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2. Remembering Hasib Sabbagh (1920-2010)
- Author:
- Walid Khalidi
- Publication Date:
- 03-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Hasib Sabbagh, who died on 12 January 2010 after a long illness, was arguably the preeminent Palestinian entrepreneur in the business and contracting fields in the post-1948 period. Born to an old and distinguished Greek Catholic family of Safad in Eastern Galilee, Sabbagh established the Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) in 1945 in Haifa with several partners after graduating in engineering from the American University of Beirut. Under his dynamic leadership and with the cooperation of his life-long partner, Said Khoury, the CCC (which Sabbagh reconstituted in Lebanon after the fall of Palestine) evolved from a modest local enterprise into the giant global multinational corporation that it is today. Using the CCC as his base, he began as of the early 1970s to devote his great energy to the service of Palestine, not only through his philanthropic ventures promoting social and educational causes, but also through his behind-the-scenes political mediation and reconciliation efforts. The following reminiscences trace the unusual partnership and friendship between the author, whose orientation was largely academic, and Sabbagh, whose approach reflected his big-business milieu. The two met in 1972 around the time when Sabbagh was embarking on his public service phase. They became fast friends and remained so until Sabbagh's death, joined by their common dedication to Palestine. The memoir includes Sabbagh's own account of his departure from Palestine in 1948 and sheds light on some relatively little known activities of the Palestinian business and academic elite in the post-1967 period. I met Hasib Sabbagh for the first time in 1972 in Beirut, but his name had been familiar to me since the late 1930s when he was a student at the Government Arab College in Jerusalem, whose principal was my father. The principal's residence was just behind the main college building, and I heard his name mentioned while eavesdropping on a faculty meeting held in my father's study. The fact that Hasib was a pupil at the Arab College already says a lot about him. The college was the apex of the Arab, male, public (in the American sense) educational system. Admission to it was based exclusively on merit and the most stringent entrance qualifications. Although a boarding institution, its fees were nominal. Entrants were at the top of their class at the mid-high school level, where the college classes began. Its recruitment network encompassed the entire country, generating the stiffest competition among applicants and tapping the best Arab talent, rural and urban, irrespective of social or financial status. The faculty, graduates of the best British universities, were mostly Arab, and the curriculum was a balanced synthesis of the humanities and the sciences as well as of Arab Islamic culture and the Western classical heritage, both Greek and Latin being taught. . . . Had Palestine not fallen in 1948, the college would have become its national university. In most ways, the Arab College was unique in the Arab world, and possibly in the third world. Its graduates constitute to this day an elite with their own esprit de corps. Between the 1930s and 1972, when our very different paths finally converged, the watershed year in Hasib's life and mine—as for all Palestinians—was, of course, 1948. The events of that year have remained a permanent item on our agenda as, day after day and over the years, Hasib and I “tired the sun with talking and sent it down the sky.” Coaxing his memory, the following is what I have pieced together from Hasib's reminiscences of how he left Haifa, his adopted city, which in his mind was second only to the true capital of Palestine, his hometown Safad. Hasib's Tale When the final Jewish onslaught came on 23 April, Arab morale broke down and there started a panicky flight from the city by land and sea. The British forces escorted convoy after convoy out of town, encouraging the evacuation of Haifa. We lived in the Abbas quarter, and close by was the house of George Mu`ammar, a business partner and an active member of Haifa's National Committee. Mu`ammar was distraught by the flight of Haifa's residents, and I can still see him standing on his balcony, haranguing the crowds surging by below, pleading with them not to leave. When I saw this I ran up to him and shouted: “What on earth are you doing? Leave these people alone! Can't you see that if they stay and get killed, you will be blamed?” He persisted, but I pulled him down and made him stop. I myself had decided to go to Safad, my hometown, which was in the middle of Arab territory and strongly held by us. But with the fighting in eastern and western Galilee at the time, the easiest way to reach Safad was from the north, through south Lebanon, which meant I had first to go to Beirut. Our company had lorries in Haifa, and I invited anybody who wanted to travel to Beirut to climb on board. Soon the lorries were crammed to capacity, and the British escorted us to the Lebanese frontier. We arrived in Beirut on the afternoon of 23 April. There I met Captain Emile Jumay`an, who was with the Transjordanian Arab Legion and an old family friend. I told him I had just come from Haifa, which had fallen, and he asked me what I intended to do. I said I was going to Safad after seeing my brother Habib and my sister Suad, who had just come [to Beirut] from there. He told me not to go, although he was on his way there himself on a mission involving the garrison under the command of the Arab League's military committee based in Damascus. When my brother Habib, who had been sent by the Safad National Committee to get arms and ammunition, heard what Jumay`an had said, he decided to stay behind in Beirut. But my sister Suad, who had come to Beirut on behalf of the Red Crescent to take back medicines and bandages, insisted on completing her mission regardless. After two weeks in Beirut, I set off for Safad myself. But when I reached the border on 9 May, masses of people were coming from the direction of Safad, among them my brother Munir and my sister Suad, who was disheveled, barefooted, and with torn clothing. Safad had fallen, so we returned to Beirut, and, as I contemplated our situation, I decided that what the family most urgently needed was money. We had plenty in Barclays Bank in Haifa, so I made up my mind to return there, and set off by sea from Tyre. The journey was stormy and the boat was packed, with everybody vomiting over everybody else. The boat docked in the harbor near the government hospital on 10 May, five days before the end of the British Mandate. Arriving in the city we saw both British and Haganah forces. The Haganah troops looked at our identity cards and, the Mandate still being in force, allowed us in. I made my way to our house in Abbas. Shops were closed, the streets were empty, and Haganah troops were all over. Our house had not been touched. Soon after my arrival, I went to call on Mu`ammar, who was delighted to see me. He chided me for leaving and tried to convince me to stay: “If you stay behind, you and I can do a lot of business together.” I said I had come only to withdraw money from the bank.
- Political Geography:
- Palestine, Jerusalem, and Lebanon
3. (In)Security and Reconstruction in Post-conflict Nahr al-Barid Refugee Cam
- Author:
- Ismael Sheikh Hassan and Sari Hanafi
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This article examines the intersection of the Lebanese state's post-conflict security policy in Nahr al-Barid refugee camp and the reconstruction of the camp, which was destroyed in a battle between the Lebanese army and the militant group Fatah al-Islam. The significance of the government's security focus derives from its intention to make Nahr al-Barid a “model” for all the other camps in the country. After discussing the Lebanese security context, the characteristics of the pre-conflict camp, the arrival of Fatah al-Islam, and the ensuing battle, the authors focus on the urban planning process for a reconstructed Nahr al-Barid, highlighting both the state's militarization of the process and the local grassroots planning initiative which, in partnership with UNRWA, managed to secure some concessions. Also analyzed is the government plan submitted to donors, which conceives of “governance” as community policing without addressing the status of the Palestinians in Lebanon. IN THE SUMMER OF 2007, the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Barid, the second largest of the fourteen United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) camps in Lebanon, was totally demolished. This was a result of a battle between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist fundamentalist group, predominantly foreign, that had implanted itself in the camp only six months earlier. After its destruction, the camp remained a strict militarized zone, imposing additional hardship on a post-disaster community of refugees struggling to rebuild their lives. Various security-based projects and policies affecting the camp's urban form, governance structure, and legal status that were planned, negotiated, or approved by the Lebanese government signaled a new era in Lebanese-refugee relations. With the events of Nahr al-Barid, the Lebanese state entered the realm of the camp, and security concerns and practices assumed new forms that would potentially affect the future lives of Palestinian refugees in all Lebanon. The camp remains a military zone to this day. More importantly, the Lebanese government's plan to make Nahr al-Barid a security model for the other Palestinian refugee camps in the country brings the issue of security more urgently to the forefront of the debate about Palestinians in Lebanon. Nahr al-Barid also fits into a wider security discussion relating to Palestinians in the host countries in the context of the “war against terror,” with issues relating to the status of camps becoming intertwined with the correlative themes of good governance, refugee rights, human security, and integration for the benefit of international donors and development agencies, even as policies on the ground disregard and sometimes contradict these concepts. This article is based on two years of fieldwork and action research in Nahr al-Barid camp. Our involvement included participation in local community post-conflict initiatives, in-depth interviews with Nahr al-Barid residents and community leaders, and up-close observation of various Palestinian and Lebanese actors in the reconstruction planning process. Our aim is to contribute to the debate on the role of “security” in dictating state policy and actions during and after the battle. The fact that government policies are still in flux makes reflection and debate on these events all the more urgent. CONTEXTUALIZING SECURITY WITHIN PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMPS A variety of themes and discourses at the local, regional, and global level intertwine as a backdrop to a discussion of the heightened security measures for Palestinian refugee camps in general and Nahr al-Barid in particular. One of these is the state's traditional fear of refugees as a potentially threatening and disruptive political force. Ironically, this fear—and the security measures it engenders—is shared by those who produced the refugee problem and the host states that suffered its consequences; indeed, some disturbing parallels have been drawn, mutatis mutandi, between measures against Palestinians enacted by Israel and Arab states in the name of security. Thus, whereas historically the violent conflicts between the Palestinian movement and various Arab regimes were attributed to ideological differences and power struggles, the current situation seems to be heading in new directions. Today, what has become a seemingly universal obsession with security and fighting terror increasingly infiltrates Arab slogans to validate various practices against Palestinian camps and neighborhoods (not to mention against their own citizens). These practices affecting citizens/refugees and cities/camps alike are empowered by largely uncritical international military, financial, and political support for the “war on terror.” As a result, massive urban destruction has been wreaked on densely populated communities with scant consideration for civilian populations, with the suspension of civil liberties and imposition of siege now standard procedures validated by security-based arguments for Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Jenin/Nablus in the West Bank (2002), Lebanon (2006), Nahr al-Barid (2007), Gaza (2008), and Yemen (2009).
- Topic:
- Islam and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon
4. In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp
- Author:
- Adam Ramadan
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- The destruction of Nahr al-Barid camp in Lebanon in 2007 was a disaster for the 35,000 people for whom it had become home. To understand what was lost, this article explores what the refugee camp is and what it does, materially and imaginatively, for its residents. Drawing on the words of ordinary Palestinians from Nahr al-Barid and Rashidiyya camps, it describes how the camps are social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. While the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space that emphasizes displacement and transience, they have also become meaningful places in themselves. Consequently, the loss of Nahr al-Barid and the displacement of its society have been understood as a repetition of the foundational experience of the modern Palestinian nation: the Nakba. IN TRYING TO PORTRAY the disturbed and discontinuous nature of Palestinian existence, Edward Said wrote that Palestinians in exile do not really live, but “linger in nondescript places, neither here nor there.” From this perspective, life in exile is a kind of meaningless purgatory through which Palestinians must pass before the promised future return. Time is privileged over space, and the present comes to be seen as a temporary transition between a meaningful past and a hopeful future. In contrast to Said's claim, I would argue that the refugee camps in which so many Palestinians live are neither meaningless nor nondescript. They may be temporary spaces in which Palestinian refugees await their right to return, but they have nevertheless become imbued with meaning and significance over decades of Palestinian habitation and place making. As I argue in this essay, the meaning and importance of a camp is perhaps never clearer than when the camp is viewed through the prism of loss. Between May and October 2007, a new chapter was written in the story of the Palestinian people. Nahr al-Barid, a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon home to 35,000 people, was totally demolished first by a 104-day military conflict between two non-Palestinian sides, and then through the actions of the victorious Lebanese army: looting, arson, and vandalism. Nahr al-Barid's destruction resumed a sequence of erasure of Palestinian camps in Lebanon dating back over three decades to the destruction of Nabatiyya, Tal al-Za`atar, Dikwaneh, and Jisr al-Basha camps in the early years of the 1975–1990 civil war. The Palestinians of Nahr al-Barid were displaced to Biddawi camp and further afield, staying with friends, relatives, and acquaintances, or sheltering in garages, storerooms, and improvised shelters. With the camp destroyed and the Lebanese army refusing to allow people back, the prospect of a quick return faded into a prolonged and uncertain displacement. In order to understand what, besides buildings and property, was destroyed in Nahr al-Barid, it is necessary to ask what a refugee camp is and—more importantly—what it does, both materially and imaginatively, for its Palestinian residents. In this article, I explore how Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon act as social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. I do this by looking at two camps: the destroyed Nahr al-Barid in the north and the still “thriving” Rashidiyya in the south. Using 128 semistructured, qualitative interviews conducted with residents of the two camps in 2007 and 2008, I show how the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space, which emphasizes displacement and transience, while at the same time becoming meaningful places in themselves. In these interviews, I asked people about life in the camp, the advantages and disadvantages of living there, what the camp means to them, and prospects for the future. Rashidiyya and Nahr al-Barid are quite different places politically, economically, and socially, but my intention here is not a straight comparison between the two. Rather, I have juxtaposed opinions and quotations from residents of the two camps: the residents of Rashidiyya talking of what they have, those of Nahr al-Barid talking of what they have lost. My aim was to understand what the camps mean and do for Palestinian refugees living a marginalized existence in Lebanon. THE PRESENT AS TRANSIENT A refugee camp can be defined as a temporary humanitarian space, usually set up by international humanitarian agencies and designed to meet the basic human needs of displaced people, including shelter, protection, and short-term relief. Palestinian refugee camps have these basic functions, and Palestinians receive relief, welfare, and social services provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Palestinian political factions, and various Palestinian and international NGOs, charities, and other groups. In the course of six decades, however, the camps have developed into seemingly permanent features of the landscapes of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza. Over the years, the inhabitants themselves replaced their tents first with corrugated iron and then with brick and concrete, and the camps became like small cities. As the built environment was assembled into something more permanent, the slow accumulation of experiences and memories, births and deaths, built up a sense of place and meaning. Alongside the networks of formal institutional support, myriad informal social relations among camp individuals and families formed channels through which help and support are given and received. As much as the material fabric of buildings and streets, these relations between people and institutions constitute the space of the camp, creating a place of refuge from the bewildering disorientation and insecurity of exile.
- Political Geography:
- Arabia and Lebanon
5. Hoffman: My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century
- Author:
- Khaled Furani
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- In telling the story of Taha Muhammad Ali, Adina Hoffman captures with remarkable sensitivity the sadness, hilarity, mysteries, absurdities, and absences that have made up the life of an extracanonical Palestinian poet, whose reputation in English surpasses his reputation in the Arab world. Born in 1931, Taha, as Hoffman refers to him, hails from the vanquished village of Saffuriyya and for decades sold trinkets to Christian pilgrims, only a few kilometers from his obliterated birthplace, in Nazareth, where he and his family made their home after a brief refuge in Lebanon.
- Political Geography:
- Palestine and Lebanon
6. Hovsepian: The War on Lebanon: A Reader
- Author:
- Amer Mohsen
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- The War on Lebanon: A Reader, edited by Nubar Hovsepian; foreword by Rashid Khalidi. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2008. xxxiii + 399 pages. Notes on contributors top. 405. Index top. 422. $20.00 paper.
- Political Geography:
- Lebanon
7. Remembering Shafiq al-Hout (1932-2009)
- Author:
- Rashid Khalidi
- Publication Date:
- 09-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Shafiq al-Hout was one of the original founders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, a member of its Executive Committee in 1966–68 and 1991–93, the long-time PLO representative in Lebanon, a prolific and talented writer and journalist, and an orator with rare gifts. He was born in Jaffa to a Palestinian family that originated in Lebanon, but lived most of his life in Beirut. Shafiq al-Hout never returned to Palestine after his family was forced to flee Jaffa for Beirut by boat in April 1948, but he always yearned for a return with dignity. He was deeply marked by the cosmopolitanism for which those two seaside cities are known.
- Political Geography:
- Lebanon
8. Speaking Palestinian: An Interview with Rosemary Sayigh
- Author:
- Mayssun Soukarieh
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This interview is part of a longer conversation that independent researcher Mayssun Soukarieh conducted with Rosemary Sayigh in Beirut during the summer of 2008. Sayigh, an anthropologist, oral historian, and researcher, was born in Birmingham in the United Kingdom and moved to Beirut in 1953, where she married the Palestinian economist Yusif Sayigh. She earned her master's degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1970 and was awarded a PhD from Hull University in Yorkshire in 1994. Since coming to Beirut fifty-six years ago, Sayigh has dedicated her life to writing and advocating for the Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere. She is the author of two groundbreaking books: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People's History (Zed Books, 1979) and Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (Zed Books, 1993). Although these conversations focused on Sayigh's scholarly work rather than her personal history, it became clear that the two are inextricably linked.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, America, Palestine, and Lebanon
9. What Rosemary Saw: Reflections on Palestinian Women as Tellers of the Palestinian Present
- Author:
- Penny Johnson
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Referencing the "stereotypes of self" identified by Rosemary Sayigh in the life stories of Palestinian camp women in Lebanon who had lived through the Palestinian resistance, the author focuses on the narratives of two women in Ramallah's Am'ari refugee camp since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada to reflect on the Palestinian present. Though the women-and their goals and struggles-could not be more different, their narratives reveal significant shifts in self-representation that reflect both the impact of post-Oslo political realities and the new (unattainable) aspirations fueled by satellite television images and Ramallah caf´e culture. The narratives also reflect, in very different ways, the national crisis, the impotence of Palestinian political groups and institutions, and the erosion of solidarities
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon
10. From Nationalist to Economic Subject: Emergent Economic Networks among Shatila's Women
- Author:
- Diana Allan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This article revisits Rosemary Sayigh's theory of "culture as resistance" and considers how primordial attachments of kin and village, and by extension nation, in Shatila camp are being reconfigured by deepening poverty and provisionality. Shifting analytical attention away from the discursive continuities of nationalism toward the contingencies of everyday material practice in its local environment, the article examines how dynamically evolving networks of solidarity are reconstituting traditional structures of kinship and political belonging, broadly conceived, and producing new forms of agency and economic subjectivity for camp women.
- Topic:
- Security and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Lebanon