I was urged by Assaf recently to write a diary to provide my perspective. I am a Palestinian Israeli.
What is my narrative? What story do I have that is shared, or not, by others? Do I long to return even though I'm fortunate enough to have never been dispossessed?
I am a privileged Palestinian. A free Palestinian.
What is my narrative?
My first breath was of the seashores of my beloved Haifa, which is coastal town on mount Carmel. My second was the winds of the Galilee. I ate the fruits of my ancestral Olive groves in a Galilee village north east of Nazareth. I grew up with the pronounced Galilean dialect surrounding me. I was never a revolutionary, nor a fida'i. I did not live an intifada. I was never a refugee. I am a Galilean who remained in the Galilee.
I have quenched my thirst in the springs of Nazareth, bathed in the baths of Acre, and have soared above the skies of our Jaffa. I have walked on the Lake Tiberias. I am a Palestinian not dispossessed. I am free. I am a privileged Palestinian.
Yet I remain a Palestinian tortured from one generation to another by narratives. Most of the other Palestinians are not as fortunate as me. They are either refugees or live under occupation and have done so for a few generations.
My Palestine is that of poets. I have broken bread at a table with Mahmoud Darwish before his exile. I played in the yard of Emile Habibi (facebook group, appologies to readers) and was nourished by the love of Toufik Zaiad (Arabic). I have touched the face of Samih al-Qasem and have recited poetry with the living poets of the Galilee in the Galilee.
Like many of the people I grew with, these were luminaries of the Jewish-Palestinian communist party, now the leftist political party al-Jabha or Hadash, which remains to this day the dominant political party among the Palestinians of the Galilee and has a growing Jewish constituency. It is distinguished from other political parties in Israel in that it is not and has never been encumbered ideologically by sectarianism and related moral and theoretical compromises.
These are poets of Palestine. They are some of the most important poets of Palestine. In a normal world they would also be the poets of Israel, for they too are as I am Israeli. But for now they are my poets, they are the poets of the refugees, they are my story, and they are Palestine's story. The links above may seem curious to you. But I felt an extreme displeasure linking to sites like the New York Times which are often full of sublime bigotry when narrating stories about Palestinian Israelis like myself.
When the Palestinian refugees, the unfortunate Palestinians who are unable to return to their homes, endured the massacres of Beirut they sang the poetry of Tufiq, when they longed for return they recalled those of Mahmoud. When the memory of Haifa became faint they grasped for Emile. You see our culture is a culture of poetry. Poetry is the cathedral in the heart of Palestinian culture. We openly celebrate our poets. Our children recite poetry at an early age and are encouraged to write poetry.
How do I recite my story. Let my poets relate my narrative. The story of the refugees and the occupied, the other better known Palestinians, will be related by the Palestinian delegates at the Madrid Peace Conference.
To my mind, the most important document for Palestinians is the Madrid Peace Conference: Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991 It outlined a vision for peace. It outlined the Palestinian narrative. It is a cry for peace. A cry for help. A longing for return. It is the Palestinian perspective. You can get a link of that speech here. Anyone interested in the Palestinian political outlook should be at least aware of that speech.
Here I will outline parts of that speech that touched me.
- We, the people of Palestine, stand before you in the fullness of our pain, our pride, and our anticipation, for we long harbored a yearning for peace and a dream of justice and freedom. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
Why did I cry? How did my lips quiver upon hearing the opening words of the representatives of the oppressed, dispossessed, and refugees?
I walk tall
Carry great burdens
In my palm an Olive branch
and on my shoulder my coffin
My heart is the red moon
My heart the meadows
in it the vines
in it the winds
My lips a raining sky
A flame that nourished, love that brings life
In my palm an Olive branch
and on my shoulder my coffin
and I walk and I walk
Samih al-Qasem, Nazareth
- For too long, the Palestinian people have gone unheeded, silenced and denied...Before such willful blindness, we refused to disappear or to accept a distorted identity. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
Do I exist? Am I? Why do I feel pain at night in the day? From where am I? Where do I come from? What is my home? Who am I?
I am from There:
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gullls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an Olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there.
I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the
sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one: Home
Mahoud Darwish, Haifa
- Our Intifada is a testimony to our perseverance and resilience waged in a just struggle to regain our rights. It is time for us to narrate our own story, to stand witness as advocates of truth which has long lain buried in the consciousness and conscience of the world. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
I was not in the intifada. There was only one intifada. It was when the masses of refugees, occupied, oppressed decided that occupation must end. It did not affect me. Nor did the oppression of occupation. But as in the siege of the refugees of Beirut and the destruction of the Ayn al Hilwa refugee camp in Lebanon, the words of Tufiq Zaiad stand in solidarity with the downtrodden and the oppressed.
I call upon you
I hold your hands
and kiss the ground beneath your feet
and say: I sacrifice
I bequeath you the light of my eyes
and the warmth of my heart
for the tragedy that I live
is my share of the tragedy
I call upon you
I hold your hands
I do not dishonor my home nor do I stand fearfully
I have stood in the face of my oppressor
An orphan, naked, barefooted
Taufiq Zaiad, Nazareth
- The Palestinian people are...fused by centuries of history in Palestine, bound together by a collective memory of shared sorrows and joys, and sharing a unity of purpose and vision. Our songs and ballads, full of tales and children's stories, the dialect of our jokes, the image of our poems, that hint of melancholy which colors even our happiest moments, are as important to us as the blood ties which link our families and clans. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
My essence is shared with the refugees in the divinely inspired words of the prophet Mahmoud Darwish.
I long for my mother's bread
My mother's coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I love my life
for if I die
my mother's tears shame me.
And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touch the depths of your heart.
If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand.
Mahmoud Darwish, Haifa
- We come to you from a tortured land and a proud, though captive people, having been asked to negotiate with our occupiers...And what do we tell the loved ones of those killed by army bullets? How do we answer the questions and the fear in our children's eyes? How can we explain to our children that they are denied education, for schools are so often closed by the army?...What requiem can be sung for trees uprooted by army bulldozers? And most of all, who can explain to those whose lands are confiscated and clear waters stolen, a message of peace? Remove the barbed wire. Restore the land and its life-giving water. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
Mahmoud my poet from Haifa anticipated the gravity of the occupation in one of his first poems.
Record !
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards
of my ancestors
And the land
which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks..
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!
Mahmoud Darwish, Haifa
- In the name of the Palestinian people, we wish to directly address the Israeli people with whom we have had a prolonged exchange of pain: Let us share hope, instead. We are willing to live side by side on the land and the promise of the future. Sharing, however, requires two partners, willing to share as equals. Mutuality and reciprocity must replace domination and hostility for genuine reconciliation and coexistence under international legality. Your security and ours are mutually dependent, as entwined as the fears and nightmares of our children. We have seen some of you at your best and at your worst. For the occupier can hide no secrets from the occupied, and we are witness to the toll that occupation has exacted from you and yours. Madrid Peace Conference - Palestinian Delegation Opening Speech October 31, 1991
Even to love there was a barrier. Mahmoud Darwish sang for Rita. The story related to me, as the poem was written around our house, is that Rita may have been, well she actually was, Mahmoud's lover in the Israeli Communist Party. Rita was ethnically Jewish. I will leave you with his poem to Rita and the rifle of occupation.
Between Rita and my eyes
There is a rifle
And whoever knows Rita
Kneels and pray
To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes
And I kissed Rita
When she was young
And I remember how she approached
And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids
And I remember Rita
The way a sparrow remembers its stream
Ah, Rita
Between us there are a million sparrows and images
And many a rendezvous
Fired at by a rifle
Rita’s name was a feast in my mouth
Rita’s body was a wedding in my blood
And I was lost in Rita for two years
And for two years she slept on my arm
And we made promises
Over the most beautiful of cups
And we burned in the wine of our lips
And we were born again
Ah, Rita!
What before this rifle could have turned my eyes from yours
Except a nap or two or honey-colored clouds?
Once upon a time
Oh, the silence of dusk
In the morning my moon migrated to a far place
Towards those honey-colored eyes
And the city swept away all the singers
And Rita
Between Rita and my eyes--
A rifle
Mahmoud Darwish, Haifa