On June 26th, a Yemeni artifact dating back to the first century BCE was put up for auction in Barcelona, Spain, after having been smuggled out of Yemen at an unspecified time.

On July 13th, a rare bull statue from ancient Yemen, made of calcite and inlaid with green glass, was featured in a global auction held by the American auction house “Artemis.” Earlier this year, on January 13th, Yemeni antiquities researcher Abdullah Mohsen revealed that a statue from Yemen was on display in Tel Aviv among a private collection owned by Jewish businessman Shlomo Moussaieff.

Such discoveries are not rare. From time to time, Yemeni artifacts appear in auctions across Europe and the United States. The smuggling and sale of Yemeni relics and manuscripts have surged since the start of Yemen’s ongoing war a decade ago.

According to a Yemeni Ministry of Culture official who spoke to Noon Post, over 3,200 artifacts have been smuggled out of the country—figures that align with a report by the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, which noted that more than 2,000 smuggled Yemeni artifacts, valued at $12 million, are currently in the United States. An additional 1,000 artifacts are housed in museums around the world.

Yemeni relics are now openly listed in online auction catalogs, visible to all. Experts in antiquities have described the war years in Yemen as a “golden age” for artifact smuggling networks.

Why the Surge?

The illicit trade in Yemeni antiquities is not new. In 1862, British officer Sir William Marcus donated 27 bronze tablets from Ma’rib and 13 stone inscriptions from Shabwa and Ma’rib to the British Museum—pieces smuggled out of Yemen via trafficking routes.

During the 1994 civil war over Yemeni unification, hundreds of artifacts were looted and smuggled. Provinces like Al-Jawf, Ma’rib, and Shabwa—rich in archaeological heritage—served as key departure points for the stolen items. Several foreign archaeological missions were implicated in the trafficking.

Since 2014, Yemen’s archaeological sites have been bombarded by both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi movement. According to Abdullah Mousa of the Hudhud Center for Archaeological Studies, Saudi-led forces have bombed 100 archaeological sites.

Activists also accuse the Houthis of looting and destroying antiquities. Marwan Dammaj, cultural advisor to Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, told Noon Post that five museums across Yemen have been damaged in the crossfire between government forces and the Houthis, prompting the internationally recognized Yemeni government to move many valuable pieces into bank vaults for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, unregulated excavation by civilians has become common in historic regions like Al-Jawf, Ma’rib, and Hadhramaut. Many items have also disappeared from museums, including the Military Museum in Sanaa, according to Yemeni antiquities researcher Adnan Al-Qayz.

Al-Qayz notes that the largest smuggling operations during the war have involved high-ranking officials, tribal leaders, and influential figures working with organized crime syndicates, a claim corroborated by the Ministry of Culture and the General Authority for Antiquities.

Abdulbasit bin Sariyah, Deputy Minister of Culture, told Noon Post that his ministry is not solely responsible for the looting of Yemeni antiquities. The ministries of security and commerce, along with local organizations, must also be held accountable.

Bin Sariyah attributes the rise in theft and smuggling to several key factors: rampant insecurity across the country, the high profits that antiquities fetch, competition among locals to trade in artifacts, and the complicity of officials who facilitate smuggling operations.

“The gravest problem,” he said, “is that those involved in these crimes know they will face no consequences. Security agencies fail to arrest or prosecute them.”

Who Is Tracking the Looters?

A group of Yemeni researchers—among them Dr. Ameeda Shaalan, researcher Riyadh Al-Farah, antiquities expert Abdullah Mohsen, and archaeologist Dr. Yusuf Mohammed Abdullah—have taken it upon themselves to track and expose artifact smuggling using personal resources.

Some of these experts monitor international auctions and collections for smuggled Yemeni artifacts, publishing their findings on social media. Abdullah Mohsen argues that Yemeni diplomatic missions abroad should play a vital role in halting or at least curbing the smuggling—but they largely remain inactive.

The Yemeni government, he adds, turns a blind eye to the fact that the UAE, Djibouti, and Oman are key transit points for smuggling Yemeni heritage.

According to Mohsen, artifacts are transported from archaeological sites to hidden storage spaces across various provinces. From there, they are smuggled overland, or through seaports—and in fewer cases, through airports.

Many of these pieces make their way to the UAE and neighboring countries like Djibouti and Somalia, with Europe and the US as final destinations for this stolen heritage. This was confirmed in a joint article by Deborah Lehr, Director of the Antiquities Coalition, and Yemen’s former ambassador to the US, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak.

Trading Blame

The Houthis and the Yemeni government routinely accuse each other of enabling artifact smuggling.

According to the Houthi-controlled Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Sanaa, “the legitimate government is orchestrating the organized looting, destruction, and sale of archaeological sites and artifacts, as well as legitimizing the bombardment of these sites by the aggression’s airstrikes [referring to the Saudi-Emirati coalition]. It is part of a broader scheme to erase Yemen’s cultural and historical identity.”

Conversely, the internationally recognized government accuses the Houthis of being the main perpetrators. Yemen’s Minister of Information and Culture, Muammar Al-Eryani, said the Houthis are “systematically looting and smuggling Yemeni antiquities as part of a criminal scheme to erase the Yemeni identity and enrich their leadership while funding their terrorist operations.”

What Can Be Done?

On September 22, 2023, Yemen’s Ambassador to the US, Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, and Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, signed an agreement to cooperate in recovering Yemeni artifacts and protecting the country's cultural heritage. However, according to Yemeni researchers who spoke to Noon Post, the smuggling of artifacts to the United States continues.

Wadie Aman, head of the Heritage Protection Authority in Aden, says that finding a comprehensive solution to artifact smuggling during wartime is extremely difficult. However, he stresses the need for cooperation among all relevant agencies—including Yemen’s customs authority and the ministries of defense, interior, culture, and commerce—along with tribal leaders and local community figures to help prevent smuggling.

On the diplomatic front, Yemen’s UNESCO ambassador, Mohammed Jumeh, is working to compile a comprehensive database of missing Yemeni artifacts. This database could serve as a reference for UNESCO in reaching out to countries and institutions harboring smuggled Yemeni antiquities.

UNESCO announced an emergency plan in July 2015 to preserve Yemen’s cultural heritage, but the plan has stalled due to funding shortfalls.

Yemeni antiquities experts are also calling for reform of the country’s antiquities law. Law No. 21 of 1994, which remains in force, is widely criticized for imposing lenient penalties on smugglers and traffickers. Researchers urge the revitalization of the Antiquities Authority to facilitate the recovery of looted items both inside and outside Yemen.

Since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by the Israeli occupation forces on October 7, 2023, up to early 2025, approximately 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed, according to a UN satellite assessment (UNOSAT).

Day after day, the devastation grows—and official figures likely understate the truth. In May 2025, an Israeli soldier captured footage in Rafah, southern Gaza, showing the city in near-total ruin, with just one house still standing.

Reconstruction of Gaza is projected by the United Nations to take around 15 years, at a cost estimated between USD 30 and 53 billion. Yet Palestinians—ever resilient—have previously astonished the world by reusing rubble from destroyed buildings to construct homes anew.

It’s as though they echo an ancestral folk song—sung before the Nakba of 1948—as their elders built homes:
“O our home, we shall build you tall and proud…
With our swords we shield you from every approaching danger, O protector…”

In this refrain, “O protector” (يا واو) is not merely poetic—it stands for the jackal, a symbol of lurking menace; “from every approaching danger” asserts a defiant promise of protection. Palestinians, it affirms, will raise their homes and guard them with swords against any threat.

And why not? Pre-1948 Palestinian homes embodied self-sufficiency. Crafted from local materials—clay, stone, wood—they reflected faith, joy, community life, and rich traditions.

More than structures, these homes were social and spiritual creations, woven into community gatherings and religious customs. Eyewitness accounts and scholarly works—such as the late Tofig Kanaan’s “The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore” (1964), Gustav Dalman’s “Work, Customs, and Traditions in Palestine,” along with Antonin Gossen’s studies on Nablus and Moab—document these homes in detail.

Below, we explore how the Palestinian farmer built his house from local resources, turning humble construction into a source of pride, spiritual celebration, and communal connection.

The Rural Palestinian House

• Community-built simplicity: Rural homes were built with the direct labor of the farmer, his children, neighbors, and relatives. Even when a professional mason was hired, the homeowner's own hands remained involved.

• Water management: A trench was dug around the house to channel rainwater into a well. Roofs, made of wood and brush with a clay‑straw mix, required annual maintenance—a challenge during winter rains.

• Roof life: Birds sprouted grass—or even wheat—on these roofs, though the plants soon withered.

• Colorful metaphors: Farmers joked that their four walls were like “four thieves wearing caps” or “four corpses carrying a corpse” (the heavy roof), while the creaky door was likened to a hung man crying out in vain.

• Support structures: Roofs were sometimes held up by interior wooden or stone pillars—or built directly onto the walls.

  

• Ventilation and light: Windows were rare, to deter thieves. Small openings near the roof—called “ṭāqāt”—provided air and allowed cooking smoke to escape; doors often stayed open during the day.

  Villagers warned that cold blasts through a “ṭāqa” could be brutal—some even said, “Better to sleep outside than beside a drafty opening”—so farmers boarded them up in winter.

• Interior layout: Most rural homes had one or two stories, with a single ground-floor bedroom, a small hall, and sometimes an extra room. A rooftop room called the “ʿuliyya” might be added—accessed by ladder, often opening onto a balcony.

  Bathrooms were absent in many. Basic chamber pots were used indoors, while needs at night were taken care of behind the house. Urban homes, by contrast, typically featured bathrooms.

• The courtyard world: A spacious front courtyard featured a shaded “maṣṭaba” (bench) under trees and trellised roofing, often accompanied by a large shade tree nearby. Nighttime summer respite came under these beams.

  Courtyards also held a chicken coop, livestock pen, straw storage, cooking hearth, and traditional oven—all enclosed by a low wall, crafting a self-contained microcosm reflecting interdependence with the land.

Local Materials—From Land to Home

Materials depended on wealth and local environment:

1. Stone construction: In Jerusalem and hill areas, farmers used local rock. Large slabs were sometimes blasted with explosives, then shaped with primitive tools crafted by blacksmiths—axes, picks, adzes, chisels, levers.

2. Mud-brick building: In the coastal plain, red clay soil was mixed with water, molded, dried in frames, and sometimes baked in kilns for extra strength.

3. Mortar and plaster: Stone homes used lime mortar; mud-brick builders used red or yellow clay mixed with straw and plastered walls and roofs annually.

Stone houses also received lime-sand and marble-powder whitewash, reinforced joints, sealed with a blend of lime and indigo, and polished.

4. Woodwork: Timber from pine, oak, kermes oak, pistachio, cypress, hackberry—but not olive wood (too twisted)—formed beams and supports. Roofs in the north were flat, thanks to straighter local timber; in the south, curved roofs reflected scarcity of long beams.

Farmers harvested and prepared wood themselves, using simple tools; wealthier ones hired carpenters for structural features, doors, and windows.

Building Rituals: Sacrifices, Songs & Blessings

Building was steeped in ritual:

• Foundation sacrifice: With the laying of the first stone or brick, a sheep was slaughtered and its blood let into the foundation trench—a ritual believed to ward off spirits and seek divine blessing. The meat was shared with family, laborers, neighbors, and the poor.

• Regional traditions: In Northwest Jerusalem, builders laid the first stone on the southeast corner, invoked the name of God (“O God, O friend of God”), and recited Al-Fatiha; some communities performed this again on the threshold and read scriptural passages or used holy water and buried silver or gold.

• Shadow superstition: Owners avoided letting their shadow cross the foundation stone—believing it portended death.

  

• Protective charms: Christian builders stuffed items like eggshells, evil‑eye beads, garlic, glass shards, bright beads, bracelets, pomegranate seeds, and ostrich feathers over doors to guard against evil, or adorned them with crosses or verses (for Muslims), with the “Hand of Fatima” across faiths.

• Ceremonial meals & songs: Neighboring folk joined the builders, sharing food and drinks. Celebratory melodies filled the air—chants like “Praise be to God, bless the Prophet!” and lyrical refrains celebrating the new home.

  At completion, another sheep was sacrificed, a feast held, and another celebration if a rooftop room was added.

  

• Roof tokens and blessings: On walls, farmers planted a white “flag of God”—a cloth tied to a stick—to be bleached by sun, wind, and rain, symbolizing lasting happiness; olive branches atop roofs promised long life and enduring faith.

  Among Bedouins around Nabi Musa’s shrine, they sacrificed and anointed tent poles with blood for spiritual protection.

For the Palestinian farmer, building a home was more than construction—it was a testament to resolve, community, faith, and cultural identity. Crafted entirely from local clay, stone, wood, and straw, homes were raised with collective labor, spiritual rites, joyous songs, and heartfelt blessings. In simplicity lay profound strength: a home was built by hand, blessed by tradition, and held together by unity, pride, and the blessings of the land itself.

At the onset of the Israeli invasion of Gaza following October 7, 2023, an estimated 50,000 pregnant women—around 5,000 of whom were in their final month—were plunged into severe health and food crises due to Israeli attacks, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

However, this suffering existed even before the Al-Aqsa flood. Reports from UNICEF confirmed that one in every four pregnant women in Palestine—25%—was at risk of dying during childbirth, a consequence of the occupation’s policies aimed, as described by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, at restricting childbirth in Gaza.

What were already perilous pregnancy and birth conditions before the Al-Aqsa catastrophe worsened into “something worse than Hell after the deluge,” when childbirth had previously been a source of joy and celebration. Below, we explore the childbirth and nursing rituals in Palestine before the existence of “Israel,” drawing from contemporaneous sources:

• Gustav Dalman, German orientalist, in Work, Customs, and Traditions in Palestine (early 20th century);

• Alois Musil, Austrian orientalist, in Arabia Petraea (late 19th–early 20th century);

• Tawfiq Kanaan, Palestinian researcher, in The Saints and Islamic Shrines in Palestine;

• Sharif Kanaaneh et al., Procreation and Childhood: A Study in Palestinian Culture and Society;

• Nidal Taha, Popular Rituals and Beliefs from Palestine.

Birth and Its Rituals: “Relief upon your head, relief from your distress.”

Late in pregnancy, women prepare by gathering wild herbs—bluf and basa‘miya—drying and grinding them into a flour with oil. The expectant mother eats this during labor, believing it nourishes and aids delivery.

The mother-to-be receives chickens, rice, and other essentials called al-hamoola (“the load”) from family in her final month for extra nourishment during childbirth.

She might visit a local shrine, making vows—offering dates, the dish mujaddara, or even a sacrifice—asking for a safe delivery of a male child.

To protect against evil spirits or envy, she may receive a protective amulet or blue bead from a religious elder, wear a prayer-bead necklace over her belly, recite the Quran, and pray.

When labor begins, the woman sits on a birthing stone (hajar al-julus) rather than lying in bed, flanked by female relatives and attended by a midwife (dayyah), with her mother often present. If no stone is available, alternatives include a chair, an overturned clay pot, or a stack of bricks.

If labor stalls, those around chant prayers and place blessed rosaries on her belly and neck. The midwife recites an ancient, folkloric blessing invoking prophets and divine power:

“Relief upon your head, relief from your distress, O Noah, O Noah, O spiritual deliverer...”

These practices transcended religious lines. Even Christian families in areas like Beit Jala sought help from Mary and saints, with priests praying and women wearing crosses for protection.

Once the baby’s head appears, the midwife prays:

“I stretch my right hand and trust in You, Lord of the Worlds... I stretch my left hand and trust in You...”

After the birth, she performs a blessing:

“I have enveloped you with Jacob’s children under the tree… in the name of He who gave you breath…”

She then carefully delivers the placenta, known as al-khalasah (“the deliverance”), thought to be the child’s spiritual twin and guardian. It’s tied and placed respectfully—often buried or stored in a clay jar—to preserve the child’s well-being and future fertility.

Muslim families avoided Friday births, seeing them as bad omens—they would sacrifice an animal and sprinkle its blood on the home and child. Generally, an aqiqa sacrifice was performed for newborn boys (and sometimes girls), but the blood was not sprinkled unless the birth fell on a Friday.

Welcoming the Newborn (Al-Khiryān) and Naming

Three days after birth, the newborn is anointed with oil, swaddled, washed with sheep’s urine, swaddled again, and nicknamed khiryān until they are formally named. On the seventh day (al-sabu‘), they’re bathed again with clean water.

Some families delay the newborn’s first bath up to a month, believing angels wash the baby at night. When the bath finally occurs, they sing lullabies and sprinkle perfume, salt, and blessings.

On day seven—or sometimes at the 40-day milestone—the baby visits their paternal or maternal grandfather, accompanied by a sheep or goat for an aqiqa. A green ribbon is tied to the animal, and the grandfather gives the baby its name in a ceremony:

“O Lord, accept this (goat or lamb) as an offering for the son of so‑and‑so...”

Friends and relatives are invited to a feast and bring gifts, especially for the new mother.

In traditional folktales, male births are preferred over female ones—“A daughter is a house-breaker; a son builds the home.” Both Muslim and Christian families share this cultural bias, separate from religious decree.

At the aqiqa, a lock of the baby’s hair is cut. In many areas, this happens a year—or even two—after weaning. Parents may keep hair, tucking it in the mother’s pillow or wall; headaches in the mother could signify the hair’s misuse.

Names reflect religion and lineage: Muslims favor prophetic or theophoric names (e.g., Muhammad, Abdullah), and Christian families choose Biblical names in Arabic, especially ones linked to saints' feast days. Others select aspirational names like Sa‘d, Saeed, Tawfiq, or naturist names referencing animals, plants, or months.

Christians name newborns immediately but formalize the name at baptism around day 40. A priest submerges the baby three times in holy water, cuts a cross-shaped lock, anoints them, and officiates with godparents and celebratory gifts and feast, similar to the Muslim aqiqa.

Nursing and Lulling: “Nurse, little fava bean...”

Nursing was intended for two years per Quranic guidance, though often interrupted due to rapid subsequent pregnancies. A mother’s success in breastfeeding was culturally esteemed, associated with fertility and strength.

During lactation, families performed a ritual: placing seven fava beans in water and chanting:

“Nurse, little fava bean, grow like the little stalk...”

As the beans swell, it symbolized the baby’s growth and appetite.

Babies were soothed through hadhhadah (gentle rocking and lullabies) by a family member, allowing the mother to complete household chores before breastfeeding. Lullabies included:

“O valley dove, bring sleep to my child...”

At six months, with the eruption of first teeth, an aunt would massage the gums—never the maternal aunt, as it was believed only a paternal aunt (‘ammah) could ensure strong teeth.

Weaning in summer was avoided; spring was preferred when animal milk supply peaks (“Wean in March even if the child is a tear”). Goat’s milk, boiled and sweetened, often supplemented.

These joyful and deeply human childbirth and nursing traditions, even when interwoven with superstition, honored the child as more than a physical being—but a spiritual continuation of ancestral life and identity.

Today, Palestinian birth remains a form of resistance—a tool against the settler-colonial erasure of indigenous inhabitants. The newborn embodies hope in the face of loss: “He who reproduces never dies.”

On the walls of ports, in train stations, and inside cafés across French cities, advertisements began to promote travel by ship, then by car, train, and eventually by airplane to Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. These destinations weren’t presented as sovereign states, but rather as mysterious, enchanting realms, cloaked in an alluring Orientalist fantasy.

These posters were more than mere marketing tools for steamship lines or travel to the "lands of the sun." They reflected the West’s imagined gaze upon the East: veiled women in tranquil riads, bustling souks splashed with color, and camels disappearing into the desert haze.

The Arab "other" was rendered with romantic fascination and subtle bias, using carefully selected visual elements—ornate palaces, veiled women, mosaic-covered doors, vibrant spices—to conjure an exotic dreamscape.

This vision was part of a broader mechanism now referred to as "colonial tourism," in which Maghrebi lands were sold as serene, picturesque, and pacified territories, ideal for discovering "wonders" or escaping the drudgery of industrial Europe.

By the early 20th century, Orientalist posters emerged as a distinct art form. They were showcased in commemorative exhibitions, such as the Spanish Pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, which featured an Andalusian palace that inspired artists like Georges Clairin and Henri Dinet.

Later colonial exhibitions followed, including the 1906 Marseille Expo and the 1930 Algiers Expo, commemorating a century of French occupation.

The Image as a Colonial Tool

In Morocco, businessman and art collector Abderrahman Slaoui took a keen interest in Orientalist posters, embarking on a tireless quest to locate them across Paris, Brussels, Geneva, London, Canada, and the United States, often poring through auction house catalogs.

In April 1994, Slaoui organized a small exhibition of his collection, timed to coincide with the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement, which paved the way for the creation of the World Trade Organization. The concept was inspired by a factory that specialized in movable commercial signage, whose designs had a similar mobility.

This early exhibit was closed to the public and attended only by delegates and diplomats. Many attendees urged Slaoui to present the collection in a larger, more permanent venue.

Two years later, in June 1996, the collection was exhibited for two months at the Arab World Institute in Paris. Slaoui later established a permanent exhibition at the Abderrahman Slaoui Museum in Casablanca, housing his acquisitions from around the globe. These hundreds of visually striking and historically significant posters documented a century of Orientalist advertising.

His efforts culminated in the 2010 publication of a richly illustrated book, The Orientalist Poster: A Century of Advertising, by Malika Editions. Though the book was never translated into Arabic, it includes an essay by Abdelaziz Ghouzi, director of the Ibn Siraj Library in Paris, who offers a critical reading of the posters—not just as travel ads, but as cultural artifacts charting Europe’s complex and layered relationship with North Africa.

Also featured is a foreword by former French Foreign Trade and Foreign Affairs Minister Michel Jobert, adding an official tone to the book’s cultural weight.

A Ticket to the Other East: How They Saw Us

Tourism in North Africa began in earnest in the early 1890s, when shipping companies allowed the PLM Railway (Paris–Lyon–Mediterranean) to expand into Algeria and later Tunisia. This marked the birth of an organized colonial tourism industry.

As Ghouzi notes, advertising posters became a primary means of commercial communication in the 20th century. France played a significant role in promoting them to support its colonial agenda.

The earliest of these travel posters date back to 1891 and 1892, when artist Hugo d’Alési created promotional posters for PLM, showcasing Orientalized scenes from Algeria and Tunisia designed to captivate European tourists.

Travel brochures also emphasized the "radical differences" between France and the Maghreb, enhancing the exotic appeal and presenting these territories as "the other France," suggesting both geographic and cultural extensions of the French Empire.

Before World War I, tourism to the Maghreb was largely seasonal, restricted to the winter months. Promotional texts of the era painted a vivid picture:

"There are fewer houses than in France, vast open lands, no fences separating the fields, and red or brown clay huts instead of stone buildings. On the road, locals travel with horses, camels, or mules, unbothered by long distances. In the Maghreb, the tourist steps into another world—yet feels at home, thanks to France’s influence."

Posters frequently depicted North Africans with dark skin, Amazigh dancers, or labeled settlements as “Berber,” a term that originally bore pejorative connotations of primitiveness and savagery, derived from the Latin barbarus, which Romans used to describe non-Greek or non-Latin-speaking peoples.

One common motif was the Moroccan Sultan on horseback en route to the mosque, flanked by his entourage. Algerian minarets—especially those of Tlemcen—appeared regularly, alongside fully veiled Algerian women. In contrast, Tunisian posters often portrayed more "liberated" female imagery, by Western standards.

European women in bikinis appeared on the beaches of Agadir and Tunis, or in golf carts at exclusive resorts, juxtaposed against traditional depictions of locals—reinforcing the visual divide between the "civilized" European visitor and the "primitive" Orient.

Egyptian posters, meanwhile, offered a different appeal: winter warmth and ancient pharaonic splendor, targeting tourists in search of sun and history.

During World War I, North African countries were called upon to support the Allied powers. Posters encouraged enlistment, subscriptions, and loans to "liberate France" and bring soldiers home. Between the wars, as transportation evolved, the golden age of the travel poster emerged.

By then, the sea journey from Marseille to Algeria took 22–26 hours, to Tunisia 30 hours, and to Morocco around 3 days. Air travel reduced that to 6–10 hours.

The Maghreb Through the European Poster

Major transportation firms promoted the Maghreb as an “exotic yet accessible” destination, commissioning artists like Broders, Romberg, and De La Nézière for poster campaigns. Early designs were text-heavy, packed with visual lures.

In 1920, tourism offices opened in Algeria, Tunisia, and Casablanca. These favored hiring local artists to better convey a sense of place, leading to a shift toward more minimalist poster designs without excessive annotations.

Printed locally—most notably by the Baconnier press—these posters used bold lighting and striking color gradients. Artists included Josset in Tunisia; Koffi, Carré, and Thell in Algeria; and Majorelle, Drésch, and Brondy in Morocco. Some pursued an explicitly colonial vision, while others simply expressed an artistic interest in local culture.

Jacques Majorelle settled in Marrakech and created the now-famous garden that bears his name. Gabriel Rousseau authored books on Moroccan fashion, and his posters reflected that. Mariano Bertuchi Nieto, active during the Spanish protectorate, managed several museums, including the one in Tetouan.

Shipping and railway companies integrated posters into broader marketing strategies. They adorned travel agencies, train stations, ports, and tourist offices, capturing the imagination of prospective travelers.

Though produced as ephemeral ads, many posters survived and now serve as rich visual records and fertile ground for cultural analysis.

Patrick Boulanger of the Marseille Heritage Office notes in the book that these posters offered Europeans a fantastical glimpse into foreign lands, blurring the line between reality and myth.

Famous steamship companies like Paquet, Cie Générale Transatlantique, and SS Champollion hired renowned artists such as Édouard Collin, Hugo d’Alési, Roger Broders, Jacques Majorelle, Louis Lessieux, Mathieu Brondy, and Maurice Romberg.

Over time, visuals overtook text, making posters resemble "telegrams to the mind."

The Paquet Steamship Partnership

Maritime travel to Morocco was particularly fraught due to the country’s unprepared ports and hazardous coastlines. Strong waves often forced ships to anchor offshore for days, with cargo transferred by small boats.

Trade between Marseille and Morocco involved French exports of candles, sugar, and soap, in exchange for Moroccan wool, leather, and olive oil. By 1900, Paquet Line, owned by Nicolas Paquet, dominated maritime routes to Morocco with eight ships—some of which sank in Moroccan waters due to harsh conditions, though no lives were lost.

Nicolas Paquet pioneered a French-Moroccan shipping partnership, inviting local Muslim and Jewish traders as shareholders. The initial partners included Abdelkader Attar, Mokhtar Ben Azzouz, Yves Bergil, David Corcos, and Massoud Lasri.

Between 1900 and 1914, this partnership spurred exponential growth: the fleet grew to over twenty ships, and Paquet was responsible for producing more than a third of all Moroccan-themed posters of the time.

This special relationship showed in the posters, which portrayed Morocco with unmatched artistic enthusiasm. A square in Casablanca still bears Nicolas Paquet’s name, though his company now offers luxury cruises under "Croisières Paquet."

These posters now evoke nostalgia for the grand steamship era, for the romance of Mediterranean voyages, and the luxury of maritime travel. Though planes eventually replaced ships, the surviving posters preserve a vibrant memory of that bygone time.

The Age of Aviation

The first regular air service between France and Morocco began in 1919 via the French airline Latécoère, which later merged into Aérospatiale. Favorable Moroccan weather made it an ideal base for launching these pioneering intercontinental flights.

Even earlier, in 1916, a route from Toulouse to Rabat via Barcelona, Alicante, and Málaga allowed air travel in 16–18 hours—considered one of the world’s earliest intercontinental journeys.

In Algeria, Latécoère launched a Marseille–Algiers route in August 1928 with three weekly flights, which became daily by the next year. In 1929, Air Union—predecessor to Air France—introduced three weekly flights from Marseille to Tunis. Soon, trans-Mediterranean air travel expanded rapidly.

As travel posters flourished, a new genre of commercial posters emerged promoting Oriental-themed products—soap, coffee, cigarettes, and carpets—featuring turbaned Arab men and seductive Eastern women.

Anyone browsing these hundreds of Orientalist ads will detect a double gaze: one that reduced the East to mystical tropes, swaying between aesthetic admiration and cultural condescension. These images were far from innocent; they carried political and colonial undertones shaped by Western imagination, not the lived realities of Eastern societies.

Today, revisiting these posters with a critical eye is less about condemning them as art, and more about deconstructing the visual discourse they carried—liberating the visual consciousness from inherited stereotypes in hopes of creating a more just, balanced image of the East and its people.

This indelible identity reflects a profound aspect of the events of 1948, one rooted in psychological, emotional, cultural, and social impact rather than purely political or legal definitions.

While the term "Nakba" offers a unified national narrative capable of reclaiming political and historical rights, everyday language often opts for more emotive and colloquial expressions: "displacement," "expulsion," "loss of homeland," and others.

From this lived identity—one that presents the Palestinian catastrophe as a cultural, social, and human dispossession—emerges a narrative carried through oral traditions, visual symbols, and the daily practices of the diaspora's generations.

This memory stretches from the lost geography of villages and towns to their vibrant presence in songs, names, and embroidery motifs, forming a cultural and human resistance to forgetting.

It is a process of constantly reproducing the homeland through its people's language, attire, and stories.

Villages Carried on Shoulders and in Memory

In her book The Absent Ones: Women and Palestinian Cities until 1948, researcher Manar Hassan highlights the emphasis on villages and rural memory at the expense of cities in the Palestinian exile narrative.

She describes how collective memory has been shaped predominantly by a rural consciousness that transcends Palestinian communities worldwide—an orientation that also influenced intellectuals and scholars.

This focus is warranted, given the symbolic power villages hold in Palestinian oral geography. These places often stand equal to, or even surpass, cities in significance, serving as sources of poetry, harvest songs, wedding chants, and even resistance hymns. Their symbolic weight is heightened by the massacres, burnings, and destruction they endured.

Reviving and commemorating these villages is thus a step toward reclaiming them. Yarmouk Camp in Syria exemplifies this phenomenon—a two-square-kilometer space housing refugees from over 300 villages across the Galilee and Palestinian coast, along with nearly 16 central cities.

First, the camp's diverse origins make it a living archive of Palestine in exile. Second, its residents have played a vital role in every phase of Palestinian national struggle, preserving traditions from their original villages and towns.

Streets, shops, sports clubs, and cultural centers carry names like Lubya Street, Safad Street, Al-Ja'una Street, the KhaLsa Theater, Tabgha and Jenin libraries, and the Karmel and Talhoum teams.

Third, the camp’s demographic layout mirrors the geographical order of Palestine. Families from specific villages congregate in distinct areas—residents of al-Tira from Haifa gather in the camp’s southern quarter, those from Saffuriyya in the center, and people from Balad al-Sheikh in the adjacent Tadamon neighborhood. Such clustering has preserved traditions and facilitated intergenerational transmission.

This pattern is repeated across diaspora camps, where walls bear slogans like “Palestine, the Eternal Wound,” “Revolution Until Victory,” and “Palestine, My Homeland.” Names of children also carry symbolic weight: Yafa, Bisan, Quds, Haifa, Jenin, or more abstract expressions like Areej (fragrance), Intisar (victory), Thawra (revolution), and Haneen (longing).

Scholar Long Yaling interprets this social behavior as a collective affirmation of Palestinians’ ties to their land and the legitimacy of their belonging. He argues that such shared experiences go beyond the personal to become mechanisms for cementing group identity, where “a community of memory reinforces its identity by recalling the past.”

For Yaling, the individual memory of a refugee cannot be separated from collective memory, no matter how personal. Both are essential in shaping identity. This confluence is what forms the independent Palestinian identity—a narrative centered on the Nakba, serving as the nation’s foundational myth that answers “Who are we?”, “Where did we come from?”, and “Where are we going?” Songs, chants, and inherited tales provide a powerful response.

Inherited Memory Through Stories and Chants

According to Palestinian historian Nur Masalha, storytellers and their oral narratives were the first to preserve cultural memory after the Nakba, especially in a context marked by grief, silence, and a hostile environment. These stories were soon followed by popular chants and written poetry.

Oral history became a cornerstone of Palestinian identity and a means of preserving the details of the Nakba—not shaped by intellectuals but by mothers, grandmothers, elders, and shepherds. They passed down first-hand accounts of displacement, embedding memory into popular folklore.

Through Palestinian oral history, the memory of place has been preserved: homes, threshing floors, clay houses, roads, and the paths of flight—where they fled first, where families reunited, and where they dispersed. These recollections are especially resonant today amidst the genocide in Gaza, validating memory through the lived reality of renewed displacement and violence.

Less commonly discussed but equally vital are forms like zajal, hadaaya, and tarweedat—oral poetic traditions that evolved in the 1950s as vehicles for lamenting the enemy, celebrating the lost village, and chronicling exile.

These forms appeared in social gatherings, striking a balance between not celebrating amid grief and not surrendering to despair. They even featured in mourning rituals.

Such performances highlighted a unique Palestinian voice that echoed across Arab identities, reviving the joy of harvest and wedding songs in melodies like mi’jana and ‘ataaba, which communities sang together:

My steed gallops when war erupts / darkness unfolds / Where are the eyes to see the fire / that blazes from the muzzle of a gun?

These traditions emerged alongside a renaissance in Palestinian political poetry in the 1960s, with poets in occupied Palestine leading the charge. They reframed the Nakba as a pan-Arab cause, going beyond individual nostalgia to document stories of displacement, resistance, and the land itself.

Through such tools, Palestinian refugees created an alternative map—one built not on photos or documents, but on collective yearning that intensified during moments of cultural or political resistance.

This evolution of nationalist poetry paved the way for resistance songs. As writer Badr Al-‘Uqbani notes, the post-1967 shift from martyrdom to armed resistance galvanized composers and poets to create lyrics rooted in nationalist and pan-Arab ideals.

These songs incorporated terms like bullets, fire, and tanks, especially after the launch of Voice of the Storm radio in Amman in 1968.

Thus, even refugees who had never set foot in Palestine could recount their village’s layout, its families, springs, fruits, and alleys—passing this knowledge on to the next generation as a heritage to be safeguarded, regardless of the challenges of return.

In this way, the Nakba evolved from a collective trauma to a social and emotional inheritance, with memory preserved not merely as information, but as identity and continuity.

Embroidered Geography: The Dress as a Miniature Homeland

Thread and needle predate the Nakba by millennia—some date the practice to 2500–3000 BCE—but embroidery has always adapted to political, social, and economic shifts. Each village had its own motifs, symbols of love, joy, the sea, harvest, weddings, and religion. Gold and silver coins sewn into dresses reflected economic and social status.

Traditionally, Palestinian girls would begin embroidering their wedding dresses at age ten, using white, blue, black, and brown fabrics. Natural dyes were sourced from river silt and sea shells, and embroidery patterns ranged from 11 to 33 stitches, including cross-stitch (fallahi), ant stitch, Bedouin wrap, and Gaza’s sickle stitch.

Maha Saca, director of the Saca Heritage Center and known as the guardian of the Palestinian dress, has documented its legacy. She identifies the oldest known Palestinian dress as the “Jericho Dress,” dating back 10,000 years. The oldest photograph of such a dress comes from 1886 and features her ancestors.

After the Nakba, Palestinian embroidery suffered due to deteriorating social and economic conditions and Israel’s efforts to appropriate Palestinian heritage. This spurred grassroots efforts to preserve it—folk heritage parades, community centers, and educational campaigns aimed at sustaining Arab Palestinian identity.

These efforts led to the formation of associations to protect embroidery and support Palestinian families. Women began to embroider not just for loved ones, but as paid work to sustain their families.

By the 1950s and ’60s, several organizations emerged, including Family Revival Society in Ramallah, Palestinian Refugee Revival in Beirut, the Returnees Association in Syria, and the Arab Women’s Union across its branches.

The Palestine Liberation Organization also founded the SAMED Foundation, where women described their embroidery as “political and social resistance.”

The Dress as Political Expression

Despite its commodification, the Palestinian dress has remained a powerful symbol of identity. It reflects nostalgia for communal traditions—weddings, births, construction, and harvest—and embodies the blending of styles that occurred in the camps. Financial hardship led to fewer gold coins being used, making traditional dresses rarer and triggering campaigns for their revival.

The dress has also become a canvas of resistance, its traditional motifs replaced with the Palestinian flag, rifle, key, and map of the homeland. As embroidery went global—particularly after Oslo, which saw the creation of 64% of all embroidery associations—it moved from a private cultural artifact to a symbol of national pride.

This shift raised fears of losing the dress’s original meaning. Organizations like Tarazein, Family Revival, and the Palestine Museum launched initiatives to document regional styles and host exhibitions that go beyond commodification to preserve village-specific dress patterns.

The dress became a threatened memory, much like Palestine itself. Israeli efforts to appropriate it—substituting the six-pointed star with Palestinian embroidery, having ministers’ wives wear it, and displaying it as “Israeli heritage” in international exhibitions like the one Moshe Dayan’s wife organized at the White House—underscore the urgency of cultural preservation.

The dress must now be elevated beyond folklore to a political statement and soft form of resistance. Wearing it at weddings, graduations, and public events has become an act of reclaiming history and defying erasure.

This culminated in 2021 when Maha Saca compiled a 700-page book on the Palestinian dress and submitted it to UNESCO. The result: 194 countries voted to add Palestinian embroidery to the 2021 Intangible Cultural Heritage list—marking a victory for cultural resistance and a bulwark against appropriation.

In the end, this embroidered fabric preserved the scent of a mother, the taste of her cooking, the seasons of harvest stitched into its folds. It conveyed stories unspoken, histories unwritten, and continues to embody the Palestinian experience in defending cultural heritage against occupation.

It is a testament that Palestine may not always need grand institutions, but rather individuals who remain true to their compass—those who know that the path home will never be betrayed by memory, will never be missed by the rifle, and will always be cloaked in the warmth of stories and their embroidered gowns.

This textured mosaic of communities, rendered in black and white or faded greyscale images, was deliberately erased from the historical narrative of Palestine and the decisive moment of the Nakba. The result: a landscape flattened into a binary conflict between Jews and Muslims, as though the Zionist movement carried the mantle of the Crusaders in their war against the Muslims of the Holy Land.

Perhaps that is why the Western capitals erupted in celebration when General Allenby entered Jerusalem in 1917, or when Moshe Dayan marched into the Haram al-Sharif in 1967.

This erasure served the Zionist movement on multiple levels: it reframed the issue as a religious conflict between two faiths; it rallied Western Christian support for the Zionist cause; and it underpinned the long-standing strategy of "divide and conquer"—a tactic Zionism adopted both before and after the Nakba.

This strategy helped win over various sects and ethnicities to its project, while also creating the illusion that its crimes only targeted Arab Muslims, sparing others and thus absolving itself in Western eyes.

On the anniversary of the Nakba, this article revisits the selective policies Israel implemented against Palestine’s diverse population, while highlighting the broader context of fragmentation across the Arab world.

Wherever ethnic or sectarian rifts exist, Israel finds fertile ground for expansion—feeding off fractures and multiplying within them, always at the expense of the native fabric of this land.

No Unified Identity for Palestinians

According to the first population census conducted by the British Mandate authorities in 1922, Palestine’s population totaled 757,182 residents, comprising a Muslim majority of 590,390, 73,024 Christians, 38,694 Jews, 7,028 Druze, 408 Sikhs, 265 Baháʼís, 156 Shia Muslims, and 163 Samaritan Jews.

Nine years later, on November 18, 1931, the Mandate government conducted a second census. It recorded a population increase of 36.8%, bringing the total to 1,033,314. This surge was most pronounced among Jews, due to organized immigration, whose numbers had risen by 108.4% to 174,610—surpassing the Christian population, which stood at 91,398.

Meanwhile, the Muslim population reached 759,717, the Druze numbered 9,148, the Baháʼís 350, and the Samaritans 182. As for the nomadic Bedouins in the south, they refused for the second time to cooperate with census officials, prompting the statistics office to estimate their number at 759,717.

The final census before the Nakba was carried out in 1945, jointly conducted by the Mandate’s Statistics and Land Office and the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (UNSCOP). Its results laid the groundwork for UN Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

According to that census, based on general demographic proportions and supplemented with data from the Jewish Agency and immigration records, Palestine’s total population was 1,764,520, including 1,061,270 Muslims, 553,600 Jews, and 135,550 Christians. The rest—Druze, Baháʼís, Samaritans, and others—were lumped together under the category “Others,” totaling 14,100.

Despite major questions surrounding the census—particularly its reliance on projections based on 14-year-old data for all groups except Jews, and its heavy dependence on Jewish Agency figures that advanced the goal of establishing a Jewish state—the data still proves, beyond doubt, that the Jewish presence in Palestine was unnatural and its expansion aimed not only at displacing Muslims but also targeting non-Muslim Palestinians.

Palestinian identities are deeply rooted, not only in numbers but also in the political, religious, cultural, and economic contributions of all segments of society.

Christians in Palestine, for instance, were never marginal or peripheral; they played central roles in politics and national movements, producing influential figures such as Yusuf al-‘Isa (founder of Al-Karmel newspaper), George Antonius (author of The Arab Awakening), and Issa al-Bandak (mayor of Bethlehem and editor of Sawt al-Sha‘b).

This list also includes pioneering writers and publishers like Khalil Baydas, Emil al-Ghouri, Iskandar al-Khuri, Najib Nassar, Emile Habibi, and Hanna Abu Hanna—intellectuals who shaped an inclusive national discourse that transcended sectarian divides.

Economically, Christians were also trailblazers—establishing workshops, trades, banking institutions, and a robust press (Falastin, Al-Difa‘, Al-Karmel). In education, they founded schools, printing presses, and cultural clubs such as the Arab Orthodox Club, and connected Palestine to the Arab world in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.

The Druze contributed significantly to agriculture and livestock herding, maintaining a cohesive local economy and balanced relations with Muslims and Christians, despite their religious conservatism and relative isolation.

The Armenians, meanwhile, introduced photography to Palestine, established its first printing press in Jerusalem, and became renowned goldsmiths—forming an artisanal class that played a key role in Jerusalem and Jaffa, including the upkeep of churches and religious landmarks.

This applies also to other minority groups like the Circassians, Baháʼís, and Samaritans, who enriched Palestinian life through their contributions across sectors, solidifying Palestine’s place as a vital part of Greater Syria—“Southern Syria”—and as a bridge linking Istanbul, Damascus, Beirut, and Alexandria. This significance carried into the diaspora experiences of Palestinians after the Nakba.

The economic and cultural vitality of some communities, along with tendencies toward neutrality or seclusion, may explain why Zionist policies were often lenient toward them—or excluded them from direct expulsion plans.

In this sense, the Nakba was more than a sweeping act of ethnic cleansing; it was a complex scheme of population engineering that preserved certain groups in targeted areas for long-term strategic use, redistributed others functionally, and uprooted the majority to fulfill a larger settler-colonial goal.

The Nakba as a Selective Policy: Who Is Displaced and Who Remains

Ethnic composition, population distribution, and political, economic, and cultural engagement all play critical roles in deconstructing the Nakba through the lens of minority communities. This reveals how Christian, Druze, and then Bedouin populations experienced the Nakba differently from the Muslim majority, their presence reshaped rather than obliterated.

This disparity is evident in areas where these communities concentrated—Galilee, the coast, and the south—and in how they were redistributed after the Nakba under Israel’s strategic logic: Who lives near “secure” borders? Who is deeply integrated into the broader Palestinian or Arab landscape? Who can be politically or economically co-opted? Who can be separated from Palestinian national identity through isolation, fragmentation, or reinvention?

Christians of the Holy Land

From this angle, it becomes clear that Israel, after dealing with the Muslim majority, focused on demographic density as a means of controlling the demographic balance. This explains why Christians, like Muslims, were expelled from coastal cities, and why Christian villages along the northern border with Lebanon and Bedouin concentrations in Wadi Ara and Beersheba were similarly targeted.

The Druze, meanwhile, were “retained” for purposes of political co-optation and containment.

Prior to the Nakba, Christians lived across Palestine—in Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Ramla, Lydda, and Safad—and often constituted significant portions of these populations. They played pivotal roles as thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and influential cultural and political figures.

After the Nakba, however, Christian presence was largely confined to Nazareth and surrounding villages in Galilee. More than 60,000 Christians were displaced from cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Ramla, Lydda, and Safad.

Their share of the population fell from roughly 10% to less than 2% today. Their involvement in the national movement, especially during the 1936–1939 revolt, likely accelerated Zionist efforts to expel them from central and coastal regions.

It’s crucial to note that their survival in Nazareth was not due to some special immunity, but rather Israel’s deliberate policy to preserve a marginal “image of religious diversity” to placate the international community—particularly given Nazareth’s global Christian symbolism and its churches, notably the Church of the Annunciation.

Just as demographics drove the expulsion of Christians from most areas, international pressure helped preserve their presence elsewhere. For example, the few Galilee villages that remained were not in direct geographic contact with Lebanese or Syrian villages across the border.

Villages on the “first line” like Maalul, Rameh, Iqrit, and Kafr Bir’im were cleared and replaced with Israeli settlements.

This distinction also played out in how expulsion occurred. For Muslims, Zionist militias employed mass killings, forced deportations, bombings, house burnings, and demolitions—blunt tools of terror and displacement.

For Christians, the methods varied: direct expulsion as in Lydda and Ramla; “encouraged departure” in places like Haifa; or “temporary evacuation” based on false promises of return, as in Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im. In some cases, churches, Western institutions, and Christian dignitaries intervened to halt displacement, as happened in Nazareth.

This differentiated treatment produced a new post-Nakba demographic reality. Some Christian families remained in neighborhoods in cities like Jaffa and Haifa, while most Muslim residents were expelled.

Some Christians returned to their villages; in mixed areas, both Muslims and Christians were expelled under the guise of “non-discrimination.” While some historic Christian villages in Galilee survived, Muslims were erased from most.

One striking disparity post-Nakba was that Palestinian Christians in Nazareth and Bethlehem retained urban, economic, and social infrastructure—and support from Western churches.

Their continued presence was later exploited to promote Israel’s image as a pluralistic state, in stark contrast to Muslim Palestinians, who lost their economic centers and social cohesion with the fall of major cities that linked them to administrative, financial, and academic networks.

Israel’s gain from selectively displacing Christians and Muslims went beyond propaganda. It was a calculated strategy of demographic curation. Christian Palestinians were, in general, urban, middle-class or above, and had longstanding economic ties to European and American markets.

Their education levels—both before and after the Nakba—were higher than among Muslims, Jews, and other minorities. Additionally, they had the lowest birth and natural growth rates in the country.

The Bedouins: Palestine’s Forgotten

This selective policy also applies, in part, to the Bedouins—whom Ghazi Falah once called “the forgotten Palestinians.” Indeed, they were marginalized before and after the Nakba. Urban Palestinian society did not fully integrate the Bedouins, which left them in a state of isolation that made them more vulnerable to Israeli targeting after 1948.

Yet, that isolation was not always a disadvantage. Bedouins actively resisted Jewish immigration and British colonial rule, and participated in the Palestinian Revolt by attacking British police posts and Zionist settlements, particularly around Baysan and Mount Carmel. They also sabotaged railway lines and blocked roads between colonies.

They joined early in the al-Qassam Revolt and in protests against British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. Notable tribes like Arab al-Suqur, Arab al-Ghazzawiyya, and Arab al-Tarabin played major roles.

From a wide geographic spread that once extended from Beersheba to Gaza’s outskirts, from Marj Ibn Amer to Baysan and the depths of the Negev, Bedouins are now confined to unrecognized villages in the Negev.

These are subject to routine demolitions and forced evictions—like al-‘Araqib, which has been razed over 200 times, denied water, infrastructure, schools, and transportation.

In coastal, Carmel, and Marj regions, most Bedouins were displaced into limited enclaves like Zarzir, Tuba-Zangariyya, and Arab al-Shibli near the Jordan Valley. This displacement continued well beyond 1948, escalating between 1951 and 1953 under policies of “Negev development,” “soft transfer,” and population relocation.

Ironically, Bedouin survival in some regions had less to do with Israeli leniency and more with their own knowledge of the land. Their familiarity with the terrain allowed them to repeatedly return after expulsions, exploiting gaps in Israeli geographical knowledge.

Yet, despite their resistance, continued Israeli efforts forced a drastic decline: from around 95,000 Bedouins before the end of the Mandate to just 13,000 afterward. The rest were expelled to Gaza, Jordan, Sinai, Khan al-Ahmar, and Masafer Yatta.

The Bedouins of southern Palestine refer to their uprooting as “Kasrat Bir al-Saba‘”—the shattering of Beersheba, a phrase that embodies their catastrophe. Sixteen tribal leaders, out of 95 displaced tribes, formally petitioned the occupation authorities to remain on their ancestral Negev lands.

A month and a half later, the committee—comprising Yosef Weitz (known as the “father of afforestation”), General Yigael Yadin, and Yigal Allon—rejected the request, stating only “friendly tribes” would be allowed to remain. This prompted pledges of loyalty from some tribes, while others—like the al-‘Azazmeh—resisted, resulting in the expulsion of 700 of their members.

Today, only seven Bedouin villages in the Negev are officially recognized, compared to 180 Jewish settlements. The rest remain “unrecognized,” constantly threatened by demolition and eviction.

Despite the sweeping nature of the Nakba, some Bedouin leaders chose to negotiate separately with Israel. Under military rule, which deprived Bedouins of freedom and space, and given the deep attachment to land among Bedouins, Israel exploited this vulnerability.

Upon completing military service, Bedouin soldiers were allowed to apply for loans to purchase land and build homes—an option unavailable to other recruits. This lured some into homeownership at the cost of surrendering communal lands and collective identity.

Today, Bedouins constitute 5–10% of Israel’s military, mainly in the 585th Battalion, known as the “Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion.” Founded in 1970, it handles tracking, border patrol, and infiltration interception along Gaza, Egypt, Sinai, and Jordan, and supports field operations. About 1,581 Bedouin soldiers serve in this unit alone.

Still, this figure remains small compared to the 300,000-strong Bedouin population. Recruitment is technically voluntary, but often incentivized through economic perks like loans and land ownership.

Nevertheless, deep-rooted national consciousness endures among many Bedouins, with numerous examples of resistance—such as detainee Shatila Abu ‘Ayadah, who carried out a stabbing operation and remains imprisoned, and activists Suleiman al-Hurbaid, Ya‘qub Abu al-Qi‘an, and Haitham al-Hawashleh.

One version of the battalion’s origin, cited in Israeli archives, recounts that during Operation Yiftach on the eve of “Independence Day” (the Nakba), Yigal Allon and the Palmach were unable to gather intelligence from Safad, which was under Arab control.

He turned to Sheikh Yusuf Hussein Muhammad al-Hayb of Tuba-Zangariyya, who sent two villagers to Safad. One was killed after refusing to swear on the Qur’an that he had no ties to Jews; the other survived. This led Allon and the Sheikh to form a Bedouin unit in the Palmach called “Balhayb,” named after the tribe.

Yet this recruitment was never an equal partnership—it was bait. Israel exploited Bedouin tracking skills unavailable to others and then discarded them. Even those who served were later denied equal rights.

Today, this reality persists. Homes of Bedouin soldiers from Tuba-Zangariyya—who served along the Lebanese border—were demolished while they wore IDF uniforms. Discrimination extends not only to infrastructure but also within the military, where non-Jewish units face systemic condescension and marginalization.

The Druze and Circassians: Isolation Toward Separation

In a rare act of principled resistance, the late scholar Qais Firro produced critical academic work on the Druze community's relationship with the Israeli occupation and the history of their conscription. He stressed that the mainstream Israeli narrative surrounding Druze conscription is incomplete and must be approached cautiously—especially when based on Zionist archival sources.

According to these archives, in May 1948, the Israeli intelligence officer Giora Zaid established the so-called “Minorities Unit” and issued orders forbidding Arabs from harvesting or burning wheat fields—except for those from the Druze community. Druze villagers were given a grim ultimatum: retain their lands in exchange for mandatory military service.

Firro argued that this move was not primarily military in intent but aimed at severing the organic connection between Druze and Arabs, especially their ties to Syria and Lebanon. It was also part of Israel’s image-making efforts—like with Christians—leaving Druze as a symbolic minority within the “Jewish state.”

He further noted that the Minorities Unit was not under the Ministry of Defense but rather the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—emphasizing the political and propaganda nature of the project.

Supporting Firro’s analysis are records showing that 23% of Druze Arabs participated in the 1948 war on the side of the Arab Liberation Army—exceeding their proportion in the Palestinian Arab population.

Druze Palestinians also took part in attacks on Jewish settlements during the 1920s as members of the “Green Hand Gang” led by Arab-Druze rebel Ahmad Tafesh. The group operated in northern Palestine for three years.

Druze involvement in Palestinian and Arab affairs remained strong until the early 1940s when Zionist leader Yitzhak Ben-Zvi recognized the strategic value of co-opting them. He supported efforts to challenge the dominance of Grand Mufti al-Husseini, promoted the sale of Druze tobacco via Jewish merchants, and encouraged friendly visits to Druze villages.

Despite these efforts, Israel’s “Minorities Unit”—which included limited Druze, Bedouin, and Circassian participation—failed in its first operation: an assault on the Druze village of Nahaf.

Local Druze, aligned with the national movement, inflicted heavy losses—41 Israeli casualties, including 11 Druze. Yet, this assault laid the groundwork for the later formalization of Israel–Druze relations through the so-called “Blood Pact” signed on October 29, 1948.

Under this pact, Druze were allowed to enlist in the Israeli military in exchange for unique privileges not extended to other minorities. Still, initial attempts to impose conscription faced resistance. Only 127 of 472 draft orders were fulfilled, and entire villages refused to comply.

At that time, strong Druze leadership—figures like Sheikh Farhoud Qassem Farhoud—galvanized opposition to conscription. But with the loss of Arab backing after the Nakba, the Druze became increasingly vulnerable to Israeli policy.

Even so, until 1965, Sheikhs Farhoud Farhoud and Amin Tarif supported draft resistance and enforced social boycotts on conscripts, including bans on marriage.

This changed in the early 1970s when Israel confiscated 83% of Druze agricultural land, their main livelihood. This economic blow drove many Druze into the military and security sector, beginning a shift toward forced conscription.

During this period, Israel passed laws separating Druze and Circassians from Arabs and Muslims—designating them as distinct ethnicities, imposing separate curricula, replacing Islamic holidays with Prophet Shu‘ayb Day, and creating separate administrative and legal systems.

This coincided with the decline of historic Druze leadership and the rise of a more pliant, less educated elite—facilitating mandatory conscription.

Today, about 85% of Druze youth are drafted into the Israeli army. Service begins at age 18, a result of systemic pressures including land confiscation and the collapse of traditional agriculture, driving young Druze to seek social and economic benefits through military service.

This situation parallels that of the Circassians, though with unique historical distinctions. Unlike Druze, Christians, or Bedouins—whose roots in Palestine go back centuries—the Circassians arrived more recently, between 1876 and 1878, after being expelled from the Caucasus by Tsarist Russia. The Ottoman Empire resettled them across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.

Roughly 950 Circassians settled in Palestine before the Nakba, belonging to the Shapsugh and Abzakh tribes, concentrated in Kafr Kama and al-Rihaniyya. They preserved their language and customs and were relatively new converts to Islam.

Their recent arrival, coupled with Ottoman decline and increased Jewish immigration, limited their integration into Palestinian national identity. Like other minorities, they adapted to shifting political powers and maintained cordial relations with various sides.

Some participated in the Palestinian Revolt—figures like Idris Hasan La‘sha and Ishaq al-Sharkasi engaged in clashes with British forces and Zionist guards.

Others, however, protected Jewish settlements and opposed Palestinian fighters. A school principal from Kafr Kama testified that Circassians aided nearby Yavne’el during the 1936 Revolt.

Palestinian fighters tried to recruit them during the 1948 war, but they declined, preferring neutrality—unlike their counterparts in Jordan and Syria who fought in the Arab Liberation Army and suffered casualties in Palestine.

During the Nakba, while Zionist forces ethnically cleansed much of Galilee, Circassian villages like Kafr Kama and al-Rihaniyya were left untouched. Explanations range from Israel’s divide-and-rule strategy to their low population numbers, longstanding ties with nearby Jewish settlements since the 1930s, and tensions with local Arabs stemming from past Ottoman allegiances.

Yet, this did not last. Within two months of the Nakba, Circassian volunteers from Kafr Kama participated in military operations in Nazareth, Shefa-‘Amr, and western Galilee alongside Haganah forces. They became part of the 12th Battalion of the Golani Brigade. With the formation of the “Minorities Unit,” Circassians, like Druze and Bedouins, were swept into Israel’s mandatory conscription system.

Historian Ilan Pappé noted that promoting Circassian participation in the Minorities Unit aimed to provoke Arab resentment. In fact, only five Circassians served—one from al-Rihaniyya, three from Kafr Kama, and one Syrian Circassian residing in Palestine.

In 1953, when the mukhtar of al-Rihaniyya, Hassan Bek, died, villagers nominated Rashid Ghash. Israeli authorities rejected him and appointed pro-Israel figure Jamal Khurshid instead. This triggered internal division and escalated after the assassination of a notorious informant. Israel responded with a village siege, arrests, and exile of seven families—more followed in 1957 amid land confiscations.

Kafr Kama’s land shrank from 8,500 to 6,500 dunums; al-Rihaniyya’s from 6,000 to just 1,600. To deepen the divide between Circassians and Arabs, Israel designated them as a separate ethnic group, imposed distinct school curricula, and enforced conscription—adding a new official holiday: “Circassian Exile Day.”

Today, there are about 4,000 Circassians in Israel, with around 75% serving in the Israeli military. They are considered among the most assimilated minorities, likely due to their small numbers and lack of institutions to preserve their cultural identity.

But that assimilation has not spared them from discrimination or racism—only repurposed them for Israel’s showcase of diversity in a state built on ethnic cleansing.

As such, both Druze and Circassians were placed in the same category—subject to the same racist laws that excluded everyone but Jews. The 2018 Nation-State Law (Jewish Nationhood Law) made this official.

Despite advances in education and living standards among some minorities, conscription remained compulsory, and nationalist movements among them were left isolated—ignored by the Arab world and manipulated by Israel.

What precedes raises a series of fundamental questions about what is hidden and what is revealed in the Nakba—its true nature and deeper reality.

Was it merely a case of ethnic cleansing, or a multi-layered project of minority engineering disguised as “positive discrimination,” often implemented under false pretenses?

What legal, administrative, political, and military tools did Israel use—before and after the Nakba—to intentionally fracture what remained of Palestinian society under the banner of “favored minorities”?

In Conclusion...

In this context, the question of narrative becomes urgent. The Nakba’s story cannot be singular. It must reflect the multiplicity of sects, identities, and affiliations.

There is a pressing need to return to the diverse Nakba narratives found in memoirs, oral histories, literature, and lived experience—and to reincorporate them into the broader Palestinian story.

The exclusion of minorities and sects from the collective memory is no accident; it is a deliberate erasure that serves one party alone.

But what is the purpose of all this?

The goal is to reframe the Nakba not as a one-time event but as an ongoing structure—1948 and the present Nakba—as the contexts evolve but the policies remain. The essence is unchanged. Another goal is to restore silenced voices—ethnic and sectarian—and return them to their rightful place in the collective national narrative.

Not for tokenistic inclusion, but to affirm a shared destiny and unify efforts in the face of collective annihilation—rather than scattering into isolated struggles for survival under overlapping threats of erasure.

Kafr Sabt is a depopulated village located in the district of Tiberias. It is one of four Maghrebi villages situated west of the city in the area known as “Shafa Tiberias,” which overlooks the Jordan Valley. These four villages were collectively known as “Bilad al-Amir” (The Prince’s Land).

Before the Nakba of 1948, there were about eleven villages inhabited by Palestinians of Maghrebi descent, particularly Algerians, broadly referred to as “Maghrebis” from North Africa. These villages were located in the districts of Safad and Tiberias.

Safad was home to five villages: Dishum, Amuqa, Marus, Talil, and al-Husayniyya. Tiberias had another five: Samakh, Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt. The eleventh village, Husha and Kusayr, was located in the district of Haifa.

In addition to rural settlements, Maghrebi migrants also settled in neighborhoods in major Palestinian cities like Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Acre. The Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, in particular, was among the most renowned and historic neighborhoods before it was demolished by the Israeli army following its occupation of the city in 1967.

As for the eleven villages, all were depopulated in 1948, except for Sha‘ara—one of the four villages of “Bilad al-Amir”—which had been uprooted and depopulated in the 1920s, before the Nakba. However, the historical presence of Algerian migrants in Palestine predates these events, with roots going back to the Crusades and what can be termed a “narrative of pilgrimage and protest.”

Pilgrimage and Protest

In his recently translated book Under the Shadow of the Wall: The Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem, Its Life and Death 1178–1967, French historian Vincent Lemire traces the deep history of Maghrebi presence in Jerusalem through the evolution of the Moroccan Quarter, a symbolic space reflecting the broader Maghrebi legacy in the Levant.

Lemire begins with the origins of the quarter to highlight the story of mass migration from the Maghreb to Palestine at the end of the 12th century, triggered by the Crusader occupation and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

He explains that Maghrebi migration to the East followed two intertwined paths. The first was the pilgrimage route to the holy sites, with Jerusalem and Palestine occupying a central place in Maghrebi religious consciousness.

The second path was a response to the call for jihad against the Crusaders, as these migrations evolved into organized military mobilizations, answering Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi’s (Saladin’s) invitation to join his army in the liberation wars of the late 11th century.

Relying on Arab and foreign sources, Lemire recounts that in the late 12th century, Salah al-Din collaborated with his close Andalusian Sufi companion Sidi Abu Madyan and, under the initiative of his eldest son, Emir al-Afdal Ali, launched a series of charitable endowments in Jerusalem. These institutions aimed to house and care for pilgrims and fighters arriving from the Maghreb.

One of these was the Zawiya of Sidi Boumediene, established in the early 14th century, which became the nucleus of the Moroccan Quarter. Maghrebis had already been arriving in Jerusalem for over 150 years. The famed Andalusian Sufi Ibn Arabi, during his 1206 visit, noted their high status, saying they “worked miracles defending Muslims.”

Until the Nakba, the village of Ein Karem, located west of Jerusalem, was endowed to the Zawiya and the Quarter’s charitable institutions for nearly 700 years.

The Maghrebi pilgrimage to the Levant and Palestine continued unbroken from the establishment of the Zawiya until the mid-19th century, when the Shadhili-Yashruti zawiya was established in Acre in 1868, after its Tunisian founder Sheikh Ali Nour al-Din al-Yashruti arrived in 1850.

In addition to religious functions, the Maghrebi presence also held military significance. Sources note their participation in various conflicts, particularly during the era of Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani (1695–1775), who rebuilt Acre and enlisted Maghrebis to guard and fortify it.

In Jerusalem as well, Lemire notes that the Moroccan Quarter’s residents were tasked with guarding the city’s gates, a testament to their respected role in the city’s security and society.

Yet, the most significant wave of Maghrebi—particularly Algerian—migration to Palestine occurred in the mid-19th century, following the exile of Emir Abdelkader al-Jazairi to the Levant after his forced departure from Algeria under French colonial pressure.

In the Emir’s Footsteps

Algerian migration to the Levant followed the path laid by Emir Abdelkader, who arrived in Damascus from Algeria via the Port of Beirut in 1856. But the Emir had already been preceded by Sheikh Ali Nour al-Din al-Yashruti, founder of the Shadhili-Yashruti zawiya, who settled on the Palestinian coast in 1850, according to Suhail Khalidi’s book Maghrebi Radiance in the Levant: The Role of the Algerian Community in the Levant.

The Emir’s 1847 defeat forced him into exile after signing a “safe conduct” agreement with the French. This marked the start of the first wave of Algerian migration to the Levant (1847–1858), spearheaded by Rahmaniyya Sufi sheikhs.

Among the most notable was Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyib bin Salim, who arrived in Beirut with 560 Algerians and then moved to Damascus. According to Abdullah Salah Maghrebi in From Djurdjura to Mount Carmel: The Migration and Identity Experience of the Abdul Rahman Maghrebi Family, these migrants became the nucleus of the Maghrebi presence in rural areas of Safad and Tiberias, anchoring the Algerian identity in the Palestinian landscape.

Subsequent migrations occurred in three more waves identified by Palestinian historian Mustafa Abbasi in his research article The Algerian Community in the Galilee from the Late Ottoman Period to 1948. The second wave (1860–1883), the third (1883–1900), and the fourth (1900–1920) were driven by religious, political, economic, and security motives—all rooted in the French colonization of Algeria, beginning in 1830.

A key catalyst was the suppression of Emir Abdelkader’s revolt in the 1840s. Later waves reacted to the oppressive policies of the French regime, including mandatory conscription imposed during World War I, which directly sparked the fourth wave.

Settlement and Its Motivations

The settlement of Algerian families in Palestine, particularly in the Galilee, dates back to the 1860s, with most settling in the rural areas of Safad and Tiberias. The settlement in Safad preceded that in Tiberias.

In The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Settlements and the Arabs, Israeli historian Aryeh L. Avneri recounts a pivotal 1868 incident when Jewish settlers tried to establish a colony on the land of the village of Talil on the edge of Lake Hula. They were met with fierce resistance from recently arrived Algerian Maghrebi inhabitants. According to Suhail Khalidi in Maghrebi Radiance in the Levant, the villagers repelled the settlers with direct intervention from Emir Abdelkader.

Settlement in the Tiberias countryside began around 1870, when Algerians settled in five villages, starting with Samakh, located south of the city and the lake. The other four were west of the city, in the area known as “Shafa,” overlooking Tiberias from the west at the eastern edge of the Jezreel Valley.

According to Khalidi, the settlement of Algerian Maghrebis in the Galilee, and particularly in Tiberias, followed a coordinated plan overseen by Emir Abdelkader himself. The aim was to secure trade routes that passed through water corridors from coastal Acre to the inland cities of Safad and Tiberias, where the lakes of Tiberias and Hula were located.

Khalidi emphasizes this strategic goal by noting the simultaneous settlement of Algerian families in the Hauran region of southern Syria, in villages such as Kafr Sanj, Ghabaghib, Abidin, and al-Kuwayya.

Thus, the Maghrebi villages in the Galilee became geographically linked to the historic “Darb al-Hawarna” (Haurani Route), the grain trade path from Hauran, through Samakh and Tiberias, and up westward toward Shafa, where the four Maghrebi villages—Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt—were located.

These villages occupied key crossroads leading either westward via the “sea road” connecting Tiberias to the Port of Acre, or southwestward via Khan al-Tujjar (Caravansary of Merchants) or “Uyoun al-Tujjar” (Merchants’ Springs) toward the Jezreel Valley, and on to the southern Palestinian coast.

Another account offers a different explanation for the resettlement of Algerians in the Galilee. Beginning in the 1860s, Ottoman authorities reportedly grew uneasy about the growing number of Maghrebis clustering around Emir Abdelkader in Damascus, who had become a powerful local leader, especially after his pivotal role in protecting the city’s Christians during the 1860 massacres.

Fearing his influence, the Ottoman state began redistributing his followers across southern Syria and northern Palestine, using them as a security force to protect trade routes and control Bedouin tribes.

Accordingly, Palestinian historian Shukri Arraf states in The Bedouins of Marj Ibn Amer and the Galileans: Past and Present that the settlement of Algerian Maghrebis in the four villages—Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt—in Shafa Tiberias aimed to contain the nomadic tribes of Sbeih and Saqr in the Jezreel Valley, known for seasonal raids on the crops of Tiberias district villages such as Lubya and Hittin.

This version of history remained embedded in the oral memory of the Bedouin of Arab al-Shibli village, who would say: “The Turks brought the Maghrebis to hold back the Sbeih and Saqr Bedouin.”

The four Maghrebi villages came to be known as “Bilad al-Amir” (The Prince’s Land), in reference to Emir Ali ibn Abdelkader al-Jazairi, the son of Emir Abdelkader, who was appointed to oversee these villages and their lands, according to Suhail Khalidi.

The Ottoman state granted these lands to Algerian migrants, gave them an eight-year tax exemption, and exempted them from military service for twenty years to encourage stability.

Emir Ali lived in the village of Ulam, where he built a grand home known as “the Emir’s Palace.” In a recorded interview published on the Palestine Remembered website, Hajj Saleh Ali proudly recounts, “We had a spacious house called the Emir’s Palace…”

The house was built in the late 19th century and stood until the Nakba, when it was demolished along with the rest of the village. However, its legacy remained in the popular memory of the region, echoed in folkloric chants of the farmers of the Jezreel Valley, including the well-known line: “Call upon the prince of the Arabs… to the horses and horsemen…”

In Residence and Naming

The Maghrebi migrants settled in the villages of Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt, but they did not found these villages. The villages had long existed with their original names and were vacant prior to the Algerians’ arrival. Historians suggest the depopulation occurred due to the instability that followed the withdrawal of Egyptian forces in 1840, prompting many peasants to abandon their villages.

Historian Shukri Arraf estimates in an unpublished paper on Kafr Sabt that the village was deserted for 15–20 years before the Algerians settled it, a timeline that likely applies to the other three villages. The four became collectively known as “Bilad al-Amir” by the early 1870s.

According to From Djurdjura to Mount Carmel, the Algerian families who settled in Shafa Tiberias descended from the tribes of Wadi al-Bardi and Bouira in Algeria. They spread across the four villages: Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt—each name predating their arrival and cited in historical travelogues.

Ulam, in particular, is an ancient Roman-era name. It appears in various sources as “Ulam,” “Ulam,” and “Awalem,” though its meaning and origin remain unclear. Even among locals of Algerian descent, the name’s etymology is unknown, as noted in interviews with Hussein Hammadeh and Saleh Ali: “We arrived and found it was called Ulam…”

Ma’dhar also carries an old name. Historian Walid Khalidi notes in All That Remains that it was known as “Kafr Matar” during the Crusader era. One local story recounted by Hajj Muhammad Nahar al-Mashraqi says the name Ma’dhar derived from being a place where horses were let loose to graze freely, evoking a rural sense of fertility and openness.

Sha‘ara’s name, however, has no known etymology, with no sources explaining its origin. As for Kafr Sabt, its accurate pronunciation is Kafr Sibt (with a short “i”), and it was mentioned in Crusader records as “Kefar-set,” likely its original Arabic name. The French explorer Pierre Jacotin recorded it as “Kafr el-Sitt” in his 1799 map, while French traveler Victor Guérin referenced a rock-hewn olive press there during his 1875 visit.

In the Location and Topography of Each Village

The four villages of Bilad al-Amir were located across the Shafa area, adjacent to the city of Tiberias and its valley. A series of descending slopes separated them from the city, with Shafa situated roughly 10 to 11 kilometers west of Tiberias. The four villages stretched from Wadi al-Bira in the south, where Ulam was located, to the Maskana–Golani junction in the north, where Kafr Sabt stood.

Other villages populated by local residents also existed in the Shafa area, such as Sirin, while others, like al-Haditha and Kafr Kama (a Circassian village resettled during the same period as the Algerian migrants), lay between the villages of Bilad al-Amir.

Awlam was situated along the slopes of Wadi Awlam, which flowed westward into Wadi al-Bira. To the east, in the valley, lay the village of al-Dalhamiyya; to the south, Sirin; and to the northwest, Ma’dhar. Ulam covered approximately 18,546 dunams of land and had around 850 residents before the Nakba.

According to Abdullah Maghrebi in From Djurdjura to Mount Carmel, most Algerian migrants who settled in Ulam were fighters in Emir Abdelkader’s resistance against French colonization. This may explain the Emir’s decision to establish his palace there.

Ma’dhar stood on a high hill, about 6 kilometers from Mount Tabor to the north and roughly 12 kilometers from Tiberias. Southeast of it was Ulam. A dirt road linked Ma’dhar to the nearby Circassian village of Kafr Kama to the northwest.

Several springs in Ma’dhar fed Wadi al-Bira, which flowed eastward into the Jordan River. According to Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains, the village spanned 4,579 dunams in 1945 and had a population of around 500 by the time of the Nakba.

Sha‘ara, due to its proximity and location, was considered a twin village to Kafr Sabt. It lay 11 kilometers west of Tiberias, bordered by Kafr Sabt to the north and Kafr Kama to the south. To its northwest, more than 5 kilometers away, was the depopulated village of al-Shajara.

Sha‘ara does not appear on British Mandate maps, as its population was displaced and its structures demolished in the 1920s, making information about it scarcer than for the other villages of Bilad al-Amir.

Kafr Sabt was located north of Sha‘ara and Kafr Kama, about 10–11 kilometers west of Tiberias. To the north lay the depopulated village of Lubya, separated from Kafr Sabt by the road from Tiberias to the Maskana junction and onward to the Acre-bound coastal road. West of Kafr Sabt were the lands of al-Shajara, less than 5 kilometers away.

Walid Khalidi estimated that Kafr Sabt encompassed 9,850 dunams. Beginning in the early 1930s, parts of this land were gradually transferred to Jewish ownership, eventually totaling nearly half of the village’s area. The village had a population of 450–500 until 1948.

Between Integration and Social Distinction

The four villages of Bilad al-Amir—Awlam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt—are remembered in recent memory as Maghrebi villages and were perceived as such by Galilee residents. Yet this does not mean they were purely Maghrebi in population. Local Arab families also lived in them, and Bedouin tribes such as the Dalaika and al-Mashariqa settled at their outskirts.

These Bedouins were part of the community—they sent their children to village schools, buried their dead in village cemeteries, and drank from the same springs.

Hajj Muhammad Nahar al-Mashraqi, born in 1910 in Kafr Sabt and interviewed for Palestine Remembered, considered himself and his tribe as native to the village, though they were part of the al-Mashariqa Bedouin, not Maghrebi migrants. The term “Mashariqa” (Easterners) was used to distinguish them from the “Magharibah” (Westerners) who came from Algeria.

In his interview, al-Mashraqi recounts his clan’s hardship after being expelled from Kafr Sabt’s vicinity by British Mandate authorities in the 1930s, following the sale of some of the village’s land to Jewish buyers. They were forced to relocate to nearby Ma’dhar, which came to be associated with them.

Thus, the local Palestinian Arab presence in these villages never entirely disappeared, despite their Maghrebi identity. The Maghrebi migrants reshaped their identity from the 1870s until the Nakba of 1948.

In a recorded interview by the “Zochrot” Association, which documents Nakba memory in historic Palestine, Hajj Mahmoud Saleh Abdul Qadir Issa, a native of Kafr Sabt, recalls how his Algerian ancestors’ traditional dress initially attracted curiosity and ridicule from locals.

“When we first came, we wore barnous cloaks, and people thought we were poor and mocked us,” he said—highlighting the cultural distinctions that led to early social tension with nearby villagers.

Over time, however, these differences faded. The Algerian migrants in Ulam, Ma’dhar, Sha‘ara, and Kafr Sabt began assimilating into the broader Arab-Palestinian environment, adopting local agricultural practices. Farming was their primary livelihood, like other peasant communities in the Tiberias countryside.

Gradually, the Algerians adopted local customs in clothing, replacing the barnous with the Levantine qambaz, and also adapted local styles in song, cuisine, marriage rituals, and daily life. Intermarriage with local families in nearby villages like al-Haditha, Sirin, al-Shajara, and Lubya further cemented their integration.

Conversely, the Algerians influenced local culture as well—especially culinary traditions. One of the most enduring legacies is the dish maftoul, also known as couscous in the Maghreb, which found its way into Palestinian and broader Levantine cuisine. In the Galilee, the dish is still colloquially called “al-Maghribiyya,” reflecting its origins.

Interestingly, as Ahmad al-Maghribi, a displaced native of Kafr Sabt, explains in a filmed interview for the “Return” series on YouTube, villagers didn’t call the dish maftoul or Maghribiyya, but simply “al-ta‘am”—“the food”—often pronounced with a softened “t.” It was the centerpiece of feasts and social gatherings.

Some Maghrebi-influenced songs also found their way into local tradition. One popular tune, “Mandil ya Kareem al-Gharbi… Mandil w’mdayya‘ darbi…” references the practice of using a mandil (scarf) in folk fortune-telling—a role often filled by Maghrebi women at the time.

Overall, while the people of Bilad al-Amir remained known for their Algerian–Maghrebi roots, they gradually became “Mashriqized,” fully integrated into the socio-cultural fabric of Tiberias and the Galilee from the time of their arrival.

They also participated in political and resistance movements—first against Ottoman conscription during World War I, and later against British Mandate policies, especially the sale of lands to the Zionist movement, which targeted the villages of Bilad al-Amir. Sha‘ara was the first among them to fall victim.

The Nakba Came Early in Sha‘ara

British survey maps of Galilee and the Tiberias countryside from the 1920s make no mention of Sha‘ara. Unlike the other villages, whose lands were gradually transferred to Jewish ownership, Sha‘ara was sold in its entirety—land and homes alike—leading to the forced expulsion of its residents and the complete leveling of the village between 1926 and 1927.

Sha‘ara was the only one of the four Bilad al-Amir villages to be depopulated in the 1920s. Yet it was not the only village in the Jezreel Valley uprooted at the time. Multiple villages were sold to Zionists through land deals involving powerful feudal families, some based in Lebanon and Damascus, others Palestinian families from Nazareth and Haifa. This marked the so-called “early Nakba,” predating the mass expulsions of 1948.

Sha‘ara’s lands, originally owned by descendants of Emir Abdelkader—the Algerian family—were allegedly sold by Prince Sa’id bin Ali bin Abdelkader, according to both Arab and Hebrew sources cited in The Claim of Dispossession. However, Suhail Khalidi refutes this in Maghrebi Radiance, blaming his son, Abdul Razzaq, instead—calling the sale a “black stain” on the family’s legacy.

Khalidi also recounts that Sha‘ara’s residents—primarily the Awlad Sidi Issa family, originally from Sour al-Ghozlan in Algeria—refused to sell their land, resisted expulsion, and even forced Abdul Razzaq to leave the village. They rejected his offer of alternative land in Hauran and initially remained in caves and rock shelters around Shafa until they were ultimately forced to relocate to the Maghrebi village of Abidin in Hauran.

Finally, land sales to Zionist groups during the 1920s and 1930s also affected the other three villages—Ulam, Ma’dhar, and Kafr Sabt—gradually transferring more than half their lands. However, this process did not displace the population until the Nakba of 1948, when the villages of Bilad al-Amir, along with the rest of Tiberias district and the city itself, were uprooted.

In May 1948, Ulam and Ma’dhar were occupied by the Golani Brigade and fell officially on May 12. Kafr Sabt was seized in early July 1948 by Zionist militias in preparation for the capture of nearby Lubya during that phase of military operations.

Before and after that definition, the world has witnessed horrific massacres targeting entire populations. Yet, the mechanisms of documentation and international response have varied from one tragedy to another. Today, with the rise of digital media and advanced methods of evidence collection, documentation has become more critical than ever in exposing violations and ensuring justice. But a profound question remains: how do we chronicle catastrophe? And how do we preserve the memory of its victims?

Gaza: A Genocide in Real Time, Broadcast to the World

Gaza is the first genocide in history to unfold live before the eyes of the world, transmitted through the lens of modern communication technology. As images often convey the deepest sense of tragedy, the photobook "Gaza… I Spy" captures the lives of Gaza’s children under the shadow of annihilation, through 200 vivid images accompanied by poetry and prose.

Media coverage has also been shaped by a few brave Palestinian voices who found themselves alone in a desolate media landscape. Journalist Wael Dahdouh received the 2024 Courage in Journalism Award from Reporters Without Borders. Photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf was honored by Amateur Photographer magazine, while 20-something journalist and content creator Bisan Owda won an International Emmy for Outstanding Hard News Story for her documentary "I Am Bisan from Gaza... and I Am Still Alive."

In cinema, the documentary From Zero Distance, directed by Rashid Masharawi, was nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars. The film comprises 22 short pieces shot by Palestinians inside Gaza during the war—each created under impossible conditions of siege and bombardment.

On the legal front, nearly a year into the war, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In January 2024, South Africa filed a formal case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide—a move later supported by several other countries. Hundreds of meticulously documented human rights and medical reports from respected international organizations now form a vital part of the living archive of aggression.

In a moving symbolic gesture, Irish orthopedic specialist Mary Evers has memorialized Gaza’s martyrs by embroidering their names onto cloth using the colors of the Palestinian flag—black for men, red for women, and green for children.

Artistically and culturally, Gaza’s genocide has appeared in art galleries and traveling exhibitions worldwide. Yet no permanent museum has been dedicated to it. The Nakba of 1948 remains the most represented tragedy in Palestinian museums, both in the West Bank and at the Palestine Museum in Connecticut, USA.

In the literary world, two English-language books published in 2024 document the unfolding genocide in Gaza. The first, Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide, is by former Palestinian Culture Minister Atef Abu Saif. Trapped in Gaza during a cultural heritage event, he recorded nearly three months of personal observations and psychological shifts under relentless bombardment.

The second book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, is by Egyptian-Canadian journalist and award-winning novelist Omar El Akkad, who famously won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for What Strange Paradise. The title stems from a viral post El Akkad shared on X, viewed over ten million times:

"One day, when it is safe, when there is no cost to naming things as they are, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable—everyone will have always been against this."

In Arabic, the poetry anthology Gaza, Is There Life Before Death? features the voices of 26 poets from Gaza and the diaspora, offering a living, evolving record of tragedy. Soon to be released by Dar Al-Adab is Memory of Loss: Gaza’s Testimonies of Genocide by Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek—a literary act of remembrance and resistance.

Rwanda: A Landscape of Visual Memory

In 1994, Rwanda witnessed the deadliest genocide in modern African history. Over a span of 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people—mostly Tutsis—were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

Today, Rwanda and the United Nations commemorate the genocide each year on April 7. Official ceremonies and candlelight vigils are held, with survivor testimonies shared in audio and visual form.

These personal narratives have played a pivotal role in international prosecutions, notably at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and in local “Gacaca” courts that allowed victims and their families to confront perpetrators within their own communities—fostering restorative justice and national reconciliation.

Such testimonies are now preserved in public archives, media platforms, and documentaries that help ensure global remembrance of the atrocity.

Rwanda is dotted with memorials commemorating the genocide. Chief among them is the Kigali Genocide Memorial, situated on Gisozi Hill, where a quarter-million victims are buried. It features images, artifacts, survivor stories, and physical evidence of the horrors—clothes, letters, personal belongings.

Churches that became massacre sites—like Nyamata, Murambi, and Bisesero—now serve as chilling memorials, displaying skulls, bones, and garments. In 2023, UNESCO added these four sites to its World Heritage list, recognizing them as tangible, direct witnesses to genocide and its enduring scars.

Rwanda also integrates genocide education into its school curriculum to inform future generations and prevent recurrence. Public awareness programs and workshops promote peace and reconciliation, and denial of the genocide is criminalized both domestically and in several European countries.

Art and cinema have played crucial roles in globalizing Rwanda’s story. The Girl Who Smiled Beads, a memoir by genocide survivor Clemantine Wamariya, co-authored with Elizabeth Weil, has been translated into Arabic and stands out among literary testimonies. Numerous other works remain untranslated.

Films like Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes in April starring Idris Elba, and Kinyarwanda—a love story between a Hutu and a Tutsi—have all etched Rwanda’s tragedy into the global cinematic consciousness.

Srebrenica: A Wound in the Heart of Europe

Each July 11, the world commemorates the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina—an atrocity the United Nations officially recognizes as genocide. It took twelve years for the 1995 massacre to gain that legal designation.

A special tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was convened to prosecute war crimes in Bosnia. Several Serbian military leaders and soldiers were convicted. Yet, genocide denial remains legal in Bosnia, unlike in countries such as Germany, France, Poland, and Austria, where Holocaust denial is criminalized.

Every year, the “Marš Mira” peace march retraces the “path of death” taken by fleeing civilians between July 8 and 10. Some survived; others were killed. The event concludes with a memorial ceremony at the mass grave site in Potočari.

The following day, newly recovered remains are buried in a mass funeral attended by religious and political leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in recent years.

The Srebrenica Flower—a white bloom with eleven petals representing July 11 and a green center symbolizing hope and healing—has become the genocide’s emblem.

In the years following the massacre, several museums were established to document the genocide. The Potočari Memorial Center, once a UN military base, opened in 2012 with an exhibition titled Srebrenica: Genocide at the Heart of Europe. The exhibit includes photos, testimonies, multimedia presentations, and human remains from mass graves.

In Sarajevo, the War Childhood Museum captures the impact of siege and starvation on children through their belongings and stories. A book by the same name documents these memories.

Bosnian author Hasan Hasanović, a survivor, has penned two books: Surviving Srebrenica and Voices from Srebrenica. Another book—based on a research trip through Bosnia’s war memory—is expected soon and was recently commended by the 2024 Ibn Battuta Prize jury.

Numerous films have depicted the Bosnian tragedy, though most focus on rape camps rather than the genocide itself. Twice Born, starring Penélope Cruz, is among the most notable, contributing to the cinematic remembrance of the war.

The BBC’s Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave stands out for its survivor testimonies and harrowing escape stories. Al Jazeera Documentary’s The Bone Collector follows a man who searches hillsides for human remains, delivering them to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) investigation teams.

Genocide stands as a chilling reminder of what humanity is capable of when justice and moral order collapse. These crimes, though decades past, remain etched in collective memory—summoning our vigilance, demanding accountability, and compelling us to prevent their repetition.