Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > June > 13 > Entry
Khirbet al-lawz was a Palestinian village.
Today, Khirbet al-lawz is a ruin of toppled stone walls overgrown with carob and almond trees.
Abu Ghazi Shakla was born there, and he returned the other day with his son, Ghazi Shakla, and about 30 Israelis, mostly Jews, who erected signs that read, in Arabic, Hebrew and English: “Khirbet al-lawz was a Palestinian village,” and the date its occupants became refugees: June 7, 1948.
The hillside village, once home to 450 people, located outside Jerusalem, is one of more than 400 Palestinian villages that Israel destroyed during and after the 1948 war.
The Israeli group, Zochrot — remembering, in Hebrew — has erected signs marking 25 former Palestinian villages in Israel in an effort to weave together the Palestinian and Israeli narratives of 1948 — the birth of the modern state of Israel and the birth of Palestinian refugee population.
Most of those signs have later been removed anonymously, organizers said.
Abu Ghazi, who is 73 or 74 years old, picked his way through the tumbled stones and found the home where he was born. The group erected a sign that said: “Hassan ‘Ata Allah’s home.” Hassan was Abu Ghazi’s father.
Most of the families from Khirbet al-lawz, which means ruin of almonds in Arabic, live in the West Bank or Jordan. Abu Ghazi lives in a refugee camp in the West Bank and his son married a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship. They live nearby and visit the village ruins — public land designated with hiking trails — with their seven children about every month.
“We sit and drink coffee and eat seeds,” Ghazi said. “Three weeks ago, I smoked nargileh here,” referring to the flavored tobacco water pipe. “They don’t want us to remember anything here, so they destroyed everything.”
“One day we will return. This is our land. We must return,” Ghazi told me, repeating a mantra that has become so often repeated — and not fulfilled — over 60 years it is by now hackneyed and nearly stripped of meaning.
Abu Ghazi was mostly silent during the tour of his former home. One of the organizers of the outing held a microphone to his face and asked him if he thought he would ever return.
Hunched with age, standing where the front door had been, his eyes were fixed straight ahead, without seeming to focus.
“Inshallah,” he said, barely audible. God willing.
Comments
By Malek
June 17, 2008 1:09 PM | Link to this
Im Malek Zatar,My grand father Ali Mohammad Zatar grow up in Kirbet al lawz,he lived the 18 years of his life.Im proud to Palestnian Blood running through my vains.I remmeber one day, he started to tell me about how beautiful his village was,then tears started to come down his eyes.He told ” Malek they stole our land and left us with nothing”.One Day Kirbet al-lawz will be free and the palestian flag will raise high like it use to be. May Allah Bless you Palestine.I love you and I will never ever forget that one day my home land was occuiped by a group of terrorists.
Salam Alukom ,
Malek Zatar