Day 24 - June 13, 2009

We headed far up north today to the area of Galilee to meet with Dahoud Badr from the Association for the Defense of the Rights of Displaced Persons. On the way, however, some of the women from the Coalition of Women for Peace informed us more of the legal system that affects Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. There are apparently many legal systems in play at once, and Israel will often apply the system that works best for them at any given time. There are two systems in the West Bank, one for Israeli settlers and one for the Palestinians - the Palestinians must always be subjected to Israeli military court, while Israelis have civilian court (and it must not be forgotten that it is against international law for the occupier to impose its laws in the occupied territory). Israel has technically been in a state of emergency since 1948, which means that the government can do whatever it wants to ensure "security" (for American readers, this would be like having the Patriot Act always in effect) - this is often the logic used for demolishing houses, imprisoning Palestinians, etc.
With the Association we toured villages that had been destroyed in the 1948 nakba. The first we visited, Al Ghabiya, was the home village of our tour guide Dahoud. He was born there in 1942, and the only building left standing was the mosque. The village was evicted in 1948, even though they had an agreement with Israeli forces that they could stay (the evicting force would later say that they didn't know of the agreement). They were allowed back in but evicted again in 1950 for "security purposes." The land was then confiscated in 1953 through the absentee law (if the rightful owners do not return to their land within three years, the state can take it - in this case, and in most confiscation cases of Palestinians, they are barred from returning to their land for this purpose). The village was completely destroyed in 1956 to ensure that the refugees could not return, however the mosque was not touched as a "democratic" state would not destroy a holy place. Some of the living villagers tried to start using the mosque again in 1995 even though it was very delapidated, and on January 1, 1996, Land Authority came and threw everything out of the mosque and arrested Dahoud for trespassing, even though his own community had built this mosque. It was then opened again for one year beginning May 1, 1996 until Sharon, the Minister of Infrastructure, ordered in closed. Today, it is completely barred up and surrounded by barbed wire to ensure that no one can enter. Dahoud told us that his community still holds the deeds to this land, and if they request it back they are ignored; if they are willing to sell it they are given its worth in 1948 currency, which is essentially nothing.
We then went to Al Bassa, where a friend of mine, Elias's family is originally from (he now lives in Jaffa). The church, shrine (where both Muslims and Christians worshipped together) and the mosque were destroyed because they were worship places for Palestinians. At that time, there were 2000 Christians and 1000 Muslims, which puts to rest this massacre simply being about the "war" against Islam.