baroud_14-15.qxp_From the Diaspora 5/24/18 9:13 PM Page 14
From the Diaspora
My Home Is Beit Daras: Our Lingering Nakba
By Ramzy Baroud
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
each invader left their mark— ancient Roman tunnels, a Crusaders’ castle, a Mamluk mail building, an Ottoman khan (Caravanserai)—but they were all eventually driven out. It wasn’t until 1948 that Beit Daras, that tenacious village with a population of merely 3,000, was emptied of its population, and later destroyed. The agony of the inhabitants of Beit Daras and their descendants lingers on after all of these years. The tragic way that Beit Daras was conquered by invading Zionist forces has left behind blood stains and emotional scars that have never healed. Three battles were bravely fought by the Badrasawis, as Two young boys hold hands as they look at the bombed-out remains of a mosque that was targeted in Israeli the dwellers of Beit Daras are air strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Aug. 10, 2014. called, in defense of their village. At the end, the Zionist militias, the Haganah, with the help of British WHEN GOOGLE EARTH was initially released in 2001, I immediweapons and strategic assistance, routed out the humble resistance, ately rushed to locate a village that no longer exists on a map, which which consisted mostly of villagers fighting with old rifles. now delineates a whole different reality. The “massacre of Beit Daras” that followed remains a subdued Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp, and then scream that pierces through the hearts of Badrasawis after all of moved to and lived in the United States, finding a village that was these years. Those who survived became refugees and are mostly erased from the map decades earlier was not, at least for me, an irliving in the Gaza Strip. Under siege, successive wars and endless rational act. The village of Beit Daras was the single most important strife, their Nakba—the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in piece of earth that truly mattered to me. 1947-48—has never truly ended. One cannot dispel the pain if the But I could only find it by estimation. Beit Daras was located 32 kilowound never truly heals. meters northeast of Gaza, on an elevated ground, perched gently beBorn into a family of refugees in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in tween a large hill and a small river that seemed to never run dry. Gaza, I took pride in being a Badrasawi. Our resistance has garA once peaceful village, Beit Daras had existed for millennia. Ronered us the reputation of being “stubborn” and the uncorroborated mans, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans ruled over, and even claims of having large heads. We truly are stubborn, proud and gentried to subdue, Beit Daras as in all of Palestine; yet they failed. True, erous, for Beit Daras was erased but the collective identity it has Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of palestine Chronigiven us remained intact, regardless of whichever exile we may find cle. His latest book is the last earth: a palestinian story (available ourselves in. from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Baroud has a Ph.D. in PalesAs a child, I learned to be proud from my grandfather: a handtine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident scholar some, elegant, strong peasant with unshakable faith. He managed at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California. His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>. to hide his deep sadness so well after he was expelled from his 14
Washington RepoRt on Middle east affaiRs
June/July 2018