, there were a couple near us pushing a stroller down the stony
track towards the road. A thick cloud of gas was coming towards us. I
told the man to leave the stroller and run uphill as fast as he could
with the baby.
“Later I found them with the baby retching, its eyes streaming and
choking. It broke my heart. There were so many families with young
children, and the police charge was just so unprovoked. It started from
nothing.”
The 17-year-old boyfriend of Therese Zbeidat’s daughter, Awda, was
among those arrested. “It was his first time at any kind of nationalist
event,” she said. “He was with his mother, and when we started running
up the hill away from the police on horseback, she stumbled and fell.
“He went to help her and the next thing a group of about 10 police were
firing tear gas cannisters directly at him. Then they grabbed him by
the keffiyah [scarf] around his neck and pulled him away. All he was
doing was helping his mother!”
Later, Therese and her daughters thought they had made it to safety
only to find themselves in the midst of another charge from a different
direction, this time by police on foot. Awda was knocked to the ground
and kicked in her leg, while Dina was threatened by a policeman who
told her: “I will break your head.”
“I’ve been on several demonstrations before when the police have turned
nasty,” said Therese, “but this was unlike anything I’ve seen. Those
young children, some barely toddlers, amidst all that chaos crying for
their parents – what a way to mark Independence Day!”
Jafar Farah, head of the political lobbying group Mossawa, who was
there with his two young sons, found them a safe spot in the forest and
rushed downhill to help ferry other children to safety.
The next day he attended a court hearing at which the police demanded
that the eight arrested men be detained for a further seven days.
Three, including a local journalist who had been beaten and had his
camera stolen by police, were freed after the judge watched video
footage of the confrontation taken by marchers.
Farah said of the Independence Day events: “For decades our community
was banned from remembering publicly what happened to us as a people
during the Nakba. Our teachers were sacked for mentioning it. We were
not even supposed to know that we are Palestinians.
“And in addition, the police have regularly used violence against us to
teach us our place. In October 2000, at the start of the intifada, 13
of our unarmed young men were shot dead for demonstrating. No one has
ever been held accountable.
“Despite all that we started to believe that Israel was finally mature
enough to let us remember our own national tragedy. Families came to
show their children the ruins of the villages so they had an idea of
where they came from. The procession was becoming a large and prominent
event. People felt safe attending.
“But we were wrong, it seems. It looked to me very much like this
attack by the police was planned. I think the authorities were unhappy
about the success of the processions, and wanted them stopped.
“They may yet win. What parent will bring their children to the march
next year knowing that they will be attacked by armed police?”
Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer living in Nazareth, Israel.
His most recent book is “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq,
Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”, published by Pluto Press.
His website is www.jkcook.net
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