In ’48 War, the Jews “Didn’t Want These People to Leave the Village”
Israeli-Arab town of Jisr az-Zarqa
Alexander Galloway, a former UNRWA director in Jordan, famously said that the Arab world was not interested in solving the Palestinian refugee problem, but instead preferred to “keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel.”
Today, ironically, it is UNRWA, the United Nations body responsible for Palestinian refugees, that’s often charged with perpetuating the refugee status of Palestinians. And if the refugee problem is still used as a weapon against Israel, it is largely as a key component of the simplistic, hostile narrative that holds Israel as uniformly guilty and the Palestinian as fundamentally victims.
An example of this narrative: The claim in a The New York TImes Op-Ed a few years back that, in 1948, “a people had been expelled from their land in a comprehensive ethnic cleansing operation.”
But from those not enlisted in the war-of-words against Israel — from those who speak casually, as citizens and not as warriors — that narrative is often undermined. In today’s Chicago Tribune (and in the LA Times last week) there is a story about the Arab-Israeli coastal town of Jisr az-Zarqa. One older resident is quoted talking about that allegedly “comprehensive ethnic cleansing operation”:
In 1948, amid fighting between Arabs and Jews surrounding the creation of Israel, there was no fighting in Jisr.
Arabs living in nearby villages fled, but “we didn’t even think about it, never even thought about leaving our lands,” said Gamil Jarban, 72, a retired fisherman, who said his father built the first house in Jisr. He said the people of Jisr were left alone because they were peaceful.
“Even when the Jews came here, they didn’t want these people to leave the village,” he said.
To those most dedicated to talking points drawn up by Palestinian rejectionists, Jarban’s frank remembrance might be viewed as a betrayal. But even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can’t be angry. He’s been known to contradict his own narrative now and again.
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