Remembering Nakba, Finding Peace - Share your Nakba story

Remembering Nakba day 15th May 1948: I wrote the bulletin below a year ago (time does fly!). The message is still relevant. Despite the many obstacles to peace right now, we must not lose hope in the human heart. There are many people on both sides of the wall who want to see the two states side by side living in peace. Let's not forget that it's people who can choose to make positive change to make their world a more peaceful, safer place. Below is both my grand parents stories of Nakba. I invite you to share your story of Nakba. It could be about your parents or grand parents. Please share it with us

Dear friends,
For the past few days I have been wondering what to write about 15th May 1948 Nakba day (meaning catastrophe). I have to admit it’s not an easy conversation to have while still maintaining the quest for peace. Memories of Nakba bring up feelings of anger, dispossession & injustice. Feelings we could choose to let them either foment or suppress in our hearts. They can lead to frustration, anger, hatred & consequently war & more war (with each other & with the other).
When I remember Nakba I remember my grandparents. My maternal grandparents, Issa & Labibeh Habash were lucky! They found a truck to load the children in with some clothes and left Jaffa to Amman thinking it will be couple of weeks & they will be back. My paternal grandparents, Saliba & Wedad Wahhab weren’t so lucky! They were marched out of Ramleh on foot walking for 3 days through the rocky hills to Ramallah with five children under 10.
My grandparents’ stories are 2 personal stories out of more than 700,000 that make up the Nakba stories; when our grandparents lost their homes, businesses & groves and with it the dream of a country. These are stories that most Israelis & many people in Western countries don’t know about. The aim of my bulletin today is not to make you angry. My aim is to educate you if you don’t know about Nakba but also to bridge the gap that is missing when we talk about peace and justice between Israelis and Palestinians.
With this bulletin I aim to make peace. Not knowing each other’s narrative is what keeps the war and occupation going and with it more Nakba stories of people losing their homes and farms to the wall and settlements. Israelis don’t know much about our history and narrative and we don’t know much about their history and narrative. I would like to introduce to you Roni Segoly an ex Israeli soldier and secret service agent who is now a member of combatants for peace, a joint Israeli-Palestinian NGO.

Roni: “I was born in Baqa neighborhood in Jerusalem (this is the Arab name of the neighborhood that is used until today). I grew up in an Arab house, which to me meant a house with high ceilings, nice tiled floors and thick walls. The fact that in the past Arabs lived there didn’t occur to me at all. In 1967 right after the 6 day war, when I was 10, a few Arabs knocked on our door, and they told us in broken English that they used to live in the house once, and they asked to see it. That was an embarrassing and strange situation, what do we do? And what do they want? I mean this house is obviously ours. Anyways we let them in, they looked around and left, and we haven’t heard from them since. I presume we weren’t very kind to them. This moment has been engraved in my memory ever since.
In 2006 I went with my mother to Romania to see where my roots were. In other words, where she ran away from after the Second World War. We went to the tiny remote village where she was born. It was a deserted village in northern part of the country and we looked for the house she used to live in. Today, obviously Romanians inhabit it since they are almost no Jews left in the area. We didn’t find the house, so we knocked on the door of a neighboring house. Someone opened and asked what we wanted? We explained and they were very unfriendly. Then I suddenly realized, this is an identical story to the one that happened in my childhood, with the original residents of the house I grew up in.”