I remember the day I became fully aware of my identity as a Palestinian... The year was 1970 and I was 9 year old 3rd. grader in Salina Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, USA. I had been in the U.S. for a little over a year, having immigrated to the US in the spring of 1969. My 3rd. grade class was asked to fill out a survey for some government agency. Amongst the usual questions such as name, age, date of birth and such, was a question of COUNTRY OF ORIGIN AND NATIONALITY...Since I was not yet a U.S. citizen, I naturally wrote in the box: Palestine and Palestinian. After about 15 minutes, the teacher came around and collected the forms that we had filled out. There were kids from just about every country in the Middle East, since Dearborn had been a magnet for Arab speaking immigrants from the Middle East as well as Europe. The teacher went through the forms as they were collected one by one to check if they were complete. When she approached my desk, I handed her my paper. She took one look at it and let out a nasty groan. I was informed by her, in a rather loud tone, that I had made a mistake. I had written in a nationality and a country that did not exist. She made me stand up and asked me in front of the whole class what my nationality was. I said, "Palestinian." She replied, "Nonsense, there is no such thing." She then handed me back my form and told me to correct it. I was confused. Exactly what was I supposed to write? She erased the words Palestine and Palestinian and told me that I had a choice. I could be Lebanese, Syrian, or Jordanian. I informed her that I was none of those. To no avail, she wrote in the words SYRIA and SYRIAN on the form. She then scolded me in front of the whole class as someone that did not know his nationality. Of course all of the kids made fun of me and had a laugh at my expense. The cruelest ones were kids from other Middle Eastern countries. They so desperately wanted to be accepted, that they chided one of their own. This episode occurred about around the same time that Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, made that infamous speech. In it she said that there was no such thing as Palestine or a Palestinian people. That episode only made me more aware and proud of my heritage and helped shape who I am. Palestinian then, now, and forever! Read More...
By: Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison
Date: 25/06/2008
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Denied the Right to Go Home
(Hanan Ashrawi’s daughter telling her story) I am Palestinian - born and raised - and my Palestinian roots go back centuries. No one can change that even if they tell me that Jerusalem , my birth place, is not Palestine , even if they tell me that Palestine doesn't exist, even if they take away all my papers and deny me entry to my own home, even if they humiliate me and take away my rights. I AM PALESTINIAN. Name: Zeina Emile Sam'an Ashrawi; Date of Birth: July 30, 1981; Ethnicity: Arab. This is what was written on my Jerusalem ID card. An ID card to a Palestinian is much more than just a piece of paper; it is my only legal documented relationship to Palestine . Born in Jerusalem , I was given a Jerusalem ID card (the blue ID), an Israeli Travel Document and a Jordanian Passport stamped Palestinian (I have no legal rights in Jordan ). I do not have an Israeli Passport, a Palestinian Passport or an American Passport. Here is my story: I came to the United States as a 17 year old to finish high school in Pennsylvania and went on to college and graduate school and subsequently got married and we are currently living in Northern Virginia. I have gone home every year at least once to see my parents, my family and my friends and to renew my Travel Document as I was only able to extend its validity once a year from Washington DC . My father and I would stand in line at the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem , along with many other Palestinians, from 4:30 in the morning to try our luck at making it through the revolving metal doors of the Ministry before noon – when the Ministry closed its doors - to try and renew the Travel Document. We did that year after year. As a people living under an occupation, being faced with constant humiliation by an occupier was the norm but we did what we had to do to insure our identity was not stolen from us. In August of 2007 I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC to try and extend my travel document and get the usual "Returning Resident" VISA that the Israelis issue to Palestinians holding an Israeli Travel Document. After watching a few Americans and others being told that their visas would be ready in a couple of weeks my turn came. I walked up to the bulletproof glass window shielding the lady working behind it and under a massive picture of the Dome of the Rock and the Walls of Jerusalem that hangs on the wall in the Israeli consulate, I handed her my papers through a little slot at the bottom of the window. "Shalom" she said with a smile. "Hi" I responded, apprehensive and scared. As soon as she saw my Travel Document her demeanor immediately changed. The smile was no longer there and there was very little small talk between us, as usual. After sifting through the paperwork I gave her she said: "where is your American Passport?" I explained to her that I did not have one and that my only Travel Document is the one she has in her hands. She was quiet for a few seconds and then said: "you don't have an American Passport?" suspicious that I was hiding information from her. "No!" I said. She was quiet for a little longer and then said: "Well, I am not sure we'll be able to extend your Travel Document." I felt the blood rushing to my head as this is my only means to get home! I asked her what she meant by that and she went on to tell me that since I had been living in the US and because I had a Green Card they would not extend my Travel Document. After taking a deep breath to try and control my temper I explained to her that a Green Card is not a Passport and I cannot use it to travel outside the US. My voice was shaky and I was getting more and more upset (and a mini shouting match ensued) so I asked her to explain to me what I needed to do. She told me to leave my paperwork and we would see what happens. A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the lady telling me that she was able to extended my Travel Document but I would no longer be getting the "Returning Resident" VISA. Instead, I was given a 3 month tourist VISA. Initially I was happy to hear that the Travel Document was extended but then I realized that she said "tourist VISA". Why am I getting a tourist VISA to go home? Not wanting to argue with her about the 3 month VISA at the time so as not to jeopardize the extension of my Travel Document, I simply put that bit of information on the back burner and went on to explain to her that I wasn't going home in the next 3 months. She instructed me to come back and apply for another VISA when I did intend on going. She didn't add much and just told me that it was ready for pick-up. So I went to the Embassy and got my Travel Document and the tourist VISA that was stamped in it. My husband, my son and I were planning on going home to Palestine this summer. So a month before we were set to leave (July 8, 2008) I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, papers in hand, to ask 2 for a VISA to go home. I, again, stood in line and watched others get VISAs to go to my home. When my turn came I walked up to the window; "Shalom" she said with a smile on her face, "Hi" I replied. I slipped the paperwork in the little slot under the bulletproof glass and waited for the usual reaction. I told her that I needed a returning resident VISA to go home. She took the paperwork and I gave her a check for the amount she requested and left the Embassy without incident. A few days ago I got a phone call from Dina at the Israeli Embassy telling me that she needed the expiration date of my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card. I had given them all the paperwork they needed time and time again and I thought it was a good way on their part to waste time so that I didn't get my VISA in time. Regardless, I called over and over again only to get their voice mail. I left a message with the information they needed but kept called every 10 minutes hoping to speak to someone to make sure that they received the information in an effort to expedite the tedious process. I finally got a hold of someone. I told her that I wanted to make sure they received the information I left on their voice mail and that I wanted to make sure that my paperwork was in order. She said, after consulting with someone in the background (I assume it was Dina), that I needed to fax copies of both my Jordanian Passport and my Green Card and that giving them the information over the phone wasn't acceptable. So I immediately made copies and faxed them to Dina. A few hours later my cell phone rang. "Zeina?" she said. "Yes" I replied, knowing exactly who it was and immediately asked her if she received the fax I sent. She said: "ehhh, I was not looking at your file when you called earlier but your Visa was denied and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid." "Excuse me?" I said in disbelief. "Sorry, I cannot give you a visa and your ID and Travel Document are no longer valid. This decision came from Israel not from me." I cannot describe the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. "Why?" I asked and Dina went on to tell me that it was because I had a Green Card. I tried to reason with Dina and to explain to her that they could not do that as this is my only means of travel home and that I wanted to see my parents, but to no avail. Dina held her ground and told me that I wouldn't be given the VISA and then said: "Let the Americans give you a Travel Document". I have always been a strong person and not one to show weakness but at that moment I lost all control and started crying while Dina was on the other end of the line holding my only legal documents linking me to my home. I began to plead with her to try and get the VISA and not revoke my documents; "put yourself in my shoes, what would you do? You want to go see your family and someone is telling you that you can't! What would you do? Forget that you're Israeli and that I'm Palestinian and think about this for a minute!" "Sorry" she said," I know but I can't do anything, the decision came from Israel ". I tried to explain to her over and over again that I could not travel without my Travel Document and that they could not do that - knowing that they could, and they had! This has been happening to many Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID card. The Israeli government has been practicing and perfecting the art of ethnic cleansing since 1948 right under the nose of the world and no one has the power or the guts to do anything about it. Where else in the world does one have to beg to go to one's own home? Where else in the world does one have to give up their identity for the sole reason of living somewhere else for a period of time? Imagine if an American living in Spain for a few years wanted to go home only to be told by the American government that their American Passport was revoked and that they wouldn't be able to come back! If I were a Jew living anywhere around the world and had no ties to the area and had never set foot there, I would have the right to go any time I wanted and get an Israeli Passport. In fact, the Israelis encourage that. I however, am not Jewish but I was born and raised there, my parents, family and friends still live there and I cannot go back! I am neither a criminal nor a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world, yet I am alienated and expelled from my own home. As it stands right now, I will be unable to go home - I am one of many.
By: Dana Shalash for MIFTAH
Date: 26/10/2006
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Ramadan Ended! Now What?
So today is the third day of Eid Al Fitr that all Muslims worldwide celebrate right after the culmination of the month of Ramadan. Not sure if it’s only me, but Ramadan seems to have lost its glory. Years ago when I was a child, people’s attitudes towards both Ramadan and Eid (festival) were way different than now. Maybe I have grown up to the extent that I see in them nothing but the mere fact that few arrogant relatives come for a visit for a couple of minutes, and everyone just sucks them up. It has been a gloomy day in deed. Being self-centered often times, I thought that my own family never enjoyed the Ramadan that other people celebrate. But the night prior to the Eid, I went for a drive to Ramallah with my uncle and three sisters, we toured around Al Manara and the mall a bit, and felt the legendary atmosphere. People were happy. That hit me; I am not accustomed to seeing them vividly preoccupied with the preparation for the big “day.” So I came back home and wrote to all my contacts wishing them a Happy Eid and expressed my astonishment and satisfaction to see promising smiles in the crowded streets of Ramallah. But the sad part was that I knew it was merely fleeting moments and that those smiles would be wiped off soon. Not only have my fears become true, but I was blind. Yes, blind. Or may be I just chose not to see it. May be I wanted to believe that we are actually happy. Would I miss Ramadan? NO. Not really. It has been made hell this year. While Ramadan is believed to be the holy month during which people get closer to Allah by fasting from food and drink all day long and focus on their faith instead, I am not pretty sure this was the case with us Palestinians. It was only a drug. Ramadan numbed our pain. We could handle both the Israeli and Palestinian political, economic, and security pressure knowing that the day of salvation was approaching; the Eid. But after the three days elapsed, then what? Now thousands of Palestinians are waiting for the next phase. It has been seven months now. Seven months, and thousands of the PA employees have not received their salaries. And two months elapsed with millions of students deprived form their right of education. I have three sisters and two brothers who do nothing but stay at home. They have not attended school from the very beginning of this term. It is both sad and frustrating that they have to “do the time” and pay a high price. Reading the news headlines on the first days of Eid is not healthy at all. It lessens the effect of the drug, and one starts to get sober. Sounds funny in deed, but that was the case. Few minutes ago, I surfed some of the blogs and came across few Iraqi bloggers writing on both Ramadan and Eid. If the titles did not mention “in Iraq,” I swear I could never tell the difference between Iraq and Palestine. The hunger, misery, constant killing, and lack of security are all Palestinian symptoms. I am speechless now; I can hardly verbalize the so many conflicting thoughts. Heaven knows how things would be like next Ramadan, but I would not speculate it already. It is not time to worry about it now, other issues are on stake; food, money, and education. Until then, there are a lot of things to sort out. By: Margo Sabella
Date: 27/07/2006
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Children will Judge
Yesterday, I realized that I believe in love at first sight. Not the romantic kind, rather the sense of connecting with another human being without ever having to say a word. Indeed, the person I was so enthralled with last night was a five-month-old girl, who smiled at me and then hid her face in shyness. Those few moments of interacting with this baby lifted my spirits, but it also made me reflect in sadness about the fact that many children in this current conflict are robbed of their joy and their childhood. I often contemplate how mature Palestinian children seem. Sure, they play the childhood games that we all played in our day, but there is wisdom in their words that is eerily sobering. Their age defines them as children, but if you have a conversation with a Palestinian child, you will realize how much awareness she has of the world around her, of suffering in the next village, in Gaza, in Lebanon. She is a child that has empathy and understands that life, by nature, is wrought with all sorts of difficulties. A Palestinian child knows better; life is not as it is depicted in cartoons, where those who die are miraculously resurrected not once, but several times, where injuries are healed instantaneously, where death is a joke and life is a series of slapstick moments. A Palestinian child escapes into imagination, but she is never far removed from the reality of children and adults alike being indiscriminately shot outside her window, in her classroom, at the local bakery. Who would have thought that normal things, simply walking down the street to grab a falafel sandwich, could result in your untimely death? Perhaps the Israeli army mistook the falafel stand for a bomb-making factory, or an ammunition shop? Make no mistake about it; the Israeli military have made too many “mistakes” that there is obviously a pattern there, wouldn’t you think? A child that is robbed of the sense of security, therefore, is a child that is mature beyond her years. She knows that the bullets and the tank shells do not discriminate. Her father can shield her from the neighbor’s vicious dog, from the crazy drivers, he will hold her hand to cross the street, but he will not be able to capture a bullet in his hand like the mythological superheroes in blockbuster movies out this summer in theatres near you. He might be able to take the bullet for her though. But once gone, who will be her protective shield against the harsh reality of life that goes on in what seems the periphery of the conflict? And who will be there to share some of her joyous milestones; graduation, marriage, the birth of a child? Hers is a joy that is always overshadowed by a greater sorrow. Is it fair that 31 Palestinian children have died in a 31-day period? A child-a-day; is that the new Israeli army mantra? Khaled was just a one-year-old, Aya was seven, Sabreen was only three. What lost potential, what lost promise – who knows what Khaled would have grown up to be? An astronaut? A veterinarian? A philosopher? What about Aya; she could have become a fashion designer, a teacher, a mother. By what right has this promise been so violently plucked and trampled upon cruelly and without a moment’s hesitation on the part of the Israeli soldier, who heartlessly unleashed a fiery rain of bullets and shells on a neighborhood as if he is in a simulated video game and those who die are fictitious and unreal? Perhaps that is what he is made to believe, otherwise, who in clear consciousness is so willing to pull the trigger and with one spray of bullets destroy life, potential and rob joy? If you can see the smiling face of your own child, then how do you go out and unquestioningly take the life of others? If you value life, then how do you live with the burden of knowing that you have taken it so unjustifiably? Perhaps that is your perpetual punishment; the judgment of a child scorned is the harshest of them all.
By the Same Author
Date: 15/11/2004
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Arafat and my Palestinian Identity
Much has and will continue to be written in the days following the death of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. While the world debates his place in history, his enemies have embarked on a “crusade to besmirch Yasser Arafat”, as the Israeli newspaper Haa’retz reported in its pages. Emotions and vicious attacks aside, I felt that I, as a Palestinian, who was born in Jerusalem, lived through the 1967 War as a 6 year old (we were forced to flee our homes and seek shelter in the caves of the surrounding hills for more than 2 weeks), and whose connection to Palestine is very much alive, must at least try to convey what Yasser Arafat’s impact has been on my life and identity as Palestinian. My children are the grandchildren of Palestinian of refugees who, like the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, were forced from their ancestral homes and lands by the terrorism and criminal actions of Israel’s Jewish terrorist founding fathers. Yasser Arafat was by no means a perfect man. His accomplishment and mistakes were many and I was never shy with my criticism. Yet, through it all, he embodied the Palestinian cause, making sure that we, the Palestinian people would not be cast aside and forgotten as the early Zionist founders of the State of Israel had hoped and worked for. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, is famously quoted as saying “the old will die and the young will forget”, in reference to the Palestinian people and the catastrophe of being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland. The old did and do die, this is only natural, BUT Yasser Arafat made sure that the young would never forget. In a world that would have liked to see the Palestinians “just go away”, he made sure that we didn’t, that we were and ARE a people, complete with our own history and identity: Palestinian. He forced an uncaring world to see us as a people, not just a collection of rag tag refugees. He instilled in us hope and pride, even in our darkest hours, when the rest of the world could have cared less about our plight, dreams, and aspirations. When the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir arrogantly announced to the world that “there was no such thing as a Palestinian people”, Yasser Arafat was there, defiantly proven to her and the rest of the world that we exist! This point was not lost on me as a little boy here in America. Yasser Arafat helped me and the millions of other Palestinian children discover and assert our identity to a world that had been accustomed to hearing the lies and propaganda of Israel and the Zionists! I remember the day I became fully aware of my identity as a Palestinian... The year was 1970 and I was 9 year old 3rd. grader in Salina Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, USA. I had been in the U.S. for a little over a year, having immigrated to the US in the summer of 1969. One day, they took all of the classes to the cafeteria for an assembly and to have us fill out some kind of a questionnaire/survey. I went along with my fellow 3rd graders and we sat down to fill out a survey for some government agency. Amongst the usual questions such as name, age, date of birth and such, was a question of COUNTRY OF ORIGIN AND NATIONALITY...Since I was not yet a U.S. citizen, I naturally wrote in the box: Palestine and Palestinian. After about 15 minutes, the teacher came around and collected the forms that we had filled out. There were kids from just about every corner of the globe as well as most countries in the Middle East, since Dearborn had been a magnet for Arab speaking immigrants from the Middle East as well as Eastern Europe due to the availability of jobs in the Auto Industry. We lived, played, and went to school in the shadows of the mammoth, smoke belching Ford Rouge Plant. The teacher went through the forms as they were collected one by one to check if they were complete. When the teacher who was charged with collecting the papers approached my desk, I handed her my paper. She took one look at it and let out a nasty groan. She stared at me and began to lecture me, in a rather loud tone, that I had made a mistake. I had written in a nationality and a country that did not exist and was not recognized. She made me stand up and asked me in front of the whole class what my nationality was. I said, "Palestinian." She replied, "Nonsense, there is no such thing." She then handed me back my form and told me to correct it. I was confused. Exactly what was I supposed to write? She erased the words Palestine and Palestinian and told me that I had a choice. I could be Lebanese, Syrian, or Jordanian. I protested to her that I was none of those. I was born in Jerusalem not in any of those other countries that she had listed. To no avail, she wrote in the words SYRIA and SYRIAN on the form. She then scolded me in front of the whole class as someone that did not know who he was or where he came from. Of course all of the kids, being the kids they are, made fun of me and had a laugh at my expense. The cruelest ones were kids from other Middle Eastern countries. They so desperately wanted to be accepted, that they chided me mercilessly even though I was “one of their own”. This episode occurred about around the same time that Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, made that infamous speech. In it she said that there was no such thing as Palestine or a Palestinian people. That episode only made me more aware and proud of my heritage and helped shape who I am. A Palestinian! And for that, I am eternally grateful to Yasser Arafat. Now the entire world knows who the Palestinian people are. My own children do not have to go through what I went through as it pertains to their identity. They can show pride and the world can never again pretend that we “didn’t exist”! Date: 15/11/2004
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The Defiant Survivor
Though I knew Yasser Arafat was dying, I didn't know how I would receive the actual news of his passing. He had been written off so many times in the past, I think I was expecting him to miraculously recover, the ever- defiant survivor. Like most Palestinians, I never knew a world without Arafat. During our darkest hours, he was there, reassuring us that our struggle for freedom would not be forgotten. I remember the great excitement and pride when my father took me to a local coffee house here in the US in the 1970s to watch Arafat give his famous speech at the UN. I was filled with a pride I had never felt before as a Palestinian. He carried the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the entire Palestinian people when he strode into the general assembly. The world was forced to recognise we were still there, that we would not "just go away". He symbolised Palestinians right to the end, when Ariel Sharon had him imprisoned in his Ramallah compound. His confinement and Israel's vilification of him, mirrored the daily mistreatment, oppression and vilification of the entire Palestinian people. It is a sad day for me and for all Palestinians, our loss is great. But his spirit, the spirit of the Palestinian people, will live on. Date: 01/04/2003
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First Love
I can’t say for sure when it happened. Nor can I say for sure how it happened, but rest assured it happened. I had fallen hard for this, my first love. I was smitten but could not really explain how or why. I was a mere child who could not put into words the feelings that I had for this fair maiden, the true extent of which did not reveal themselves until much later on, only after I was separated from her. The vast distance between us only made me yearn more for her ever more. She was in my blood and there was nothing on this earth that could remove her. Her name is Palestine. The first time I laid my eyes on her was December 1st 1960. That was the day that I was born onto her soil and drew my first life giving breath from her sacred air. She nourished me with food grown in her earth, watered by her dew and this mixed with and formed my flesh and blood. It wasn’t until 1965 that I began to see and feel her beauty and warmth. I was an inquisitive and very adventurous child, raised in the village of Beit Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem. I spent days upon days exploring the hills and trees that encircled the village of my youth: running from my family’s fruit and olive orchards, to the caves in the hills; I was never at loss for adventure. A slingshot, handmade from olive wood and the rubber of a car inner tube, was my constant companion. All the children in the village had slingshots dangling from their back pockets: one's proficiency and marksmanship with a slingshot was a source of pride amongst the youth in our village. How can I describe such a love affair between a man and his land? The early spring mornings, richly colored hills alive with wild flowers, plants, and blossoming trees, watered by life-giving spring rains. Standing on the balcony - high, overlooking the valleys and outward to the hills - that was built by my great grandfather, I saw what he had seen, admired and loved: an ancient grape vine planted in the early 1900’s, snakes its way up the staircase, covering the balcony, providing shelter and protection from the hot summer sun, its lush emerald canopy a source of shelter and its leaves rolled by my mother, grandmother and sisters with tender, loving hands into a staple of our daily food, as were the giant bunches of golden grapes, hanging just above my head, dangling in the breeze. I would climb the hills, where my other grandfather lived and scan the valley below, seeing my village, and the mosque’s minaret - my compass from every point. To the west, my family’s fruit orchards, a living carpet of green pink and white blossoms’ the fields, hills, and valleys alive with village people tending their crops and orchards. Mule and horse drawn plows tilling the orchards and open fields: turning over long, straight lines of fresh earth as the plows dug up the dirt. Shepherds and their herds of sheep and goats, baby lambs born in the early spring months, dot the hills grazing on new grasses, plants, and flowers. To the east, my family’s fig and olive orchards, fields of red poppies waving in the breeze. The women of the village roaming the hills, collecting a variety of herbs and plants to be used in our everyday lives to season our food and heal our wounds and illnesses. Whatever was not used immediately was dried and saved for later. My mother assigned me guard duty at the edge of one our groves where the plums and apricots were grown: my job was to keep the girls from neighboring girl’s school away from the trees and their fruit. The girls loved to pick the small unripe and still green fruits: these are generally sour and they liked to dip them in salt and munch them for snacks, likewise, the green almonds, so abundant in Palestine. My mother, bless her, used to make pickles from just about anything: green plums, apricots, and almonds as well as the usual stuff like cucumbers, eggplant, and green tomatoes. All of our vegetables were grown in our own gardens. Summer, with its heat, helped ripen the golden apricots, plums of every color of the rainbow, fuzzy peaches and other fruits that were in abundance. The early summer months meant the apricot harvest, later the plums and peaches, and finally grapes and figs that ripen only in late summer. Nothing has stuck in my mind more than the early mornings, waking at dawn and running down to our orchards to collect fallen apricots from the ground: these were ripened by Mother Nature and still covered by the cool, early morning dew that waters the Palestinian countryside in the summer months in the absence of rains. I would select one of these golden beauties, lift it over my mouth and squeeze the drops of golden sweet nectar onto my tongue. The taste still lingers with me today, 35 years after the fact, never duplicated. What we did not consume, my mother transformed into jams and jellies – so that year round, we enjoyed the abundant and delicious fruits of our land. Fall ushered in the olive harvest: the most celebrated of harvests in Palestine. Olive trees can live for many hundreds of years and are a very vital part of Palestinian life. Cared for as one would for a newborn child, olive trees are synonymous with Palestine and her people. The orchards and their crops are an integral part of Palestinian life. The olive harvests were festivals: the hills and valleys become alive with people; entire families, scores of people carry ladders and sacks as they make their way to harvest their precious crops. The olive harvest was, by far, my favorite season of the year. I loved to be with my siblings as we picked olives and ate our meals under the very trees that my ancestors had planted and harvested before me: where they ate, like me, under the same trees hundreds of years before. After the harvest, olives are either turned, cracked and pickled or sent to the nearby presses to become the best cold pressed virgin olive oil on the planet. To this day, I still receive olive oil from my mother that is pressed from the olives grown on our lands: the same trees that my ancestors harvested and that I climbed and harvested as a youth. The winter months were spent in relative quiet indoors. There was no electricity in the village of my youth: we burned wood to heat our humble abode. A large metal barrel, with both ends cutoff, would be placed atop the round stove; the wood piled into the barrel and the fire lit. After the wood had become glowing embers, it would be carried inside to heat the. Some used kerosene heaters but most used these simple wood-burning stoves that I loved. As kids, we’d take eggs and bury them in the hot ashes of the fire to roast; after a few moments they were ready to be taken out and eaten: the taste so much better than simple boiled eggs; sometimes we’d bury potatoes and other vegetables to get them cooked. The elders would make coffee and tea at the edge of the glowing embers. The winter months brought the much-needed rains, even the occasional snowfall: we kids absolutely loved the snowfalls. We would run outside to play in the snow, knowing full well that it would melt fast at it touched the earth. The sight of the snow-covered hills was a rare and awesome sight: olive trees covered in snow is also a sight to behold. Families huddled by the fire, exchanging stories and tales handed down for generations. We had an old radio, but we usually provided ourselves with our own entertainment, giving root to an indescribably feeling of closeness with community and family. Such was the life that made me fall madly in love with my beautiful Palestine. Her soil is intermixed with my blood; her air fills my lungs; her beauty forever displayed in the museum of my mind… One never forgets his first love… Today, my village is barely recognizable from what I remember. It is encircled now by Jewish settlements that seem to dominate and choke her. There is a Jewish only highway that cuts straight through the heart of my beloved village like a giant scar on an otherwise beautiful face. Most of the olive orchards have been destroyed and uprooted by the Israelis in their unquenchable thirst for land. The village is cut in half; its people are not allowed to travel from one side of the village to the other – not even when their lands are there. People are cut off from their lands, crops, orchards, more importantly, families by roadblocks, and soldiers. Palestine today, is a land bleeding and in pain. May the grace of God heal the wounds and mend its broken hearts so that she may know true peace. If I close my eyes and think hard enough, I can still see the things that made me fall madly in love with my homeland. Yes, she has changed. And yes, she has a few scars, some wrinkles and lines, but these only make me that much more attracted to her – my first and true love. Date: 01/04/2003
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Identity
I remember the day I became fully aware of my identity as a Palestinian... The year was 1970 and I was 9 year old 3rd. grader in Salina Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, USA. I had been in the U.S. for a little over a year, having immigrated to the US in the spring of 1969. My 3rd. grade class was asked to fill out a survey for some government agency. Amongst the usual questions such as name, age, date of birth and such, was a question of COUNTRY OF ORIGIN AND NATIONALITY...Since I was not yet a U.S. citizen, I naturally wrote in the box: Palestine and Palestinian. After about 15 minutes, the teacher came around and collected the forms that we had filled out. There were kids from just about every country in the Middle East, since Dearborn had been a magnet for Arab speaking immigrants from the Middle East as well as Europe. The teacher went through the forms as they were collected one by one to check if they were complete. When she approached my desk, I handed her my paper. She took one look at it and let out a nasty groan. I was informed by her, in a rather loud tone, that I had made a mistake. I had written in a nationality and a country that did not exist. She made me stand up and asked me in front of the whole class what my nationality was. I said, "Palestinian." She replied, "Nonsense, there is no such thing." She then handed me back my form and told me to correct it. I was confused. Exactly what was I supposed to write? She erased the words Palestine and Palestinian and told me that I had a choice. I could be Lebanese, Syrian, or Jordanian. I informed her that I was none of those. To no avail, she wrote in the words SYRIA and SYRIAN on the form. She then scolded me in front of the whole class as someone that did not know his nationality. Of course all of the kids made fun of me and had a laugh at my expense. The cruelest ones were kids from other Middle Eastern countries. They so desperately wanted to be accepted, that they chided one of their own. This episode occurred about around the same time that Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, made that infamous speech. In it she said that there was no such thing as Palestine or a Palestinian people. That episode only made me more aware and proud of my heritage and helped shape who I am. Palestinian then, now, and forever! Contact us
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14 Emil Touma Street, Al Massayef, Ramallah Postalcode P6058131
Mailing address:
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Palestine
972-2-298 9490/1 972-2-298 9492 info@miftah.org
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