The Palestinian Tragedy Repeats Itself: From 1948 to Gaza -
I saw a job ad a few days ago: "Wanted, a 40-ton excavator, including operator, for demolition work in the Gaza Strip to join our team. 7 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., 6,000 shekels ($1,790) per day. The army pays for diesel fuel."
I wondered why I was having a déjà vu, and I recalled the documentary "Blue Box" about the Jewish National Fund. The scene is from 1948, when the (first) Transfer Committee was established, in the wake of the United Nations Partition Plan. There were discussions in the Yishuv – the Jewish community in prestate Palestine – about preventing Arabs from returning to their villages, helping them to resettle elsewhere, settling Jews in Palestinian communities and destroying as many villages as possible during the military operation.
On the screen, a historical document appears: a letter from Solel Boneh, the Yishuv's first public construction company, to JNF offices in Tel Aviv. Subject: Invoice for the demolition of villages in Samaria and the south.
What began as an organized policy continues to operate using the same mechanism. The military and the state carry out home demolitions, population displacement, land allocation and population replacement. There is no randomness or malfunction here, only the continuation of a mechanism of control and ethnic cleansing through destruction and annihilation.
History repeats itself over and over again as a systematic practice of oppression. The State of Israel was built on parts of Palestine; today, it continues to build and expand on the remaining parts, until all of what had been Palestine is erased. The ad seeking an excavator is nothing but a modern, technologically advanced incarnation of the same policy, turning Palestinian suffering into Israeli revival.
Palestinian man holding a key in commemoration of Nakba Day in 2022.Credit: Tal Cohen
The day the Nakba of all of Palestine is completed and documentaries are made about the "second Nakba," similar to the documentation of World War I and World War II, the help-wanted ad will be framed as a historical document, just like that Solel Boneh invoice. A seemingly insignificant, quotidian, technical document, evidence of a mechanism by which a people was crushed, lives and land were taken and borders were drawn at the expense of basic human rights.
What will be written there? "There was a people and it was erased"? Did the Jews erase the Palestinians? Will a trace of us go down in history even after we are gone? Will we become a myth, a folktale, a story passed down from father to son about those who once lived here?
All writing creates a document of historical value. Every word about what is happening here, what preceded it and what we have heard about what was once here is evidence of daily events and a prediction for the future.
The future looks like the past I've heard about. I write like Palestinians who wrote about the uncertain future, and I write the same thing. They wrote in Arabic; I already write in the language of the occupation.
- After 80 years, the world is sobering up to the other side of Israel's story
- Europe and Arab states are asleep. Soon, anything that moves in Gaza City will be killed
- 'I did it for the money, then for revenge': Israelis profit from razing Gaza
Most of the time, I feel that I am living within history, and I cannot think about, describe, or even be optimistic about the future. Everywhere I go in this land, I see the reduction of the Palestinian presence, our necrosis. How can I think in such a state of distress, with the sense that our tragedy is repeating itself and will soon swallow me as well?
Every advertisement, every news item, every technical description is written and sounds exactly like those written a hundred years ago. Then they spoke plainly about the atrocities. Perhaps there was still a certain degree of shame or concern for appearances. Today, people speak viciously and openly.
Writing is the only way to leave a memory, to hold on to life within the ongoing mechanism of destruction.