Ana səhifə

Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface


Yüklə 0.87 Mb.
səhifə3/21
tarix24.06.2016
ölçüsü0.87 Mb.
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   21

At least I’m still alive, as you


Can see

I’m like the man who took a brick

To show

How beautiful his house once used

To be

Bertolt Brecht



Through their shrouded memories, whether fresh or whithered, refugees remain attached to this piece of land called Lubya. Never mind the fact that the village itself has been demolished and erased from the map of present day Israel. Lubya still exists in the remaining debris of wells, fields, the cemetery, and the olive and cactus groves. The geography of Lubya will always be part of the identity of exiled Lubyans whether they are living nearby or thousands of kilometres away in Europe or North America.
The writings of Yousef al-Yousef42, now residing in Yarmouk camp in Syria, animate every piece of Lubya’s history and landscape. Yousef’s earliest memories of the village landscape stretch back to a time when he was a boy of nine. His Shakespearean-like descriptions of the flowers and herbs, trees and mountains personify the landscape into a lively and god-like creature. “That huge creature which fascinated me as a panthanic God made me wonder why old people didn’t worship such mountains, beautiful and full of pride. I thought I would climb it when I grew up.”
Yousef Muhammad Issa43 visited Lubya in 1994 for the first time since 1948. There was not a piece of land or place that escaped his memory after 46 years in exile. As he walked amid the ruins of the village homes, he started showing me the remains of the five wells in the area. He found four. Then he started looking for the fifth. Only after digging a few centimetres with his fingers, the fifth well was located. I was astonished at his extraordinary power to remember a piece of stone and an iron nail as a cover for the well. “Even after one hundred years, and how much they have done to the land,” he said, “they will never succeed to erase my memory of the land I lived in twenty-eight years of my childhood.”
During the interviews that I conducted for this research project, refugees from Lubya identified by name 126 places, 6 caves and 9 maqqamaat (religious places; singular, maqqam) associated with their village. These memories give each plot of land a special meaning and offer a unique insight into the people who lived in this little village for centuries before their exile in 1948.
Origins of a Name
There are many references to the origins of the name Lubya in modern times. According to the Arab historian Bin Katta, Lubya is a kind of bean if it ends with the Arabic letter alif – i.e., lub(ya) – however, if it ends with the letter ta – i.e., Lubi(eh) – then it is the name of a city in Egypt between Alexandria and Burka.44 Another historian, Abu al-Rihan al-Beiruti writes that ‘Lubieh’ was the name of the land south of Egypt according to the Greek division of the planet into three parts with Egypt as its center. The other two parts were 'Aoraki and Asia.
Scholar Ihsan Hakki claims that the name Lubya is a Greek word, which means ‘white countries’ (bilad al-beed). The name refers to those countries which lie in modern Libya and to the north of the lands known as the ‘black countries’ (e.g., Ethiopia).45 Ahmad Daoud states that 'Libya' is the name of the daughter of the king of Tire.46 The historian Mustafa Dabbagh writes that Lubya was the name of a plant as well as the name of an old Greek city.47 Dabbagh also refers to a book entitled, al-Daw’ al-Lami’ [The Shining Light], which confirms the link between the well-known Islamic scholar Abu Bakir bin Abdel Rahman bin Rahhal bin Mansour al-Taki al-Loubyani and the village of Lubya.48
In his diary about life in the village, Abu Isam writes that “Lubya is originally a word that means labwa, or the feminine of the world lion. It was so named because of its strong position, built on the hills and surrounded by valleys. It was a fortified castle, difficult for anyone to attack.” Abu Majid told me that the origin of the word Lubya is al-jadir, an Arabic word derived from the word jadeer meaning ‘worthy of.’ The name Lubya was carried by word of mouth by Kamil al-Huwayin from al-Shajara village. He took the name from Ali Ahmad al-Shajrawi, a writer, poet, and a religious man. Abu Majid claims that Shajrawi found this explanation in an old book.
Ibrahim Shihabi, who is the author of the first booklet on Lubya published in 1954, told me that the name Lubya was mentioned three times in a book by Abu Shama al-Makdisi entitled, Ktab al-Rawdatayn (Vol. III), published in the thirteenth century. Lubya is also mentioned in a classical poem written to celebrate the defeat of the crusaders: 'Ama ra’aytum futooh al-Qadissiya fi, Aknafa Lubiyya Tajalla, wa tha ‘umroo (Have you not seen the holy victory around Lubya so decisive and clear, and that is 'Umar)'.
A number of Jewish sources also discuss the meaning of the name Lubya. The Official Guide to Israel traces the name of the village to “a Jewish town from the Roman Byzantine period whose name was retained by the Arab village of Lubya.”49 The Comprehensive Ethnological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language claims that the name is related to the Hebrew word lavan, which means ‘white’, and also to the Arabic word laban, which is a type of yogurt.50 During my research at the Zionist archives in Jerusalem I also discovered references to the name Lubya in documents relating to land transactions in the village. These documents refered to Lubya in five different languages: German, French, Arabic, English, and Hebrew.
After 1948, the name Lubya disappeared from official Israeli files. A new Jewish settlement established on village lands was named Lavi. Lubya was only one of around 9,000 Arabic names of villages, wadis (valleys; singular, wadi), mountains and other places were systematically Hebraicized after 1948 as part of the simultaneous process of establishing Zionist claims to the land and wiping out Palestinian Arab claims, including those of the refugees.51 Today, few Israeli Jews are familiar with the original Arabic place names of refugee villages like Lubya.
Location and topography
The village site of Lubya lies 10.5 km west, southwest of the city of Tiberias on the road to Nazareth in the Galilee. Lubya was built on a hill 3,235 metres above sea level. Its lands extended in a plain that covered the area to the east, as well as to the northwest to a hill named Jabalah, which is 294 metres above sea level.
Lubya was the largest village in area in the district of Tiberias during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. It was also one of the largest villages in the country. As of 1946, total village lands amounted to 39,629 dunums.52 The built-up area of the village was 210 dunums. The Zionist dossier on Lubya lists the total area of the village at 22,000 dunums.53 Of this area, almost 5,000 dunums was described as unproductive land. The dossier notes that, later on, an extra 200 dunums of land were cultivated.
Scholarly writing and the diaries and memoirs of foreign travelers provide rich descriptions of the historical, religious and archaeological sites in Lubya. "More than three thousand books and travelogues on Palestine were written by Europeans throughout the nineteenth century,” writes Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.54 However, all of them “[paint] a picture of a primitive Palestine waiting to be redeemed by Europeans." Rarely do these sources mention Lubyans – i.e., the primitives – themselves. Nevertheless, these records are important given the fact that Lubyans themselves left few written records of their village.
J.S. Buckingham, a British traveler who visited Palestine in the early nineteenth century described Lubya as a large village situated on top of a high hill.55 The Swiss traveler Johan Ludwig Burckhardt described the wild artichokes that covered the plain on which the village was located. Burckhardt was nicknamed ‘Sheikh Ibrahim’ because of his long beard and the Arab clothes and turban that he wore on his journey through Palestine.
…From hence the road continues on a gentle declivity, in the midst of well cultivated Dhoura fields, as far as a low tract called Ardh el Hamma [al-Hima was Lubya’s largest plain]. The whole district is covered with the thorny shrub Merar. On the west side of Ard el Hamma we again ascended, and reached the village of Kefer Sebt, distant two hours and a half from Tabaria…. About half an hour to the N.E. is the spring Ain Dhamy (known for Lubyans as Damia), in a deep valley. From hence a wide plain extends to the foot of Djebel Tor; in crossing it, we saw on our right, about three quarters of an hour from the road, the village Louby, and a little farther on, the village Shedjare (al-Shajara). The plain was covered with the wild artichoke, called Khob; it bears a thorny violet coloured flower, in the shape of an artichoke, upon a stem five feet in height.56
The Survey of Western Palestine described Lubya as a stone village on top of a limestone ridge.
Lubieh – Caves, tombs, and sarcophagi; several rock-cut wine-presses and cisterns were observed at this village, which probably represents an anscient site. There is a photo for a house in Lubya “built of cut stones of medium size in the direction of east and west appears to occupy the site, and to be built out of old materials formerly used for a Christian church - Guerin”.57
Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria (1898) also refers to Lubya.
From Kafr Kennâ the road leads to the E.. through the broad, fertile, and well-cultivated Wâdi Rummâneh, a side-valley of the plain of Battôf (p. 276). After 50 min. Tur’an is seen to th left. In ¾ hr. we pass the ruins of Khirbet Meskana, and turn due E., and in 20 min. more see Lûbiyeh on the right. In April, 1799, the French under Junot fought heroically against the superior forces of the Turks near Lûbiyeh. We next reach (23 min.) the ruins of Khân Lûbiyeh, cross the caravan route (to the N. rises the Karn Hattîn, see p. 285), and traverse a hilly tract to th E. to (1 hr. 25 min.) the hill above Tiberias, which we reach in ¾ hr. more.58
Two kilometres from Lubya there was a caravansary built during the Ottoman period. There was also a destroyed pool and ruins of old houses at the same site. Lubya was also known as an archaeological site. Many caves and tunnels were discovered under the village.59
Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, published at the beginning of the twentieth century also includes a short description of Lubya.
Our road lies across the plain to the E., and there is nothing of interest to detain us by the way. After 5 m. (1 ½ hr.) we pass Lûbieh on our rt., standing on top of a low rocky hill, and surrounded by hedges of prickly pear. Several caves, tombs, and sarcophagi, rock-cut winepresses and cisterns are to be found in this village, which thus probably occupied some ancient important site…. After crossing the caravan-road from Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt, by the side of which are some deep wells, we come in sight of a saddle…. The horns of Hittin, the scene of the famous victory of Saladin over the Crusaders on July 5, 1187. The battle itself was fought on the irregular plateau between Hittin and Lûbieh, which we are now crossing. The Crusaders were nearly annihilated in this desperate conflict.60
The dossier on Lubya collected by Zionist intelligence sources provides a short description of the village. “Lubya is located at the Tiberias-Nazareth road. There was a khan two kilometres from the village. The houses are from stone. The roofs are made of wood or cement. Cactus trees form the walls of the village. There are two valleys, al-A’laka and al-Hima.”61
In contrast to the descriptions of travelers, academics, and scholars, and Zionist intelligence officials, Lubyans memories of the village are full of life, detail and emotions, which express the relationship between the villagers and their place of origin. It is like the relationship between a mother and her daughter or a father and his son. As Tamam ‘Ajayni (Um Hassan)62, who spent half of her life in Lubya and the other half in exile in the nearby village of Dayr Hanna inside Israel, stated to me: “Lubya was the mother of all the land (um al-bilad).”
The interview with Um Hassan had the tone of past memories that refuse to whither or die. Her feelings toward the people also had undertones of tenderness and love. “May God compensate you for your trouble,” she said in Arabic, when she knew that I had two daughters. Before I left Dayr Hanna, she insisted on giving me 2,000 shekels from her savings as a present for my daughters. To avoid upsetting her, I took the money and gave it to her son-in-law, to give back to her. Um Hassan died at the age of 100.
The feeling of Lubyans towards the land is expressed in both the spoken and written word. Abu Majid expressed his connection to Lubya in the following poem.


Ya Za’ir In Ruhit la-bladak ziyara

Boos trabha boos lihjara

Itha mayyalt ‘a lubya al ‘thbi

byihiznak ya za’ir manthar atharha

Shammil ‘ala ilhara il-shmaliyyi

wi zoor il-balad hara ba’id hara

Lamma jarrabat il-kuwwat il-isra’iliyyi

ala lubya tshin ghara



Dabbabat wa tayyarat wa madfa’iyyi

wa rashashat tzikh bi ghazara

Kan il ‘adad wahad lamiyyi

wa darat ilma’raka min dar la dara

Wa bkina bihlokhim shoki kawiyyi

kat’een il-tareek imshaddidden il-hisara

Ila in ja’at ilkuwwat ilkawokjiyyi

sallamatna bi’amir madroos wa sadir karara


You who will visit your land

kiss its soul kiss the stones

If you pass by the sweet Lubya

you will be melancholic at its sad ruins

Go to the northern suburb

and visit the village suburb by suburb

When the Israelis forces tried

to invade Lubya

Tanks and airplanes and mortars

and machine guns shooting rapidly

The numbers was one to one hundred

the battle was from door to door

We stayed in their throats a pick

disrupting their roads and strengthening the besiege

Until Qawuqji63 forces came

and deliver the land by orders from above.


In his diary Abu Isam described the village as “situated on the caravan road between al-Sham (Damascus), Egypt and southern Palestine, and at the crossroads between Hauran in Syria, and the coast [of the Mediterranean Sea] where the port city of ‘Akka was known as a main starting point for caravans from the coast. There was a road that crossed Lubya from north to south called Tariiq al-Sham, or al-Sham road [Bilad al-Sham is the old name of all the area roughly comprising Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan] and another road crossed the village from east to west called Tariiq Hauran. Thus caravans passed through Lubya from east to west and from north to south. From Hauran, the caravans carried seeds to ‘Akka and goods were carried from Syria to to Egypt and vice versa.”


The location of Lubya would later play a key role in the relation between the village and the British as well as Jewish forces during the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt and the war of 1947-49 as discussed in subsequent chapters. According to Abu Isam’s diary, “There were two wells where rainwater was gathered. East of the village there was a reservoir. The walls of the reservoir were built of stone, which made it strong and durable even though it was built long ago. The fields of Lubya are fertile with black and volcanic earth. Lubya was well-known for its seeds that were exported to Nazareth, ‘Akka and Haifa. There were two harvests annually, in summer and winter. In the south west of the Hima plain was located a very rich area called Khirbat Damya, which was known for its spring water. In this area there was an old reservoir used for watering cattle, sheep, cows and camels. The fields nearby were irrigated as well. South of the plain on the slope of the mountain was maqqam Bassoum.
The peasants used to put their field instruments at night in the maqqam because thieves were afraid to enter. They thought that God would punish them. Even in 1999 when I visited Lubya I was warned by the man accompanying me not to go inside the maqqam, which still stands.
The diary also states that “there were also springs in al-Bassoum and Wadi al-Nassa, and from these the Jews took water to their two kibbutziim. In the north of al-Hima was located Khirbat Sarjouni. Its name was taken from the Roman word for ‘sergeant.’ Later on the Arab al-Khawalid inhabited this area. There were Roman ruins in ‘Ard al-Tal east of the village. The inhabitants of the village were prosperous farmers because of its rich and extensive fields. They extended to the east to the borders of Tiberias (Tal al-Ma’oun), which is a land owned by the Tabari family (Sheikh Sa’id al-Tabari). It is a high hill. To the east of this hill was ‘Ard al-Manara, a wide field overlooking Tiberias and Sahl al-Hima, a wide plain with a high temperature. To the north of the village, the land of Lubya bordered Hittin’s land and the horn of Hittin. To the west are the lands of Tur’an and al-Shajara, and to the south al-Shajara and Kufr Sabt.”
Ahmad Khalil Joudi (Abu Sameeh)64 was one of the few Lubyans lucky to stay in Palestine close to Lubya because of a relative of his mother who lived nearby. Today Abu Sameeh’s primary past time is visiting the ruins of Lubya. When he visits the village he never forgets to clean the cemetrey, to fix a gravestone here and there. Today this is the only sign of life in the village. Abu Sameeh can identify the men’s graves from the women and children through the size of the grave and the way the stones were placed on the tomb. Only two people can be identified by their gravestones: Haj Dawwas and Muhammad Mufaddi.
When we walked together among the ruins of Lubya’s homes, he insisted on showing me the place and on giving me the names of various plots of land and of their owners. “Tallet Kindeel, al-Ruwaise, al-Shubbabi, Jor al-Khail, Birkit ‘Saisi, Wadi al-Godran, and ‘Ard al-‘Akaba. al-Sanasil is still the same as when we left it,” he said. “[T]his here is ‘Ard al-Sadir, which belonged to the Shihabis. Here was manzool (a house for guests and meetings) ‘Ajayni and here was the mosque.”
“Up there on the slope of the hill was Jablat al-‘Owaini where we used to collect sabr (cactus). This is Karim Mas’oud where Muhsen Khalil Joudi owned an olive grove. It is now a playground for the children of the Jewish settlement of Giv’at Avni. This here is the cave where we used to hide when the airplanes attacked in 1948, and that is the road we used to take to go to the nearby village of Hittin.”
Abu Sameeh was very sick when he returned from his pilgrimmage to Mecca in 1998. He even asked his cousin to let him visit Lubya before he went to Mecca because he was afraid he might die there and never see his village again. But he survived the pilgrimage and the first place to visit when he returned, before his house in Dayr Hanna, was Lubya. For Abu Sameeh, Lubya was not just a pile of old ruins. It is a lively village even until today. His cousin told me how he became active and enthusiastic again when they were at the entrance of Lubya. The moment he realized that had arrived Abu Sameeh whispered: “ya habeebti ya Lubya (Lubya my love).”
Remembered places in Lubya
Each piece of land in the village has a specific meaning and historical significance for Lubyans. An entire book is needed to explain the origins and the meanings of each piece of the land and the various historical connotations of the places, as remembered by the elderly people. The cave of Magharit al-‘Ariis, for example, is where the bridegroom took his bath on his wedding day. Another cave named Magharit al-Shuhada is where they buried Lubyans who died while defending the village.
Oral history is an important tool for reclaiming information about the land and various sites in the village considering the fact that many Lubyans left their village in 1948 without land titles, tax forms, and other documents related to the land. Even the nineteenth century biblical expeditions and later Zionist archaeologists and cartographers used this method to collect correct information about the land in order to rename and Hebraize it, according to the way they heard it from the 'native Arabs'. The names of the pieces of most of Lubya’s land was collected in this way.
Lubyans identified by name 126 places, 6 caves and 9 religious maqqamaat in the village. (See Appendix II for a complete list). Some of the plots of land in Lubya are named after seven villages, which date back to the Roman period. When he was a boy, Abu Majid used to hear stories about these places from his grandmother. He memorized by heart the accounts he heard from the elderly generation. Abu Majid’s recollections are similar to those of other Lubyans.
(See Appendix III – Place Names in Lubya)
Bassoum was the burial site of a sacred man (wali) named Bassoum. There was also a small lake at this site. A stone to the north of the village where Jesus distributed bread to his disciples was known by villagers as Hajar al-Nousrani. Damya was the name of a lake fed from a nearby spring called Ra’s al-Nabi. The lake was square-shaped and used by cattle as a water source. The lake is mentioned in Burkhardt’s description of Lubya as ‘Ain Dhamy. Tallet al-Khaima was the name of a hill located opposite the khan where travellers used to stop on the journey from Instanbul to Cairo. The name of the hill means hill of the tent. One of Salah al-Din’s officers used the hill as a headquarters during the battle against the crusaders.
The place where the battle between Salah al-Din and the crusaders took place was known as al-Kasayir, which means the vanquished. It was located on the eastern side of the village running all the way up to Tal al-Ma’oun, where an Israeli hospital now stands. The place referred to as Nabi Shwamin was named after one of the son’s of Jacob in the Old Testament. One of Lubya’s most famous olive groves was known as Karim Issa. Finally, ‘Ajayni lake is located on a small one dunum plot of land. During the winter, excess water seeped into the valley below, which was named Wadi al-‘Ayn. These are only a few of the 143 names for places, caves and maqqamaat that have special meaning for Lubyans.
Erasing the landscape
Like hundreds of other Palestinian villages located inside the territory of historic Palestine that became the state of Israel, Lubya was destroyed almost totally after the war of 1948. This was part of a general policy employed by Israel to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees after the end of the war.65 (The fate of the village and its inhabitants during the 1947-48 war itself is discussed in further detail in Chapter 8.)
The mosque in Lubya was also demolished with the rest of the village. Today, visitors to the village can see clearly the remnants of the mosque and the school. When I visited Yousef al-Yousef in Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus and showed him pictures of the village site he pointed out that “the last wall in Lubya, still standing until now, belonged to my grandfather Ali Yasin al-Kafri.” I sent an aerial photo of Lubya taken in 1942 to Yousef in Damascus. His reply was full of emotional connotations of the past. The last sentence of the letter read: “This is the best present I have received during my whole life in exile.”
Mustafa al-Said (Abu Khaled)66, who I met in Burj al-Burajni refugee camp67 in Lebanon near Beirut, visited the village secretly in 1950, hoping to find a few possessions that they had hid before their rapid departure in the summer of 1948. According to Abu Khaled, most of the homes and buildings in the village had already been razed to the ground. Salah Shehada (Abu Nimr)68 is the last half-Lubyan who still partly lives there as a guardian of the remaining trees of the village. He told me that most of the buildings were still standing up until 1960.
A number of the Israeli Jews who I interviewed shared memories about the fate of Lubya after 1948. Nahom Abbo69 was an Israeli officer who participated in Lubya’s occupation and was later responsible for the quarry in Lubya. “When I worked in Lubya as a stonecutter after 1948, I had 75 Arab workers working for me in the quarry (rujmi). I used to obtain permits from the authorities to allow them to work in Lubya. I stayed there until 1955 and up to that time, the village still stood as it was.”
Nahom added that “it is a lie that bulldozers destroyed it. Infiltrators (mistaninim) from Jordan hid in Lubya and Kufr Kanna for years after 1948, in the hope of returning to their families undetected. I can tell you also that people from other villages came to salvage iron, copper, and used materials from Lubya. I can also tell you that my own workers used to fetch wood, copper and iron from there.” The so-called infiltrators referred to by Nahom were in fact Lubyans who crossed the border to check on the situation in their village and retrieve personal possessions.70
Israel subsequently established new Jewish settlements on the lands of Palestinian refugees, including the land of Lubya. “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist," said former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. “Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”71
The construction of new Jewish settlements on so-called abandoned Palestinian refugee lands also aimed to prevent the return of the refugees. In the book The Official Guide to Israel, Lubya is replaced by Lavi, which was, according to the official narrative of the Israeli authorities, “a Jewish town from the Roman Byzantine period whose name was retained in that of the Arab village of Lubya. It was founded in 1948, and in 1949 moved to the present site to the lands of the abandoned village of Lubya. During the disturbances of 1936-1939 and war of independence the village served as a base for Arab gangs.”72
Committees were established to rename wadis, mountains, villages, and other features of the natural landscape, often according to the names of the Old Testament in order the clean the geography from its Arabic names and connotations.73 The announcement of the new name for Lubya was made on 8 February 1949 by Y.A. Arikha, secretary of the special committee established by the Israeli government to replace Arabic place names with Hebrew names. Arikha was addressing the religious 'pioneers' at the agricultural center of the Poel Ha Mizrahi.
We have the honour of informing you that at its meeting yesterday, the names committee discussed the selection of an appropriate name for your settlement which is going to be established on the land belonging to Lubya in Lower Galilee. After a thorough discussion, the committee decided to select for your settlement the historical place name from the Second Temple period "Lavie" .… It is worth noting that aside from the historical considerations, the name Lavie symbolizes the revival of the Jewish people and the establishment of Israel their land.74
The word ‘abandoned’ dominates much of the official Israeli narrative concerning the displacement of the Palestinians. It gives the impression that Palestinians willingly left their homes and villages in 1948. In reality, however, Palestinian refugees, like refugees elsewhere, only left either because they felt their lives were in danger or because they were expelled by military forces.
The village site of Lubya has since been forested and renamed South African Forest. In total three new Israeli Jewish settlements were built on a small area of the village lands – Lavi (1949), Sedeh Ilan (1945) [check original], and Giv’at Avni (1992-93). Israelis also use some of the land for grazing cattle and recreation. Even to western historians and anthropologists, the village site is difficult to recognize without assistance from remaining Lubyans. Ted Swedenburg, while researching his book, Memories of Revolt, the 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past, accidentally came across a pine forest, and wrote:
One day in March 1985 I accompanied Sonia Nimr’s family on a picnic outing to the Sea of Galilee. Driving from Nazareth to Tiberias, we spotted a clutch of cacti, an unruly patch of desert growth amid the bucolic order of a planted pine forest. Sonia’s father an electrical engineer in his late fifties, exclaimed, “I remember, there used to be a village here, it was called Lubya.” Later I consulted a map and discovered that the Jewish settlement across the road from the forest was a kibbutz, founded on village lands in 1949 named Lavi - presumably a Hebraisation of Lubya. The ruins of the village are buried under two JNF [Jewish National Fund] forests, one planted in the name of the Republic of South Africa. Former rebels in the Galilee recalled Lubya as a major smuggling post where they used to purchase rifles and ammunition for use in the revolt.75
Still, more than fifty years later, ninety percent of Lubya’s extensive lands are not built on.
During my visit to Lubya in 1999, Lubyans were protesting to the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs because someone had defaced the remaining graves in the village with Hebrew graffiti. Nayif Hajjo76, who is living in Dayr Hanna accompanied me to see the graves and take photos. He is active in the National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Internally Displaced Palestinians inside Israel and was wounded by Israeli police forces on Land Day in 1976.
The graffiti sprayed on the remaining graves in the village cemetery read: 'A dog is buried here.' The photo of the defaced graves was later published in local newspapers.77 Nayif wrote a letter to the Israeli authorities requesting permission to fence off the graveyard after this incident. I accompanied about thirty Lubyans to the cemetery to show the representative of the Ministry the graffiti and the condition of family graves that are hardly recognizable. The request to fence off the graveyard for protection has not been met to this day.
Abu Nimr, who accompanied me in his Land Rover to see all of Lubya’s lands, told me the story of the attempts by Israelis to uproot the cemetery, and how he managed to stop them from doing so at the last moment. He spoke very cautiously during our first meeting. Many of the remaining Lubyans in Israel viewed Abu Nimr with suspicion because he managed to obtain the consent of the Israeli government to remain on village lands. They questioned why he was allowed to stay. Nevertheless, he was extremely generous and provided many details about Lubya over the past fifty years. He later asked me for copies of the land registration documents for Lubya that I had obtained from the Israeli archives so he could give a copy to his children.
I also found that a new cemetrey for Israeli Jews, which is called Beit Ra’il was built in the midst of Lubya’s old cemetery. A quick look at both cemeteries spoke, without any comment necessary, of the intended fate of each: the total neglect of the older cemetery, and the marble stones and modern fences and flowers of the newly established Israeli one.
Chapter Four
Rhythms of Life
The village - with its special arrangements of houses and orchards,

its open meeting - places, its burial ground, its collective identity -

was built into the personality of each individual villager

to a degree that made separation like an obliteration of the self.

Rosemary Sayigh

Before its destruction Lubya had its own vibrant life, gentle culture, and intricate social network. Cohesion and harmony in the village grew out of agreed upon internal social codes. Schools, cultural clubs, family relations, and religious and social traditions formed the foundation of civil society78 in Lubya. Political society in the form of state institutions, including an army, police and central administration, was absent from the village.
“We had everything we needed to live a decent life,” said Um Hassan. Some of Lubya's men joined the British police and other civilian sectors, its peasants had their cattle and sheep, and its merchants traded within Palestine and abroad. In a word, we were independent.” Others spoke in more detail about aspects of everyday life: the barber, the butcher, the dentist, etc. “Life was very simple and primitive,” said Nayif Muhammad Hassan79, “but it was beautiful.”
Many Lubyans related common memories of harvest time and wedding celebrations in the village. These stories illustrated the sense of continuity between the people and the land, which continues until this day. “Our social life was established on happiness,” Nadmi Othman (Abu Khalil)80 told me during a visit to Homs refugee camp81 in Syria. “Every day I sat outside our door and listened for the sound of music. Then I would join the wedding party.”
Despite its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent imposition of the British Mandate until 1948, Lubya remained, to a large extent, an identifiable and separate socio-economic entity, living in social harmony, and depending mainly on agriculture for its survival. This unique social and cultural identity of the village prevails up to the present among Lubyans in exile.


1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   21


Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©atelim.com 2016
rəhbərliyinə müraciət