Bethlehem- In the alleys of the Dheisheh refugee camp in the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, Tel Aviv Tribune Net walked in search of the home of the elderly Khadra Ramadan, who lives here forcibly and refuses to recognize her small house as a permanent place of residence, because she insists on her right to return to her village “Jarash” in the Jerusalem district, which She was displaced from it during the Nakba.
Hardly a single wall in the Dheisheh camp – which was established in 1949 – is devoid of expressions of rejection of the occupation and glorification of the Palestinian resistance, and of the camp’s martyrs who rose to fame over the years.
The smell of the Palestinian Maqluba dish that wafts from the camp women’s kitchens also creeps into the visitor’s nose in every alley, especially on Fridays.
Al-Jarashiya neighborhood
In an alley with narrow alleys, which the camp residents call “Al-Jarashiya” or “Al-Ramadaniya” neighborhood, in reference to the Ramadan family and the village of Jarash from which they were displaced, the house of the elderly refugee Khadra is located, where there is a brown iron door that does not at all resemble the entrance to her family’s home in her displaced village, nor does it resemble the features of her current home. Childhood home.
Khadra was born in 1936 in the village of Jarash, located on the lower western slope of one of the mountains in Jerusalem. It is surrounded by valleys from the south, west, and north, and is connected by a side road that penetrates the neighboring village of “Sufla” on the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. The village was rectangular in shape, and most of its houses were built of Stones.
This is the Palestinian historian Walid Al-Khalidi’s description of the village’s location, according to what was stated in the “Lest We Forget” encyclopedia. But Khadra’s description of her village was more poetic. She said with a sorrow that has pained her for 76 years, “Our house consisted of two floors: the lower one was for animals and the upper one was for family members, and the rooms of the house were High vaulted ceilings and large space.
Khadra utters these words and looks at the ceiling of her dilapidated house in the camp. She feels pain and then insists on continuing her conversation, which includes many terms foreign to the new generations.
Land of good things
“We used to spend our time farming and taking care of the land, and for every month of the year there were tasks for the farmer… We sowed the grains and planted them in the ground after plowing them, then we waited for them to ripen in order to harvest them, then we picked them and kept them in the khawabi, which are the mud rooms designated for storing the harvested crops.”
Wheat, lentils, barley, corn, fenugreek, and others are grown at specific times of the year, and throughout the year the people of Jerash, according to Khadra, cared for their village’s fruit trees, such as almonds, olives, and figs, and for crops used for daily consumption, such as tomatoes, all kinds of leaves, zucchini, eggplant, and others.
“I lived a beautiful childhood… I contributed to all the work that falls to women on earth. I also learned traditional Palestinian embroidery, and I made some dresses before we were displaced, and I keep them until now. The most famous stitches that the women of Jarash are famous for sewing are birds, varicose veins, two roses, and feathers.”
Bitter departure
As soon as the living testimony of this elderly woman reached the displacement and asylum station, her tone of voice changed and she said with deep pain, “Everyone must know that we had lands that were mind-blowing (referring to their abundance), and that we were forced out of our country after the battle of Bab al-Wad and the departure of all the people of the villages near us, such as Sufala.” And Ishua, and Deir Aban, and Zorah, and Artuf.”
“When the Zionist gangs arrived in the village of Deir Aban, they repeatedly targeted its people with mortar shells and other weapons. We had no choice but to leave, so we rode in two freight cars owned by my uncle and bid farewell to the village in pain, but with the hope that we would return to it.”
With the scenes of the displacement of Gazans in trucks during the current aggression against the Gaza Strip, Khadra’s memory of her bitter journey away from her village was revived. She said, “I cannot see with my own eyes because of the intense crying over the Gazans. They are being subjected to a genocide worse than the one we were subjected to in 1948. I cry for them because I know what awaits them now in terms of diaspora and wandering far from their homes and lands.”
Migration route
The village of “Bani Naim” in the Hebron district was the first destination for the people of Jarash, and from there they took refuge in the village of “Jourat Al-Shamaa” and then to “Beit Sakarya” in the Bethlehem district, before Khadra married her cousin in 1950, and settled with him in the Dheisheh refugee camp, which now includes 13,000 Palestinian refugees trace their origins to 45 villages west of Jerusalem and the Hebron area, according to the website of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Khadra says that she personally counted 300 people from Jarash who left the village. The “Lest We Forget” encyclopedia stated in its documentation of the village of Jarash that its population between 1944 and 1945 was 190 Palestinians living in 33 houses.
This refugee succeeded in visiting her displaced village repeatedly after the Nakba, and before the Israeli military checkpoints tightened their grip on the people of the West Bank.
She mentions that the houses were completely blown up, but she made sure to stand on their ruins, which is consistent with the information contained in the encyclopedia that weeds cover the village site, interspersed with the remains of destroyed houses and the rubble of terraces, and that carob, olive, almond and fig trees are still standing there.
From Tantura to Gaza
Throughout the hours of our stay in the house, her attachment to the past was evident in all her conversations. When she got married, she brought with her to her husband’s house 12 traditional Palestinian dresses, and whenever one of the dresses was about to be destroyed, she cut parts of it and made pillows and heritage antiques from them to decorate her small sitting room in the camp.
Before we bid farewell to her, she expressed her wish to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, saying, “I pray to God day and night to grant victory to the Palestinians and return them to their homeland to live in safety, and for all countries to have pity on the displaced and those under bombardment to end this massacre… The heartbreak of the Deir Yassin and Tantura massacres has been with me for a year.” The Nakba and now the heartbreak of Gaza have joined them, and they will accompany me until my death.”
We left Khadra’s house while she was busy explaining the threads of her dresses to her two granddaughters. Whenever one of them made a mistake with something, the elderly woman got emotional and repeated the explanation. This heritage and history must be transmitted accurately to all generations in light of the attempts to distort and Judaize everything that is Palestinian has been exposed to since the year of the Nakba.
