Visit to Haifa (II). A Trip about Historical Memory.

My friend from Haifa is a Catholic Palestinian and has a very interesting family history, which I am able to learn while I visit his family on the mother's part, during a trip around the North of Galilee. They used to inhabit a place called Kfar Bir’em, a Christian Maronite village near the border with Lebanon. I am happy about learning my friends history, but I am not sure what I’m going to find there. The first surprise comes when we arrive at where the village was supposed to be. There is some sign for a new Jewish village nearby, which has a similar name (Bar’am) but sounds more Hebrew. However, this is not the place, they tell me, we are going to the old Arab village.

When we arrive, there is some kind of barrier and a cabin. What? You have to pay to visit an old village? Yes, we have to pay because this has been turned into a National Park now, it is a place to visit but not to live in any more. As I get off the car I see a kind of a park with some devastated ruins, something that does not resemble a village in any way. I learn the whole population of around 1050 inhabitants was expelled from it in 1948 with the excuse that they would be able to come back in two weeks. They were told it was for their own security. When the inhabitants tried to go back to their houses they were attacked by the army and had to flee. Some of the inhabitants tried to go back in 1949 to take care of their houses, after the hard rains of that winter. Chief Police Officer of Safad gave them permission to do it. However, my friends tell me that when the inhabitants arrived at the village the Army took all of them to the Police Station in Safad. There they were given an expulsion order, and were taken to a small village called Zbuba, near Jenin.

My friend’s family and many others started an exodus that took them from Jenin to Nablus, then to Amman, to Damascus and lastly to the South of Lebanon. They walked all this way with no money or possessions, without anything to do but to ask for money in the streets to survive. Once in Lebanon, some of them achieved to cross the border and most of them settled in the empty houses that the refugees from the Naqba had left in a little village near Bir’em, called Jish (or Jasqala).

Eventually, the authorities took over all the abandoned lands, on the grounds of not having been used by their owners (who were not able to go back to them in any way). Therefore, most inhabitants from Bir’em live currently in diaspora or in small houses without any lands in Jish.

The people from Bir’em filed a complaint to the Israeli authorities and they recognized their right over the land and the error the Israeli Army committed with them. However, in the last 60 years the village has remained uninhabited, and only the church has been rebuilt and used again from time to time. The reason the Israeli Authorities give not to let them back is that doing that with them would mean doing it with the remaining more than 500 villages documented that were occupied during the 1948 war and in the years after it. There is a complete historical review of what happened and the current legal status of the village in these links.

Bir'em's church is the only building that could be renovated and is still used sometimes

The place nowadays seems to be quite touristic and I wonder what people think when they learn this amazing story. They are not told about it, my friends say. There are some ruins of a Synagogue here, they come to visit them and are told the rest of the ruins are just “ancient ruins”, they tell me. You know what? Actually, my mother used to own a house near the synagogue, look how now they cleared everything, it seems there was nothing here ever, my friend’s mother says. I can see the grief in her and the feeling of impotence, when visiting this place and remembering where she comes from.

What is currently left of the village of Bir'em

As we are here, we can actually see a group of people attending a tour on the place. Some of them hear us talking and come to answer. A couple of them seem quite annoyed. They tell my friends that they actually know what happened at this place and they feel really sorry and ashamed for it. However, they seem to have taken the criticism too personally, as from my own experience I can have the feeling that, unfortunately, the knowledge of this kind of events is not widespread in current Israel. At least not amongst those not related to Palestinian refugees.

We stop at the family’s cemetery. They want to visit their relatives. It is a Christian cemetery, where the names of all those that died and were not able to come back are written.

A monument remembering all the dead people that should have been buried at Bir'em's cemetery

Scriptures at the cemetery. Notice that Christian Maronites would originally not use Arabic but Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic.

After this visit, we drive just by the border fence with Lebanon. It is amazing how close it is. We can see some villages just some hundred meters away and a huge pole with a yellow flag on top. Of course that is no Lebanese flag, but the one from Hizbollah. I cannot believe how close we are to them and start thinking about the fragility of the area I’m walking on at the moment. I want to take a picture, but my friends do not want to stop the car and be seen doing it.

As we drive back to Akka and later to Haifa, I try to think about my friends and their impressions after visiting this destroyed village. We are refugees inside Israel, the father says. The process happening in the West Bank is just a continuation of what started here in 1948, Arab villages are demolished and Jewish settlements are built. The Arabs have, either to leave or to stay in very bad conditions. My friends explain how they could never consider themselves as Israelis and how the very concept of Israel as a Jewish State undermines theoretically and practically their history and identity as inhabitants of this place.

History repeating itself

Listening to Palestinians currently living in Israel has made me wonder about the validity of a Two-State Solution for both Israelis and Palestinians in this area. They definitely oppose the idea and want to live in freedom and democracy in a state of its citizens, not Muslim, not Arab, not Jewish, just Democratic (i.e. including all of them but at the same level). For me it seems the most reasonable solution given the circumstances, but it seems unattainable nowadays, unfortunately.

As a matter of fact, a few days after visiting this village I learn about the situation of Bedouins in the South, who seem to be suffering from their own catastrophe, still nowadays. A good friend of mine and a great blogger used to work with them and filmed this small but impressive documentary about a small village that has become their icon for struggle: Al-Araqib.

I cannot but wonder if history is repeating itself, if we have not learnt anything from the past, from the errors and catastrophes that we suffered and we caused to others and still stay in our conscience. It seems the idea of nation-state is trying to be implemented in one of the most diverse areas in the world, with the biggest diversity of nations and religions. To be honest, I cannot really think about any feasible solution that goes further than I what I already stated (democracy, no ethnicity on top, freedom of religion). To be honest, I feel more skeptical than ever with the so acclaimed Two-State Solution after having experienced this and hearing my friends' opinion about it. This conflict becomes more confusing and complicated than ever, finding solutions will not be easy, but I can definitely foresee there is no good that can come out of all this bad, for none of the parts.