PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 94

general). I was pregnant with my third child. They
were with me when the situation between Israel and
Egypt became dangerously tense. 15 Within a few weeks
the Israeli aerial bombardment reached us. 16
Our street pretty quickly became deserted, the resi-
dents fleeing to Amman; only two families stayed, the
13 other houses were empty. Our neighbours, with
their nine children, could not find a car big enough to
take them all together to Jordan. My doctor said to me:
‘Why don’t you take your children and go and find
shelter in Amman or in the countryside?’
‘I am not going anywhere,’ I replied.
I was not going to run away like we did in 1948!
And in any case, I was not afraid.
I was eight months pregnant when a bomb fell in
the garden. The next morning, the Israelis started going
round all the houses to seize the cars. In this way, rid-
ing in our cars, which had Jordanian number plates,
they could move around unnoticed and enter into West
Bank villages by surprise – to catch all the Arab citizens
whom they considered “suspect” – which they would
not have been able to do with Israeli plates. Having
forced their way into our garden they wanted to open
the garage, but the metal door was stuck: it had been
deformed in one of the explosions. Our car was the
only one on our street not to have been requisitioned.
Our neighbours found theirs a few days or weeks later,
abandoned in the fields. The war did not last long. The
Israelis had bombarded and destroyed the Egyptian air
force at the beginning. There was no fighting.
We had no water or electricity, but the well in the
garden allowed us to survive. All those who had gone
to Amman had a lot of trouble coming back. But the
Israelis did not control everything. My brother-in-law,
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Memories of 1948
for example, managed to cross back secretly over the
Jordan River through a spot that was not guarded.
Three weeks later, the contractions began, but the
curfew meant we could not go out. My husband was
only able to drive me to the clinic in Beit Hanina once
the curfew was lifted at four o’clock in the morning. I
gave birth to my daughter one hour later, on June 29,
the day on which Israel declared that Jerusalem was
“unified” under its flag. 17 I cried a lot that day.
Life began to get organized under occupation. We
were surprised suddenly to have access to Haifa, Jaffa,
Qisarya (or Caeseria) and even to Tiberias without a
pass. But that did not last long. Very soon, restrictions
began to be imposed at the same time as settlements
began to spread. Moving, building, importing… noth-
ing could be done any more without a permit from the
Israeli administrative authorities. Little by little we felt
as if we were being strangled.
Some time later, a special identity document was
issued to the residents of East Jerusalem. 18 Even though
I was born in Jerusalem, this document was denied
me: I was considered to be a West Bank inhabitant (I
had a Jordanian passport dating from the time when
the West Bank was part of Jordan, between 1948 and
1967) because I lived in Ramallah. That made travel-
ling very complicated.
In the 1970s, we visited England. Israel, which
did not recognize our Jordanian passports, gave us a
travel pass. That document stated that our nationality
was Jordanian. At the airport in London, the customs
officer did not understand: an Israeli pass and Jorda-
nian nationality? He looked at us dubiously for a long
time. Then, resigned, he wrote “uncertain” in the box
for “nationality”.