For Palestinians, Joy and Some Hints of Sympathy

August 18, 2005
For Palestinians, Joy and Some Hints of Sympathy
By JAMES BENNET

BEACH CAMP, Gaza Strip, Aug. 17 - The essence of the Palestinians' national story, the one told in their songs and schoolbooks, is a tale of dispossession and eviction by Jewish and Israeli forces. It is symbolized by keys to houses unseen for two generations and affirmed by maps showing Palestinian villages lost in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and boundaries blurred in the one in 1967.

On Wednesday, Palestinians watched Israeli Jews forcibly evict other Israeli Jews, who struggled and wept over their homes and what they saw as a devastating new chapter in the Jewish people's own story of dispossession, of loss.

As news reports conveyed images of agonized settlers and soldiers, some Palestinians celebrated the removal of those they saw as usurpers of their land and liberty. But mixed with the jubilation and grim satisfaction there were flashes of sympathy, too, from some of those who know what it means to lose a home.

"I feel that as a Palestinian this is my territory, this is my land," said Mkhaimar Abu Sada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza City whose family became refugees in 1948. "This is my life, and I really want this to be happening right now. But on the other side, it's something on the human level - it's not an easy thing to take someone from their property and make them leave."

A bewildering upheaval is under way, a shifting of the theoretical and actual grounds on which the conflict has been fought. Israeli Jews have been barred at army checkpoints from reaching the settlements; giant armored bulldozers are preparing to demolish Israeli, rather than Palestinian, homes. Gaza is being unsettled, and everyone is struggling to understand what it means.

Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist in Gaza City who was made a refugee as a boy in 1948, said of the evacuation, "It provokes feelings of victimization and a kind of feeling we are all victimized by the whole thing."

He recalled watching television with his wife and friends on Tuesday. "One Israeli settler lady was talking about that she planted some trees, and she wanted the people behind to look after them," he said. He looked over at his wife, he remembered. "She was smiling," he said, "and at the same time she had tears. So it tells you about the conflicting emotions."

In this Palestinian refugee camp, where tents long ago hardened into houses of cinder blocks and memories of lost villages softened into myth, refugees said they found themselves thinking back this week on their own experiences. But some said that did not make them sympathetic.

"Let them taste the bitterness," said Amona Aksham, who has lived more years and been surrounded with more grandchildren than she has counted.

Illuminated by a bare bulb as she sat on a thin mattress on the floor, she remembered her "beautiful life" in a village near Ashkelon. There, she grew grapes instead of buying them and left bread still baking when she fled the Israelis in 1948 without any belongings. "No, I can't sympathize with them," she said. "They didn't sympathize with us."

Unlike the settlers, Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by an enemy during war, and no one compensated them. There are more differences than parallels, despite a shared romance with the land and with their remembered notions of their present antagonists.

Palestinian refugees like to say life with Jews was neighborly before the Zionists came and spoiled it all; for settlers, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza were their friends until Yasir Arafat came to Gaza.

A few blocks from Ms. Aksham's house, Suheil Abu al-Aaraj sat with his brother, Abdel Khader Abu al-Aaraj, in the balmy evening air and recalled the family home in Israel, which he first visited in 1972.

"Maybe I shouldn't mention this," he continued. "I saw a settler crying on television. But they've been settlers for what, 20 years? What about those who stayed refugees for 50 years? They are victims, and we are victims too."

His brother, 50, hotly interrupted him. "They are not victims," he said. "They are occupiers. They kicked us out of our land. They killed us."

Suheil Abu al-Aaraj, 40, replied, "When I say victims, I meant victims because their government cheated them." The Israeli government sent them to Gaza in the first place, he said.

Many Palestinians were irritated by what they saw as excessive news coverage of the travails of people they believe have caused untold Palestinian suffering. Diana Buttu, an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said, "I feel no sympathy for them whatsoever."

Ms. Buttu also said Israeli governments had used the settlers by encouraging them to go to the West Bank and Gaza. "But at the same time it's not as though they weren't warned they were living in occupied territory," she said. Her relatives became refugees in the 1948 war, leaving behind homes near Nazareth in what is now northern Israel.

"In the case of my uncles and my aunts, they didn't have a country they could go to, and they still now remain in exile," she said. "And the difference is they were actually from Palestine, rather than being imported in from around the world." Israeli Jews argue that Israel is their historic homeland, to which they have returned after 2,000 years in exile.

In the zero-sum game that can define Israeli-Palestinian relations, what makes one side sad might be expected to make the other proportionately happy. Yet Palestinians are wary of all this Israeli tumult.

Palestinians have for decades seen Ariel Sharon, one of Israel's most ferocious commandos and an architect of the settlement movement, as a bitter enemy. Now they are watching him turn on the settlers.

Dr. Sarraj said, "It's very strange and very comical, even, that this same man has victimized his own people twice: once luring his people into this settlement activity and then evicting them, and at the same time victimizing Palestinians." Many suspect Mr. Sharon of trying to hold on to most of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem.

Many Palestinians are reluctant to celebrate because the pullout has not yet resulted in any palpable change in their lives. It may be weeks or months before the army finishes demolishing the settlements and lets Palestinians in. Palestinians do not know if Israel will release its control of Gaza's borders and airspace.

Further, Palestinian officials fear that excessive jubilation might send the message that the Palestinians consider Israel to have ended its occupation even before it releases control. "It's a huge bind," Ms. Buttu said. "The colonization is finally over, but occupation is not."

By minimizing their own relief, Palestinians may signal the rest of the world that the Israeli misery is not so important, that it does not indicate a serious concession.

"The Israelis now are correcting their historic mistake: to settle in areas, territories, that do not belong to them," said Jibril Rajoub, the national security adviser to Mr. Abbas. "They are just correcting this mistake. They are not doing a benefit for anyone."

He spoke while standing at an Israeli Army checkpoint just north of the Gush Katif cluster of settlements. The checkpoint was shut tight against Palestinians, as soldiers struggled with the settlers nearby.