Friday 19 September 2008

A refugee's open letter to Abbas

Abdelfattah Abusrour,
The Electronic Intifada
September 19, 2008


Dear Mr. President:

My name is Abdelfattah Abdelkarim Hasan Ibrahim Mohamad Ahmed Mostafa Ibrahim Srour Abusrour. I was born in the Aida Refugee camp, on rented land from Palestinian owners from Bethlehem. My two eldest brothers as well as my father and his father and all those who were born before them, originate form Beit Nateef village destroyed on 21 October 1948. My mother was born in Zakareya village, also destroyed in 1948 by the Zionist bandits. I grew up in the Aida refugee camp. When I was four years old, I remember most of the people in the camp hiding in a cave behind our house. I remember the old people talking about the war. I remember the sky full of planes, and all of the young children covered by black blankets, and cherished by their mothers. I remember the first curfew after the Israeli occupation in Aida camp in 1968. I remember the first Israeli soldier, who was an old Iraqi Jew of about 60 years old. I remember the day my second brother was invited for an interview by the military occupation administration in 1972, and never returning back to the house.

I remember that he was exiled six months later, without any confession, without any judgment or court sentence. I remember that we were fed the love of this occupied country, because it is ours. I remember the rusty keys of our houses in Beit Nateef, keys for doors that exist no more, but keys that have their doors in our hearts and our imaginations, keys for doors that were real and are now gone, for real houses that were built and are now gone, in which real people lived in and brought up children. These rusty keys are still with me. I remember that we were brought up with the eternal belief that the right of return is the right, and nothing can justify abandoning it.

I remember that our right of return to our original villages and homes is eternal, and nothing can change it, neither realities on the ground nor political agreements, because it is not only a collective right, but an individual right. It is my right, Mr. President, and the right of my children and grandchildren, and all those who come after, wherever they are born.

Dear Mr. President:

I remember the death of my mother, on 9 September 2003. She was 75 years old. I remember the death of my father on 26 December 2006. He was 96 years old. My mother and my father were hoping to be buried in their village, where they got married, where they brought up their children, where they irrigated their land with their sweat, blood and tears, where they filled their land with joy, happiness, laughs and whispers. My parents are buried in the cemetery of Aida camp. My mother's tomb is next to a military tower, and surrounded by Israeli barbed wire. My mother's tomb is not accessible, I can't visit it on a day of feast to recite on her tomb al-Fatiha or a surah from the Holy Quran.

Dear Mr. President:

I was full of hope that after 60 years of occupation, after 60 years of armed and non-armed resistance we could achieve something other than shallow promises. I was full of hope that we will never give up our rights, these rights that are recognized by the whole world, even if the whole world remains complicit with injustice. I was full of hope that nothing can justify giving up such rights, with all the realities on the ground that say otherwise, what heritage are we leaving to our children and the generations to come? Should we say to them: Go to where the wind takes you, never stand up and resist oppression? That it is more important to stay alive even if it is a life of humiliation and non-recognition of belonging to a human race?

Where are you taking us, Mr. President? To what desert are you leading us? To what catastrophe?

How dare you decide how many refugees can or cannot return? Who gave you permission to speak in my name, and in my children's name? Who asked you to barter our rights? What is the price for the sale of an entire people's rights and their sacrifices for 60 years?

Where UN resolutions talk about the right of return and compensation for the suffering in exile as refugees, for all this exploitation of lands and properties, for all this humiliation and torture that worsens every day, you dare to say that not everybody wants to return? Even if this is the case, they have their right to their homes and lands, whether they want to return or not. They can sell it to others if they want, but it is not up to you to decide.

It is not your right or anyone's to say "those who don't want to return should be compensated."

Every single refugee must be compensated for these 60 years of Nakba [catastrophe]: those who left or were forced to leave, those who are owners of lands, those who had their fields and oranges and fruit trees. Yes, the oranges of Jaffa were before Israel and they will remain after Israel, if they are not destroyed like the thousand-year-old olive trees were. You were not elected to give away our rights, to give away the hopes and dreams and rights of a people who are still in refugee camps, living on rented lands and have waited and struggled to return to their original homes and lands for the past 60 years. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, we are living on lies and broken promises of change. Well change comes, but for the worse and not the better. Nothing improves with all these negotiations, Mr. President. Should we undress ourselves and show our nudity so that Ehud Olmert, and the Israeli occupation forces are satisfied that we have nothing to hide?

Yesterday, Israel distributed papers in East Jerusalem using the Holy Quran and the Bible to say that they are fulfilling the promise of God to populate Israel and chase away every non-Jewish person. And we should understand that and help them, by leaving the country because we have so many other countries for us to go to? And then we can live in peace and our children will be happy with their children and things will be great?

Is this the next step, Mr. President? Is it because colonies on the ground are expanding, and we can't force our presence on Israel, that we should be nice so that the whole world will be sympathetic to us, that we must do whatever Israel wants us to do? And then we talk about painful compromises and difficult solutions, we should be the nice ones who make the compromise, who forgive, who forget, who give up, who leave or die because that would solve it all? Mr. President: I am not ready to leave. I will never leave, even if it is the only way to earn a living. I will never give up my right to return to my village, even if I have a castle in the UK, and a chateau in France, and chalet at the Red Sea, and property in the Bahamas. My right is mine, and neither you nor anybody else has the right to erase it and exchange it or play with it. I do hope that you will leave your tower of ignorance to the needs of your people and descend for a moment on the ground and look in the eyes of those who still have a passion for this country, despite the disasters that we have sank into with such futile and fruitless negotiations, while Palestinian blood is shed daily by those with whom you negotiate.

Have we no shame to stop such a circus? I would have loved, Mr. President, that such energy in negotiations be invested among Palestinians who are still in dispute, and because of such stubbornness from you political advisers, it is not you who suffer, but your people. Are we so worthless that we do not deserve your time and energy to stop this circus and unite your people? Is it not enough that we are only considered a humanitarian problem that is worth no more than a sack of flour or a bottle of oil or expired medication?

Is it not enough that a whole population has been transformed into beggars, living in poverty and dependent on charity rather than helping them to be productive and maintain their dignity? Isn't the humiliation of the occupation enough? Must we only wait for greater humiliations to come? I am full believer in peace and nonviolence. I am a full believer in hope and right and justice. I am a full believer in the values that make humanity what it is. I never learned to hate. I never hated anyone. My parents were full of love and peace. They never taught me or my brothers anything other than respect for others and endless love to give and help others. They taught us that when you practice violence you lose part of your humanity. But at the same time, they taught us to defend what is right and to stand against what is unjust and wrong.

Therefore, Mr. President, I dare to say that you have no right, even as President to give up our rights, the rights of two-thirds of your people to return in dignity to their destroyed lands and properties and to be compensated for their suffering and exile, and the seizure of their lands and fields and the stealing of their funds in British banks or other banks by the Zionists.

Mr. President: I don't know if you will read these words or not, or if I will be alive if you do. But I do hope that these words, which come from the heart, reach your heart, Mr. President, and that you can find the hope and strength that our people -- your people -- still have. We do not give up our rights. We will never give up our rights. Peace can be built with justice. Real peace can be built with real justice, anything else is just a joke in the face of history.

My name is Abdelfattah Abdelkarim Hasan Ibrahim Mohamad Ahmed Mostafa Ibrahim Srour Abusrour. I am still a refugee in my own country with two rusty keys to his house.

Abdelfattah Abusrour, PhD is the Director of the Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center, an independent center for artistic, cultural, and theatre training for Palestinian children in the Aida Refugee Camp. The Center provides a "safe" and healthy environment to help Palestinian children creatively discharge stress in the war-time conditions in which they live.
Link: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9842.shtml

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Give up ‘right of return,’ Nusseibeh tells fellow Palestinians

David Lazarus(Canadian Jewish News);

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13447&Itemid=86

"MONTREAL — For Sari Nusseibeh, true peace between his own people and Israel won’t come from canny manoeuvres at the negotiating table.

Ultimately, the Palestinian philosopher and humanist argued in a recent lecture at McGill University, peace will result from the mutual realization and acceptance of the fact that neither side will get everything it wants.

For Palestinians, peace will mean giving up on the long-held dream that they will return one day to land they left almost 60 years ago.

For Israelis, peace has to mean giving up on the dream that it can hold on to occupied land or that Jerusalem will never be the capital of two nations.

“On both ends, I believe a new paradigm has to be created based on an equitable settlement,” the 58-year-old Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University in the West Bank, said in a relatively brief, 20-minute address to a crowd of about 600 in the Stephen Leacock Building.

“In the final analysis, a peaceful future and a positive future are not impossible to achieve. The distance is not arduous – it is the distance between one side of a pane of glass and another,” he said.

The glass is transparent, but it must be “cracked,” he added. “The Israelis and Palestinians have the power to change. If we don’t, it is not because we were powerless, but because we could not see through the pane.”

Nusseibeh’s appearance before a warm and welcoming audience was part of an event organized by the McGill Middle East Program (MMEP), a decade-old initiative creating community-based social programs among its Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian partners based on the shared values of “peace, understanding and social justice.”

Nusseibeh himself is a member of MMEP’s executive committee, and others at the event included MMEP co-chair Gretta Chambers; founder and director Jim Torczyner; philosopher Charles Taylor, co-chair of Quebec’s “reasonable accommodation” commission hearings and a colleague of Nusseibeh’s from their days together at Oxford University; and this year’s crop of MMEP “fellows,” among them Israeli Michal Gomel and Palestinian Rawan Zaitoun.

At McGill, Nusseibeh, who recently released his memoirs, Once Upon a Country: a Palestinian Life, appeared to live up to his reputation as a voice of moderation, humanism, and intellectual rigour regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Nusseibeh recalled how, in 1986, he witnessed the “horrible” stabbing of a 90-year-old pious Jew and decided to condemn the crime in writing – an act that was looked upon suspiciously by Israelis and got him into trouble with his own community.

“It is easier to say things that please people, but I say exactly what I believe. If I condemn acts of terror, it is because of my humanity,” he said. “It has been a constant fight.

Nusseibeh, referring to the fact that he has been called brave for speaking out, said, “I speak not because I’m courageous, but because of my fear about the future.”

For Palestinians, he said a two-state solution will have to entail trading their “right of return” for their “right to freedom.”

“These are impossible to implement together,” he said, although it has always been “taboo” for Palestinians to say as much.

But, he asked, “Why pursue the right of return at the expense of freedom?”

He said that Palestinians will return to their homeland “not in a literal sense, but in a realistic one” when they “live in freedom in their own state.”

Similarly, Israelis must be prepared to give up some of their own dreams, too.

Jerusalem, he said, is destined to be the capital of two states, and occupied territories will have to be abandoned.

Asked about the continued level of violence in the area, Nusseibeh seemed to regret that Palestinians have not “reached a consensus” on the use of non-violence.

Recalling the first intifadah in the late 1980s – in which he played an active role – Nusseibeh said Palestinians were once “very creative” in resisting Israel without violence.

In reply to another question, Nusseibeh said the last five years have been “unfortunately” violent, with Hamas operating under a completely “different paradigm” in which the group’s means don’t necessarily appear to be related to appropriate ends, which should be a two-state solution.

“Do the people who voted for Hamas support violence against Israel?” he asked.

Not necessarily, he answered.

“My sense is that the majority of Palestinians who voted for Hamas would also accept a peace solution that is tangible.”

On negotiating peace, Nusseibeh said he favours a “package deal” that delineates “what both sides would get and what price would be paid from the start” over the step-by-step approach made famous by former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

That’s what Nusseibeh hopes to see at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference this month in Annapolis, Md.

“The point is not to have a road map, but also a destination map,” he said. “Leaders have to stand up and say what the price [of peace] will be.”

But if there is no peace, “I don’t know what will happen,” Nusseibeh said.

“Twenty years from now, there might be no Jewish or Arab state.

“It will not be a very nice place.”

In remarks to the audience, Torczyner said Nusseibeh exemplified the very principles of co-existence that the MMEP was founded upon.

Taylor, citing Plato’s observation that rulers should become philosophers and philosophers should become rulers,” said that Nusseibeh, like Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, has a “very clear vision of what is going on” and values reason above all.

“Reason can transform,” Taylor said. "

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13447&Itemid=86

Anonymous said...

Mr. Nusseibeh,

The two-state option is dead and it was killed by Israeli settlements. You should start advocating against Israeli Apartheid and for a comprehensive economic boycott of anything that feeds Zionism.
Then we Palestinians will get our right of return, freedom, justice and peace.

Below is the opinion of the Palestinian Canadian community.

James Kafieh
jameskafieh@hotmail.com

HAMILTON DECLARATION

October 28, 2007

An Open Letter to Mahmoud Abbas - President of the Palestinian National Authority

We the Palestinian Canadian community assembly at the Palestinian National Voice Preparatory Conference in Hamilton, Canada, issue this letter out of profound concern regarding the present state of the Palestinian national struggle and the November 2007 “peace” conference to be hosted by the United States in Annapolis, Maryland.

While Palestinians still suffer from the disaster of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian National Authority has now agreed to attend another round of flawed negotiations. This time it does so under the pressure of North American and European nations that have actively collaborated with Israel to divide the Palestinian people and inflict collective punishment and other
war crimes against them. Even now Israel is being allowed to deny the Palestinians the basic necessities for a functioning society through a humiliating siege against the Palestinian people in response to the exercise of Palestinian democracy and the adherence to its results.

It is our belief that the purpose of the Annapolis round of negotiations is to extract further critical concessions from the Palestinians while further delaying final status agreements. In particular, we believe that Israel will attempt to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians as being only about ending the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, or parts thereof. Such a redefinition leads the Palestinians into the trap of the “two-state” formula which subverts our legitimate rights under international law. We stress that the central issue in the Palestinian conflict with
Israel has always been the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their land and property caused by the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the Israeli denial to Palestinians of the basic human right to return and to live in peace and security as equal citizens on their land.

We further specifically caution you against any recognition of Israel as a “Jewish” state. Such a recognition would give Israel the façade of moral and legal legitimacy while critically compromising the full implementation of the inalienable Palestinian right of return. In addition, it would contradict the struggle by Palestinian citizens of Israel to maintain their identity and gain equal rights as citizens. We point out that Israel was established through United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (Partition Resolution) which does not envisage or consent to the
establishment of states on a religious or ethnic basis. In addition, we underscore that Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on the basis of its having recognized the full right of return of the Palestinian people on the basis of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (Right of Return Resolution).

Today it is more apparent than ever that the only basis on which peace can be brought to the historic land of Palestine is through the establishment of a unified secular democratic state in which all citizens are equal and share the same rights and responsibilities regardless of a citizen’s religion.

Palestinians can only be properly represented through a delegation representing the united Palestinian people. Accordingly, it is essential that the internal dispute between Ramallah and Gaza be resolved before Palestinians participate in any negotiations with the Israelis. In addition, the ultimate decision on what Palestinians can accept can only be determined by a fully elected and democratically effective Palestinian National Council (PNC) representing all of the world’s 10 million Palestinians. Palestinians who are denied the right to participate in elections to the PNC cannot be regarded as having consented to any agreement made in their name. The re-activation of the PNC as a fully elected and democratically effective body would also have the effect of re-energizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate instrument of the Palestinian people.

We stress that any attempt to establish peace and security in the land of Palestine can only be successful if it is firmly based on natural justice and the principles of international law. We reconfirm that the right of the Palestinian people to return to their homes and property and to receive full compensation for all damage done to their property as well as for all other losses associated with the violation of their rights by Zionist forces is both an inalienable individual and collective right. Any Palestinian leadership that suggests that the inalienable Palestinian right of return can be negotiated away abrogates any legitimacy it may have had to speak in the name of the Palestinian people.


LIST OF PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS ALL OF WHOM ENDORSED THE ABOVE DECLARATION

Al-Awda (Toronto)
Association of Palestinian Arab Canadians – Capitol Region (Ottawa)
Canada Palestine Humanitarian Appeal (Mississauga)
Canadian Alliance for Palestine (Mississauga)
Canadian Palestinian Association of London (London)
Canadian Palestinian Foundation – Quebec (Montreal)
Coalition Against Deportation of Palestinian Refugees (Montreal)
Jerusalem Community Services of Ontario (Ottawa)
Niagara Palestinian Association (St. Catherines)
Palestine Community Society Center (Vancouver)
Palestine House (Mississauga)
Palestinian Association of Brantford (Brantford)
Palestinian Association of Hamilton (Hamilton)
Resistance Art (Toronto)

-end-

Anonymous said...

Sari,

You speak of reason overcoming issues with respect to nationalism, and but national issues are forever romantic concepts. This much you must know. Still, the right of return is an international legal concept that was crafted using the rationalism that you purport to ascribe.

I am sure that you know how inappropriate it is for you to arbitrarily decide that the right of return cannot be upheld for the Palestinian people.

Not only have my sister and I returned despite being born in Canada to a Palestinian mother born in Nazareth after 48 and a Palestinian father displaced by the Israeli Zionist machine, but I freely encourage the return of many others who are presently legally entitled to so do. I also believe in the right of return for those who presently legally cannot. Where the law diverges from justice, as much as possible that gap must be properly bridged. After being schooled on principles of humanity, nationalism, law and justice, I see nothing that bars the Israelis from being able to live here freely. LIKEWISE, there is NOTHING that prevents the Palestinians from coming home, and also sharing in those rights and freedoms that are due to them (but unjustly, racistly denied). It is not only right, it is reasonable.

Concessions such as the right of return are not for you to decide on. If it makes your life easier to tow the line, and give your superiors the positions that you think will make your professional life advance in Jerusalem, then by all means feel free. But do not propagate this discourse on my behalf, nor use your authority to discredit those of us more enlightened and more dedicated to our homeland, culture, nationality and human(e) condition who rightly seek the right of return to be upheld.

It is a simplistic analysis to view rights as goods to be bartered and exchanged – freedom for return. They are not and ought not to be without exception mutually exclusive.

Randa Mouammar-Nimry, M.A., LL.B.

Canada Glogal Immigration (CGI) Law Office

URL: www.cgilaw.ca

Email: cgilaw@rogers.com

UAE: +971.050.143.3961

Canada: +1.416.904.0562

Facsimile: +1.905.508.7975

Anonymous said...

Dr. Sari Nusseiheh,

In a recent presentation at McGill University on how to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians, you were reported as having advocated that each party must give up something if peace were to have a chance. The summary of your presentation amounted to one assertion: If Palestinians give up their Right of Return, and if Israelis give up their occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, then peace would flourish.

I do not accept the assumption that you are stupid. I do not accept the allegation that you are an agent of Zionism. I do not accept the assertion that you have lost all hope in justice and in the human spirit. I do not accept the accusation that you are intellectually inferior. I would rather think of you as someone who was taking a nap while the most important lesson in human history was taught: “Hope is the stuff of which life is made.”

An intelligent person, like you, should have invested his vast knowledge, his well developed cognitive abilities, and his recognized brilliance in searching for a solution that would be better than giving up rights in favour of power, or surrendering dreams in favour of present day reality.

On resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, instead of the Palestinian Arabs giving up something something and the Israeli Jews giving up something in return, what about a possible solution where Palestinian Arabs gain everything except dominating Israeli Jews, and where Israeli Jews lose nothing except dominating Palestinian Arabs? What about an idea that would fulfill the Palestinian Arabs Right of Return and their entitlement for justice as well as the Israeli Jewish need for security and their dream of an eternally united Jerusalem? Wouldn’t that be a better idea? In other words, wouldn’t gaining everything for everyone—with a compromise for the equal humanity of both—be better than either one losing anything?

The idea is simple: A bi-national democratic state for all, where individual equality before the law is sanctified, and collective equality between the two communities is constitutionally guaranteed and institutionally secured.

I hope that you will reconsider your views; revisit the lessens of history; recognize that the back of the Palestinian people will not be broken by suffering; understand that the Jewish need for security will not be satisfied through injustice; truly comprehend the meaning of the human spirit; and seriously take a hard look at the idea of a bi-national democracy as a just and possible alternative.

Monzer Zimmo
Ottawa, Canada



Safouriah, Palestine - is my permanent address-
to Sari Nusseibeh‏

Sari Nusseibeh,

Thanks for my Canadian citizenship, which allowed me to go down to my parent's, mine, and my children's home, which I wasn't born in neither my kids, although it is been caved in, and what is left from it is more like a remnant of a structure, but we still consider it our permanent and only home, it's been videotaped and that tape will be passed on to the future generations, until we go back and rebuild it.

Mr. Nusseibeh, you can not relinquish our right to that house, it is only myself and my kids who could, and we will never do it.

We all remember about five years ago the American Holocaust survivors' story, who went after Switzerland government, asking for compensation of their ancestors accounts, which was in Billions of dollars according to them, and how could I forget the story of my fellow Jewish Canadian from Montreal who went after the French government, because his land lord in the second world war kicked him and his dad out of a rented apartment, asking for tangible and intangible losses and sufferings incurred from that barbaric act, and guess what ? I sympathised with him, and it shouldn't have happened to any human being.

I am a simple Palestinian who raise a question to you, and your philosophers who were attending that shameful night.

Do you think I'll be asking too much if I expect the same criteria to be applied in my case and millions of Palestinians like me ?

Shame on you Mr. Nusseibeh.
Ibrahim Kanaan


Sari, will the 5 million Palestinians refugees in Diaspora will become free when they give up their right of Return? Sari,You may want to appease your " Zionist Friends", you are "free to do that", by giving up your right to own a house in Jerusalem, not by asking us to give up our right to return to our homes.
Unlike Mandela and Tutu , you are not a person of vision as you were introduced by your Zionist friends at Mcgill University. On the contrary you are a man who gave up his colour and dignity to look good in front of his enemy. You are an inferior person. Sari, Shame on you

Issam Al yamani



Dear Sari,

I am a Palestinian refugee and I want you to stop talking on my behalf.

You only have the right to relinquish your right of return but you certainly have no right to speak on behalf of the 5 million Palestinian refugees about relinquishing their right of return.

Khaled Mouammar
Richmond Hill, Ontario
Canada

Anonymous said...

and that s the reason why Mr Nusseibeh is wined and dined in the west and they love him , but Mr Nusseibeh should not speak for the Palestinian , because they Have not chosen him or elected him to do so .