A White Lie Read online

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  University of Alberta Press

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  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2J4

  uap.ualberta.ca

  Copyright © 2020 Barbara Bill and Ghada Ageel

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Title: A white lie / Madeeha Hafez Albatta ; Barbara Bill and Ghada Ageel, editors.

  Names: Albatta, Madeeha Hafez, 1924–2011, author. | Bill, Barbara, 1956– editor. | Ageel, Ghada, 1970– editor.

  Description: Series statement: Women’s voices from Gaza series | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200305158 |

  Canadiana (ebook) 2020030528X |

  ISBN 9781772124927 (softcover) |

  ISBN 9781772125160 (EPUB) |

  ISBN 9781772125177 (Kindle) |

  ISBN 9781772125184 (PDF)

  Subjects: LCSH: Albatta, Madeeha Hafez, 1924–2011. | LCSH: Women, Palestinian Arab—Gaza Strip—Gaza—Biography. | LCSH: Palestinian Arabs—Gaza Strip—Gaza—Biography. | LCSH: Refugees, Palestinian Arab—Gaza Strip—Gaza—Biography. | LCSH: Women refugees—Gaza Strip—Gaza—Biography. | LCSH: Gaza Strip—Social conditions—20th century. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

  Classification: LCC DS126.6.A43 A3 2020 | DDC 956.94/5694305092—dc23

  First edition, first printing, 2020.

  First electronic edition, 2020.

  Digital conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.

  Copyediting and proofreading by Angela Pietrobon.

  Maps by Wendy Johnson.

  Cover design by Alan Brownoff.

  Cover image: Laila Shawa, Hands of Fatima with Crescent Moon and Stars (detail), 2004. Acrylic and gold leaf on Wasli, hand made paper, 120 × 100 cm. Used by permission

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  University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund.

  To those who struggle for justice

  Contents

  Preface

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  A WHITE LIE

  1 / Childhood Days

  2 / School Days

  3 / Marriage

  4 / Massacre

  5 / Occupation

  6 / Black September

  7 / 1973 War

  8 / Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

  Chronology of Events in Palestine

  Notes

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Preface

  Introducing Women’s Voices from Gaza

  THIS BOOK IS THE FIRST VOLUME of a series on Women’s Voices from Gaza. This series of seven stories recounts life in Palestine, prior to and after its destruction, narrated by women who lived through those experiences. The collected corpus of their accounts offers a detailed and vivid picture of places and people, of both the past and present, of a people. It traces Gaza’s history, a rich tapestry woven of many strands.

  The oral history accounts recorded in this series complement a body of work asserting the centrality of the narrative of Palestinians in reclaiming and contextualizing Palestinian history. The research, through which these testimonies were located, solicited, documented, and gathered into a whole, aims to re-orient the story of Palestine by restoring it to its original narrator: the Palestinian people. In addition, the focus of this series is on Palestinians who lived in the Gaza Strip, whether prior to, or as a result of, the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe that led to the collective dispossession of the Palestinian people.

  While other works, such as that of anthropologist and historian Rosemary Sayigh, have aimed at “narrating displacement”1 as a defining experience of Palestinian people in modern times, this series describes life both before and after the Nakba as it was lived by the narrators: in different parts of Palestine, in Yaffa, Beit Affa, Beit Daras, Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis, Bureij, and Gaza, and in exile. More specifically, it provides a full account of life in different parts of historic Palestine, starting from pre-Nakba times, through the destruction of Palestine’s villages and towns and the dispossession of their inhabitants in 1948, to the Israeli invasion and occupation during the Swiss crisis in 1956, the war followed by military occupation in 1967, displacement and exile, and two intifadas, to a failed peace process leading to the current impasse. While the series brings to the forefront experiences of normal life before displacement, dispossession, exile, wars, and occupation, the accounts also brilliantly illuminate much of the small, everyday detail of lives in villages and towns. They recount rituals associated with agrarian cycles, wedding rites, rites accompanying birth and death, as well as aspirations, fears, and hopes. Readers are invited to reimagine Palestine and the lives of those sidelined by traditional history.

  Unlike some approaches, where essentialized framing of oral histories collected from displaced and refugee women has allowed researchers to “reinterpret” the outcomes of their research, our narrators own and have determined their narratives. Consequently, these are presented in all their complexity, fertility, and normality. Through their deep collective memories, each individual woman transmitted her own narrative/history, embodying a chapter of Palestine’s neglected history. Following Edward Said’s observation that, “facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation…for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place,”2 our effort has been to seek out and foreground the narratives of Palestinian women with minimal interference. This has allowed the women unhindered ownership of their own story, with only minimal intervention or interpretation on our part. Our sole interference in each woman’s text was editing and positioning it so as to give it greater fluidity and allow it to read as a cohesive piece.

  In contrast to works that have focused on women living in urban areas or on experiences of displacement, this series engages with women from the both urban and rural parts of the Gaza Strip, and with Indigenous women as well as refugees and returnees (women who had been exiled and were able to return to Gaza following the Oslo Accords). Although Gaza is small, it is densely populated, and small geographic variances may have significant impacts on how life is experienced. Life in rural parts of the Strip can be very different from urban life, and Indigenous vs. refugee backgrounds make for distinctly different life stories. Such considerations help move us toward a more fully comprehensive and representative account of life in this part of historic Palestine, both prior to and after 1948.

  Unsurprisingly, many of the details of the stories recorded in this series overlap, although the women telling them are unlikely to have met each other. This universality of experience provides a multi-layered map in which human history becomes political history, allowing readers an opportunity to see into the heart of life as it was lived in these spaces f
rom day to day. Individually and as a cumulative corpus, the stories offer a new contribution to the fields of both Palestinian oral history and women’s studies.

  The life stories collected and presented are those of women from distinct, differing backgrounds: a refugee from Beit Daras village living in the southern part of the Gaza Strip (Khadija Salama Ammar, Khan Younis Refugee Camp); a refugee from Beit Affa village living in the central Gaza Strip (Um Jaber Wishah, Bureij Refugee Camp); a refugee from Yaffa City living in the north of the Strip (Um Said Al-Bitar, Hay Al-Naser in Gaza city); a villager living in the north of the Gaza Strip (Um Baseem Al Kafarneh, the border town of Beit Hanoun); an Indigenous Christian resident of Gaza city (Hekmat Al Taweel); a returnee to the Gaza Strip, originally a resident of Gaza city who was displaced and became a refugee after the 1967 war (Sahbaa Al Barbari); and an Indigenous resident of the Gaza Strip living in Khan Younis city who subsequently moved to Gaza city (Madeeha Hafez Albatta).

  The seven participants were interviewed over two years in the midst of an acutely difficult period: the late 2000s during the second intifada, while freedom of movement within the Gaza Strip was severely restricted. The women interviewed were carefully selected to represent a variety of backgrounds, whether religious or socio-economic, with different personal statuses and very distinct trajectories. Several parameters such as refugee vs. Indigenous background or rural vs. urban experiences determined the editors’ selection of interviewees, in an attempt to record Gazan women’s knowledge from a broad spectrum of individual standpoints.

  We interviewed each woman in her home or on her farm. In most cases, we met with and interviewed them on their own. In some cases, other family members were present. Interviews in the presence of younger people and particularly in the presence of daughters-in-law tended to arouse a great deal of excitement and astonishment, often expressed in a mixture of laughter and tears. These occasions were clearly learning experiences, enabling others as well as the interviewers to join these brave women in exploring and narrating hidden chapters of their lives. Each of our interviewees courageously revealed moments of pain, joy, distress, peace, and uncertainty, along with the abiding hope that they had sustained over decades.

  Our interviews with each of the women were audio-taped, producing hundreds of tapes that were then carefully transcribed and translated. One of us is a native speaker of Arabic, which facilitated the translations, and the other is a native speaker of English, which much improved the abbreviated English narratives. In a thorough, nuanced process, we returned to each interviewee with multiple questions and requests for clarification, with the result that the research and editing required a full three years. We checked factual details against known events to ensure the accuracy of each story, which we compiled in a way that would ensure the narrative’s continuity, cohesion, and harmony.

  The narratives, translated as they were told, remain faithful, honest accounts of these women’s lives.

  Foreword

  I ENTERED THE MAIN GATE of the big house and observed lemon trees in the inner courtyard.

  To my right, there was the guest reception room. On top of it was the study of the grand man, master of the house, Sheikh Hafez al Batta, the town’s distinguished Islamic scholar, father of Madeeha. He was reading his books on the balcony, as usual. And as usual, reviewing what was going on in his household and beyond. As a 12-year-old boy, I was allowed to cross the next door to the much wider courtyard, where the women and children lived, slept, cooked, sewed, gossiped, and frolicked in peace. My admittance was on account of my friendship with Nadid, Madeeha’s brother, who was my age. We did not stay there long, but went out to play and do things. Nevertheless, my easy access was crucial in my knowing more about Madeeha and being able to have a part to play in her life with her future husband, my brother Ibrahim.

  The rest is in the book.

  Madeeha (“the praised one”) is a special example of Palestinian women in the south of Palestine. She lived most of her life in Khan Younis, the most southern town (or large village) in Palestine, and was well-educated by the standards of the time, where the majority of rural women had little education. Women were busy with the business of life, making a living in the fields and raising families. Her education allowed her to be a teacher and a headmistress at a young age. She wrote literary articles that were published in the prestigious literary magazines in Cairo, like Al Risalah and Al Thaqafa, equivalent to today’s Times Literary Supplement.

  This is not surprising. Her mother came from the respected family Al Idrisi and her father was a learned Islamic scholar. But her own character allowed her to assume extra duties, raising her brother and two sisters after her mother passed away and also her new brothers and sisters in the company of her kind stepmother.

  Married to my brother Ibrahim in November 1949, they had a blissful marriage till the last day of their lives.

  During the historic crime of the Nakba, which took place in 1948, the tiny stretch of land from Gaza City to Rafah, through Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, the home of 80,000 people, was flooded with 200,000 people, the inhabitants of 247 villages depopulated due to the Zionist invasion of southern Palestine.

  Madeeha’s husband Ibrahim became a refugee as his neighbouring ancestral land, Al Ma’in (Abu Sitta), was attacked on May 14, 1948. Al Ma’in is 8 kilometres away from Khan Younis, separated by a fictitious line, the Armistice line of 1949.

  The separation between the two is not geographical or national. It is the difference between a homeland attacked and occupied by armed European settlers, and a homeland under imminent threat, not yet occupied, but under siege and bombardment.

  As if that were not enough, disaster struck on November 3, 1956.

  The Al Batta household was shaken by loud bangs on their door. The old man opened the door to find Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at frightened women and children, shouting: “out, all men.” The old man said there were only women and children. “Get them out. Out. Out.” They came from under the staircase.

  Then they saw Nadid. “Come here.” His mother screamed, “He is a school boy. Here is his school card.” They dragged him on the floor. He cried from the bottom of his heart, “Yamma, I am thirsty.” His mother pleaded with the soldier pointing his gun at him to allow him a drink of water. He agreed. She rushed to get a glass of water and approached her son’s lips when the soldier kicked the glass by his boots and emptied his machine gun in his head. Nadid’s blood and the water were spilled on the floor. With an expression of victory, the soldier left.

  With God’s mercy, Madeeha was not there. She was with Ibrahim in Cairo. But the pain was multiplied by the distance. And the tragedy was not over. Later the same morning, her brother Hassan, newly married with two children, was dragged from his home and shot summarily along with hundreds of other young men in the town. Over five hundred bodies were strewn in the streets. Nobody was allowed to reach them for a day or two. Khan Younis, now empty of men, became the funeral town.

  Women had to cope. The task of coping was destined to be the fate of Palestinian women all their lives. The burden has been loaded on their shoulders for over a century, since the treacherous Balfour Declaration of 1917. Britain was entrusted to bring freedom and independence to Palestine. Instead, it betrayed that trust by handing Palestine to wealthy European Zionists keen to create a colony for themselves. Curiously the anti-Semite Balfour refused to let Russian Jews into England and preferred to create a satellite colony for them in Palestine.

  Fifteen years later, the flood of Jewish European settlers in Palestine reached the alarming level of 30 percent of the population. The Arab Revolt (1936–1939) erupted.

  Once again, Britain betrayed its duties to protect Palestinian people. The British Army quelled the revolt most brutally. For the first time ever, the villages were bombarded by air. Collective punishment was applied. Villagers were held in cages for two days in the sun without food or drink. Leaders were imprisoned or deported.

 
; A minimum estimate of Palestinian casualties from 1936 to 1939 is 5,000 people killed, 15,000 wounded, and a similar number jailed. More than 100 men were executed, including leaders such as 80-year-old Sheikh Farhan Al-Saadi, who was hanged while fasting during Ramadan on November 22, 1937. About 50 percent of all adult males in the mountainous region of Palestine, corresponding roughly to the West Bank today, where the revolt was particularly active, were wounded or jailed by the British.

  While men were rounded up, women cared for their families, salvaged the home supplies destroyed deliberately by the British, and attended to the fields and cattle. They did more than that. They fought battles. Fatma Ghazzal was killed in Azzoun in 1936 in an ambush by an Essex Regiment and was found dead among her men comrades.

  Peasant women’s mass involvement was physical and direct…Village women…were arrested for being members of the Black Hand band, for writing threatening letters to the police, for hiding wounded rebel fighters, and they kept secrets…urban women collected money, took part in demonstrations, sent protests to the government, and formed women’s committees…Schoolgirls held strikes.1

  And, “police shot a girl during a stoning of forces in 1938.”2 In the battle, “widows of dead fighters also took up arms…encouraged their ‘menfolk’ to assist the fighters…[and] ‘stirred up’ the local population”3 During Faz’a, they “were seen running behind their husbands ululating,” urging them into action.4

  When the Nakba struck in 1948, Palestinian women were the first victims and the first to cope with its effects. The Nakba is the largest, longest, continuous ethnic cleansing operation in the history of Palestine. Five hundred and sixty towns and villages have been depopulated by the Zionist European invasion of Palestine. Nowhere was this tragic scene observed more than in the Gaza Strip, when the population of 247 villages in the southern half of Palestine was herded onto the Gaza Strip, which is only 1.3 percent of the area of Palestine.

  The mass exodus did not take place smoothly. It was dotted with massacres. Villages were attacked at dawn when people were asleep. At the explosion of bombs, the wave of machine gun bullets, the women rushed to pick up their children for safety in the dark, frequently carrying a pillow instead of a child, shouting for youngsters to follow, carrying some milk or a little food, and hurrying toward the only gate the Israelis had left open for them to escape, having blocked the other sides.