15 May 2011

Nakba Day 2011

I’ve been trying to avoid discussing Israeli/Palestinian issues directly on this blog if for no other reason than that everyone in the world already seems to have a firmly set opinion on that subject and sees anyone else’s opinion as absolutely invalid (more so even than abortion in the USA … and as the sage says about ‘opinions are like a*sh*les; everybody’s got one and they all stink’). So I’ve avoided that minefield if only to avoid those mines.

But, today, the news impinges directly on them: as I write this, the number of Palestinians killed in apparently largely unarmed confrontations with Israeli soldiers on several borders is going up. I heard 8, then 10, then 12, now 15 (and by the time I finish, likely higher). And one of those borders is in Syria.

So … I enter the sharkpool.

I’m as pro-Palestinian as the next Syrian and as reflexively anti-Zionist as they come. Here, that’s obviously no big deal; when I lived in the US, of course, it was rather more problematic. We used to sit around and cogitate and ruminate on how we could get ‘our’ message better across to the wider population there. From our point of view, who were the ‘white hats’ and who were the ‘black hats’ was a no brainer. Yet, we had observed that, for too many Americans, the reflexive equation waas quite different: Palestinians, they seemed to think, were ‘bad’, were all ‘terrorists’ and the big bad wicked Arab wolves were always out o get poor little, plucky little Israel, a country too busy making deserts bloom, birds sing, and lions to lie down with lambs to ever even think about aggressing.

We knew that that was BS … but we also saw that, no matter how hard we worked to get the really story out, some numbskull in the Bilad would go and do something moronic … and the whole cause would appear to be discredited. We’d wonder why ‘our side’ kept doing counterproductive things and we imagined how things might be done better …

In a conversation – this must have been almost twenty years ago! – I remember that we talked about what would be a clear and strong way of getting the message across that, when it came down to it, the core issue from the Arab point of view was the right of the Palestinian Arabs to live in their own homes, the ones that had been the homes of their forefathers and so on … and that idea was dreadfully simple:

The Palestinian refugees gather from all directions and just go home; a peaceful surge of humanity, seeking to return home. No violence, no real need even for slogans. Just a river of humanity pouring in from all directions, crossing the Jordan, coming up from Egypt, from Lebanon and over the Jaulan, pouring out of every camp and every neighborhood and just going …

Millions of people on the move in a reverse of the exodus of 1948 and an undoing of the Nakba …

The Israelis could shoot, they could stand in the way but to do so they would need to tell the world the truth. The world would see that what it was all about was going home, going home to Jaffa and Haifa and Sumail and Dar-e-shu …

And I remember when it was suggested wiser heads pointing out why it wouldn’t work. Forget the practicalities of moving millions of people, forget the fact that the Zionists would just kill them … but the brave Arab leaders would not want that and would work to stop it. Far more than the Israelis themselves, they, after all, watch the borders to make sure no one gets it in their heads to try and ‘create difficulties’. Stability is what they have wanted.

The Arab people, we thought, do not make their own history but are the victims of history.

And then it all changed.

If 2011 is remembered for one thing it will be as the year when the people of our nation stopped seeing themselves as victims and began to make their own history. If they could do it in Tunisia or in Egypt, we could do it in the streets of Damascus … and Homs and everywhere else. We have awakened.

And if Syrians and Yemenis and Bahrainis and Egyptians and Tunisians can seize their rights for themselves, so can Palestinians.

And Palestinians were talking about doing such a thing this year, on the day of the Nakba, the anniversary of the catastrophe … from Gaza and Egypt and Lebanon … and even in Syria. Palestinians, ordinary refugees, went to the borders and tried to go home.

Not all of them this time, but some … and the Israelis reacted in the only language they know, with bullets … and claimed that this was all cooked up by the Lion’s Cub of Damascus to distract from his domestic problems.

No, Ben Netay, no. You have it exactly backwards. This is not a way to distract the Syrian people but a sign of the future. Mubarak is gone, Assad is going … all your old confidences are failing. The police states that held Palestinians back from going home are heading to the ash-heap and the people are coming in to their own

This year, they won’t win … but what do you think happens next year? They will finally make their own history; all of we, the Arabs, will.

Statement by the local coordination committees

Statement by the local coordination committees



As peaceful demonstrations and protests enter their third month in Syria, the Syrian society with all its diversity and different classes proved commitment to their justified demands. Those demands of a country that is based on freedom, dignity and citizenship; Demands that are achieved through peaceful democratic transformation, regardless of the price to be paid, or repression and intimidation by arresting, torturing and killing people, or sieging cities and towns with tanks and armoured vehicles.



Today, it became clear to anyone that security and military approach, which the Syrian regime has used since day one of our revolution, has failed and had serious consequences on Syria as a country, and on the regime itself too. Thus, the Minister of Media and Information has announced a comprehensive national dialogue in all the provinces. . . .



We at the local coordinating committees, while emphasizing the importance of ending the military and intelligence solution and immediately transitioning to the political process, we declare the following:



1- Peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience in all provinces shall continue until all our demands in our initial statements have been fulfilled



2- it is ethically and politically unacceptable to start any national dialogue to end the national crisis (which was created by the Syrian regime) before the following steps are followed:



- All killing and acts and violence against peaceful demonstrators are brought to a complete halt

- The siege on all Syrian provinces is over, and all military divisions shall be returned to their barracks

- All peaceful demonstrators and political prisoners in Syria are released

- Putting a stop to all arrests and Harassment of demonstrators, political and legal activists; and never face peaceful demonstrations with any forms of oppression or prevention. the Syrian government shall stand up to its responsibility to ensure the safety of demonstrators.

- Putting a stop to all campaigns that denounce the patriotism of demonstrators, and the systematic media disinformation campaigns that have been practiced by official and semi-official media outlets

- Allow the Arabic and International news agencies to cover what is really happening in Syria



3- any national dialogue shall be based on clear principals in order to produce real solution to the national crisis that is happening in Syria. some of those principals are:



- Dialogue shall not be divided to separate provincial meetings and dialogues

- All social levels and sectors shall be represented by freely and equally elected individuals

- A clear and strict timetable for the dialogue shall be predefined

- A specific deadline for the dialogue shall be predefined

- Dialogue shall be public and transparent by defining the involved parties, and the individuals representing those parties. Also the schedule and timetable of this dialogue shall be published, and different media outlets shall be allowed to cover the proceedings.



4- Insisting on persecuting all individuals who bear responsibility for shedding the blood of Syrian citizens, including all military, police and secret service agents. those individuals shall be put against public and fair trials, and their trials shall be covered by media outlets



5- All media campaigns aiming to start secular tension and break apart the social and national Syrian unity are aimed at weakening the civil peaceful movement and disrupting it, as well as scaring Syria citizens from the peaceful democratic change. Those efforts shall be doomed to failure. Our civil democratic action will never be towards anything but the freedom and dignity of any Syrian citizen.





Compassion to our martyrs and victory of our revolution for a free, democratic Syria.



the local coordination committees in Syria

15-5-2011

Committee Dara’

Committee Homs

Committee Banias

Committee Saraqeb

Committee Idleb

Committee Hasaka

Committee Qamishli

Committee Der Ezzor

Committee Syrian Coast

Committee Hama

Committee Raqqa

Committee Swayda’

Committee Damascus suburbs

Committee Damascus

Negotiate? Maybe ...

We will negotiate with this regime when they ceasefire and pull troops out of cities. If they stop the killing, we can talk about the way ahead.

We're ready, we're willing ... but you must show that you are trustworthy first.

Stop the violence: stop the torture: free the prisoners. And we can talk constitutions and reforms.

The Great Revolt: A History Lesson

I was raised on stories of the heroes of the Great Revolt and have always considered them my inspiration. Knowing that my grandfather was a friend of Sultan al-Atrash was a point of pride; we always were told that he had kept liquor at home in case the Sheikh visited. Naziq al Abid was another inspirational figure for me from girlhood; I have always wanted to be as bold and as forthright as she was and imagined myself at Maysalun or fighting from the Ghouta …


So, when I look at what’s happening now and my mind searches for an analogy, it is natural to see this as an even greater version of that time … much more than the any of the analogies that clog the press.

But I realize a great many people who read this may not immediately recall it. So, here goes another history lesson:

Before the Palestinian intifadas, before the Iraqi insurgencies, there was what started as a Druze revolt and became a national uprising that lasted from 1925 to 1927 against the French. It wasn’t the work of one class or one place but was a real mass movement against colonialism. Though not successful, it remains a beginning of our history of reistance.

During World War I, the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein, had declared a revolt of the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire (which had ruled here for 400 years). The British had encouraged him strongly, promising their support for an independent Arab state after the war. Arab fighters from the Hijaz – along with a fair number of Syrian and Damascene volunteers – pushed north in parallel to the main British advance. In Damascus, Arab nationalists prepared to greet them and, at the end of the war, Sharif Hussein’s son, Faisal, entered Damascus in triumph. An Arab national government was formed and declared it independence with Faisal as king (I’ll write more on that at some point; the lost history of the Arab kingdom needs to be known).

However, while they had promised independence to the Arabs, the British government had also promised Syria as a reward to the French (and then there’s also the Balfour Declaration … but we won’t get into that just yet!). The French landed and occupied Beirut (they’d seized Arwad during the war and used it to blockade the whole coast, triggering a famine in many coastal districts). The new League of Nations granted Syria and Lebanon as a French “Mandate”, allegedly to prepare us for independence but really a new name for colonization. The Syrian government, naturally, refused to give up independence and rejected the French mandate.



The French met resistance as they moved beyond the coast, first in the mountains behind Latakia. The resistance, using only guerilla hit-and-run tactics, had some success and received support both from the national government in Damascus and from the Turkish resistance movement led by Ataturk (though the Turks stopped aiding Syrian resistance after Ataturk signed a treaty with the French in 1921 and the French pulled their occupation troops out of Turkey itself).


To ‘deal’ with the source of resistance, the French sent a full army in and defeated the Arab kingdom’s army at Maysalun; King Faisal had already accepted the inevitability of French rule and had prepared to flee, so it was an army outnumbered three to one by French forces and made up largely of volunteers that met them (including Naziq Abid, my hero). At the time of the French invasion, the Syrians had been writing a constitution and, at that time, the debate had been focussed on women’s voting rights. Without the French intervention, Syrian women would have had the right to vote before American women did!

Anyhow, two days later, French forces entered Damascus on July 25, 1920. King Faisal fled to Jordan; General Henri Gouraud became the French High Commissioner and celebrated his victory by going to Saladin’s grave. He spat on it, kicked it and said:

"The Crusades have ended now! Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent."


It was typical of the sort of indignity that would follow. Syria was further partitioned into five parts that the French hoped to rule as separate colonies or puppet states: Damascus, Aleppo, an Alawite state based in Latakia, the expanded “Grand” Lebanon, and a separate Druze state in the south west. Stories of the time are familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Bab al Hara or other things like that. My own family tale is that of my grandmother: she was a young, unmarried woman then, still in her late teens. She was walking, veiled through the old city alone. A French gendarme began harassing her “Fatima, give us a kiss!” and when she tried to get away from him, he chased her, pulled off her veil and tried to kiss her … she returned to her family’s house, in utter sorrow. Her older brother and a friend of his were in the house, heard about it and were outraged; they’d both be determined from then on to avenge the slight. And the friend swore then and there he’d marry her … as he of course is my grandfather!


While everyone seethed under the new regime, in the new Druze state, the rebellion began. There, the French decided that the traditional leadership of the Druze – mostly from Dar al-Atrash – was insufficiently pliant and wanted to replace them with more willing tools who’d help spread French “Civilization”. The traditional courts were to be abolished and replaced by French law and a Captain Gabriel Carbillet was to be governor. He decided that he’d abolish ‘feudalism’ by using the Druze sheikhs and community leaders as forced laborers on road-building projects and break them to the new regime.

The Druze as a group are proud and uncowed by anyone; naturally, they reacted and began gathering their strength. August 23, 1925 saw the Druze leader, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, issuing a declaration of a national uprising against the French. He appealed to all the ethnic and religious communities as Syrians, united against foreign domination of the Bilad. And the spark took: the whole country rose up!




By the end of August, the French had been driven from the Druze mountains and were being chased from Damascus. France hastily hurried thousands of soldiers to Syria, mostly colonial levies from Morocco and Senegal. For the next three years, resistance continued across the whole country though the French were forced to use enormous numbers of troops and money. As a part of the war effort, they began recruiting Christian Lebanese and Alawi Syrians into their forces and hoped to divide the country as a result.

They attacked Damascus after they’d been driven out. They fought their way back in with mortar shells and aerial bombing. Huge parts of the city burned during the attack and one can still see evidence of it in the Suqh. At least a thousand Damascene civilians died in the attacks.


But, though resistance was fierce, France was too strong and had the full support of the neighboring British occupied areas. Ataturk and the Saudis – fresh from their invasion of the Hijaz – gave tacit support to the French. By the spring of 1927, it was over. Sultan al-Atrash and many other national leaders (including an uncle of my father) were sentenced to death by the colonists; fortunately, they escaped as a group to Transjordan. After the signing of the Franco-Syrian Treaty in 1936, they returned to Syria and were met by cheering crowds


The French gave up their dream of dividing Syria fully; Aleppo, Damascus, and the Druze mountains were reunited and, eventually, the slow drive to independence began. It would take almost 20 more years and many lives, but eventually, they were gone. To this day, we remember it as the largest and longest-lasting of our revolts. The revolt had seen Muslims, Druze and Christians unite; the townsmen, the peasants, workers, and veterans of both Ottoman and Arab armies too were united in a common cause with the great merchants, landowners and intellectuals. Syria, if it had not existed before as an idea, now lived and the idea of Syria was the first mass movement against colonial rule in the Middle East.

That memory is what I see reflected now; Kurds and Arabs arm in arm, Christians, Muslims and Druze together, city and country people … north and south, all of us together as one.

This time, though, we will win.