Amidst Hamas’ willingness to sacrifice the lives of so many Arab Palestinians rhe hard part for most outsiders is to understand what a “Palestinian is?” What is there about ethnic identity that led the Jewish Palestine to Masada and now the Arab Palestinians to Gaza? The hard part for the Jews is to listen to the words “I am a Palestinian” from an Arab. Why is this hard? It is NOT because Zionists do not recognize that the Arabs of Palestine are people. Rather it is because prior to 1968, Arabs denied that there was a Palestinian Arab identity. Arabs living in Palestine were Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians but not “Arab Palestinians.” Only the Palestinian Jews identified themselves as Palestinian .. perhaps because there were not Syrian, Egyptian, or Jordanian Jews living in Palestine.
Do Palestinians Really Exist?
Dean Obeidallah , The Daily Beast (adapted and redacted)
What you don’t know about Palestinians.
My late father, Abdul Musa Obeidallah, was born there in the 1930s. When I say Palestine, that’s not a political statement. It’s just a statement of fact. When he was born, there was no state of Israel. There was no Hamas. No PLO.
There were just people of different faiths living together on the same small piece of land called Palestine. And to be honest, but for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I doubt you would’ve heard much about Palestinians.
My father, like the seven generations of Obeidallahs born before him in his sleepy farming town of Battir, didn’t harbor grand dreams or bold plans. They lived a simple life of growing fruits, vegetables, and lots of olive trees. (Palestinians love olives!) Their biggest battles weren’t with other people, but with the elements.Most of my Palestinian ancestors lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. That would likely have been my father’s path as well. But as we are all keenly aware, fate had far different plans.
<ed. today> When you tell someone you’re of Palestinian heritage, it’s not just an ethnicity, it’s a conversation starter. In fact, just saying the word Palestine inflames some. People will tell me to my face that there has never been a Palestine and there are no such thing as Palestinians. To them, I guess Palestinians are simply holograms.
When I ask these people what the land where Israel is now located was called before 1948, they tend to stammer or offer some convoluted response. The answer is simply Palestine. Not a big deal, really. Indeed, the United Nations debate in 1947 over the creation of the state of Israel was described in terms of the “question of Palestine.” The U.N. even explained in its official summary that “It is recognized that Palestine is the common country of both indigenous Arabs and Jews, that both these peoples have had an historic association with it,” adding that “Palestinian citizens, as well as Arabs and Jews who, not holding Palestinian citizenship, reside in Palestine.” It’s hard to hold legal citizenship of a place that doesn’t exist.
Nowadays, few disagree there is a Palestinian people. After all, there are more than 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel alone <Ed. odd … being an Arab Israeli does not make one a Palestinian any more than being a Chinese American makes one a Chinese citizen>. Of course, that didn’t stop Newt Gingrich from commenting during his failed 2012 run for president that the Palestinians are an “invented” people…………
When I was about 9 years old, my teacher asked about the ethnicity of each student so she could pin it on a map of the world. When she came to me, she was stumped.
…. As most know, war resulted in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being driven from their home or fleeing. Ironically, this war was waged by the surrounding Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, etc.—which claimed they were doing it for the Palestinian people. But when Palestinian refugees sought to move into these Arab countries after the war, they often were met with horrible discrimination. In some instances, they would not be able to obtain government benefits, were not hired because of their ethnicity, or worse, were fired from a job because a citizen of that country wanted it. To this day, many are relegated to overcrowded refugee camps, which still exist in the occupied territories as well as in Lebanon and Jordan, which is home to 22 refugee camps and millions of registered refugees per the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). I’ve visited some of these refugee camps in the West Bank, and the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. … more akin to overcrowded ghettos where dreams are deferred on a daily basis. … millions of Palestinians … have survived upon the “kindness of strangers.” You see, there’s nothing that truly links Arabs across the region. Moroccans don’t have much in common with those in Dubai. Egyptians view themselves as leaders of the Arab world, while many in Lebanon, which is relatively close to Egypt in terms of kilometers, see themselves as more European than Arab.
….. My forebears didn’t flee their homes in Battir during the 1948 war. Since then, they have been under Jordanian rule and then Israeli after the 1967 war. They have endured intifadas and an often cruel military occupation. My grandmother’s land outside Bethlehem was even confiscated by Israeli settlers, who made it part of a Jewish-only settlement. Not because she did anything wrong but simply because she was the wrong religion .
…..When I was about 9 years old in the late 1970s, my teacher asked about the ethnicity of each student so she could pin it on a map of the world. When she came to me, she was stumped—she didn’t know much about Palestinians, and of course she couldn’t find it on the map since it wasn’t there. ….. Later that night, I relayed that story to my father and asked him: “Where is Palestine?” He paused for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. He then touched his heart and head and responded: “In here.”I wonder what my response will be if I have children and one day they ask: “Where is Palestine?” Will I be able to take out a map and simply point it out, like most people do when they are asked about their heritage?
– See more at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/yes-we-palestinians-are-human-beings.html#sthash.ufgbnrZT.dpuf