As Palestinians Mark 60th Anniversary of Their Dispossession, a Conversation with Palestinian Writer and Doctor Ghada Karmi.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/15/as_palestinians_mark_60th_anniversary_ofToday is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages. Ghada Karmi is a well-known Palestinian writer and medical doctor from Jerusalem who lives in Britain. She has written several books about Palestinian history and her own experience as a refugee, including In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story and, most recently, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine.
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AMY GOODMAN: The narrative in this country of that period when you left was that the Arab governments called on the Palestinians to leave, not that you were forced out by the Israeli government or, before that it wasn’t Israel, by Jewish settlers.
GHADA KARMI: I can’t believe that anybody still believes this narrative. Is that so? I grew up with this nonsense, and I always used to wonder how sane human beings could actually believe that people would get up, leave their belongings, leave their home, their land, their livelihood and just walk away because somebody told them to. Now, of course, later—first of all, this was completely untrue. There was no such instruction. It was not—on the contrary, the leaders told the Palestinians to stay put, not to leave, but then they said, look, get the women and children out, evacuate them temporarily, but the men were not allowed to leave.
And, in fact, when we left in that April of 1948, they stopped our taxi. They stopped it. These were militia, Arab militias. And they said, “Where are you going?” And he said, “Look, this is my wife. These are children. I am returning,” which was perfectly true. He said, “I’m returning the next—tomorrow morning. I just have to take them to my in-laws’ house just for safety, and I will be back.” And they took his name and so on.
So, of course, this was all nonsense. But the thing, you know, that used to get me is that you’d say to friends of Israel and devoted friends of Israel—you’d say to them, “OK, supposing—alright, supposing we, the Palestinians, left either because we were told to or because we just felt like it, why were we never allowed back? Why? People go on holiday. They do. They leave their houses, and they go away for a bit. They go and visit somebody. So, does it mean they can’t be allowed back to their homes?” And, of course, they never had an answer for this.
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on edit-- I have to add, this was one of the most compelling stories I've heard recently on Democracy Now! It was one of those stories you sit in your car listening to long after arriving at your destination, which is exactly what I did. The link is to the full transcript-- it is excellent-- and of course one can stream the audio from the site as well.