A Journey To A Denied Homeland

By Elias A. Rashmawi

Abstract: Although he was born in Gaza, Palestine, Elias Rashmawi was issued a permanent deportation order by the Israeli High Court because of his involvement in Palestinian organizing while a student in the United States. In November 2000, as the second Intifada raged on, Elias' father passed away, and he was granted a limited permit to his homeland to attend the funeral. "How many fathers must die before we are all allowed to return," he asks in this essay that reifies the brevity and pain of his truncated visit.

It appeared before my eyes through the confining window of a plane, yet one more time, mangled and perverted, new and unknown, clumsy and foreign - so was the appearance of my own homeland to these native and longing eyes. I shifted from side to side, inspecting the once gorgeous topography, the once tremendous and uncontaminated simple landscape, the now ugly and towering buildings, and the now bare land - all while passionately attempting to guess or juxtapose just where some of the obliterated Palestinian villages and towns might be. Villages and towns that once nestled between the hills but were removed, all 450 of them, in 1948, to make room for the colonists, to make room for the vulgarity of Europe and its settlements.

My desperate search for my homeland was perhaps a response in recognition of the intent of Theodore Herzl, the founder and architect of political Zionism, who stated: "If Zionist settlers were to move into a region where there are wild animals to which the Jews are not accustomed - big snakes, etc., -- I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in transient countries, for the extermination of these animals."

Such racist and colonial intent was implemented in programs of terror and dispossession at the hands of Jewish underground terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern. These murderous gangs terrorized every home, destroyed villages and slaughtered entire families. Dozens of massacres were committed within a few months of the establishment of Israel: Al-Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Al-Kabri, Haifa, Qisarya .... In the Zionist Plan Dalet, as was evident through my piercing eye from a plane window, 50 percent of the Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared from its Palestinian population: Aker, Bir Al-Saba', Bisan, Al-Lod, Al-Majdal, Nazareth, Haifa, Tiberias, Jaffa, West Jerusalem... At least 13,000 Palestinians were murdered, and 737,166 were ejected from their homes. The Palestinian populations in major towns such as Aker, Bir Al-Saba', Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda, Al-Majdal, Al Ramla, Safad, Tiberias, and West Jerusalem were almost entirely removed, thus making room for the new settlers.

It is in this context that my visit had to come while dressed in the robes of a United States citizen. A visit that occurred only after I was granted a special permission so that I may participate in my father's funeral. Denied entry to Palestine in 1997, and later issued a deportation order by the Israeli High Court that permanently ejected me from the very place where I was born and raised, my return was particularly painful since it was secured only by the death of my father. How many fathers must die for us collectively to return?

As I entered that sordid Ben Gurion Airport, which was built on confiscated land from the Palestinian town of Al-Lid (Lud), a Plan Dalet victim, the only sign of Palestine were the Palestinian Arab travelers who were confined to a room run by the airport police. Clearly, upon entry, the State of Israel assumes that all Palestinians are guilty until proven otherwise. And this assumption remains during the entire life-span of all Palestinians, and even when they die, their very dead bodies are constantly searched, just in case they are carrying a piece of Palestine to the end. Under the cover of "state security", Israel allows itself to practice extreme forms of racial discrimination and outright bigotry, including collective punishment and individual torture - all in clear contradiction to the Fourth Geneva Convention. How else would the celebrated Anthony Lewis of The New York Times write: "Here (in the West Bank and Gaza), as there (South Africa), a people suffer humiliation without recourse, without voice or vote. Men and women are at the mercy of 18-year-olds with guns. Law is manipulated to serve the rulers, until justice is eaten away. The press is censored, and the press is banned."

Although I was to enter a part of historic Palestine not more than a few miles from where my mother was born, and from where she was also ejected in 1948, another victim of Plan Dalet, as Israel declared itself a state, I entered into a foreign land - an exclusive theocracy, a military Sparta of sort, and an alien polity, to be sure. Nothing except one's own knowledge that this is Palestine indicates that you are home. Nothing - or maybe the forgotten ruins of homes, the abandoned and destroyed Arab churches and mosques, and the ghettos where only a small fraction of the Palestinians remained, wretched and dehumanized, tells you that this is the place of your ancestors.

For you see, Israel was founded on the very essence of colonial segregation and settler violence. It has enacted laws and regulations securing Palestinian land for new settlers, and banning Palestinian owners from their very own property. The Law of Return is one primary example. Jews, regardless of their nationality, are offered Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. The Law of Return is also open to those related by marriage or birth to a Jew, including the non-Jewish grandchildren of a Jew. Under this Law, millions have since "returned" to where they do not belong, in my mother's home.

Six hours passed, and I was passed from one soldier to the next detective, from the Shabak to other intelligence officers. "Are you sure your father died?" they asked with contempt. They asked me, asked my mother at home in Ramallah, asked the governor of our district, and even the clergy of the church. They had to be sure that the man was dead, and that I was to walk with him to his grave before I was to be granted a special "humanitarian permit" to enter. My ever-proud stand - a Palestinian stand - would not yield, however, as I announced to all that though they may deny me today, the future was indeed ours. Soon I was released to the larger prison where the rest of my people live - Palestine.

We started the trek home to Ramallah, avoiding settlers who are ready to shoot, soldiers ready to send you back to nowhere as long as it is Back, and pits and holes where much of our journey had to be - on undeveloped roads to avoid all. Dotted with exclusive Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land, ugly and intrusive on the landscape as they are, colonial in their intent and racist in their very presence, their orchestrated presence viciously destroyed our land. "Can we go from here," I asked, pointing to a nice wide road fenced on both sides. The driver answered, "No, this is a bypass road, reserved only for Jewish settlers, we are not allowed on." Amazing, I thought, the self-proclaimed only democracy in the Middle East practices outright segregation and racial discrimination to this day, funded with United States dollars, as the world watches. Simply amazing!

Finally, I saw a Palestinian flag and a couple of Palestinian youths dressed in police uniforms. "We are in Area A now," announced the driver. No sooner, had he made his proud declaration that we heard an explosion, then another, then another. "They have started shelling already, I need to get home," he continued, with clear disgust and fear. He was referring to the daily shelling and bombing by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers of Palestinian towns and villages. A shelling that later became an inseparable part of our sleepless nights.

The flag and the police were instituted as a result of the 1993 Oslo "Peace process," a process that gave the Palestinians Bantustans and cantons, without any sense of nationhood or self-determination. Brokered by the United States government, the Peace Process is considered today by nearly all Palestinians as the paramount curse after the 1948 and 1967 catastrophes. It was enacted in 1993 in a desperate attempt to quell the Intifada of 1987 that lasted seven years after, an uprising that was met with Yitzhak Rabin's policy of "might, power and beatings." Intentional, orchestrated, and malicious bone-breaking of youths, destruction of homes, imprisonment without trial, expulsion and deportation, and summary murders and death-squad campaigns of terror became the normal and accepted practice of the Israeli forces supported by the settlers, all in an attempt to stop the Palestinian stubborn and recurring call for statehood and independence.

As we arrived home, my mother greeted me with tears in her eyes, but with a strong and perhaps slightly cracking voice. I was now home, where I played, carried out pranks on my friends, and dreamed of my future. Just after I looked for my father, but found his chair empty, where no one dared to sit, and after I asked whether or not they are sure that he was gone, I had to turn immediately to our fig tree. Seeing it gave that immense sad and grieving moment a sense of stability and perseverance, a proud announcement that we belong to the very land on which we stand, on which we are or will be buried, a challenge to all that we most certainly have roots - very deep Arab roots.

As I entered my room, and laid on the very bed that shared my dreams and secrets when I was much younger, I tried to listen to the night. The absence of father's sleep sounds and snoring was deafening. I needed to hear it, the home was not the same without it. As if the foundation was now gone, for he was that very foundation. As if life was standing still, for he was very much the center of our lives. But then, the silence was broken with a rude and murderous intrusion - the shelling had started, again, and again, and again, we heard it as it shook our home and shattered the night and lives. No one knew exactly why, no one knew exactly where, but everyone seemed to know that some will die, and others will lose their homes. Such was the case every night, and it remains so to this day.

Aimed at Palestinian homes, the shelling and bombing campaigns are part of a larger program of completely destroying any articulation of Palestinian independence, as has been so intensely announced to the world ever since September 28, 2000, when the second Intifada erupted. So far, at least 290 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 injured, many with permanent disabilities, all for the price of freedom, and all as the world watches.

The following morning we made yet another trip to our hometown Beit Sahour, where all the Rishmawis come from. It was there that my father was to be buried. Next to his own father, mother, brother, nephew, and all the Rishmawis who have left the world of the living. But as we wanted to say goodbye, bid him yet another farewell, touch him for one last time, there was shelling again. Beit Sahour had paid a dear price in the first Intifada, for it was there that the tax revolt was initiated and implemented. Many, such as my pharmacist cousin, had lost their businesses, homes, and entire belongings, including the very toys of their children. It is now time for Beit Sahour to pay a heavy price once more - by losing its homes to falling bombs.

As we walked with my father's coffin on our shoulders to the church, there was the shelling; as we cried and waved goodbye, there was the shelling; as people from everywhere filed into our family home to share our and their loss, there was the shelling. It lit the sky, shattered the sadness of the moment, robbed us all of the right to grieve, and vandalized our hearts in their totality. And so we buried my father, Abdallah Elias Rishmawi, under the banner of resistance, as the thunderous reminder of the colonial occupation sounded out loud the vile nature of Israel.

Yet in the days to come, many other funerals were to occur. Every day, people were killed, homes destroyed, bodies battered, and dreams shattered. Every day brought more funerals, more children killed or injured, and harsher collective punishment against a people. There were children who could no longer remain alone in bed, adults who started to lose control of their bodily functions, and the elderly who were seeing their society yet one more time being erased - or so the Israelis wanted. For the intent of the occupation is not only to destroy people, land, and homes, but also the very essence of humanity and the collective cumulative history of our people.

Did you get your bread? asked one, as people rushed to make certain they have food for children. How about the newspaper? asked another, for in Palestine news are more important than bread. Yet, despite all of the killing and destruction, there emerges every day and night another Palestinian, a hundred Palestinians, slingshot in hand, pushing back the Israeli checkpoint yet one more meter. As they fall, one after the other, many take their places, flags raised high, proud, tall, dark, armed with hope and a rough stone, aiming at the occupier, at the thief of dreams, the killer of trees, the monster with metallic toys made in the USA - toys that kill.

And as we walk on the road to freedom, coffins on our shoulders, some occupied and some awaiting, we march in unison to our hopes. We march to the singing and poetry of mine and all the fathers like him, who with their lives graced our existence and with their death secured our return - the return of millions of refugees denied their homes, the return of sanity to our besieged people, and the return of our songs and dance without perversion by colonists.

As the time neared for my deadline to leave, to be ejected once again, a different type of anger came over me. This time it was rage. How could they do it all as the world watched? How could they kill us, how could they leave us to die as we await in an ambulance at a checkpoint, and all while the world watches. How?

They escorted me for almost 4 hours at the same sordid airport where Palestinians seem to be endlessly searched and strip-searched again. "Where were you, did your father really die, what did you do, who did you see, did your father really die, did you ..." "Stop. Have you no shame?" I answered, for I was about to depart my mother, my home, my street, my father, and my country. Absolutely, my country, despite time and in spite all.

The plane finally left the ground where our forefathers are buried under the runway. Behind, I left a mother with tears, a photograph of my children in my father's inside pocket nearest to his heart, the bed where I dreamed and witnessed the nightly shelling, the fig tree where I hid from my peers, the school where I played chess and soccer, the streets where I threw stones and walked in demonstrations and funerals, the totality of my being, the very roots of my culture, and the very essence of my life. I left as I carried a piece of Palestine in me, I left as I recited to myself, what my son now recites to me, my father's most endearing pieces of poetry.,p> So long Palestine, we will return triumphant and proud. Ours is the land, ours is the future, and ours is Palestine. So said my dad, and so I tell my children, and so they announce to all.

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