The open Palestinian wound
One Saudi riyal made me see how deep is the Palestinian wound.
I gave this Saudi riyal to a Palestinian money collector when I was 11 years old, just two days after seeing Israeli map being many times larger and the Palestinian refugee camps more crowded. That was on June, 11,1967. As I gave my precious Saudi riyal to the money collector, I said: Please make sure it goes to a heart broken Palestinian child in a refugee camp.
But, 37 years later I found out that this Saudi riyal did not go to a Palestinian refugee child. That was on Nov. 11, 2004 when I heard of the death of Yasser Arafat and seeing his wife Suha Arafat and her daughter giving up their Palestinian passport. Arafat had spent all his life struggling to have this passport recognized in the West, a place her husband spent all his life criticizing. And Suha Arafat took a lot of money including the poor refugees’ money and my Saudi riyal (Riyal Falasteen) to a place as far away as she can from a Palestinian refugee camp.
I was in Lebanon in 2003 for the first and last time and saw the open Palestinian wound. It is the Palestinian refugee camps and the forgotten people in it.
Those poor refugees have been promised over and over that one day they will be able to go back to their homes. Some of them still have keys to their homes. They were told it would be two months before they could get back (that was in 1948). Then they were promised day after day that they would be able to go home. The wound is deeper than what the doctors (politicians) thought.
What made me confused and sometimes mad is that we the Arabs had more than one chance to solve the refugee problem or at least reduce the agony and humiliating life those refugees live. It was the PLO that refused the Camp David accord in 1978 and it was the Palestinian Authority who turned down King Fahd’s initiative in 1982 in which the Palestinian refugee problem was the priority. That was more than 30 years ago and a lot of progress could have been made for those poor refugees regarding education, health care and gradual return to their homes, at least to the 1967 homes.
Why did the Palestinian politicians ignore the chances to deal with the refugee problem? Did they ask the people at these camps? No, they did not. And what is worse, I have seen Americans, Europeans and even Jewish activists visit and write about Palestinian refugee camps and never seen any Palestinian Officials visit those camps unless there was an international media photo opportunity.
And when the intifada begun and Arabs were jubilant and the Arab media were in full swing cheering those nine-year-olds throwing stones at fully armored Israeli tanks as a real life sad story unfold. I asked myself, was I the only one who wanted the intifada to stop. I thought it was the most violent televised child abuse in modern history. Having young kids fight the Israeli Army with stones. Did the Palestinian leadership mistake the blue Star of David on the IDF tanks with the one the Dallas Cowboys cheer?
What made me angry and hope to see the intifada end is the fact that only the poor Palestinians were in the harm's way. As for the children of the elite, they were going to schools abroad. And there are leaders in the Arab world who manipulated the situation of the refugees for their own purposes and they are the ones who keep on putting salt on the Palestinian wound. The Palestinians have to put aside their differences and concentrate on important issues, not their personal interests.
I hope one day I will be able to have a Palestinian lady from a refugee camp with her baby and a lady from an Israeli settlement with her baby and say to them, this Planet Earth is the only place where humans can live. Now it is your choice to see the two babies go to the same school and enjoy their life in harmony or have them fight each other at the age of 15. Only God can heal this open wound. Without solving the Palestinian refugee problem, the whole Middle East will become an open wound.
— Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, is commodore (Retd.) in the Royal Saudi Navy. He can be reached at: almulhimnavy@hotmail.com
Comments
GORDON READE
Feb 18, 2011 11:11
Report abuseIf I was offered my grandfatherâ™s old cold water flat in Brooklyn and told life would be just like 1938 I would say, no thanks, Iâ™m happy living in California. If I felt that I would enjoy a better quality of life in Canada or New Zealand Iâ™d move. Why not go where you are happiest?
The Palestinians want to move back into villages that have not existed for 60 years. I am sorry but that is not going to happen. Anyone with adult memories of pre-Israel Palestine would have be older than the faces on Mt. Rushmore. In America children are told to look forward to the future. Palestinian children are taught to look backwards to the past. After 63 years isnâ™t it time for the Palestinians to admit defeat and move on?
GEORGE
Feb 18, 2011 11:41
Report abuseIMBAZBAZ
Feb 18, 2011 21:16
Report abuseUANZAR
Feb 18, 2011 21:22
Report abuseA.S.
Feb 18, 2011 21:24
Report abuseA second quetion is why is there an insistence in the Arab world on framing the issue as an Israeli/Palestinian one? It has been since its beginning an Israeli/Arab dispute. Seven Arab countries invaded Israel upon its independence. The Palestinians had a choice to make a stand at the time. They could stand up and say, No, we want a partition, we'll live side by side! They didn't do that. They could have stood up and said - we will raise our own force, like the Jews have, and defend our land, and our people. They didn't do that either, except for Hitler's friend Haj Amin Al Husseini who decided to hire Fauzi Al Kaukji and his mercenaries to fight the Jews because he didn't trust too many of his Palestinian brothers with modern weapons. Kaukji didn't accomplish much either.
No, the Palestinaians did little in 1948. They let Jordan and Egypt and the others do the boasting and much of the fighting, and they had to live with the consequences of this Arab Israeli war. I'm told that Arabs have long memories. Well, so do the Jews, who didn't forget who attacked them.
Two more things, about the Palestinian refugees. First, many Arabs decided to stay and live in Israel after 1948. Now they are 20% of the population. They have 98% literacy, high longevity; democratic representation in the Israeli Knesset, Justices on the Supreme Court, and the freedom that Egyptians and Tunisians are only now hoping to taste. Their lives are not perfect. There are imbalances in Israeli society. There are inequities, but these are people who are at peace with the decisions their parents and grandparents made in 1948.
The second issue is that when people talk of 700,000 Palestinians, they immediately assume they were all kicked out at the point of a gun. Well, there are more exhortations to them to leave temporarily while the Arab armies take care of the Jews than I can cite here. There is the evidence that Lapierre and Collins found while writing O Jerusalem that 30,000 of the Palestinian elite moved away on their own to Beirut, Damascus and Cairo in 1947-48. There is also the records of British and American diplomats in haifa, who wrote of witnessing the Israeli civilian and military leaders pleading with the leaders of the 70,000 Arab residents to stay. They were ignored. How often did this pattern repeat itself? How often were the Palestinians betrayed by their leaders and the leaders of the Arab world?