I am already really fascinated by this topic. So far I've re-skimmed the John McCarthy book, You Can't Hide the Sun, which has given me some great quotes, including:
'By 1948 most Zionists saw the removal of the Palestinians not only as desirable but as necessary. For them it wasn't just about having an exclusive Jewish state but about ensuring its security'.
(Perhaps yet one more disastrous effect of the Holocaust, for Jewish and Arab peoples had co-existed pretty peaceably (I think) in Palestine for centuries previously).
'After the war the Palestinians in Israel [about 170,000 of them, with a further 700,000 exiled in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza] seem to have entered a kind of half-life. Most of their neighbours and many members of their families had been dispersed and their world order destroyed. They were now in a new state, run by people building a homeland for Jews, not Arabs.'
'It is hard to imagine how empty it must have been at the end of 1948 when the Palestinian exodus left areas of central and southern Israel deserted. Approximately 330,000 people from 180 villages and four towns from this region were suddenly gone'.
In re-reading his book, two images particularly struck me. The first is the use of tree planting in Israel to cover over what were once Palestinian villages:
'Then, in 1956, all the houses in al-Ghabisiyya were destroyed, blown up and bulldozed, replaced with the cypress trees that now bend in the light breeze. 'To lose your land, your house, your country - it's more painful even than losing a relative because you feel like you've lost yourself. They are killing your hope, that is what they are doing, and trying to kill your memory'.
'A few days later the authorities destroyed the foundations and also a neighbouring house. As soon as the site was cleared a truck arrived laden with mature olive trees, which were planted to create an instant park.
'It is a spiteful little park. The neat lines of short, heavily pruned olive trees look grotesque. I can imagine them spread across a hillside, part of a timeless scene, their gnarled trunks and branches at one with the rugged terrain. Here, on this flat urban space they look bizarre and alien. I could guess where they came from.'
Then, there are also tell-tale signs where nature reveals what used to be:
'It's about looking for evidence of absence as well as of presence, about watching for signs of where those destroyed villages might have been.
'... A clump of ugly cactus, looking out of place on a hillside, is likely to indicate the location of a destroyed Arab village. In the old days, Palestinians planted cacti to create simple, low maintenance and very effective fences. The Israelis may have destroyed and levelled the villages, but the cactus is so hardy that it keeps coming back to give the lie to the landscaping.'
The other image that has struck me is that Arab Israelis' live in a state of limbo
'It's like living in a kind of suspended animation,' Saud says... 'you cannot reach for the sky, you cannot touch the ground.'
'And if he cannot get his Jersulem ID restored, the Jordanian authorities have told him they will not renew his Jordanian passport. And if that happens, not only Awni but also his children will be stateless, since in Jordan citizenship has to come from the father. Unable to do anything - get work, travel or marry - they will be condemned to live in a bureaucratic no man's land.
...'I was born here and raised here. I have papers to show that. How can they take that away from me? Do I not have the right to live in freedom and dignity? Why must I suffer like this? Am I not a human being? Are my children not human beings.'
'I am a simple, down-to-earth person and am not interested in politics. I just want to live a normal life and be able to earn money to look after my family'.
This afternoon I also started watching Channel 4's 'The Promise' which several people had told me was brilliant.
Out of that, and in line with Awni's quote above, the dialogue that struck me most was when, Paul, a pro-Palestine Jew tells Erin of what his father had told him when he took him to look out over the Israel/Palestine border:
'When I was ten years old, my father took me to see the border. The Jewish side was green and fertile, the Arab side was brown and barren, with a few goats. And then he said to me, and this was this big lesson he wanted me to remember. 'Look what they've done with the land in 2,000 years. And look what we achieved in 50.' And this is a good man. A liberal man. It took me years to learn to question the assumptions behind the things he said to me that day. 'They are not as deserving as we are. They do nothing with the land. They are animals. They hate us.''
Strikes me I could simply call my project: 'The Irony of Lessons Not Learned'.
First Thoughts
So, after my day of reading, watching, and clearly looking miserable, what am I thinking of doing?
I don't claim to be political. Although I'm aware that I'm stepping on very political grounds here. So, in my project I'm not going to claim to know anything much about the history, the backgrounds, the centuries of Jewish/Arab occupancy of Palestine that's led them to where we are today.
I realise that my reading to date has been very pro-Palestinian. But I also do trust John McCarthy's account. And I feel that it is an irrefutable truth that Israel now occupies what was once Palestinian land and that Israeli Arab's lives are incredibly hard - often made deliberately so by the state.
So, that it was I want to concentrate on. Not how it's got to this situation, but what it feels like to be in it.
I want to look at work on a small, domestic scale. I have an image of lots of white in my head - clean white and simplicity. I want people looking at my work to gain some sense, some empathy with the loss the Palestinians feel. And if I can get one person to do that, I'll be happy.
To date I've had the following ideas:
a/ to slip cast domestic items - eg a saucepan, a glass and then plant small Cypress plants in them - representing the idea of Israel trying to hide destroyed villages by planting trees. (Although whether it's possible to plant small Cypress plants, I've no idea. And my gardening as about as good as my painting. No, thinking about it, it's worse).
b/ to do a model in an acrylic box with layers of land (showing various occupations) and then again planted with rows of small trees on top. I like this ideas as I've always been interested in the concept of archeology. How the land is multi-layered and each layer reveals things about the people who lived there centuries back.
c/ I keep thinking of Israel as the huge cuckoo, squatting on the Palestinian nest.
But heh. It's just day one. And we'll see.
Open your gates, O our village
Open them to the four winds
And let fifty wounds glow with fire.
Kafr Qasim,
A village dreaming of grain, violet flowers,
And flocks of pigeons:
'Mow them all down in one full sweep,
Mow them down.'
They mowed them down.
Mahmoud Darwish
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