In May 1948, the British left Palestine and Jewish refugees who had been pouring in proclaimed themselves a Jewish state, changing the name of the land from Palestine to Israel. But Ein Hod was adjacent to three villages that formed an unconquered triangle inside the new state, so the fate of Ein Hod’s people was joined with that of some twenty thousand other Palestinians who still clung to their homes…Finally a truce was reached and Win Hod sighed with relief. “We will prepare a feast as a gesture of friendship and our intention to live side by side with them…” As the people of Ein Hod were marched into dispossession, Moshe and his comrades guarded and looted the newly emptied village. “It’s very bad Hasan,” Ari said. “Zionists have hordes of guns. They recruited an army from shiploads of of Jews arriving every day. You don’t know all of it, Hasan.

They have armoured cars and planes, even.” “Hasan, they’re going to take land. They’v18e launched a campaign across the world calling Palestine ‘a land without people.’ They’re going to make it a Jewish homeland.” “…You know the UN is meeting in November and everyone believes they’re going to partition the land. They are well organised and you know the British disarmed the Arabs after the revolt years ago. Some of the orthodox Jews in the city have organized an anti-Zionist campaign. They say creating a physical state of Israel is sacrilege. But powerful men in America have waged a relentless campaign to persuade Truman to recognize and support a Jewish state here,” Ari was clearly shaken. Serving his commission, the Swedish UN mediator stated, It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who had been rooted in the land for centuries.” Abu Sameeh was a refugee who had started life over after 1948. That Israeli campaign had taken the lives of his father and four brothers. He had married in the refugee camp, raised children, and supported his two widowed sisters. Like the rest of us, he looked forward to the return, when we would all go home. But in the end, the original injustice came to him again and took his entire family once more. There could be no starting over a third time. Nothing more of life was left to live.

I learned later that Jamal’s life had ended as an “example”. Soldiers executed him in front of my brother and fifty others. Jamal was blindfolded, hands bound and kneeling, when an Israeli soldier put one bullet into the head of the boy who frequented our house daily, who played soccer in the dirt fields, and who called me ammoora-adorable…He was sixteen years old when he became an example. As the conquest in 1948 did for Hassan, Israeli’s attack in 1967 and subsequent occupation of the West Bank left his son Yousef with a tentative destiny. The grip of Israeli occupation around his throat and would not let up. Soldiers ruled their lives arbitrarily. Who could and could not pass was up to them, and not according to protocol. Who was slapped and who was not was decided on a whim. Who was forced to strip and who was not-the decision was made on the spot. “

THEY MURDERED YOU AND BURIED YOU IN THEIR HEADLINES, MOTHER. HOW DO I FORGIVE, MOTHER? HOW DOES JENIN FORGET? HOW DOES ONE CARRY THE BURDEN? HOW DOES ONE LIVE IN A WORLD THAT TURNS AWAY FROM INJUSTICE FOR SO LONG? IS THIS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PALESTINIAN, MOTHER?”

Susan Abulhawa, Mornings In Jenin, 2010