Internally Displaced Palestinians Challenge Israel’s Confiscation of Their Land
| WRMEA Archives 2006-2010 - 2008 January-February |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2008, pages 14-15
60 Years of Al-Nakba
Internally Displaced Palestinians Challenge Israel’s Confiscation of Their Land
By Isabelle Humphries
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MUHAMMAD HANI FAYED is perfectly aware that the issue of Israeli confiscation of land from his ancestral village is a political question. After forcing or encouraging their 1948 flight in fear and terror—along with the residents of the other 513 destroyed villages across historic Palestine—Israel never let the villagers of al-Lajjun return, despite the fact that 80 percent are Israeli citizens and live just a few miles down the road. But six decades of Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian land rights has not deterred this group of villagers from challenging the confiscation of their land in the Supreme Court of the state which purports to give them full citizenship rights.
Lying at the foot of the plain of Marj ibn Amr, an ancient crossroads where the road from Haifa and Lebanon crosses the Damascus-to-Cairo thoroughfare, the village of al-Lajjun has a long history of political significance. Called Legio by the Romans, in biblical tradition it marks the site of Armageddon. In 1516, when the Ottomans took the area from Mamluk control, Lajjun was one of five district (liwa) towns in Palestine. During the British Mandate, villagers played a significant role in the Arab Revolt, the anti-colonial struggle of 1936 to 1939.
Today the village committee proudly commemorates its legacy, and photographs of martyred band commanders took pride of place in the booklet produced for the 2007 Annual Nakba March, held at Lajjun. Indeed, it was this very history of resistance, along with the town’s strategic positioning at the crossroads on a fertile plain, that resulted in it being occupied in 1948 by the Golani Brigade’s Fourth Battalion and the expelling of all 1,103 residents.
The internally displaced community of al-Lajjun remains one of the stronger ones in Israel, largely because the majority of residents moved to one town, Umm al-Fahem, less than four miles down the road. Umm al-Fahem, the second largest Arab town in Israel, today functions as the unofficial capital of the Triangle, a densely populated Palestinian area in Israel with the West Bank on its eastern border and the Jewish coastal towns to the west.
In the first few years following their expulsion, many individual groups of internally displaced Palestinians attempted to pursue the case of confiscated village lands through the courts—which, they hoped, because of their Israeli citizenship, would take their claims seriously. By the mid-1950s, however, most cases had been dismissed, or court orders blatantly disregarded by Israeli military authorities. As a result, interest in pursuing justice through the legal route waned. Lawsuits today usually relate to appeals for access to and protection of holy sites.
In the case of al-Lajjun, however, villagers have continued to contest Israel’s right to a section of village land. With the support of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, a group of 200 villagers is attempting to challenge the official confiscation in 1953 of 200 dunams of village land (see <www.adalah.org>).
Along with other plots of land totaling 34,600 dunams, the dunams in question were confiscated on Nov. 15, 1953 by order of then-Minister of Finance (and later Prime Minister) Levi Eshkol, who invoked Article 2 of the Land Acquisition Law facilitating confiscation for “essential settlement and development needs.” Today, Adalah points out, the specific piece of land is covered by a subsequently planted forest, along with an industrial facility owned by the Israeli water company Mekorot.
“Compensation” vs. Confiscation
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Muhammad Fayed, chair of the al-Lajjun Cultural Association, explained how the villagers first brought the case to court. In 1990, he told the Washington Report, two extended families living in Umm al Fahem attempted to get Israel to pay them for their share of the confiscated village land. In turn the government demanded that they sign documents registering the land as theirs, so that the government could officially claim it had provided “compensation”—and that the land thus was legally purchased, not confiscated, from its owners.
The problem was, of course, that in all cases—including compensation for farmland recently confiscated for Israel’s annexation wall—“compensation” represents only a fraction of the land’s real value. And, crucially, there is no alternative to signing. At that time, one family decided to sign and accept the compensation, however reduced. Another family refused to accept the terms—and received nothing.
It was at this point, on seeing the form that his late father had received, that Fayed, a second-generation refugee, decided the community must act collectively to challenge this issue. He discovered a number of fellow villagers eager to do so, and thus the al-Lajjun Cultural Association was formed. Members compiled their own historical records of ownership and determined to challenge further government strategies to cheat villagers of their land rights.
Of course, while all Palestinian refugees should be entitled to such rights, the fact that Israel claims that the people of Umm al-Fahem are full citizens of Israel adds hypocrisy to the original crime.
In 1998, when the issue of a second piece of land arose, villagers were ready to fight collectively, and enlisted the services of Adalah. After years of litigation, in March 2007 the Nazareth District Court rejected the villagers’ lawsuit, accepting the Development Agency’s argument that the forest and water facility constitute “essential settlement and development” in the broadest sense of the words.
Adalah has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on May 9, claiming that the land was never used for such a purpose.
Today, with almost all the original buildings having been destroyed, Kibbutz Megiddo sits on the land of al-Lajjun. When a previous mayor of Umm al Fahem complained that the kibbutz was using the village mosque as a carpentry workshop, the kibbutz sealed up the mosque and surrounded it with mounds of earth. The cemetery still exists, with the tomb of Yusef al-Hamdan, a prominent fighter of the Arab revolt, clearly visible, but villagers cannot enter in large groups for visiting or renovation. Instead they must settle for a quiet visit on Jewish holidays when, it is hoped, no kibbutzniks are around.
Fayed is under no illusion. Representing al-Lajjun on the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID)—an umbrella committee for destroyed villages—he knows this is a national political issue in which Israel wields the power. But that is not enough to lead him to despair. Seeing the legal case inspire new interest in the issue of al-Lajjun, Fayed and others are determined to stimulate interest among younger people, as the generation that remembers the village slowly passes away.
This past April al-Lajjun was chosen as the site of the Annual Nakba Day March (held on the holiday marking “Israeli Independence Day”). Thousands of people walked through the fields and gathered at the site—police access having been given for that one day. “I believe the whole of Umm al Fahem was there!,” Fayed exclaimed.
Currently he is completing research for a book and hopes to publish a map of the area which marks all the old names of wells, springs and fields long since wiped from Israeli cartography. Plans are afoot to create a model of the village at a site in Umm al-Fahem, and to organize an educational program in schools to teach a younger generation about their rights and heritage.
Israel is mistaken if it thinks that this village, along with all 513 others, will simply fade quietly away. History suggests instead that it is usually occupation and colonialism, rather than ordinary people, which have a habit of crumbling into the dustbins of history.
Isabelle Humphries, based between Nazareth, Jerusalem and Cairo since 2000, currently is conducting doctoral research on internally displaced Palestinian refugees. She can be contacted at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >.
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