Umm al-Zinat: Commemorating the Catastrophe

Demonstrators wave Palestinian flags as they march to the destroyed village of Umm al-Zinat. (Jonathan Cook)

Some 2,000 Palestinian demonstrators gathered deep in a pine forest on the slopes of Mount Carmel near Haifa on Wednesday this week as most Israelis celebrated their 58th Independence Day with open-air barbecues and parties.

The Palestinian refugee families were joined by 150 Israeli Jews in an annual procession to commemorate the mirror event of the establishment of the State of Israel -- the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the overwhelming majority of Palestinians were driven from their homes and out of the new Jewish state under cover of war.

This year the families marched to Umm al-Zinat, a Palestinian farming village whose 1,500 inhabitants were forced out by advancing Israeli soldiers on 15 May 1948, a few hours after Israel issued its Declaration of Independence.

Along with more than 400 other Palestinian villages, Umm al-Zinat was entirely demolished by the Israeli army to prevent the refugees from ever returning. Children held aloft colored placards bearing the names of all the destroyed villages, while others waved Palestinian flags, an act of defiance that could potentially land them in jail.

Millions of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza and in the camps in neighbouring Arab states will officially commemorate Nakba Day on 15 May, but the smaller number of refugees inside Israel have traditionally staged their own event to coincide with Israel's Independence Day (the anniversary of which varies according to the Hebrew calendar).

Few of Umm al-Zinat's refugees could attend the 3 May procession, however. Most were expelled from the state during the year-long war of 1948 and today live in West Bank cities such as Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus, or in Jordan. Israel usually refuses entry permits to Palestinians living in the occupied territories and in Arab states.

But a handful of original inhabitants were there to tell their stories. They remained inside Israel, many of them close by Umm al-Zinat in the nearby Druze town of Daliyat al-Carmel and in Haifa and Fureidis.

Today, some 250,000 Palestinians in Israel -- a quarter of their total number -- are believed to be internal refugees. All of them are refused the right to return to their original homes and villages, as Israel fears that this would set a precedent for a more general Palestinian right of return.

The lands of Umm al-Zinat, as with many other destroyed villages, were planted with a forest of fir trees by the Jewish National Fund in an attempt, according to historian Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, to "camouflage the ruins". Other lands belonging to Umm al-Zinat were handed over to a rural Jewish community, Elyakim, for it to farm.

Palestinian political and religious leaders in Israel, as well as the refugees themselves, used the march to denounce Israel's continuing occupation of the Palestinian people and to demand the right of the refugees to return to their villages.

Sheikh Raed Salad, a spiritual leader widely respected by Israel's one million Palestinian citizens, also led prayers at the site as organisers highlighted the continuing abuse and damage inflicted on mosques and churches in the destroyed villages.

Umm al-Zinat's mosque was razed by the Israeli army after the villagers were forced out at gunpoint. In other villages, holy places and cemeteries are fenced off, usually with razor wire, to prevent them being accessed.

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