“In a heartbeat.” That is how fast
it must have taken 18 year old Hashim and the rest of the Al-Huneidi
family to realize after the massacre of 426 residents of their town,
Al-Lydd, that they would have to flee to safer ground. “In a heartbeat.”
That is also how fast Hashim’s son, Samer, would return to Al-Lydd
today—if he only could.
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Hashim Al-Hunaidi’s property which shows a new building built in
front of the family home. The building is currently being used
as a restaurant by the occupant of Samer’s family home, Robert
Ben Ano. The Al-Hunaidi family home is located in the back and
is slated for demolition by the Israeli authorities.
Al-Lydd. A major Palestinian city before 1948, Al-Lydd’s
19,000 Palestinians were reduced to 1,052 after the Zionist as
sault that lasted several months due to Palestinian resistance.
To overcome this resistance, the Zionist military forces used
airborne fighter bombers for the first time to bomb the city and
its nearby airport. Soon after the city’s occupation on 11 July
1948, the Israeli army committed its largest mas sacre in
Palestine, which resulted in the murder of 426 men, women, and
children. At least, 176 of these people were slaugh tered in
Dahmash mosque, the city’s main place of worship. Most of the
city’s inhabit ants were forced to flee to Ramallah, and many
continued to Jordan. 350 Palestin ians died en route due
to exhaustion and dehydration. One of these refugees was Ismail
Shammout (d.2007), considered the Dean of Palestinian artists,
who depicted the exodus from Al-Lydd in his early paint ings.
Al-Lydd was renamed Lod by the Israeli government. Also on the
lands of Al Lydd lie the colonies of Zeitan in the north, Yagel
nearby the airport, Ahi’Eser between them, and Ginnaton to the
east.
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An amazing declaration from Samer
who has only known Palestine from the stories of his father and family
elders, and from a few summer vacations. How is one able to leave all
that one knows and all that is familiar to live in a homeland that is
the stuff of legend?
Thirteen thousand miles away, in
Oregon, is just about as far as one can get from Palestine. Samer is
forty-nine years old and is married with teenage children. He works as
an engineer for the state. He has a good life by anyone’s measure—but he
would leave it all to “go home.” He tells me that his children would do
the same just as easily.
Samer comes from a notable Al-Lydd
family: his grandfather, Abdel Mu’ti Al-Huneidi, and great uncle, Salim
Al-Huneidi, were mayors of the town in the 1930s. Samer’s grandfather
and his great uncle died in internecine fighting before the Zionist
occupation of Al-Lydd on July 11, 1948. Samer tells of how his father
joined over 55,000 others on the road from Al Lydd to Ramallah. He tells
the story with detail one would expect from someone who had actually
lived through the Nakba, someone who had made the long march during the
height of the brutal summer’s heat with the thousands of others to an
unknown future.
The story of how the Al-Huneidi
family survived and made it out of Al-Lydd, to Ramallah, to Nablus where
Samer’s maternal grandfather, Al-Shaikh Mahmoud Amin Al Taher, was from,
to Amman, to Kuwait, and then to the US, is remarkable enough. Even more
remarkable, however, is Samer’s personal story—how the descendant of
refugees has maintained his connection to Al-Lydd and his dream of
return.
Samer was not content to passively
take in the knowledge of his family history and the stories about his
family’s olive and fruit trees, the smell of jasmine wafting in the air
of Al-Lydd in a Palestinian Spring, or the celebrations that took place
under the roof of the family home. In 1998, Samer was getting ready to
travel to the Middle East to bury his mother, Ummama. Prior to his
travel, he had obtained the name and phone number of the man who was
currently occupying his family home in Al-Lydd. Samer had visited
Al-Lydd several times through the years and he knew that his family home
was still standing. Samer was cautioned not to try to approach the house
by a Palestinian resident of Al-Lydd who was among the approximately
eleven hundred original residents who took their chances and did not
flee the town in 1948. In one of Samer’s visits to Al-Lydd in 1996,
Samer knocked on the door of his father’s home. The occupant of the home
was out but his teenage daughter gave Samer her father’s contact
information and allowed Samer to take photos of the outside of the
house.
When Samer returned to the US, he
called the occupant of his family house. For two years, Samer talked with
Robert ben Ano almost monthly. They talked about their lives, their family,
and their work. Samer learned that Robert was a Morrocan Jew who immigrated
to Israel in 1949 at the age of two. Speaking together in Arabic, Samer
learned that Robert owned a successful construction business, he was married
to an Iraqi Jew, and they had three children: two daughters, and a son.
When Samer’s mother passed away in
1998 and Samer was set to travel to the region, Robert invited Samer to stay
with him in Al-Lydd. Samer was excited by the prospect but he had one
important condition: Robert would have to agree that Samer was not coming
for a visit to Robert’s home—Samer was coming to
his home. With
perhaps a little discomfort, Robert agreed.
When Samer arrived at his family home,
he was greeted warmly by Robert and his wife. Samer however perceived some
tension in the air. Samer stayed for four days and slept in a room that he
later learned was his aunts’. Robert took Samer around the town and
introduced him to other Palestinians living in Al-Lydd. They ate together at
a local restaurant and spent the time talking together and with other
townspeople. Robert told Samer that he had his own Arabic restaurant that he
built on part of the Al-Huneidi property. Samer learned from the Palestinian
inhabitants of Al-Lydd that Robert was well-liked among Palestinians and was
kind to those in need.
When it was time for Samer to leave,
Samer’s feelings were a bit mixed: on the one hand he had met a friend, a
good and decent person; but on the other hand, he was leaving his family
home in the same way his father had left: never knowing if he would ever
return—or if he ever could. Being in such an emotional state at the Ben
Gurion Airport before a security check is never a good idea for a traveler
of Palestinian descent, especially not one named Al-Huneidi with multiple
entry and exit visas in his passport. Samer spent four hours in an Israeli
interrogation room before admitting to officials that he had visited Robert.
When they learned Samer had visited Robert, the security officials left the
room, returned a few minutes later, and then, without explanation, let Samer
get on his plane.
When Samer returned to the US, he
found a voice message on his home phone from Robert who called to make sure
that he arrived home safely. Evidently, the security officials had called
Robert to ask about Samer and Robert assured them that Samer was a friend.
Samer and Robert have maintained their friendship since that visit in 1998.
Samer has learned that the Israeli
government is planning to demolish the family home along with many other
Palestinian homes and businesses that still stand in what is today called
Lod. The Israeli government is offering Robert US $250,000 for the house;
Robert wants half a million. To Samer, it is priceless; it stands as
evidence of the crime that was committed against his family, it represents
his identity as a Palestinian and a material connection to that identity,
and it embodies Al-Nakba as it affected his family and countless others.
Today, Samer does not know if his
house still exists. Regardless of whether it remains or whether it has been
demolished like so many other Palestinian homes in Al-Lydd in favor of a
high rise apartment complex for new Jewish immigrants, Samer assures me that
he will not cease in the search for justice for his family—so long as there
is still a beat in his heart.
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