FALAMYEH, West Bank, 15 May 2004 — Rashid Abu Thaher marks Israel’s 1948 creation with a heavier heart than ever this year as he gazes at a huge Israeli barrier slashing through his vegetable fields in the West Bank.
Every year on May 15, Palestinians mournfully observe the establishment of the Jewish state as the anniversary of their “Nakba”, or catastrophe. Abu Thaher was only four years old when his family lost 20 hectares of property to the newly founded Israel.
Fifty-six years later, that land is part of the Israeli town of Kochav Yair, and Abu Thaher looks forlornly through the barbed wire Israeli fence that recently cut him off from a further 30 hectares.
“I am afraid they will seize what is left of my land because Israel’s policy is an expansionist one,” he said, waving his hand at the rocky, hilly terrain left under his ownership.
The barbed wire is part of the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank in what it says is a bid to keep out of its cities Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of Israelis in three and a half years of violence.
Palestinians call the vast concrete-and-wire structure a land grab that would thwart their dream of a viable state. “This wall not only seizes our land but destroys our work, our life and our economy,” Abu Thaher said.
Arabs went to war in 1948 over a UN resolution dividing Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab. The Nakba marks the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians from towns and villages during that conflict.
Today, there is a Palestinian refugee community of some four million in the West Bank, Gaza and abroad who have kept alive the dream of returning to homes in what is now Israel under any peace accord.
“Someone from Poland or Russia comes here and settles on my land,” said Abu Thaher, in reference to some of the millions of Jews who have immigrated to the region since Israel’s founding. “Where is the international conscience?”
US President George W. Bush backs Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new plan to withdraw from Gaza but keep most West Bank Jewish settlements, and angered Palestinians by saying Israel could not be expected to cede the entire West Bank or take back refugees under any peace deal.
