Leaving Jerusalem, past Deir Yassin
On my way out of Jerusalem today I detoured through Har Nof, now a nice-looking orthodox Jewish neighborhood within Jerusalem’s expanded city limits. There’s a mental hospital there, Kfar Shaul, behind a fence. I took some photos, until the guard told me to stop. (When I get my own computer connected to the Internet I’ll post some of the day’s photos.)
Kfar Shaul stands on the spot where the Arab village Deir Yassin used to be. Many of its residents were massacred in 1948 by members of two Jewish military organizations. Although details have always been contested, the massacre’s basic contours seem now to be generally accepted by historians. Jewish forces disseminated reports of the massacre to spur other Palestinians to flee from the villages and cities where they lived.
After the war, Israel placed Jewish immigrants in many of the vacated houses, except in the hundreds of Arab villages Israel simply leveled, some of them now covered by pretty forests planted by the Jewish National Fund. I had hoped to swing by Park Canada, built on another vanished village, but ran out of time.
Many of those Palestinians who fled in 1948 to avoid becoming victims themselves, and their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, want to return to their homes, or at least to the region they came from. I don’t think the conflict between Israel and Palestine will be resolved until this happens — which means, I suppose, that regardless of any deals that might be struck between Olmert and Abu Mazen, if the refugee problem is shunted aside the conflict will continue.