Anaheed Al-Harden - Palestinians in Syria (2016)

Speaker 1: With the ongoing civil war in Syria leaving scars among its communities, a new book looks at how the memory of war can impact generations of survivors. The book is called Palestinians in Syria and it examines the memory of the 1948 Palestinian war among those who sought refuge in Syria. More than 700,000 Palestinians are estimated to have fled or been expelled from their homes during the conflict. The mass exodus has become a significant moment in Palestinian cultural memory. Those who fled it call it Nabca, which can be translated as catastrophe. Dr. Anahid Al-Harden spoke about the Nabca with generations of survivors in Syria for this new book. She joins me on the line now. Anahid, how many of those who fled during the war of 1948 actually ended up settling in Syria?

Anahid Al-Harden: First, thank you very much for having me. It's estimated that up to 100,000 people left the north of Palestine, what became the state of Israel. Well, they were mostly expelled and arrived in Syria. So on the eve of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the community had become something like half a million people, so from two to three Perut. formed up to two to three percent of the Syrian population.

Speaker 1: And what was life like for that first generation of refugees who found their home in Syria?

Anahid Al-Harden: The first generation of Palestinian refugees in Syria, like most people who would become refugees as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel, It was a similar story across the different states where Palestinians found themselves scattered. So Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and also within Palestine, but in the territories that came under Egyptian-Judean jurisdiction. People went from having homes to having nothing overnight, having land to having nothing overnight, having a country to becoming stateless overnight. So really one of immense hardships. living in tent camps. Also, that first winter of 49 was a particularly harsh winter. So in Syria, many people who were living in the part of Syria called the Golan Heights, which is today under Israeli rule, were in a significantly colder environment. A lot of people died in open-air tents. It was pretty bad, I think. Nothing to talk about the poverty as well. And this is really a story that's across the board for all Palestinians in terms of the day-to-day lives that they were subjected to after becoming kind of refugees, you know, overnight, if you like.

Speaker 1: And what was it exactly before you, when you started on this journey with this book, what were you hoping to discover about the memory of that war? Um...

Anahid Al-Harden: I mean, first of all, I just want to say something before I respond to your question, because when you first began asking me, you mentioned that it was a war, and now again you're saying it's a war. I mean, if you refer to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Palestine as a war, I think you're already playing, you're already accepting a certain narrative, which is the narrative of Israel establishing the state and the five or six or seven Arab states declaring a war. That was the official phase of the establishment of the State of Israel. It's only one aspect of it. Actually, it's more accurate, I think, to refer to it as a mass dispossession of people and uprooting, because it wasn't a war, if we define a war as one between states and so forth. You had a Zionist movement establishing its state and forcibly removing the major part of Palestinian society for fifth. So a lot of people experienced that in that way. So that's on that issue. Now, in terms of what I was hoping to discover... I went there with preconceptions about the importance of 1948 Palestinian national identity, Palestinian history, collective memory. But it was interesting because when I was there, I was also there on the 60th anniversary of the Nexe, I really discovered that how people remember the signifier, this very important signifier of the national past, was actually not in a way that necessarily confirmed its nationalist significations are important. The work of memory is messy. So what was happening was interesting. It really challenged a lot of my own preconceptions, if you like.

Speaker 1: And what did you discover about how that memory evolved over the generations?

Anahid Al-Harden: Yeah, I mean, it was interesting because one of the main issues that came across to me was that You know, 1948 as a catastrophe, as a Nekbe, as a Palestinian Nekbe, as establishment of the State of Israel, as a dispossession of the Palestinians, wasn't necessarily the way this event was understood through time for seven decades. So one of the first ways, one of the ways in which the Nekbe was first articulated and understood was in relation to it being a catastrophe to the project of pan-Arab liberation. So, you know, there were these Arab nationalists after 1948 talking about the establishment of the State of Israel as something that is, you know, a colonial state, an imperialist project that dealt a blow to Arab liberation. And it was really only with the defeat of Arab nationalism and that kind of liberation project that the Nakba transforms for various reasons. and eventually emerges in the guise that we today understand, which is the Nakba as a Palestinian catastrophe, the establishment of the state, the destruction of Palestine. And the way people related to that was in terms of, yeah, its new signification. So the Nakba has become very important after 1993, which is the Palestinian-Israeli Accords, during which the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel, in exchange for limited autonomy, parts of Palestine occupied in 1967, and it relegated many important Palestinian concerns, like the right of return of the refugees expelled in 1948, to final status negotiations. So as a result, refugee activists kind of mobilized Nakba memories in their community, giving it a central place. and importance in terms of their own communities. And so people were relating to that in terms of what's going on in the community. So that's one aspect. That's the second aspect. So the first aspect in relation to intellectual discourses over time, but also community mobilization practices. Another aspect, of course, is in relation to social memory. So it was interesting how you had people who survived 1948 recollect everything 1948 deprived them of, right? So they recollected the lost homeland and so forth, and how this is what actually was transmitted across generations rather than, you know, memories of the Negev itself. And I reckon that this has something to do with traumatic, you know, how people experience traumatic events and how they recollect these events. I mean, that was one aspect. And then the other, you know, the second and third generation were more engaging in Nakba narratives that were circulating in their communities. So either through activist mobilization practices, through, you know, evoking Nakba memories to context the Palestinian, the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, its transformation after the Oslo Accords and so forth. So yeah, it was kind of multi-layered and historical and contingent, as one would expect when examining social memories.

Speaker 1: Does that social memory, do you find that it has a particular sort of a change depending on the country where it is? I mean, did the Palestinian community in Syria have their own particular version of remembering that event?

Anahid Al-Harden: I mean, I think yes and no. No, because Palestinians everywhere were expelled. Most Palestinians were expelled in 1948. So they would all relate to it in terms of, okay, you know, it's something that my parents experienced in 1948, and this is why I'm still stateless 30 generations later, and I can't exercise my right of return. But at the same time, yes, it was different in Syria because the Palestinian refugee community in Syria in particular was unique compared to other Palestinian refugee communities in other Arab countries in relation to the rights that it was granted. Since it came to Syria, it was gradually granted rights that really gave them rights on par with Syrian citizens. So they could go to public schools. They could go to public universities. They could work in the public sector and the private sector. They could own property. They also had to perform military service. I mean, they still do. So these things really set them apart from other Palestinian refugee communities. They made them a very socially and economically integrated community, one that did not, until at least 2011, experience the kind of violence and repeated violence and dispossession that's been inflicted on other Palestinian communities, either by the State of Israel or by Arab states. So in that way, yes, it was unique. Their memories were not invoked from this constant need to... to remember the past because of one's ongoing displacement, violence and dispossession, really. So yes and no, in a way.

Speaker 1: How has the Palestinian community been affected by the current civil war in Syria?

Anahid Al-Harden: I mean, the Palestinians in Syria today have, of course, like all communities in Syria, been affected by the war, but they have been particularly hard hit because I think they were kind of... They were, in a way, their refugee camps because they were integrated and they were part of the Syrian surrounding environment and so forth. They became a battleground between the Syrian regime and its Palestinian factions, as well as the armed opposition and its allies. And in 2012, the major Palestinian refugee camp, That was a suburb of Damascus. I mean, it wasn't really a camp. It was an urban neighborhood of maybe one million people, of which 100,000 were Palestinians. They had become a minority in this quarter over the years. But the point being is that this area, a third of the Palestinians in Syria lived there. And with the Syrian regime bombardment of the area and the exodus of most of its people, I think the war has dispossessed and impacted Syria. the major part of the Palestinian refugee community, because they also lived in Damascus and the rural Damascus areas. So once the war arrived there, right, between, yeah, so they were pretty much pushed into the war. And I'm talking now on a people level, not on a kind of their leadership level. So, you know, in terms of the leadership you've had, from the beginning there was attempted neutrality, but then you had clearly certain factions aligning with the Syrian regime and certain factions saying, no, we are with the revolution at the time, and then they left Syria. And yeah, so pretty much I think the political leadership, if you like, of the community is split. But this has reflected extremely badly on the welfare of the major part of Palestinian Syrians today.

Speaker 1: And now, just to finish up, I understand you're going to be launching this book. You did a PhD in Trinity College here in Dublin, would I be correct in saying that? And you're returning there to launch the book tomorrow. That's Thursday, or sorry, today, actually. Sorry, Thursday, 20th of October. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Anahid Al-Harden: Yes. Yes, so it's true. I did live here for four years. I was a PhD student in Trinity, so I'm very happy to be back. And yes, we have... Trinity and Academics for Palestine have organized a book talk this evening in which I'll be talking about my book and about some of the main issues and arguments and findings. So yeah, I'm very excited to be doing that. And I'll also be touching about, you know, not just talking about the Nakba and memories of the Nakba, but also trying to cover really what has happened in terms of the transformation and the meanings of 1948 in light of the Syrian war.