Nakba

When Israel observes the 60th anniversary of its declaration of statehood on May 14, Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be joining in the celebration. Instead thousands will gather in their former villages, which they have been barred from occupying for sixty years, to protest what they call the nakba, or catastrophe, of their displacement from their homeland.

In the civil strife that marked the beginning of the modern state of Israel, nearly a million Palestinians fled to neighboring countries, where they were housed in crowded refugee camps. Their children and grandchildren, now numbering over 4 million, are still in those refugee camps today.

Others who remained in the new state of Israel were displaced from their villages. They were granted citizenship but relegated to second-class status. The Israeli government seized their land to make room for new Jewish arrivals from Europe and the former Soviet Union. And although much of the seized land has sat idle all these years, the Israeli government refuses to allow former owners to return to it.

One such former owner is Jamal Abdulhadi Mahameed. Now age 69, he wants nothing more than to return to the land owned by his family for generations and tend to the pomegranate bushes planted long ago by his father.

In every respect Jamal is a solid citizen. His children include a doctor, two lawyers, and an engineer. But he is prohibited from returning to his own land because it is reserved for Jewish settlement. He notes that his daughter the doctor makes no distinction between Jewish and Arab patients. So he asks, "Why should the state treat me differently?"

Add one more issue to the many injustices to be redressed before the Middle East can even dream of living in peace.

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