Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Rochelle A. Davis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

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Palestinian Village Histories

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations.....................................................ixNote on Translations and Transliterations.................................xiAcknowledgments...........................................................xiiiPreface...................................................................xvii1 Geographies of Dispossession............................................12 Village Books: Local Histories, National Struggles......................273 Village History and Village Values......................................644 Writing a History, Defining a Past......................................945 The Authority of Memory.................................................1226 Mapping the Past: The Village Landscape.................................1507 Identities and History..................................................1798 Conclusion: Connecting Geographies of Dispossession.....................209Notes.....................................................................235Bibliography..............................................................279Index.....................................................................317

Chapter One

Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel: 2004

I am looking for the Palestinian villages of Bayt Mahsir and Suba, which were physically destroyed and emptied of their residents in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in which the state of Israel was created. I have been told that a few of the houses and recognizable landmarks remain. The villagers of Suba and Bayt Mahsir have written four village books that record the pre-1948 history of life in these villages. In the books, the authors describe the villages in ways that are meaningful to them today: the location of the villages; the livelihoods of their inhabitants; and their agricultural practices, historic sites, natural resources, family genealogies, folklore traditions, and cultural customs. The books also include long documentary sections of wedding songs, maps of the village lands and houses, reproductions of Otto man and British Mandate era documents, and photographs of the village then and now.

I find and interview the authors of the two books about Suba village: Ibrahim 'Awadallah, a refugee living in Jordan who self-published his book in 1996; and Muhammad Sa'id Rumman, whose carefully detailed, historically sourced 331-page book appeared in print in 2000 in the West Bank. Rumman's book has a striking cover of glossy contemporary photographs of the archeological ruins (a Crusader castle) at the heart of the village. The two books about the village of Bayt Mahsir are from refugees living in Jordan; one was written in calligraphic longhand and published in al-Baq'a refugee camp in 1988, the second was published in 2002. These books inform me that the villages have been largely destroyed, and replaced by two Israeli towns: Bayt Mahsir is now named Beit Meir and is a religious moshav (cooperative farm), and Suba has become Kibbutz Tzova.

I locate contemporary maps of the areas west of Jerusalem and discover that Kibbutz Tzova/Suba and Beit Meir/Bayt Mahsir are located in the Martyrs' Forest (Ya'ar HaKdoshim). Established by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1951, the Martyrs' Forest commemorates the six million European Jews who died in the Holocaust. The JNF map of the Martyrs' Forest shows the commemorative locations, along with picnic areas, biking paths, archaeological sites, and the Israeli towns that have been built there. The geography is such that without knowledge of the Palestinian villages' existence in the past it would be impossible to know that they were once here.

As I continue to research other Palestinian villages, the palimpsests of twentieth century geography reveal the layers of destruction, renaming, and rebuilding that have taken place in Palestine/Israel and that connect around the globe. Saffuriya, once the largest village in the Nazareth district, was depopulated in July of 1948 and completely destroyed; today it hosts an archeological park for the ancient Roman and Jewish town of Tzippori, as well as a JNF forest commemorating Guatemalan independence on September 15, 1821. The small Palestinian village of Biriya, near the city of Safad, was emptied on May 2, 1948, and is now enveloped in the Israeli Biriya National Forest, part of which was renamed in 2007 in honor of Coretta Scott King, the widow of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Twentieth-century maps of Palestine from the 1940s show hundreds of villages, along with cities, towns, kibbutzim, and moshavim. Today the maps of Israel reveal a new geography of Israeli towns, farms, fields, factories, water parks, and universities replacing the majority of Palestinian villages that used to be within its borders.

The geographies of dispossession that accompany and contextualize these names in the twenty-first century cross global and historical lines; render subjects that provoke deep emotions, historical victories, and injustices; and engender no easy mapping process. I am keenly aware that mentioning commemorations of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and destroyed Palestinian villages in the same paragraph, not to mention opening a book with such a vignette, places the subject of this book—Palestinian refugees—and me and my scholarship in the unenviable position of being "controversial," as if talking about these subjects itself is problematic. My point is not to engender controversy, but rather to show the dispossessions of the twentieth century, the victims of which cross many geographical borders. I tread lightly here, with the intent to focus on the devastating effects on people of ideologies, state policies, and armed movements. My point is not to compare suffering, provoke comparisons, or invoke blame. It is to understand how we record history, make sense of our pasts, and map the geographies of the displaced in our world today. It is also to show how we reconnect across our geographies as we take active roles in the present and create new futures.

* * *

Suba, Saffuriyya, Bayt Mahsir, Biriya—their stories illustrate how throughout Israel the more than four hundred Palestinian villages that were conquered and depopulated in the 1948 War have been renamed and put to different uses; most of their houses have been destroyed or taken over, their terraces left to disintegrate, their mosques and churches put to other uses, and their cemeteries plowed under and planted over. Palestinians have carried these village and city names (not to mention their memories, hopes, tragedies, and possessions) with them into the diaspora. Despite the destruction of the physical landscape, the village names continue to be part of Palestinians' everyday lives, evoking memories of the past. In the act of recalling and commemorating their villages and cities, Palestinians have also re-placed these names into their current landscapes.

Today, driving up the main road of Jabal al-Mareekh (Mars Mountain), one of the seven "mountains" of Amman, the capital city of Jordan, shopfront signs announce "al-Sarees for Electronics" and "the 'Aykirmawi Grocery." In Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, people buy the latest fashions on Lubya Street, gold on Safad Street, and the best fruits and...