‘My grandmother thought it was temporary’ — Huffpo features Nakba discussion with 5 Palestinians

This is incredible. Yesterday Huffington Post had a video conference on the Nakba led by Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a Palestinian-American, featuring four Palestinians commenting on the history and meaning of the catastrophe.

I found it incredible for the deep civility of the conversation. The calmness in the face of tragedy, the reasonableness of all the participants as they say it is time for democracy between the river and the sea, Shihab-Eldin’s grace note about a “Jewish right to a homeland,” and the lovely respect that he shows to the lovely Nina Saah:

Did you think it was temporary? That’s what my grandmother tells me when she left. That she thought it was temporary.

And yes, Nina Saah also thought it temporary. She was separated from her fiance, her neighbor, and met him by chance in 1963 and then started a family. 

Also speaking are: Eyad Serraj of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh who lives in the Galilee and is on set,  and Osamah Khalil of al Shabhaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. These three men are composed and even charming in describing a great injustice. This conversation is a reminder: The greatest fear that Israel and the lobby have is that Palestinians will get to speak for themselves. Then the game is over.

Khalil points out that the west always treated the Nakba as a humanitarian issue rather than a political one:

If there has been a major success in this tragedy, it is that Palestinians have been unwilling to forget their past, unwilling to forget what happened in 1948 and what’s happened since.

Serraj says that the “rush” to resuscitate the two-state solution is an effort to “rescue” Israel from democracy. It is time to imagine a democracy in the entire land, he says. The others agree.

Khalil:

What we’re talking about here is really equal rights for everybody… What we should demand is what is expected everywhere else in the world, and those places that don’t have that have been considered pariah nations. Palestinians are no different from anyone else. Those are the very basic claims that Palestinians have the right to hang on to and should hang on to and should continue reminding the world, including many policymakers. That one person, one man, one vote is the absolute standard

Shihab-Eldin echoes these thoughts by reading a tweet that says that states based on religion, ethnicity or tradition are just going to sow trouble. “All courtesy of Cadillac,” are Shihab-Eldin’s final words, in reference to upcoming segments. But Cadillac’s sponsorship would seem to include this discussion too.