He was born into an Arab-Christian family and first became acquainted with literature while studying at Sion English College. His house was used as a meeting place for scholars.
By
LINDA CHRISTANTY
·5 minutes read
KEMLU RI
Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno LP Marsudi poses with Palestinian women after opening a capacity building program for Palestinian refugees with the title "International Training of Trainers on Business Planning for Women in Refugee Camps: Women Empowerment to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals" in Amman, Jordan, Tuesday ( 5/3/2019).
It was summer when Adania Shiibli planned to steal a book. She drove her old car about an hour from Ramallah to Jerusalem. Using a student card from the Hebrew University, she was able to access the collections at the Israel National Library.
Her target was a book marked “abandoned property” or that of Khalil Al-Sakakini or one bearing this name. Al-Sakakini was a prominent Palestinian poet and thinker, who was quite influential in the Arab world in the mid-20th century.
The incident had long past. Adania, an admirer of Al-Sakakini, is now the author of several award-winning novels that have been translated into English, such as Kulluna Ba\'id bethat al Miqdaraan el-Hub or We Are All Equally Far from Love (2012) and Tafsil Thanawi or Minor Detail (2017).
Before the state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, Al-Sakakini lived in Qatamon, a village west of Jerusalem. He was born into an Arab-Christian family and first became acquainted with literature while studying at Sion English College. His house was used as a meeting place for scholars. His library had a collection of thousands of books. When the Zionist militia, the Jewish national movement, attacked Qatamon, Al-Sakakini was forced to flee, like other Palestinians. She left Jerusalem for Cairo, Egypt, on April 30, 1948.
Al-Sakakini\'s were no exception. The seizure operation involved armed Zionist militias.
About 30,000 books were confiscated from private libraries in Palestinian homes, according to records by officials of the Jewish National Library (now Israel\'s National Library). Al-Sakakini\'s were no exception. The seizure operation involved armed Zionist militias.
Adania recounted part of Al-Sakakini\'s history in her paper, "The Absence of Words", for a discussion at the Jakarta International Literary Festival (JILF) two years ago. In addition to writing, she teaches part-time at the Faculty of Philosophy and History at Birzeit University. Starting as a girls\' school which was initiated by Nabiha Nasir in 1924, it grew into a public school to meet the needs of the community. It later became Birzeit College in 1942.
I learned about the role of Nabiha and her school through the introductory article “The Palestine Situation” in the journal The Royal Central Asian Society, published in 1936. An Arab-Muslim and Christian committee run the school. The students came from all over Palestine and Transjordan. They were Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Anglicans.
AFP/MENAHEM KAHANA
Ultra-orthodox Jewish man and a woman chat as they sit on a bench at a plaza in the center of Jerusalem, on January 27, 2021. - In Jewish religious tradition, potential future spouses are generally connected through an intermediary and agree on a meeting spot that offers enough privacy for a personal conversation but is fully in public view.
The tension in Palestine as a result of British colonial rule was also unveiled in the article: “The current government policy, allowing almost unlimited Jewish immigration, must take into account the
psychological factor of fear; and fear breeds hatred more certain than differences of opinion and belief. It cannot be overemphasized that the recent attacks in Palestine are not anti-Jewish, but are directed against Zionist policies…”.
The colonialists supported the Zionists. Hatred against certain races grew because of the injustice conducted by the rulers.
Her speech, “I Don\'t Speak My Language”, on the opening night of JILF, revealed the reasons why Adania chose to speak English and pretended not to be Arab, even when waiting in line at the post office. She was worried that her parcel would arrive late if the postal clerk found out she was Palestinian.
“Decades of Zionist colonization and Israeli military occupation have made speaking Arabic a dangerous experience…. Once an Arabic-speaking Palestinian is in the presence of an Israeli, and thereby revealing his identity, he could become the target of discrimination, or verbal and sometimes physical attacks," he said.
This law, among other things, eliminates Arabic as the official language in Israel/Palestine in addition to Hebrew.
On 19 July 2018, the Israeli government passed the Nationality Act. This law, among other things, eliminates Arabic as the official language in Israel/Palestine in addition to Hebrew.
Another Shibli, Ahlam Shibli, recorded the situation of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories through photographs. There were no bloodied bodies or mutilated faces. You could see houses, landscapes, women staring into the distance.… However, the story behind these “calm” photos unraveled the long history of occupation.
To Joanna Mytkowska who interviewed her for The Anxious, a catalog for her joint exhibition with four other artists in Paris in 2008, Ahlam said: “When the Jewish village next to my village started to develop, the Jewish state gave the control of the territory belonging to this Palestinian village to the Jewish settlements.”
Kompas
Ultra-orthodox Jewish man and a woman walk in a public park in central Jerusalem, on January 31, 2021. - In Jewish religious tradition, potential future spouses are generally connected through an intermediary and agree on a meeting spot that offers enough privacy for a personal conversation but is fully in public view.
Palestinian refugees automatically lose their land rights. They did not only lose the land certificates but also their village. The name of their village was changed in the official Israeli map. According to Ahlam, the actions of the state of Israel were designed to abolish the ownership rights and memory rights of Palestinians. The village used to be called Arab Al-Sbaih was then changed into Arab Al-Shibli.
Ten years ago, on Feb. 18, 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution for Palestine which ordered Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Security Council declared Israel\'s actions a form of illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. Fourteen members of the Security Council and 130 member states of the United Nations supported the resolution, but it was vetoed by the United States.
In 1967, the state of Israel annexed the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. To this day these three areas are still controlled by Israel.
Adania called herself a “farmer of words,” who had been sabotaged: “Just as lands are seized, water supplies are cut off, crops are sprayed with herbicides, and crops are destroyed; libraries are looted, books are seized, and words are erased or replaced with other words.”
Did she steal the book? She failed. Stealing books could hinder her nation’s oppression process, and also made her behave like aggressors.
ARSIP PRIBADI
Linda Christanty
LINDA CHRISTANTY,a writer and cultural activist.
(This article was translated byHendarsyah Tarmizi).
