Summary
Palestinian researcher who has long worked with Zochrot, named in the Acknowledgments of Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine among those whose words animate whole chapters — Umar al-Ghubari on return — and recorded on Zochrot’s September 2012 West Jerusalem tour translating Tamar Avraham into Arabic and correcting the tour’s account of what it meant to “leave by force” in 1948 (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.10-11, 135).
Details
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On the tour, Palestinian tour guides and organizers, young and old, whom Kelly recognized from the solidarity tours they offer elsewhere in Palestine, learned alongside Israeli and international tourists how best to correct the narrative Israel advances that Palestine was a land without a people (PDF p.135).
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Avraham described one family as taken out of their home by force; al-Ghubari corrected her, reminding her that no one left their homes voluntarily: regardless of whether the family was exiled at gunpoint or not, it constituted “force” because the Haganah, or a messenger, arrived telling residents about the violence one neighborhood or village over and warning them to leave, after which Zionist settlers took over their homes in their “absence” via the Absentee Property Law (PDF p.135).
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In Chapter 5 al-Ghubari is Zochrot’s coordinator of tours, interviewed in Tel Aviv in September 2012: Zochrot records refugees’ testimony and structures tours on their memory of the village, participation is entirely contingent on the refugee’s desire, and each refugee is asked how he or she envisions the village’s future — the work is about looking at each place “as a place for the future” (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.158-159).
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Leading the September 2019 JNF Erasure of Palestine Tour, he began: “I am not a tour guide. I am a history teller” (PDF p.160); at Canada Park he introduced himself the same way and told delegates, “This is the West Bank”, “We are outside the Green Line” (PDF p.174).
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On the Israeli impasse over return: “Most of the Israelis still have the ability to listen, maybe also to remember, if they saw, and even to express how they understand the pain of the refugees”, but “they don’t want to talk about return” — a “border” “between the past and the future”; “We want the tour”, he continued, “to put the question there” (PDF p.177-179).
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On refugees in the West Bank and Jordan, too pressed by daily difficulties to plan return: “It’s amazing what this Wall is doing”, “It’s not only a Wall blocking their movement. It’s also blocking their ideas, their imagination. They can’t see beyond the Wall” (PDF p.183-184).
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In the Miska countermapping he glossed the plan: “instead of fences they want to open the fence and plant some flowers”; “You know, people can fantasize things” (PDF p.185).
Related pages
Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Zochrot, George Bisharat, Absentee Property Law, Nakba