remain after the 1970s in Ma¯qu¯ra was Abu¯ Ma¯zen (Ali¯ al-Yu¯ni¯s al-Ma¯d
i
¯) who went through
years of lawsuits concerning ownership of his land. He died some years ago and his widow
and younger children still live in Ma¯qu¯ra, prevented by the state from refurbishing their run-
down house and still involved with the courts. The great majority of refugees ended up far
from the villagein Iraq (to which they were taken by the Iraqi regent shortly after they
arrived in Jeni¯n as refugees in the summer of 1948), Syria, Jordan and the West Bank.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
As the story of Ijzim unfoldsSai¯d al-Madani¯s act of revenge, prisoners kidnapped and
exchanged, the Iraqi limited assistance, the fall of the village and the dispersal of its
inhabitantsthe villagers oral accounts and the army documents often complement each
other and sometimes converge. Unlike Kurosawas Rashomon, the testimonies of the
witnesses do not significantly diverge. Knowing that the army documents were written
shortly after the events (within a few hours or days), for internal use (usually being classified
as secret), it may perhaps be expected that they carry relatively little imprint of the
intervention and reconstruction of official state representations. It is more perplexing that the
villagers narratives are not highly inventive. We should bear in mind that these
autobiographical accounts are records of a dramatic (and traumatic) period and the incidents
have left an imprint on those who have lived through them. Furthermore, many of these
incidents have been re-examined repeatedly after their occurrence, discussed in family
settings and circulated among the dispersed village community.
At the same time, the oral sources and the written accounts diverge in their spirit. The
army documents lack a description of distinct people and their characteristics, especially
those of the enemy. This is due not only to the fact that the writers of these documents
express a national Jewish sentiment but also to the nature and needs of military
documentation. In contrast, the oral narrative revolves around certain people. There are
memorable men such as the bus driver Sa i¯d al-Madani¯ or the man who was killed on al-
Madani¯s bus, T
awfi¯q al-Mura¯d. These men, through the years of story-circulation, have
become symbols for the dispersed community. In other stories, each family has its own
protagonist, as when Abu¯ Nai¯m relates to his uncle Murshid who guarded the Jewish
captives or when Abu¯ Dau¯d recalls his fathers cousin, Abdalla¯h Zeida¯n, who rejected the
option of surrender. Unlike the army documents, the oral accounts are characterized by an
ability to inject life, volume and an internal logic to the story. In fact, the logic of certain
chaotic episodes may continue to unfold long after their occurrence.
The oral accounts are further animated by the naming of places, the inclusion of dialogues
(though reconstructed, and as such, not totally faithful to the original ones), and exposure of
the emotions and incentives that motivated the people. In the discussion regarding the
evacuation of at
-T
i
¯rehs women and children, we learn of the devastating emotional effect on
the men when they were left without their families. It was not necessarily only strategic
conditions such as the fall of Haifa that determined the outcome of the war. Rather, it was
also the villagers subjective interpretation of the meaning of such events. The fighters
motivation was impaired when the villages social fabric changed. In retrospect, the
disintegration of the village, intensified through the months of sporadic fighting, is perceived
as contributory to its fall.
No less devastating was the Iraqi failure to come to the rescue when the villagers were
already desperate. The local story that emerges accentuates the gap between Arab political
rhetoric and the actual practical conditions. Whereas the Arab States were vocal regarding
their militant intentions, in practice, at least in the Carmel Region, their intervention was very
ANTHROPOLOGICAL HISTORIES OF A PALESTINIAN VILLAGE
25