PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 56

Sharing a well-deserved meal
1.  The building of the West Bank wall started
in 2002. It is intended to stretch over 700 km,
enclosing about 50 settlements, in which about
80% of settlers live, and thus forming a territo-
rial whole with Israel. In 2004, the Internation-
al Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the construction
of the wall to be illegal and demanded it be
demolished, but the State of Israel has never
complied with this ruling.
2. A dunum is a unit of measurement dating
from Ottoman times, equal to 919.3 m 2 , but
during the British mandate in Palestine (1917–
1948), the metric dunum, measuring 1000 m 2 ,
was adopted.
3. Salman Abu Sitta, Atlas of Palestine 1948,
Palestine Land Society, London, 2004.
4.  The Palestinians gave the name “48” to the
area that became Israel in 1948. This inversion
of the space-time order shows the extent to
which that year played havoc with the world of
the Palestinians.
5.  On April 9, 1948, according to figures from
the Red Cross, 254 children, women and el-
derly people were massacred by Zionist groups
in this Palestinian village near Jerusalem. See
54
Memories of 1948
Henry Laurens, in La question de la Pales-
tine, vol. III, 1947–1967, L’Accomplissement
des prophéties, Paris, 2007, Fayard, p. 75. The
massacre, which took place while Palestine was
still under British administration, played an
important psychological role in the exodus of
the Palestinians. The official Zionist authorities
denied any responsibility.
6.  Unwra (United Nations Relief and Works
Agency) for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East was established by resolution 302 of the
UN in December 1949 (it began operations in
May 1950). This agency answered the needs of
refugees in Palestine regarding health, educa-
tion, humanitarian aid and social services in
the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Leb-
anon and Syria. The Palestinians are the only
refugees in the world that do not depend on the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refu-
gees (Unhcr).
7.  They were later granted special refugee sta-
tus by Unrwa.
8. The government of Menachem Begin
(1977–1983) followed by those of Yitzhak
Shamir (1983–1984 and 1986–1992).
9. Amira Haas, “Broken bones and broken
hopes”, Haaretz, November 4, 2005. The Israe-
li journalist writes about Yitzhak Rabin’s policy
at that time.
10.  Israel refuses to call it the West Bank, and
considers it to be the cradle of Judaism, with
reference to the Bible. Its leaders see it as a dis-
puted territory and have administered it since
1967, while the international community con-
siders it as occupied territory.
11. When Kuwait was invaded by Iraq in
1990, the PLO (and Jordan) supported Sadd-
am Hussein and as a consequence, most Gulf
countries boycotted the Palestinians. Some
200,000 of them left Kuwait. Since they had
left before 1967, Suleyman’s brothers did not
have the right of return to Palestine and most
of them went to Jordan where they had fam-
ily. See the article by Géraldine Chatelard,
“Jordan: A Refugee Haven”, in Migration In-
formation Source (the online journal of the Mi-
gration Policy Institute, MPI) August 31, 2010.
12. The Hebrew name “Shalom Akhshave”
means “Peace Now”.