Summary
Elder from Lifta who was forced out of the village as a child in 1948 and who, in July 2019, gave an international student group a walking tour of his still-standing village — not, he explained, as a tour guide but as a villager — ending in a demand for preservation from destruction together with restoration and return (Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, PDF p.170-174).
Details
- His narration paused in sorrow over the village’s neglected agriculture, terraces burned in his few weeks’ absence, graffiti, and Israeli youth partying in still-standing stone structures, some of them mosques: “I’m so sorry”, “Everything has changed.” “This was all plants” (PDF p.171).
- On the village well and spring, appropriated by Israelis for swimming: “They say they need more water than us”, “Why? Because they are cleaner than us? They drink more than us? They need flowers more than us? It is a racist mentality” (PDF p.171).
- At his family home: “This is my mother’s tabun [clay oven]”; “My childhood was between here and here”; “I was like a fish, always in the water” (PDF p.172).
- Refusing the group leaders who rushed him: “We tell this story so we don’t forget.” He continued: “I was small. I didn’t forget. This is our village. We should return. We will never forget. I have a right to go back to my home. We can build a democratic state together” (PDF p.172).
- His closing appeal: “These buildings” — “are witnesses to what happened in the Nakba. Do not let them be destroyed” — asking the group to write to UNESCO to register Lifta as a World Heritage Site against Construction Plan 6036 (PDF p.172).
Related pages
Invited to Witness — Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Lifta, Rana Barakat, Museumification, Right of Return