Land, Identity and the Limits of Resistance in the Galilee

Laurie King-Irani

(Laurie King-Irani, former editor of Middle East Report, is completing her Ph.D. dissertation in cultural anthropology. She conducted field research in Nazareth in 1992-93.)

Land Day: Spaces of Resistance, Places of Memory

On March 30, 1976, Palestinian citizens of Israel coordinated mass demonstrations against the state's ongoing land expropriations in the Galilee. Since that year, Land Day is observed every March 30 to commemorate the six unarmed Palestinian protesters who were shot dead by Israeli internal security forces in the Galilean village of Sakhnin. Each year, Land Day provides Palestinian citizens of Israel with their one and only trans-confessional, national holiday: a day to identify with the land and to show solidarity against the enforced expropriations of communal lands.

The morning of Land Day 1992, my husband and I accompanied my friends Afif, Kamal, Karim and their wives and children on a two-car trip.

Olive Groves vs. Pine Forests

We visited the destroyed town of Saffuriyya, now a Jewish farming community known as Tzippori, as well as an acclaimed Roman-era archaeological site. Before 1948, Saffuriyya had been a very prosperous town, larger and wealthier than Nazareth. Saffuriyya's pomegranates, olives and wheat were famous throughout the Galilee. Just as famous was the stubbornness of the inhabitants, who were among the few townspeople to resist the approaching Jewish forces in 1948 militarily. Even after Saffuriyya was overrun and destroyed, some families defiantly continued to live among the ruins, although many fled to Lebanon immediately after the town fell, ending up in the refugee camps of `Ein Hilweh, Sabra and Shatila. A sizable number of Saffuriyya's displaced residents eventually sought refuge in Nazareth's new northernmost neighborhoods of upper and lower Saffafreh.

Approaching Tzippori/Saffuriyya, we pulled off the highway onto an uneven field of spring wildflowers. Climbing a steep hillside, we parked our cars in a clearing surrounded by pine trees. I asked where the town had been. Smiling sadly, Kamal responded, "We're standing in the heart of it." My husband looked shocked and asked to see traces of the old houses. Kamal and Karim beckoned for us to follow, and soon we came across some old building stones and a square, hollowed-out piece of grayish limestone -- an old grape press -- half-hidden by weeds and dried pine needles. Karim looked wistfully at the stone press, which was probably still in use when he was born in January 1948, but which now lay forgotten under the detritus of the pine forest planted by the Jewish National Fund in the 1950s to dissuade Palestinians from returning to resettle and cultivate their destroyed village. "This is not unusual," said Karim. "We could show you the remains of so many Arab villages covered by pine forests." Pushing the dead pine needles off of the press, Karim added that, for Palestinians in Israel, pine trees had come to symbolize loss and exile, just as olive groves represented Palestinian rootedness and community.

Suddenly, Hasna, Afif's wife, called out, "There's ilsaineh (cowslip)!" and put us to work gathering the leaves to be stuffed with meat and rice for a meal later. As we picked the cowslip, my friends pointed out other plants, occasionally urging me to take a taste. Karim found a viridian shoot of fennel sprouting near a gurgling stream. He divided its flower in half, consuming his share and encouraging me to try mine. Its bright, licorice flavor startled me. Karim smiled at my delighted reaction. "We are having a wonderful Land Day, aren't we?" "Yes," I reminded him, " but we did miss the sole political event of this year's Land Day." "What are you talking about?" he countered in a tone of mock anger. "We are out here seeing and touching and loving the land and its fruits. This is the best way to remember our Palestine!"

The Limits of Resistance

It seemed unusual that these young people in their thirties and forties, who had lived their entire lives in the urban setting of Nazareth, who had never worked the land or depended upon it for their sustenance, and whose fathers had been employees of the British Petroleum plant and labor union members in Haifa -- not farmers -- before 1948, knew so much about the culinary and medicinal uses of plants. But the land, the trees and the fruits of the forests and meadows meant much more to my friends than mere botanical specimens or ingredients for traditional recipes. They were powerful and vital symbols of a communal identity, experience and history. Sharing the fruits of the land with loved ones was a way of communing with the past, with the refugees who had fled, with the Palestine that had virtually been erased. Visiting destroyed villages and gathering their orphaned fruits was a way of reaffirming a communal identity denied by state discourse, laws and policies.

Our Land Day outing taught Afif's small children concrete lessons about Palestine, its loss and people. The tour of Saffuriyya had imparted a subtle message: the land, the people, the traditions and memories are all interconnected. Although the name of the state is now Israel, as far as the people of Nazareth were concerned, the name of the land is still Palestine. For the children and the adults, the land has become a rich source of symbols, a repository for collective memory and a balm for the psychological pressures resulting from political exclusion and domination.