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Published March
30, 2002
My First
Experience of Israel |
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by Dr. Naim Ateek
I am a
Palestinian. I had just turned eleven in 1948
when the Zionists occupied my hometown, Beisan
(Beth Shean). We had no army to protect us.
There was no battle, no resistance, no killing;
we were simply taken over, occupied, on
Wednesday, May 12, 1948.
Our house was on the main street, so as a boy I
watched the Zionist troops, the Haganah, come
into town past our door, watched them enter
every house in the neighborhood, looking for
weapons. They searched our house, too, but did
not find any. My father had never owned a gun;
he did not believe in doing so.
In the early 1920s my father had left the city
of Nablus, where he was born, and moved to
Beisan with his wife, their two small children,
and his aged father. He had learned to be a
silver and goldsmith, but since Nablus already
had several goldsmiths, my father decided to
establish his business in a town where there
were none.
Beisan seemed a good choice. Situated about 20
miles south of the Sea of Galilee, its
population was approximately six thousand. All
the people were Palestinians, most of them
Muslim, but there was a small, flourishing
Christian community; relations between the
religious groups were good.
My father, who was brought up as an Eastern
Orthodox Christian, decided early in life to
take his faith seriously. Out house was a center
of Christian activity, Bible study, and Sunday
school. Through the influence of missionaries,
father became more active in the Anglican
Church. He was later instrumental in building a
small Episcopal church in Beisan.
When the soldiers occupied our town in 1948, our
simple and unpretentious life was disrupted.
Some members of both the Muslim and the
Christian communities fled their homes,
horrified when news of what the Jewish soldiers
had done in Deir Yasin reached them. Deir Yasin
was a small town on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
When the soldiers occupied it, they massacred
254 persons, including women and children and
threw their bodies in a well.
Many friends tried to convince my father to
leave. They said, "The Jews will kill you;
escape with your life and your family!" I recall
my father's repeated response: "I have nowhere
to go with my large family. We will stay in our
home. If we have to die then we will die here
together."
Our town was occupied on May 12, 1948. The State
of Israel was proclaimed two days later. We
lived under occupation for fourteen days. On May
26, the military governor sent for the leading
men of the town; at military headquarters, he
informed them quite simply and coldly that
Beisan must be evacuated by all of its
inhabitants within a few hours.
My father pleaded with him, "I have nowhere to
go with my large family. Let us stay in our
home." But the blunt answer came, "If you do not
leave, we will have to kill you."
I remember vividly my father's return from
headquarters to give us the bad news. With great
anguish he said, "We have been given no choice.
We must go." The next two hours were very
difficult. I can recall with great precision
what happened, almost minute by minute.
My father asked us to carry with us whatever was
lightweight yet valuable or important. The
military orders were that we should all meet at
the center of town in front of the courthouse,
not far from my father's shop.
As people gathered at the center of town, the
soldiers separated us into two groups, Muslims
and Christians. The Muslims were sent across the
Jordan River to the country of Transjordan (now
Jordan). The Christians were taken on buses,
driven to the outskirts of Nazareth, and dropped
off there, since Nazareth had not yet been
occupied by the Zionists. Within a few hours,
our family had become refugees, driven out of
Beisan forever. Rudyard Kipling has written in
his famous poem "IF":
If you can
meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat
those two imposters just the same;
If you can
bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by
knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch
the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop
and build 'em up with worn-out tools . . .
At the age of fifty-seven my father had to stoop
and, with or without worn-out tools, begin all
over again. Life in Nazareth during the ensuing
months was difficult. Palestinians flooded the
city-either fleeing or expelled from neighboring
towns and villages. Church institutions had to
open their doors to thousands of refugees. The
rest stayed with relatives or friends or had to
manage as best they could in miserable living
conditions.
On the whole, our family was more fortunate than
many others. None of us was killed. We did not
stay in refugee camps. The wounds of that war
were not only physical; the psychological
agonies were at times greater. In those days,
people's anger was directed more toward the Arab
countries for their inability to protect and
save Palestine than toward the Jews. Fear,
uncertainty, anxiety, anger, bitterness all
these became part of the life of the humiliated
and demoralized Palestinian community. The
dispersion of the Palestinians had started.
Unable to return to their homeland, they were
forced to live in the surrounding Arab
countries, in Western Europe, in North America,
and even in Australia.
As second-class citizens of the new state of
Israel, we lived under military law. We could
not travel from one place to another without a
military permit. And since Beisan had no Arabs
left to live in it, it was out of bounds. It was
ten years later, on Israel's Independence Day in
1958, when Israeli Arabs were permitted on that
day only to travel freely without a military
permit, that my father took us all to Beisan.
Israeli Jewish families were living in
Palestinian homes. Some homes had been pulled
down. Our little church was used as a
storehouse. The Roman Catholic church and its
adjacent buildings had become a school. The
Orthodox church was left to rot. The Beisan we
knew was left to gradually become a ruin while a
new Israeli Jewish town was sprouting on the
edge of it.
Our homes were still standing and several
families were occupying them. I still remember
that when we asked permission to go inside, just
to take a look, our request was turned down. One
occupant said very emphatically, "This is not
your house; it is outs."
Shortly after our return to Nazareth my father
had a stroke, followed by another a few months
later that immobilized him. Whether the stroke
was brought on by the fateful visit to Beisan, I
will never know. But I do know that the visit
was very traumatic for all of us, especially for
my father and mother.
On July 10, 1959, with the blessing of my
father, now partially paralyzed, I left Nazareth
for the United States to begin my university
education. Father knew that I was going to study
to be a minister, as I had always hoped, and it
delighted him. One year later, on September 4,
1960, just before I started my second year of
college in Texas, Father died in Nazareth.
 A
few weeks later, Mother sent me a note that she
had found inside my father's Bible. I could tell
from the handwriting that it was written during
his illness. It read, "To my son Naim: read
Psalm 37:5." I looked it up and read, "Commit
your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will
act." This was my inheritance, my father's last
will and testament to me, a very precious and
meaningful one.
Six years later, my mother came to Berkeley,
California, to attend my seminary graduation.
She and Father had long looked forward to that
day. I returned with Mother to Nazareth to be
ordained and to begin my ministry among my
people.
Dr. Naim Ateek is the director of the
Sabeel Theology Centre in Jerusalem. He is a
leading Christian theologian among Palestinians
and the author of Justice and Only Justice
(Orbis, 1989). This column is an excerpt from
chapter one of that book. During 2002 Dr. Ateek
was a guest columnist for Presence magazine.
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