Category: Arab

Alvin Josephy’s been gone for twenty years now, but his words are still with us, many still ringing in my head. Alvin said in many ways that the Reservation System, and how it evolved with land takeovers in broken and revised treaties and with the Allotment Act, was brutal and unjust. But—he said—it allowed at least some Indian tribes to stay attached to some ancestral lands. In fact, I think he would be pleasantly surprised by tribal pushbacks on land and land usage in the last 20 years. He’d like the story of the Yuroks in California, using California law to extend land holdings, advocating for fish, plants, and condors. (Alvin wrote about Condors, but that’s another story.)

Today’s story is the news videos from Gaza, the pictures of seas of people on the road to their homeland in North Gaza, some in cars and pickups piled high, others with donkey pulled carts, still others pushing prams and pulling wagons while walking. Most are walking, one a small boy carrying a full-grown cat! We’re told that the sea of people might be 400,000, not all, to be sure, of the million and a half who once called North Gaza home, but a sizable chunk of them.

When interviewed, they allowed as how their homes are probably no more, reduced to rubble, but the place is still home. They greeted each other, relatives and friends they hadn’t seen for a year, with tears and hugs, and more than one told the camera that this is “home.”

President Trump didn’t understand that when he suggested that Gazans be moved to Jordan and Egypt; the Israelis who think that this whole bloody war will result in the takeover of Gaza with new Jewish settlements don’t understand. People who marvel at the continuing presence of Hamas don’t understand. My guess is that American Indians do.

It’s ironic and tragic that early Zionists looked to the Euro-American takeover of Tribal lands as a model for their ambitions in Palestine. It’s tragic that lines drawn on a map by conquering European powers at the end of the World War I and the resulting British mandate and occupation played out so unfairly for the Arab Christians, Druze, and Muslims who lived there. They had lived for centuries as separate but neighbor nations under Ottoman rule that was called “Millet.” Millet means “people,” and each people governing itself in most matters was the way of the Ottoman Turks when they ruled well.

Oliver McTernan, Catholic priest-turned-conflict negotiator, appeared on Amanpour and Company to say that Gazans wanted their land, no matter what the condition, and held out hope that groups like his could facilitate return and rebuilding, including rebuilding relationships among minority groups and political facations within Gaza.

It’s a dream, but a good dream. And Israelis are key. It is key that Israelis who have all along promoted peace and cohabitation or two states step up. It is important that Israelis recognize that their own founding as a nation owed to the work of a “terrorist” organization, Irgun, and that they were able to absorb Irgun into the body politic. And Israelis must realize that they have now become a pariah nation in the eyes of many. Any peace built on the power they exerted—with massive American aid—and that they are still exercising in Lebanon and now the West Bank, will be a fragile peace, doubted by the world. And it invites the quiet rebuilding of another terrorist force that their actions over the last year have visibly grown.

My friend Steve Kliewer of the Lostine Presbyterian Church in Lostine, visited the West Bank in December. Alvin’s daughter and my good friend, Diane Josephy Peavey, traveled to the Holy Land numerous times, and had it in her mind to write something about the parallels between American Indians and Palestinians. She traveled with Christian Arab guides, but saw the conditions for all Palestinians and lamented them in many conversations over the years. Write them down now, I want to tell her.

And tell me when, Steve and Diane. I am not up to much physical work, but I feel almost compelled to be a witness to this huge global event that will play out among peoples and nations for decades to come.

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phot from Al Jazeera