"They carried a memory in their head" w/ Dr. Salman Abu Sitta

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: People became refugees in the middle of the night. They escaped with their own life, carrying their children, and they had nothing except the clothes on their back and one more thing, their memory. Their memory. They carried the memory in their head. In the refugee camps, they had it. And so the oral history became the only instrument which we have to document our life.

Kareem: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Makdesi Street podcast. And as usual, I'm very happy to welcome my brother, Seri.

Seri: Hello, everyone.

Kareem: And Osama. Hello, everyone. Both of whom are, of course, in California. We are extremely happy to have with us for this episode Dr. Salman Abusita, who I'll introduce in a minute, but I want to... First, again, remind everybody, as I've been told by producer Sina, who we, of course, thank as well, to kindly subscribe to the podcast. And if you'd be so kind as to put a five-star rating, that would be amazing. and this is also available usually available on the youtube channel as well and spotify and wherever else this this goes down so welcome everybody so we're delighted to have dr salman abu sita with us today he's the founder and president of the palestine land society which is a fantastic resource for anybody to please look up the website it's a fantastic resource the palestine land society which is based in London and dedicated to the documentation of Palestine's land and its people. He's the author of six books on Palestine, including the Atlas of Palestine 1917 to 1966, both in English and Arabic. and the Atlas of the Return Journey, as well as over 300 papers and articles on the Palestinian refugees, right of return, and the history of the Nakban Palestinian human rights situation. He's credited, of course, with extensive documentation. This is one of the things he's perhaps most known for, is this incredible collection of documents and mapping of Palestine's land and people. And I'm happy to say that we at the American University of Beirut, where I'm based, we're very happy to have the Abu Sutta Center for Palestine Land Studies Center, where I think most or at least much of this documentation is being transferred to and will provide an incredible resource for students, for scholars, for activists, and for those who have anything to do with Palestine, the right of return, and the issues of land and documents and mapping. And I, of course, encourage everybody to log into the AUB center, the Salman Abu Sattar Center at AUB for further information on this. He's also, I read, and it's really an amazing memoir called Mapping My Return, which of course describes his life in Palestine and his struggle as a refugee and the success that he's had and the journey that he's had to have from his home. to, in fact, Gaza, which we'll hear about very soon, and on to studies and life in Egypt and the UK and Kuwait and other places. And Dr. Salman, I wanted to start, if I may, with just quoting an article that you wrote on January 4th. And you say, quote, I could have been one of those who broke through the fence on October 7th had I been much younger and was still living in the concentration camp called the Gaza Strip. And I'm wondering if we could use that to just, if you could tell us a little bit about your story, your life story, as you've recounted in your memoir, but sort of to talk about this journey you've had from Beersheba to Gaza and beyond.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Thank you, Kareem. And hello, Sari and Osama. Your uncle, Edward Said, of course, figured very much in my life. especially in later years, in the 90s onwards. So I am happy for more than one reason to be talking to you today. Let me start by how I became a refugee, because this is actually the source of the article you referred to, Karim, just now. My family is called Abu Sitta family, and our area is called Al-Ma'in, Al-Ma'in, sometimes called Al-Ma'in Abu Sitta. It's 10 kilometers away south or east of Khan Yunis. Administratively, it belongs to Beersheba district, although physically it is very close to Gaza district. I'm not here saying it is Gaza Strip, it's Gaza district, which, of course, Gaza Strip is only a small part of Gaza district. And we lived on our land, which is 60,000 dunams. We planted wheat and barley and fruits and all that. And we were, as it were, masters of our own destiny. If I may say so, my family had a long history of fighting for Palestine. My father was his uncle in 1915. He went with his uncle to fight the British in Suez Canal in 1915. And my father's uncle was killed in that battle, and my father brought him back. In 1921, my father was one of the people who met Churchill when he came to investigate the situation after Herbert Samuel has arrived. And we, my brother Abdullah was a key figure in the revolt of 1936 to 1939. And with his group, he actually kicked the British out of Beersheba district for one year. And they set up a national Palestinian government for one year from November 1938 to 1939. And then, of course, Second World War, it was a bit quiet. But then the Fedayeen movement started in Gaza. And my brother Abdullah was a key figure in that. As for me, I was in a boarding school in Beersheba in April 1948. And on that day, the headmaster came to, called us students there and said, the Jews are committing massacres in the scene. I cannot protect you here. Go back to your families. So as a 10-year-old boy and with two other boys, I had to walk 40 kilometers from Beersheba to Al-Ma'in, which is near Khan Yunis. In that journey, I was wondering who these Jews are. I never saw a Jew before. And I was wondering, the elders were telling me that they are mostly in Jaffa and West Jerusalem. And I was wondering who these people are. Why do they come from so many different foreign countries to destroy our life? We have not done anything to them. I don't know anything about them. The elders told me they come from different countries. They speak a babel of languages and they are determined to take our country. And when I arrived home from boarding school, six weeks later, they attacked us literally in our village. On the 14th of May, 1948, old woman of the family woke up at night and said, she screamed, the Jews are coming, the Jews are coming. And we looked at night, we saw 48 lights in 24, later we know, 24 armored vehicles, they attacked us. And women and children, and I was one of them, we ran away to a creek valley, not very far, we hid there. And they destroyed everything. They destroyed the school, which my father built in 1920. They destroyed the flour mill and the bayara. and they destroyed everything. In the morning when it was cooled down, later in the morning about noon, they left and we saw the debris of the destruction and the people who were killed were collected and buried and so on. And so it was very strange to me that actually ignited my question again, who are these people? I was determined to know who they are and name pictures and what kind of platoon and regimen they are. And I did that in the following years. Now, my brothers at the time were studying at Cairo University. And so when my school was demolished and we had this situation, my father said to my brothers, take your brother with you to Cairo, let him study there, continue his studies. So I went to Cairo. And there is a story here how we walked with many hundreds of people who are crossing the border on foot. And finally, we caught a train to Cairo. And in Cairo, we are considered to be under custody. And so we were put in a convicted prisoner's train to Cairo. We arrived in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning. with about 100 or more of convicted criminals. We were escorted under guard, you see. We were kept in a police station till the morning. When the morning came, my brother and my cousin, Hamid, who had big role later on in the PLO, their papers were found and they found that they were confirmed to be university students and they were allowed in. I was not allowed in because I was not, of course, a university student. So my brother has to send a declaration. He's responsible for my food and education and so on. And so anyway, I got that. And I stayed 10 years in Cairo. I just finished the last year of elementary school. Then I went to Saudi, a secondary school, which was quite a good school. Then I finished my engineering study at the Cairo University in 1959. After a brief spell, I got a Bridge Council scholarship to London. After a little bit of working as a trainee, I entered University College London and I did my PhD in space structures and engineering. Space structures, that means they are not ordinary building in three dimensions. Anyway, my stay in London was an eye-opener for me. Here I come to the country which destroyed my life. And here around me are the people who actually, since Balfour, destroyed our life, I would say even until today. It was amazing for me how it could be in this country which did all that. One of the things which happened, we had a card called aliens card. We had to renew our residence. So I went to renew my residence card. When I took my card back after he stamped it, I looked inadvertently at the section which says nationality. It says uncertain, uncertain. so i went back to the clerk and said what do you mean i'm palestinian how could you write here uncertain i mean you and your people you i imagined that he was his age at 40 or something he could have been working the in the british administration of palestinian government so it's not the story that was 1961 i said how come i'm palestinian my father's Palestinian my grandfather And he looked kind enough and said, son, it's only a formality. That was a big shock in my life, really a big shock. The British who should know more than anybody else to say I am uncertain. And it's their doing, actually. But then I took my time to investigate the British documents about Palestine. The first one I went to is, Kareem, please stop me if you want to change the subject. I went to Rural Geographical Society and I said, I would like to see maps of Palestine. He said, what? I said, maps of Palestine. He said, we don't have Palestine. I said, are you sure? It's Rural Geographical Society. All the explorer and these geographers have all their works there. And I became actually a member of the Rural Geographical Society. I said, show me a map of the world. He showed me it. He showed me the Middle East map. I said, this is Palestine. And he says, ah, you mean Israel. And I found that they have changed the name of all the maps in the Royal Geographical Society, scratched it, and just wrote Israel. But I befriended the library and I copied so many documents and so many maps from from the Geographical Society. And it was for me a discovery. I mean, here is my country, which I knew only as a child. I traced everything. where people went, all the history and geography. And then I found a survey called Survey of Western Palestine, which the British sent in 1871 to 1877. They called it Survey of Western Palestine. And I found these documents, fascinating documents about my country in the 19th century. Later on, I jump now, later on, I had a contract with Palestine Exploration Fund. to let me see the original papers which the British surveyors took with them from Palestine in 1877. And I opened boxes which was closed for 150 years. I had to pay, of course, for all that. And from that, I worked on the original survey papers they brought in. And later on in 2020, I produced the Atlas of Palestine 1871-1877 on the basis of this original British survey with the following corrections. Number one, they have errors in the names, so we corrected the names. And I added the Arabic names as well. Secondly, they had errors of location because they didn't have satellites. Now we have GIS system. So I corrected the location of the villages, which were off the mark by half kilometer. And then there are names and information not mentioned by the printed survey in 1887. So I added 4,000 names not mentioned. And the total would be 13,000 names. Anyway, this is just one of the result of that. But my stay in England was really an eye opener, absolutely in so many ways. And as you may know, you are all both researchers, the record of Palestine in England is not on one building, it's probably 20 or 30 buildings. Could be in, of course, the British archives, the British Library and the Office of the Commonwealth and all that. But this triggered, of course, after so many years, what to do with this data. And now we have new tools. It's not only to document Palestine landed people. Because of the new technology, you can actually forecast the future simply by saying, first, we have to implement 194, right of return. Then you have to see what kind of future Palestine will be. With the new technology, you can determine population patterns, political patterns, and all that. But as far as the land is concerned, which is our land, We have documented it, I think, very well. In the atlas I produced in 2010, I have listed 50,000 names. Now, what's the importance of names? Of course, there are 1,200 towns and villages, which we all know, but the rest of this is really the history of the people in their country. The names they have created, they carve these names out of their life. like Zatunat al-Hajj Ali, like Bait al-Basha, like Wadi al-Hamam, like this. 50,000 names. And out of these, we listed them in different categories. In addition to 1,200 names, names of towns and villages. There are 14,000 names of historical and religious names. Palestine, of course, is the reservoir of history. Every village has about three or four names related to either religious sites or historical sites, and they transcend time. For example, we have the name Al-Khudr. Al-Khudr is the place where people of Palestine worshipped before they became Muslims. And when they became Muslims, they actually revered the same place. For example, in my own village land, we had Sheikh Nooran. And I used to see that Sheikh Nooran is a dome or building. I remember as a child, women go there to seek blessing when they are pregnant. And by research, we find that this Sheikh Nooran was originally the seat of Saint Hilarion in the fourth century. And when I visited one time, I looked through the broken window, the Israelis broke it so much, and then I saw a Byzantine cross. inside sheikh nuran which we revealed always as a a muslim shrine which means to me that people never left the place they worship in the same area with him dr salman can i can i just interrupt for one minute because you there's so much fascinating detail that that there's a few things that if you don't mind we can ask you

Kareem: Just to elaborate on a couple of things. For example, I know that we were having a discussion earlier about the questions of narration, re-narration, and your experience in the UK where you described so well this question of erasure. And obviously, your life work then became about re-narrating and re-literally, not just sort of in stories, but in actual physical documentation, the GIS, the land deeds, all of this kind of documentation, which you've been doing for 50 years or more. So I know my brothers, we were having this discussion about narration, re-narration. Sari has written a lot about that question of narration. And maybe Osama can talk about the archives as well. So I don't know, Sari, you want to start?

Osama: So, Dr. Salman, thank you for that extraordinary, I mean, what an introduction to your life story and the extraordinary sense of alienation, on the one hand, and the bizarre reality of, which reflects in a sense, all of us who live now in the United States, as well as in the UK, as well as in Europe, to live in the countries and the societies that did so much to destroy Palestine. And the question you raise about the archives is something that is absolutely essential and fascinating because maybe you could explain to our listeners and our viewers this point about having to rely on the very colonial archive that helped shape and destroy, that helped, first of all, design this project to begin with. And then you go back and you use the same archive to actually begin a process of re-narration, preservation and eventually liberation. So that's one question. And the second question is this thing where Israeli historians like Benny Morris, you know, absolutely racist historians who always dismiss Palestinian oral history. So the very testimony you gave us earlier now about your experience, about growing up, about going to Cairo, before you put it in a memoir, you have this in your heart, in your mind, in your memory. How do you respond and how do you help our listeners and viewers respond to this outrageous Israeli claim that oral histories of Palestinians It doesn't matter. It doesn't count because it's not written down. And so I'm just trying to figure out how you think about oral history as opposed to the actual archive you're building at a time when Israel is erasing so many of the archives in Gaza, for example.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Thank you, Osama. There are two aspects to this. One is the actual record of Palestine, and second one is the oral history of Palestine. Let me speak about the first one. What struck me when I looked at the libraries, later on I went to Germany and I saw libraries and many other countries, of course, the United Nations Library and Library of Congress, and in many countries I collected these documents. What struck me is we did not have any of these documents. Well, that's an obvious reason. I mean, I'm living in this place and this is my neighbor and the village next door. And my father used to go to Jerusalem a lot. And we know about that. And so we had no need to document that because our life was based on it. And who was keen to document that? The people who had a plan to take our country. And as you know, in the 19th century, Europe returned to the Holy Land again in the prelude to colonize it again. They came with the people who are, you know, who made survey maps and people who came for religious reasons and there were spies and Even the Mediterranean was conveyed. So the documentation, the physical documentation about Palestine, I found it only in the colonial West, not with us. We did not need to do that. Now, after 1948, we left, we were expelled, as you will know now, it's very well documented, from 560 towns and villages. and record at least 350 war crimes, including 120 massacres and atrocities. So people became refugees in the middle of the night. They escaped with their own life, carrying their children, and they had nothing except the clothes on their back and one more thing, their memory. Their memory. They carried the memory in their head. the refugee camps they had it and so the oral history became the only instrument which we have to document our life in my library in palestine beirut we have about 400 books of memoirs by individual palestinians talking about their life and let us remember one thing if you are an employee of the palestine government On the 15th of May, 1948, and you are, for example, in the Department of Health in Jaffa, you will not go to your office in the morning because you are expelled. Who will go to his office? Your colleague, the Jewish guy, Shlomo. Shlomo arrived to the office in the Department of Health or education or whatever, he will find everything intact. All the records, bank, agriculture, education, health, life, death, and so on. Everything ready for him. He will start his day without any interruption. The only thing missing in the office is the Palestinian who were expelled and became a refugee. So they have inherited or received from us a complete state ready ready state say it ready right and therefore we have to compensate for that the compensation is uh it took many years uh as you probably i'm sure you know the study of this the first 10 years people were very reluctant to take to talk about it And then slowly, especially after 1974, there was a drive to write. And now it is very common, very common. Now, Benny Morris, of course, unlike the other historians, I mean, not unlike some of them, the genuine ones which I respect is Ilan Pepe. He has the temerity to describe all the crimes and massacres in detail and then say it was not planned. It was an accident of war. I mean, imagine someone is meticulous in saying we killed this, we did this and that and that and say all this was an accident. I mean, this is of course now hardly discredited. I made one time a study of the massacres on a GS plan where they are located and which military operation carried out a massacre, and what the name of the regiment, Alexandrouni or Agafati or something, and in which region, and at what date. All these four elements, I related them, and I found that there is a great correlation between uh incidence of massacres where and at what time in order to create one or two massacres in in an area and which resulted in the population of another five or ten neighboring villages so it's absolutely correlated and it can never be uh by by accident as they say and we know today of course that this is false

Osama: So, Dr. Salman, thank you for that incredible sort of recounting of the reality of what's happened to Palestinians in 1948 and the experience of... the Nakba and the reality of the Nakba, as opposed to how Benny Morris and others who document some of these facts then narrate them in the very midst of this way. So I have a question for you about an interview, and then maybe we can move on to UN Resolution 194 and some of the other aspects that Sari and Karim will talk about. But one thing that struck me is that Israeli scholars and politicians often don't hide their racism towards Palestinians. Ehud Barak, for example, and Benny Morris had an infamous interview together in 2002, where Barak says that the Palestinians will eventually die off. The generation of the Nakba will eventually die off. Once they die, there will be very few Salmons. This is the phrase that Ehud Barak said. There'll be very few Salmons who want to return to their birthplace. Then we can finally resolve the question of Palestine on Israeli terms because of the fact that Palestinians will have lost their memory. And so I'm wondering how you respond to that because it seems like your whole work, your whole life work is about refuting this nonsense that somehow Palestinians will forget once the generation of the Nakba moves on. In other words, as if Palestinians don't have memory and don't have history. So what would your response be to that? And then we can move on to maybe UN Resolution 194.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Well, this is the false imagination of the aggressor who want people to forget his crime and what he wants the victim to forget his crime. And therefore he would escape punishment and the remedy of his crime. And this of course is patently false. As you can see from Gaza, even before Gaza last September in Philadelphia, there was a conference called Palestine rights. It was attended by 1,500 young people. None of them actually has the remote personal experience of Palestine, only from reading or from parents. And when you see their reaction, I personally feel very optimistic they will not forget it. In fact, they are in a way better than we were because they have more knowledge. They have more documentation. They are now more eloquent. They can present their case. They can translate their feelings and their rights into legal documents, into social documents, into artistic documents. Now, it's far from that. We were one and a half million people in 1948. and the 900,000 became refugees. Now we are 14 million out of which probably eight or nine are refugees because people have to mention this. People always mention the people registered. which is five and a half or six million. But there are two million not registered for historical reasons. Anyway, so it's wishful thinking. In fact, the opposite is true. When I give some lectures in America, probably one third of the audience are young American Jews who tell me We have been treated, we are taught Zionist education, and now we know these crimes are happening and we are against it. One of them who corresponds with me regularly is Peter Bernard, who is very well known among young American Jews. And so it's for them they are waking up. we have not slept we have not forgotten again i would like to say the young people not only remember but they are better than us when we did not know english very much and we did not have legal language and media language and they do they do samad it's so it's so striking just listening to your to your you know what you're talking about now

Seri: to think about the extent to which among all the different levels of the conflict between the Palestinian people and Zionism, clearly one of the arenas for struggle is that of knowledge and archives and obviously representation in the written sense, in the textual sense, or in the oral sense for that matter. For one thing, the development of an archive like the one you're working on in geographical terms, all of the historical archives, like Walid Khalidi's book, All That Remains, and similar projects. There's an amazing website that I'm sure you know called Palestine Remembered. where you can go in and click on particular villages depopulated in 1948. And it's amazing because you get images of the village. You get the history taken sometimes from Khalidi or other places. And then which Zionist battalion or brigade or whatever is the one that depopulated the place. And then you can also click and get If they've been able to track down survivors from the Nakba who were from that village, you can get their oral testimony, either in video or in oral form. It's really, it's extraordinary. So we have all these archives that we're developing and forms of sort of historical and geographical and spatial reconstruction. And of course, one big project that the Zionists have always had is the destruction, not only of our actual land, but also of our archives. And famously, in 1982, when they finally got into Beirut in 1982, they went and they captured the PLO archives, right? In Ramallah, they've repeatedly captured whatever archives the PLO has or had. One of the things they did in Gaza in this war is to capture various archives. So they're always keen. It's like they recognize, I think, the extent to which this terrain of the archive is a site of struggle, because just as we try to reconstruct our archives or develop a counter archive of some kind, They're very keen always to seize archives, as you said, about that story about the Haganah, whoever it is, guy going to his office in Jaffa after 1948. He has access to the archive. The Palestinian person no longer does. So this war over archives is incredible. I want just to ask you to step back and ask you to think about why. how you configure the Israeli war on archives specifically, like this capturing of archives, the ones in Beirut, the ones in Ramallah, the ones in Gaza. How do you think of that as part of their larger project and this larger kind of struggle over memory and historical records and so forth? And then I have another question I'd like to ask you after that.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: There are two things which Zionism took from us. our land and our history, our land means our geography, and our history, which is our memory. In terms of land, by now we have full documentation about Palestine. We also know the ownership of individual people to a very large extent. We know very closely, correctly actually, the village land area of each village of 1,200. So in terms of land, we have full documentation now, collected from various sources, but really, to a degree, extremely reliable. Now, when the people, about the people, they tried to create their archives, their history. As you quite rightly mentioned, there is Palestine, remember? There are... Other people who do, of course, Walid Al Khalidi is one, and Mustafa Dabbagh, who wrote in Arabic, about 12 volumes in Arabic. But what is interesting in the archives here, or actually record of people's life in Palestine, is the books written by the village people themselves. As I said, there are 400, about 400 village books written by people themselves from the village. Of course, they have slight exaggeration of the influence of one family or another, but collectively, they are very useful. Now, there is a new program collected in much more detail called Palestine Encyclopedia, PALQRA, P-A-L-Q-U-R-A. So, as you quite rightly said, the Israelis wanted to wipe out this, and I think they have failed miserably in this. What we want to use that data is to build the future. And we are using this extensively in something, if you allow me to speak about it, is our annual competition of the reconstruction of destroyed villages. Because we use the existing data to rebuild Palestine. We have an annual competition. Now we are in the eighth year. Every year we invite about 40 or 50 students at the graduating class of architecture from about 10 to 12 universities, mostly in Palestine and Jordan, Lebanon. And we give them data about each village. And we ask these young architects to reconstruct it according to new population figures and so on. And they do at the moment. We have 270 students, now architects, who actually passed through this. It's amazing. We have British architects jury on that. And the jury are fascinated about how these young people reconstructed their villages in great detail and with great futuristic look. And let me give you one example. One village called Sohmata in the Gulf, The winners of the first prize were young architects from Gaza who have never been to Al-Jalil, Galilee, and they got the first prize. When we finished the announcement of the awards, we took this team of young architects and made them meet the people of Trahmata, and they explained their design to them. And the people of Suhmata said, where is Madafat Abu Ali? Where is this? And how did you do that? And the younger people of Suhmata in Lebanese camps in Lebanon were also asking questions. So I honestly have no fear that the young people lost their contact with the past in Palestine.

Seri: That's amazing. I wanted to ask one quick follow-up, which is, when you look at the other side of the coin here, the counter, the opponent in this contest over land and memory, we look, for example, at the work of Mehron Benvenisti, who has that book about the renaming of places. When you see a work like that, where they're not just capturing archives, as we said, but also literally he explains the process through which they would go to all of the various Palestinian towns and villages or geographical markers and so forth and systematically try to rename them, partly just to get them into Hebrew rather than Arabic, to kind of erase the Arabic from the landscape, and partly also to try to come up with this sort of romanticized what they're trying to pretend is a kind of Old Testament landscape that harks back to 4,000 years ago or whatever. So what do you make of those kinds of attempts by the part of Zionists to rename the landscape, to translate the Arabic landscape of Palestine into this Hebrew medium that harkens back to a time that is obviously narrated in the Hebrew Bible?

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: I read the book by Myron Benvesti so many times, The Sacred Landscape. I read it so many times and I found it very useful for me because he was honest in describing a lot of things and how they tried to change the scenery and the names. This was the motivation for me to recreate our future based on our past. His motive was, of course, very different. One thing I would like to point out, he mentioned, and of course other people mentioned, how they erase the names and put new names. As I said, in our Atlas, we have 50,000 names. A naming committee came on the instruction of Ben-Gurion to wipe out these names and then put new names. Out of 50,000 names, they managed to create 6,800 only. About 10% of our names, and they are all contrived names, like Herzl, Rhodes, or whatever, or Mount Zion, or this and that. They have no relation to reality. In addition to that, there is a bishop, a Palestinian bishop, called Eusebius, in the year 313, in Caesarea, and he wrote a book for pilgrims to Jerusalem, guiding them how to reach there. So he listed the names of villages on their route. And this book was written in Latin, I think, but now it's available 10 years ago in English. we actually recreated an atlas of his names. And you will be surprised to find the names mentioned by Eusebius in 313 are the same names we know today, 17 centuries later, like Rama, like this and that and that. And we put this in a small atlas on that. Now, how can, I mean, you know, Whatever they do, they cannot wipe out this history. And it is recorded by us.

Kareem: Dr. Salman, firstly, the producer Sina is reminding us that the Israelis are building a settlement in the Golan Heights called Trump Heights in honor of Donald Trump. So that tells you we're moving to even better kinds of names. And maybe it's correct because really without the United States, and maybe we're going to talk about that a little bit later, without the U.S., things would be very, very different these days. So I wanted to ask you, you talked very convincingly about the question of land, meaning geography, and the question of memory, meaning history. And I wanted to ask you about this third pillar that obviously is a thread through many of your works, which is people. And in particular, your work on the UN and Resolution 194, for example. And if I may, I want to just quote this, the kind of key part of the UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which resolves that, quote, and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss or damage of property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible. So this is one of the very, very early UN General Assembly resolutions. And of course, this embodies the idea of the right of return or compensation of one form or the other. And you've written your mapping. So on the one hand, I want to ask you about this history of this Resolution 194. And on the other hand, I want to connect it to perhaps what you're most well known for, which are these maps that then tell us, that explain to us, for those that say, this is fantasy, this is just some kind of idea, you want to talk about right of return, but that's not possible, and you're dreaming, and it's kind of silly, except for some romantic idealistic notion, but that you have mapped in unbelievably painfully minute ways with facts, how it is that people, at least a large chunk of people, can simply pick up and almost literally walk back to where they are, and that those lands that they were kicked out of were, in fact, the lands are there. They've been destroyed, but the land itself is there, so it wouldn't even require what one might think, this kind of large displacement of Zionists that came afterwards and settled. So can you can you talk a little bit about this connection with the 194 and in particular this idea of the practical possibilities of return?

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Thank you. Thank you, Kareem. 194 is an integral part of the United Nations legal history. It was passed by the United Nations on 11 December 1948, one day after passing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And the right of return or resolution 194 emphasizes the right of return is not inventing any new fact. It's simply emphasizing a basic fact that everybody must be allowed to return. Article 13, every person is allowed to return to his home. Now, in terms of United Nations, it's the longest standing resolution in its history. So far, it has been affirmed 135 times. And only because of the intransigence and the opposition of the Western colonial countries, it was not applied. But for Palestinians, it is sacred in every heart. It's legal, as you can see. And the question remains, is it feasible or not? So I started in a study whether it is feasible or not, because Some European friends of mine say, we agree with you, but now are you going to create a Jewish Nakba? How could you do that? How could people return without a great disaster for others? And I think this answer by them is racist. If people take your home and kick you out and kill half of your family and you say, I want my home back. And they say to you, how could you? There are people who killed you are in your home. And are you going to kick them out? Of course, this is a racist concept. But from a practical point of view, let us answer that. We did a detailed study, as you mentioned, village by village, where their land, their land area, and who actually lives on, who are the Israelis who live in their land. This is in part mentioned in new Atlas called Return Journey Atlas, where we have the map of Palestine and villages. On top of that, the existing settlements and roads which the Israelis built. So anyone today can see the road Israelis built leading to their village and they know what it is. When we examined the population, the Israeli population who live in Palestine 48 or Israel, we even tried to classify them, whether they are Ashkenazis, whether they are Russians, or whether they are Mizrahi Arab Jews, because there is a geographical distribution of that. Surprising result. I arrived at, and Mehran Benvenisti mentioned that in his book, that how could the Palestinians find out that 88% of village sites today are vacant. Are vacant. Why? Because Jews still live in urban areas, slightly larger in the area they lived in during the British Mandate. And they are in the coast. And the absolute majority of them still live there. Our village land is taken by two parties. One, the Kibbutz, and their population is 1% to 2% of population. And the other is the Israeli army is taking over all the land. 88% of Palestine 48, which is Israel today, is vacant, effectively vacant. meaning that the people who use it are the Kibbutz, who are 1% to 2% of the population, and the vast majority of the land is taken by the army. And the Israelis live in only 12% of the area of Israel. In fact, if you take out public areas like gardens and roads, they live in 2.5% of the land. And this area where they concentrate in are very clearly metropolitan Tel Aviv and Jaffa, Haifa and around it, and West Jerusalem. We have found this out by actual calculation of the population who live in each area And now it is confirmed by Israeli survey, they later give the same results like that. In our plan for the return of the refugees, I have suggested that the Jews who are willing to shed Zionism, they can live like any normal citizen in our country. And therefore, they can have cultural and religious freedom in three cantons. Canton Tel Aviv, larger Tel Aviv, Canton 2 Haifa, Canton 3 West Jerusalem. This will house about 87% or more of the Jews in Israel today. Therefore, there is no physical problem of housing people who would like to live in Palestine without being Zionists. We have to add one thing more. Let me give you an example. We have in the news the genocide in Gaza today. Who are the people in Gaza? Who are the refugees? They are the original population of 342, sorry, 247 villages in southern and central Palestine. These people, whose land is about 50% of Palestine, are pushed into 1% of Palestine, which is Gaza Strip. Now, I made a study, which I can send to you, of who are the settlers taking their land, part of which, of course, are so-called hostages. You know how many live in the land of 2 million Palestinians? 150,000. I can list them for you. Each about 212 kibbutz. And the total of all these settlers in southern Palestine is less than the population of one Rafah camp, only one camp in Gaza Strip. So there, the population in Gaza, density of population is 8,000 persons per kilometer. And what is the population of the settlers who are taking their land? It's only five persons per square kilometer. I am one of them, as I said. My land, where I was born, they built Nareem kibbutz on it, which is two kilometers from the armistice line of Gaza. So if, as I said, if I was younger and in Gaza, I would have crossed the barrier to go to my birthplace. in which settlers in a kibbutz called Nareem. I chased who lives in this kibbutz, Nareem. Turned out to be led by a woman called Adele Rima. She is from the Bronx, and she comes and lives in my home place. And she writes all the time how the Palestinians in Gaza are disturbing her. I mean, the anomaly is unimaginable.

Seri: But that's exactly it. I mean, because, of course, right now at the moment we're talking, the moment we're having this conversation, all of our hearts and all of our minds are on Gaza. And the amazing thing about Gaza is that, I mean, as you're saying now, literally, Because people keep saying, as Karim said in that question a few minutes ago, that the solution to the conflict is so impossible, and how can we think, and you're dreaming, and it's crazy, and all this stuff. But literally, if you would look just at Gaza, just right now, as you're saying, if we could unlock the gates of Gaza until the 80% of the population of Gaza who are refugees, yalla, go home, they could literally, as you're saying, and that's the point about the documentation you're providing, they could literally just walk, they could literally, I mean, that's how they got to Gaza originally was on foot. They could walk back and their lands are there. They could walk and their lands are there and resettle their own land.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Even the Israelis in the kibbutz who are taking their land, and some of them are taking in Gaza now, they would not even feel it. The distance between Gaza Strip and Al Khalil, Hebron, is 30 kilometers. I mean, people can actually walk in there, and they will find nobody or nobody in their way. In the whole, 50%. uh southern part of palestine there are as i said 150 000 settlers only jewish national fund is doing a great effort to bring jews to the south to populate it and they fail to do that so actually if you take the poison out of the snake namely you take zionism out of the minds of the israelis we have no problem we don't even feel where they are they would be living, as I mentioned, almost the same place as they were living in during the British Mandate. with a little expansion. There is even one more that Peter Bernard asked me, what about if they return? What would happen? All right. The majority will find their land vacant and they just will take it over. The problem lies in the cities, Jaffa, Haifa and so on. When a Palestinian returned and find his home is taken by an Israeli. But this problem, even that problem is solved. by the United Nations and the return of the refugees in Bosnia after the Serbian attack on them, the system was created easily. If a Bosnian returned to his home, find a Serbian there and Serbian says, this is my home. What's the answer? The answer is very clear. If the Serbian has taken that house in good faith, I quote, in good faith, meaning that he knows it was not stolen or robbed, then any improvement he made is entitled to compensation for that. And the original owner, the ownership is always vested in the original owner, never lost, no matter what. And if it's done in bad faith, he has to be kicked out. But even in the case when somebody took a Palestinian home in good faith, he's only entitled to the improvement and the refurbishment he made. And probably he could buy it or not buy it or whatever. So even that situation, which applies only to very small number of the population, namely in the cities, Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, and so on. Even that is solvable. So feasibility of return, I challenge anybody to prove otherwise. It is feasible. And Israelis who actually inspect everything we say and do, they never question that. Even Meron Ben-Vist, he said, he mentioned what we did.

Kareem: And Dr. Salman, again, this is incredibly fascinating. And as we were just saying now, the idea of this, it still boggles the mind, this kind of work that you've produced to kind of show that Palestinians, refugees can simply return to their land without causing this mass displacement for the kind of the Zionists and the settlers that have meanwhile kind of taken over these lands. It's quite extraordinary. So we talked about this resolution 194, but I also wanted to ask you about Resolution 302 and this question of creating of UNRWA, which, of course, embodies this and which is now much in the news, of course, especially from the Trump administration onwards. and now continued with the Biden administration. Of course, the Israelis for a very long time have been calling for the dissolution of UNRWA, which, as I say, was created by the General Assembly in 1949. It really starts in 1950. Of course, it's meant to be this relief agency. It's meant to kind of do some relief and then humanitarian services and then eventually some development. So basically, it takes care of the education, the health care and other issues for all the all the Palestinian refugees, which it defines as those that were in Palestine between 1946 and 1948. And that's something that the Israelis have for a very long time been trying to change and to get rid of and to fold under, for example, the UNHCR in order to change the very idea and the status of what a Palestinian refugee is. So it's been quite politicized for a while, and now it seems Israelis and the Americans are seizing this opportunity to try to cast so much basically lies about UNRWA and who's running UNRWA and how UNRWA is run. And of course, we know that effectively it's there because they want to remove the symbol of Palestinian right of return, although that's not what it's mandated to do, obviously. But it has become the sense of this is the international responsibility of the international community towards the Palestinians. And this is something that Palestinians themselves see as a store of this right of return. So I'm wondering, you know, what this fight over UNRWA is all about in your mind and how this kind of connects with this history that you've been talking about and all these refugees that exist and that can walk back to their lands.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: This is a very important question, especially now. let's go back to resolution 194 resolution 194 has three elements first element that the refugees who are wishing of course all of them are wishing to return they can they can they they can return that's number one the second element in 194 that they should be given relief and help until they return The third one is a mechanism was created called United Nations Consolidation Commission of Palestine to arrange for the return. The first one, the return of refugees, Israel refused completely to let them return. The second one, relief for the refugees, Israel welcomed that because And also United States welcomed that. And it became the biggest funder of this. Why? Not out of compassion for the Palestinians, but because they relieve Israel from the responsibility of taking care of the refugees because they caused them to be refugees. So they took that burden off the shoulders of Israel and the United States other Western countries paid the largest share of UNRWA. And that was to help Israel, it was not to help Palestinians. Because Palestinians answer was we want to go back. And this went on for many decades. And in 1953, a new problem arose that the children, the refugees have children born. And so there was a question are these refugees the answer came completely correctly and the children born to refugees are refugees because the child will be born at home if his father was not a refugee and that solves that problem but in the 90s especially after oslo israel and the united states tried to renege from that commitment because they wanted to eliminate the only operating part of 194, namely the UNRWA. UNRWA is the only operating element of 194. Let's start by saying the refugees are the only ones who were born in Palestine before 1948. A crazy man, Senator Kirk, in 2012, submitted a resolution to the Congress saying the refugees are not five or six million, they are only 30,000. And of course, that is ridiculed everywhere. You mentioned also UNHCR. They tried to push the responsibility of UNRWA to UNHCR. And in the definition of refugees in 1951, there is a paragraph called 1D, which says anyone under UNHCR care should not be under UNRWA because UNRWA is a separate case. Other refugees are leaving their country. They want to live elsewhere. But the Palestinian refugees want to do the opposite. They are kicked out and they want to return. And so we should watch carefully. If someone says UNHCR or replacing UNRWA by international agencies, the idea is to kill 194. And therefore, UNRWA is an integral part of 194. And United Nations agree to that. And it is not luckily subject to US veto simply because UNRWA is one of the few agencies which are responsible before the General Assembly. They are not responsible for a Security Council or other agency, which means we have a majority in the General Assembly and they can never delete the UNRWA mandate. They can do what they are doing now, cut their funds.

Kareem: So just a quick follow-up on this question of UNRWA. It's fascinating. And this Resolution 194, is there an implied recognition of the Israelis in this resolution? And how does this connect? And I know Osama wanted to kind of also, we were talking about this off-camera before, the idea of the implied recognition or not implied recognition of the Israelis in this resolution.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Sorry, I didn't follow this. Could you repeat, please?

Osama: So in other words, Dr. Salman, sorry, I had some technical issues. But the question is, in terms of UN Resolution 194, if you could explain to our listeners and viewers this point about, is it tied to, I mean, Resolution 194 is about individuals returning to their homes, refugees returning to their homes and properties, as you've explained very, very clearly. And it's, as you said, the oldest UN resolution that has been on the books for decades and decades since December 1948. But does it also, and it's restated every, I guess, every UN cycle, General Assembly cycle, but does it actually imply or does it necessitate the recognition of the State of Israel? Because wasn't it tied to... the UN recognition of Israel. So Israel's entry into the UN was tied to UN Resolution 194. So Israel had to accept UN Resolution 194. But it also means that the Arab states or the refugees, in theory, have to accept the state of Israel. I don't know how that works. Does that make sense as a question or not?

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: No, they are totally different issues. Recognition of a state.

Osama: Exactly. I'm just asking you to elaborate. I'm asking you to elaborate that.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Okay. Recognition of a state is a political act, first of all. It does not necessarily emanate from international law. The basic principle, which is irrevocable, the human rights and any animal rights, And any liberal rights are not negotiable. And the right of return of a person to his home is part of that. It is not subject political agreement or not. The state building, the state recognition is a political act. We know there are so many examples of countries like Czechoslovakia split into a number or new countries coming in. Recognition of a state has nothing to do with that. And what we are saying, I am saying, like many others, saying I want to return to my home. I don't care what political system exists at the time, as long as I have a vote and I have the right to be in my country. To bargain or to make bargain between the right of return and the state is quite immaterial. It has nothing to do that. Besides, a state, if it is Israel, it's based in Zionism and Zionism, first of all, is an apartheid and it cannot exist. And I say in all what I'm writing, I return to my home the Jews who would like to live as my neighbors, they can do so provided they don't adhere to principle of Zionism. And I say now more strongly, Germany is accepted in Europe after it became denazification. All these doctrines, fascism in Italy, Zionism in Israel, and Nazism in In Germany, they could not exist in a normal relations if they continue. So simply, Jews can live in Palestine as they live in London. That's it. They don't really kill English people and take their homes. They live like normal citizens.

Seri: So then, in a way, what you're saying is that as long as the right of return and equality and obviously the end of occupation and the dismantling of apartheid obtain, which is obviously, that's what the BDS call, so the BDS call for the people who don't know it is what I just said. It's the right of return, the end of apartheid, and the dismantling of the apparatus of Israeli occupation of the occupied territories. As long as those things are obtained, In a way, one state or two states or three states or six states, the issue really is the rights. And the political formulation under which one can obtain those rights is sort of a secondary question. Although it seems to me, and this is the last question I'd like to ask, if you don't mind, is don't you think a one-state solution is the most obvious way to resolve to attain all of these objectives, because it would represent the right of return or embody the right of return or enable or allow the right of return. It would obviously involve the dismantling of the vicious apartheid system that Zionism has built since 1948. And obviously, since there's one state, it would entail the dismantling of the regime of occupation that the Israelis have used to subjugate and batter Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, so forth. And it would recognize that there is, in fact, one state now that controls the terrain between the river and the sea, to use that expression. But what we want is not an apartheid state. What we want is a democratic and secular state that treats everybody equally. It seems like that's the obvious way to address all the things we're talking about here.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Well, quite honestly, I don't subscribe to the idea of one state because, again, I say it's a political act intended to create something and eliminating the essential inalienable right of return. Inalienable right of return is not negotiable. A state building is negotiable. And therefore, when you ignore the fundamental right of return, and advance ideas like one state, although it's well-intentioned, it actually reduces the right of return to a lower level or to a lesser degree. And in that, you create minefields, because your people will say, Jews, for example, say, I agree to one state solution, but provided we do this, we do that, we do this. So you move the discussion from an element right to a political discussion, how much they will have in this part of the city or on that country and so on, and what kind of political structure. You convert an element right or human right, which is in element into a political arena. And I really don't subscribe to that. I would say simply, I would like to return to my home in Al-Ma'in, and whatever system to govern me and others, as long as democratic, I don't care what it is.

Osama: Okay, just a quick question, Dr. Salman, if I may follow up on this point. The inalienable right you're talking about also applies to the descendants of the refugees who were expelled in 1948, correct? Correct.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Yes. In 1953, as I mentioned, the Israelis made the point that the refugees should be the ones who are first registered. And the United Nations categorically said refugees and their descendants are refugees. Coming out from the simple, logical thing, the child is born in a refugee camp because he kicked out from Lydda and Rambla. And therefore, he's a refugee. This is an acceptable condition, even in the new LHCR. It's acceptable. So the descendants are refugees as well.

Osama: And the other question I have, if I may, before we turn to Kareem, the other question I have is, Dr. Salman, is this question of, so from what you're saying in terms of, and you may have already covered this when I was off because of my technical issues, but is it also the fact that there is no way a Palestinian leader, for example, whether it was Yasser Arafat, although he never did this, or Abu Mazen or any of the future people who come up as leaders or alleged leaders of the Palestinian movement, they don't have the right to give away the right of return, to give up the right of return, because that's the pressure that Western states often put on. They're always putting this pressure on Palestinians to say, give up the right of return. But you're saying that doesn't matter. That's irrelevant because it is an inalienable right of individuals. individual refugees and their descendants to return to their homes and properties. So it can't be given up as such.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Absolutely, absolutely. No Palestinian leader, no government, foreign or friendly, enemy or friendly, have the right to cancel that because right of return is both individual right for everyone to return. It's also collective right because the same group of people have the right to return. It is entrenched in the international law that it is both individual and collective right. And nobody, It is vested in everyone himself. An individual can drop his right of return, but no leader or no government can drop a right of return. For example, I have the right to return to, let us say, Safad or Nasra or something. I decide not to go. Fine. Even if I decide not to go, I could change my mind after some time. Let me give you a very well-known example. A Greek in United States, he can be American and he decide to return and become Greek citizen again. And so it's the Lebanese in Brazil can do that. So your affinity, your right to return is not a season ticket which expires after some time. It's with you all the time as an individual, as a family and as a people.

Kareem: Dr. Salman, just to wrap up here, What you're saying is so important. And sometimes it crosses these boundaries between those that are saying such as yourself, say, okay, Palestine needs to be liberated. And Palestinians have to, at the most important level, at the primary level, have to have this right of return with or without a one state, no matter what the political solution is, the right of return is sacred. It's something that no politician or state can take away because it's embodied in the people themselves. So that's on the one hand, and that may involve various kinds of struggles, not just political ones, not just diplomatic ones. But on the other hand, everything that you've been talking about and much of your written work that I also appreciate so much is also focused on And essentially on the importance of international law on UN resolutions, whether it's the 194, whether it's UNRWA, whether it's, you know, all these different UN resolutions that have, in a sense, protected the Palestinians from just pure naked power politics. It's something that people can cling on to. And in previous episodes, we've had Richard Falk and Francesca Albanese. who are special rapporteurs for Palestine and have kind of reinforced this idea of the importance of law and rights, even in moments where power politics and just sheer violence seems to outweigh all of this. And there's a deep, deep cynicism of law and saying, you know, what is the point? I mean, at the end of the day, violence is what it's all about, and therefore you need to counter it with violence, and that's the only way to liberate land. So the question is something that always comes to mind is this idea that, and especially in light of, and maybe we can go back to the very first question that I asked you, kind of when we started in that article that you mentioned that in October 7th, you might have been one of these people that would have crossed over. And you wrote this very interesting article about this. What is this relationship between liberation and law? Between holding on to this UN, what seems to be this old, this past somehow, of the UN order of international law, and this new kind of American rule-based thing, which basically you have to do whatever the US defines as rules, you have to follow that, otherwise you're cast aside. And we see this even among the Europeans and others where this notion of international law has been basically thrown out. And the ICJ case now that we've also talked about in previous episode is really exposes this liberal kind of hypocrisy and the sense that Germans and the British and all these who are supposed to be the inheritors of this international liberal orders are the ones that push it the most. And yet when it comes to the question of Palestine, it's been completely thrown away. And so how does one reconcile liberation, the need for liberation, on the one hand, with how can you do that without the UN and without international law and without all these fuzzy things that maybe people are perhaps right to be cynical about?

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Law always leads to liberation. To carry out liberation is another story. But definitely law calls for liberation. And the United Nations resolution are full of this affirmation. The question is that why are we not liberated? Why we did not go back? We did not go back. Because the same Western powers which created Israel in the first place are opposing that. You can just remember the last UN General Assembly meeting, 153 countries voted for a ceasefire and some abstained, and only the United States and a few islands somewhere So we, and I have to emphasize this, we are against the same colonial structure which created Balfour. and who created Ben-Gurion. It is working against us. I would say even further than that, if you go in history, this structure, Western structure, is the one which came back to the Holy Land, Palestine, in the 19th century in preparation for taking it over again, taking Egypt in 1882 and Alembi taking Palestine in 1917. The same clique, the same structure is the one working against us. Now, it's actual situation of power against that. Now, the answer to that, we have the answer. It's a modest answer, but very effective answer. The persistence, the refusal to accept that for 27,000 days. We are refusing to accept the status quo. We are refusing to be refugees thrown in the four corners of the earth. And Gaza is a very good example, a living example. People will not go anywhere. They would rather live under the rubble of their homes, although refugee camps, but it's in Palestine. So here you have the equation. Struggle for liberation, persistence, steadfastness, never giving up your case, never giving up your right against the Western powers, which are very strong. There will be, I'm sure, a time in which they crumble because we did not crumble and will not crumble as evidenced by the history of 75 years. It's a long struggle and we pay very heavy price for that. But what gives me as an 85-year-old person, which is a Nakba, is that this spirit of young people is still alive. Now, it's a long term. the principle which every child, Palestinian child should remember, I do not give up. It's a heavy price, but it's the only way to redeem our humanity and our place in our country.

Kareem: Dr. Salman, that's a fantastic way to end this with actually this note of hope. And I really can't think of a better way to think about, especially events over the past weeks, which have been, on the one hand, incredibly depressing at the human level for all these people suffering in Gaza in particular, but now increasing also in the West Bank and other areas. And as the politicians and diplomats start going on about silly things of two-state solutions and they want to revive and post-Hamas and all this kind of thing, But then someone like yourself and others, we'd like to think we're also contributing to this as well, this notion of a world that's going to be much better than what all these diplomats and all these politicians are proposing, something that is based on equity, based on justice, based on laws that are accepted by the vast majority of the world and based on a certain ethical, moral return centered around people, and in particular refugees, but all those that need to return to their lands. and live in a way in which their dignity is respected and which they're able to kind of develop. What's amazing about this discussion is that this sounds, even as I say it, it sounds so pie in the sky. On the other hand, your work has contributed so much fundamentally to showing that it's not a pie in the sky, that this is real things that involve struggle, It involves struggle on the ground. It involves documentation. It involves the documents, the mapping, the persistence, and this notion of always going back and remembering what the objective is. And it's not the political solution, but it's a solution for people and for the Palestinians in particular. And this moment, it's so, so important that we always think about that. So thank you so much for this incredible discussion and for your... for these very hopeful moments that you provide in these dark, dark days.

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: Let me just say one sentence. Let me say one sentence. The contrast is very clear. If you see two million people in Gaza, 100,000 of them either killed or injured, and they refuse to leave, even though it is a refugee camp, but it's in Palestine. Compare that, please, with Ben-Gurion Airport and see how many people are flying out of Israel and seeking to find another nationality and picking up the passport they have hidden in their pocket. So this is the contrast between the two people.

Kareem: Fantastic. Thank you so much. And on behalf of Sari and Osama, we really appreciate all your work. And thanks again for this discussion.

Osama: Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Salman. Thank you. You're an inspiration to the younger generations and all your work. Thank you.

Seri: And to the older generations, too.

Kareem: Indeed. Okay, guys. Well, I thought that was an amazing interview with Dr. Salman Abusidda. And I thought in particular, I really enjoyed just hearing about his own childhood and how his flight from Beersheba to Gaza as a refugee and then onwards to Egypt and to the UK and then to Kuwait and all the difficulties along the way and trying to kind of being denied, especially his story in England, where he's denied this idea of being a Palestinian after 1948, and then basically spending his life trying to reconstruct and re-narrate village by village, land by land, this kind of reconstructing this Palestine that he knew and that should be moving forward and this idea that 80 or 90% of all those who are refugees can just pick up and return. So denying this notion that if the right of return requires the expulsion of those that settled or the expulsion of throwing Jews into the sea and all of this kind of nonsense, he's shown meticulously that you can just pick up and walk back or the vast majority can to lands that are not being used. So I thought those were really interesting. What do you think?

Osama: Yeah, I agree completely. I think that was fascinating. Also, the idea of this man who is a survivor of the Nakba, who is also putting his faith in the new generation. He said that several times in answer to this question about how do we go forward? How do we proceed? And his absolute faith in the idea that this project of reclaiming, re-narrating, history, reclaiming geography, reclaiming narrative is actually an ongoing project that he really believes is going to succeed. And there's something incredibly powerful and moving, it seems to me, in what he's doing, in the work, his entire life story, his life work, his project. It's extraordinary, truly extraordinary.

Seri: I think that in the context of what's happening in Gaza, that the solution is in so many ways is actually much more straightforward than we're often led to believe. In other words, if literally if the gates of Gaza were unlocked, the 80% of the people who live in Gaza who are refugees from other parts of Southwestern Palestine could literally just walk home. That's a very, very powerful thought. And it's something that no amount of Israeli obfuscation can successfully cover up. It really is that simple. The question of Palestine is often represented to be this thorny, intractable thing that goes back generations or goes back, sometimes they say centuries or millennia or whatever. In fact, it's very simple. This is a conflict about keeping people from going home and the conflict to be ended largely by allowing people to go home. And in the case of Gaza in particular, which is where 2 million Palestinians are, they would literally be able to walk home. And Dr. Abbasid does work is the best single body of evidence demonstrating that meticulously, carefully, in full documentation. It's extraordinary to have talked to him.

Kareem: I definitely encourage anybody who's listening who hasn't already done so to go to his website and look up the map because you can download the map digitally and just explore that and see what he means. He has all sorts of lectures, all sorts of data, but the maps in particular, just taking these maps and looking at them, it's an extraordinary exercise. And those that come through Beirut or that want to check the website of the, at AUB, the current, the Abu Sitta, what's it called, the Palestine Land Studies Center, where he's sending, where he has sent and is sending, I think, the remaining boxes of all of his documents. that can be looked at online, I think, and certainly in person for those that are in Beirut. I think these are resources that should be checked out for sure. But I think there's one issue, Sari, I think that I had disagreed with you on one issue towards the end when we were talking about where he was, I think, making a very, very important distinction between the kind of legal and moral right of Palestinians being able to return, separated from any kind of political solution. So whether it's two state, one state, five states, six states, it doesn't really matter. That should be totally separate track than the idea that every Palestinian has a right to return. according to the UN Resolution 194. And you were proposing that a one-state solution would necessarily include that. And I'm not sure that's necessarily true.

Seri: No, I didn't say necessarily. I didn't say necessarily. I said it seems to me that the most obvious way to address all of the issues in the Palestinian people's conflict with Zionism is... is to end the occupation, obviously of the 67 territories, to end the apartheid in the 48 territories and to allow the right of return. And the one state solution is the most straightforward way to address all of those. Because yes, in theory, you could allow, you could dismantle the occupation and apartheid and allow the refugees the right of return in a two state solution. But that just seems infinitely more complicated to me than just recognizing that there is one state that controls this territory as an apartheid regime. And it needs to be transformed into a democratic and secular state, which is perfectly commensurate with allowing what is already anyway, the legally sanctified right of return of the refugees and their descendants. So there's no contradiction there. It doesn't need to be a contradiction. I mean, you're right that potentially there could be one state that doesn't allow that. But obviously, that's not what I believe. And I believe in a one state that that does, that rests on the legal rights of the Palestinian people. That is the legal right not to face genocide in Gaza, not to face apartheid in the parts of Palestine taken in 1948, not to face draconian military occupation in the parts of Palestine taken in 67, and the right of return. And so it seems to me to be the most straightforward way to address all these.

Osama: And the point is that he also just emphasized for all our listeners, Kenny, and by the way, we should put a link to all the websites you're addressing in the description below. But also just the idea of, to piggyback on what Sadi is saying, I think the idea of one state or two states, the issue really is how he explained to, I hope our listeners appreciated how he explained Resolution 194, how it applies to every single individual who was expelled from Palestine in in 1948. And so the idea of this right that doesn't, that doesn't, and you said this Kerim too, that doesn't sort of expire with time. It's not, there's no date, no matter. So geopolitics may prevent and has prevented, of course, the implementation of UN resolution 194, which he is, which Dr. Abusid reminded us was passed. I think he said right the day after the, the, the, the, the adoption of the UN declaration of human rights. Wasn't it? He said the day after or something like this. It's quite incredible. And just the idea that geopolitics has prevented the implementation of UN Resolution 194, the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. But that doesn't mean the right goes away and nobody has a right to discard that right. Correct? It's up to each individual refugee to either accept compensation or insist.

Kareem: Sorry, but you did mention this. I mean, if a country, if a Palestinian state, and that was the point of Oslo, was to recognize Oslo was about dividing up Palestinians and basically also about saying we collectively, at least as a Palestinian state or a Palestinian government or a Palestinian authority, basically deny, we accept that refugees will no longer be able to return. That was what was on the table. And that's what they expect to be on the table if they resuscitate, which they're going to do, which they're trying to do, the Palestinian Authority. So what's important now is to... I mean, that's why I think it's centrally important to... So the question I have is, should we even be having these debates about one state or two state, or should we simply ignore that and simply say that the right of return... You know, removal of the apartheid state. These are the goals that we should be driving for rather than proposing political solutions that can certainly exclude questions of right of return. and just focus on a more liberalized entity, which already exists. One state already does exist de facto from across all these territories that are occupied. So that does already exist. But what I find interesting as well is the debate about UNRWA, because it's true about the rights, but what UNRWA does, and it's also a very important point. Remember, the Palestine refugees are the only ones that have a separate UN agency and everyone else is under the UNHCR. One of the key points about this, and one of the reasons that the Israelis and more recently the Americans have been so adamantly trying to push out UNRWA in various forms, and we see it today in this very cruel defunding of UNRWA in the middle of this genocidal war, is to try to say those descendants of the original refugees would no longer count as refugees potentially. So that's what's important. So UNRWA counts anybody that was, and their descendants, as refugees. And so therefore, they also have this right of return in principle. So that this is this is a hugely important kind of connection to you have this resolution 194 about the return and you also have UNRWA, which defines what a refugee is, and which is extremely important. That's why it shouldn't be folded into UNHCR. That's why this battle is so important.

Seri: Yeah, I would just remind you, by the way, that the BDS call, as I was saying to Dr. Oboseta, the BDS call, it says explicitly, it's agnostic as to one state or two states. It says what matters is the dismantling of apartheid, the end of occupation, and the right of return. How that's to be accomplished, that's to be determined. These are the principles that matter in any just and peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Osama: Yeah, I'd like to also just maybe, Kenny and Sally, we can wrap on this point, the idea of, who this man is, this individual who's a survivor of the Nakba. And the idea that, you know, just think about how survivors of other genocides and other sort of ethnic cleansing operations don't, you know, usually are venerated and respected in the West. And here, of course, you have this individual who has survived and, you know, has spent his entire life reconstituting the history and the geography that was snatched away in 1948. And yet he's, you know, in the West, there's no space for these Palestinian survivors. They're always, they're ignored, they're vilified, they're denied. It's something quite poignant about the fact of having him, you know, just again, recognizing just how much work he has done and what he represents in terms of generation, a generation of survivors.

Seri: Yeah, and how close that generation is to I mean, how close the Nakba is. I mean, there we are, we're talking to somebody who was there. The Nakba didn't happen 7,000 years ago. It happened within, obviously within, easily within living memory.

Kareem: And connecting in the end, I mean, to wrap it, it's also connecting what we've been focusing on in these episodes we've been having, which is on Gaza. And, you know, him being a refugee from Gaza, became a refugee, put into Gaza. And now we see and sort of reminded that the vast majority of the population in Gaza are refugees from 1948 and afterwards. And at the same time, they are being mass displaced. And potentially, if you leave it to the Israelis and perhaps the Americans, they become refugees again to Egypt or to some other kinds of locations. So this notion of return is... perhaps even more important than it's ever been. And focusing on that rather than on what the US, what the Europeans now are trying to resuscitate, and to try to strong arm a little bit Netanyahu, then that's the kind of the big concession they're trying to say is let's resuscitate, bring back discussions of the day after with two states and let's bring back the Palestinian Authority and ensure that all the kind of Oslo stuff comes back into vogue, at least just as a way to say, well, you know, okay, we'll let them do what they want in Gaza, but look how good we are, and we don't really want the genocide of the Palestinians because we want to constitute some kind of state there. And this is very, very dangerous. I think if you listen to Abu Sittin, I think it's a reminder that this kind of talk, as we know, as we've been discussing a lot, is quite dangerous. This geopolitics, the politics, the coming, the post-Hamas, post-Gaza war that everybody's talking about, this is something we need to be very, very careful about. Okay, guys, so who's coming up in the next couple of weeks?

Osama: Well, we have Dima Khalidi coming up soon, hopefully, with Palestine Legal, and she'll help us explain what's going on in terms of the lawfare and all the academic freedom and freedom of speech issues in America.

Seri: And we have Hanan Asheri coming up in an episode shortly after that. And it's important for us to say that next week's episode, because of scheduling issues, will be out on Thursday rather than Tuesday next week. But we look forward to talking to everybody then.

Kareem: Okay, fantastic. See you guys. Take care.

Osama: Bye.

Kareem: Bye.