The Nakba, of which the Palestinian people have had a very bitter
experience, occurred as a result of external political developments
that took the majority of Palestinians by surprise: the growing
Jewish immigration to Palestine at the end of the 19th century and
the British Mandate over Palestine, which sounded the alarm bell
for the Palestinians, since the British had promised the Jews a
homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The
Palestinians became aware that a catastrophe had befallen them:
Here was their land under the control of a foreign power that
encouraged Jews to take possession of it, giving them rights at the
expense of the indigenous people who, in addition, discovered that
these new immigrants were importing weapons via the port of Jaffa.
The feeling grew among the Palestinian population that a plot was
afoot to take over the country by force, threatening their
aspiration for independence, pulling thus the rug from under their
feet.
Consequently, the Nakba did not start in 1947 with the partition of
Palestine between Jews and Palestinians, nor in 1948 with the
establishment of the Jewish state on Palestinian land and the
expulsion of a great part of the Palestinian inhabitants of the
Galilee, the coastal areas and the Naqab (Negev). The roots of the
Nakba go back as early as the turn of the century. Because of that,
resistance against the manifestations of the Nakba also started
around that date, closely shadowed by folk literature which
faithfully recorded every event and every battle, as well as the
names and lives of every martyr, including the most intricate
details.1 Indeed, Palestinian folk songs have recorded the events
of the Nakba and the resistance with the expertness and exactness
of a historian, and so did folk tales, myths and sayings. And just
as these songs and tales recorded the names and biographies of
their national heroes and glorified their deeds, they also recorded
the names of traitors, collaborators and spies.
A Hero in Prose and Verse
An example is the epic that records the personal tale of Abu
Ikbari. The work is divided into two parts: one recounts the life
story of the hero in prose; the second complements it and is in
verse. Through the two parts, we are acquainted with Abu Ikbari,
the freedom fighter from the village of Beita in the Nablus
district. We learn how he escaped from prison to fight the British
Mandatory authorities. The piece contains certain dramatic elements
where one of the prisoners takes on the role of a spy. He says that
he escaped from prison and would like to join the resistance. He
performs his role to perfection and leads Abu Ikbari into an ambush
set by the British forces. As a result, Abu Ikbari is martyred. The
epic describes the event in minute detail, as well as the ensuing
catastrophe that befell the area as a whole:
They told me on the back of a mule they
brought him;
The town square with him they roamed.2
The line conveys the enormity of the event as viewed by the
Palestinians, and also reveals the British tactics that aimed at
sapping the morale of the people by exposing their hero's body in
the town square in Nablus.
The poem goes on to enumerate the martyr's exploits and
virtues:
I saw Abu Ikbari lying on the palace
ground
Around him the soldiers have erected a battleground.
Alas! The jungle lion, noble and
generous
His body will end up buried in a ravine.
The whole town weeps and glorifies
me;
The men weep and the women lament.
The epic poem "Muhareb Deeb," by the folk poet Al-Jaba'i, describes
the resistance and riots that took place during the 1936 uprising.
Among the characters in the poem figures the Palestinian leader
Abdel Qader Husseini. He goes to Bani Ne'im in Hebron to initiate
peacemaking among the popular leadership. A spy informs the British
of a gathering of revolutionaries in Bani Ne'im. A confrontation
with the British forces ensues and several Palestinian fighters and
figures fall. The incident is detailed in the following
lines:
We went to Bani Ne'im, all of us
One thousand armed men, complete of number.
Twenty-four planes hovered above our
heads
And two hundred tanks around us thundered
And two thousand soldiers flanked our
rear
With cannons and they were carrying guns...
With my own eyes I saw the lion when he
fell
Abu Khleif, O son of nobleness and bounty;
With bayonets upon him they fell
And they refused to desist...
Eighty men that day were martyred
And the wounded, my friend, could not be counted.
Similarly, the martyrdom of Muhammad Jamjum, Ata A-Zeer and Fuad
Hijazi, known as the martyrs of 1929, is described with great
precision. The poem evokes how the martyrs raced to the gallows and
how one of the martyr's mothers called on her son from behind the
prison door and how all Palestine bewailed the fate that befell
these men, and goes on to describe the general strike that was
declared following the event. In spite of the atrocity, and the
gravity of the catastrophe, the people retain their pride, which is
expressed in the ululation of a woman at the moment of
hanging:
The gibbet is your crown,
The shackles your anklet,
Your death for your country is but
glory,
O, you paragon of men.
Five Stages
Students of the Nakba in Palestinian folk literature can clearly
note the distinction between the days of adversity and the days of
exaltation lived by the Palestinian people during the last eighty
years of this century. This form of literature has faithfully
chronicled events and reflected the popular position towards them.
Accordingly, the following stages can be traced:
1. From 1920-1938. The folk poets registered the successive revolts
that took place during this period: the Yaffa/Jaffa revolt, the
revolt of 1929, the prelude to the 1936 revolt and the revolt
itself. Folk literature of this period mirrors the feelings of the
people that were embodied in the rejection of the British Mandate
and Jewish immigration, as well as their call for independence and
their condemnation of the Arab countries for having conspired
against the Palestinian people and for having failed to provide the
necessary help.
2. From 1947-1948. During this period, the features of the Nakba
are clearly delineated. The Israelis had succeeded in kicking the
Palestinians out of their land and homes and, therefore, the period
is characterized by great sorrow manifested by a sizable output of
elegies.
I came to bid you good-bye, my family
hearth
Aching, I wipe my tears with my scarf.
If time grows long and I with my own am
not reunited,
Of weeping my eyes will stream out blood.
3. From 1953-1961. This period saw the growing hopes of the
Palestinian people in achieving liberation, based on the call by
Gamal Abdel Nasser (the Egyptian president of the-then United Arab
Republic) for the liberation of Palestine in words and deeds, and
the direction of Egyptian and Palestinian fedayeen to carry out
operations inside occupied Palestinian land. As a result, the image
of Gamal Abdel Nasser became paradigmatic of the liberator:
The glory of Arabdom for Gamal,
And the disgrace for Nuri Said.
Eden in his seat
Is hit with an arrow in the
jugular.
4. From 1965 to the establishment of the Palestinian National
Authority (PNA) in 1993. During this period, armed struggle became
the slogan as a response to the Nakba. The pursuit of arms and a
confrontation with Israel were the path to follow inside the
homeland, in Arab land and on the diaspora front, as a means of
bringing the plight of the Palestinians to the attention of the
world, as well as to defending their existence and identity. The
Palestinian uprising during this stage was seen as a remedy for the
Nakba as it turned an afflicted people into one conscious of its
distinctive national identity and combative capacity. Admittedly,
the uprising failed to liberate the land through armed struggle,
but it succeeded in achieving Arab and international recognition of
the identity of the Palestinians as an independent entity and with
inalienable rights. Folk literature of this period played a very
prominent role in crystallizing the transformation that took place
among the Palestinians from a life of refuge and dispersion to the
awaited return to the homeland. The freedom fighter and the martyr
were the uncontested symbols of a period where martyrdom was
considered the means for the proclamation of the rights of the
Palestinian people:
She is a freedom fighter and we are all
freedom fighters
We got used to death and to
sacrifice
This is our way and from it we shall not
deviate
And for your sake, O our revolution, we
will die.
The last five years of this stage witnessed a new form of
Palestinian struggle, the Intifada, which started in 1987 and
relied mainly on the use of stones, mostly by Palestinian youth.
This popular uprising called for an end to Israeli occupation of
Palestinian land and for a withdrawal of the Israeli army from the
West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem. This new form of
revolt was also a response to land confiscation, settlement
building and the control over water and natural resources by the
Israelis, practices which the Palestinians viewed as a continuation
of the Nakba. Even during the Intifada, the idea that the
Palestinians had been forsaken by their Arab brethren still
persisted. The output of songs and poems during that period give
expression to that sentiment:
He said speak O history, speak about
them
Whose hands got enamored with the
stone.
Lion cubs, children in the age of
innocence,
They harked to the call of the
homeland.
He said speak O law and speak O
justice
About the lion cub, valiant and
bold,
Forsaken he was by uncle and aunt
And in the arena he was left alone to
fight.
And he called upon the cross and the
crescent3
And he said, Bear witness O dark
nights,
My worries alone I endure.
And bear witness that blood like a
deluge flows
From our aged, our women and
children,
And bear witness to my piercing
cry.
Death becomes desirable and my head is
held high
Life does not please when steeped in
depravity.
5. The establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. This
stage is characterized by the growing perception among the
Palestinian people that the establishment of the PNA and the return
of a few thousand refugees (mostly from the PLO), were a response
to the Nakba. This new development heralded for them the beginning
for their recovering some rights, especially that the dispossessed
had now some form of self-government and independence within the
liberated cities.
The characteristics of this period are reflected in the output of
folk poetry, songs, and in chanting in demonstrations, saluting the
leader, the revolution, and the state. They talk about independence
as though it were already an actuality.
Within Israel
The stages reviewed above in Palestinian folk literature about the
Nakba do not apply in the same way to the reality of the Nakba
among the Palestinians who became Israeli citizens after 1948, nor
to those in the diaspora, due to the difference in experience lived
by these people. Those who remained within the Israeli state after
its establishment were subjected to a period of stringent military
rule and, for them, the Nakba took a variety of forms: loss of
land, confinement within villages, denial of jobs, starvation, the
use of collaborators and spies. After the mid-sixties and the end
of military rule, the struggle of the Palestinians living within
Israel became a fight against discrimination, and a demand for
equality within the State of Israel.
Inside Israel, the role of the collaborator and the spy gained
prominence as they worked with the Israeli authorities to subjugate
their own oppressed people, and were, thus, on the side of the
oppressor. Naturally, Palestinian folk literature there is
characterized by an abundance of songs and poems satirizing and
condemning collaborators:
With Jaber and Awad and Nakhlah
And Salim and the rest of the band
Each waiting for his master
Eshkol to hold out his hand;
Men heaping worries
With the oppressor upon the oppressed
We have to smack at once
The puppets of Levi Eshkol.
However, some texts can be found in folk literature that actually
justify collaborators and their dark deeds. This tragi-comical
attitude stems from the fact that spies and collaborators provided
the Palestinian inhabitants with permits from the Israeli
authorities, allowing them to commute between one village and
another. This, of course, reflects the harshness of the military
rule that prevailed and that denied the Palestinian population
within Israel access to any place, except with permits that only
collaborators could obtain for them. This is what one song says
about a Palestinian spy:
Why do you malign him?
By God, he is good.
He brought permits
For the Triangle4 line
He brought permits.
1. See Nimer Sirhan, The Encyclopedia of Palestinian Folklore
(Amman, 1988) and Our National Songs (Amman, 1968); see also the
series Archives of Palestinian Folklore (Amman, 1988).
2. Palestinian folk poetry and songs are usually rhymed and are
written in colloquial Arabic, and sometimes even in dialect.
3. Muslims and Christians.
4. The Triangle is an area in the northwestern part of Palestine
that stayed within Israel in 1948.
