When I returned to my liberated village
D. Essam Muhammad Ali Adwan
My village of Berbera came to me from afar. We were just about to arrive, With joy and joy at victory and liberation, we crawled on foot. We were thousands of displaced Berbera villagers in 1948. The distance was not that far, It is no more than 17 kilometers north of Gaza City, Berbera is located on both sides of the Salah al-Din road leading to al-Majdal.
We were anxious to see our lands from which our people had been displaced. My father took me to visit Berbera many times in my childhood. I even visited my grandfather’s land on the northern side of the village, with my bicycle. I was twelve years old.
When we arrive, I never missed my footsteps towards my grandfather’s land; I know it perfectly. There was no planting in them and no masonry. She was a virgin, It is interspersed with eucalyptus or eucalyptus trees with which the Jewish occupation tried to obliterate the features of the villages of occupied Palestine.
Each family stood in front of its land thanking God for the blessing of liberation and return. No one would have made any change in the village at that moment, The Governor-General of the liberated territories of Palestine issued decrees not to prejudice the status quo for a one-year interim period during which the competent authorities shall preserve the lands, property and resources of Palestine.
The occupation had built a railway that would pass through the Berberian lands, He established in part a small settlement, According to the instructions of the Governor-General, the lands of the railway will not return to their owners, as they will exchange them for another land within the village, in order to preserve this railway for the public benefit. The people have complied with the instructions of the responsible authorities regarding the inviolability of crops, buildings, electricity poles and roads. Where we were preceded to Berbera by specialized civil committees that took charge of counting and protecting these capabilities, Agricultural committees have also taken care of crops and fruit trees until the time for harvesting them.
Some of its residents flocked to the village from outside the Gaza Strip. Some of them came from Jordan and some from Egypt. Due to their remote places of refuge, they decided to stay in the village. Having specialized committees assigned by the responsible authorities to count them and accompany them to some residential buildings abandoned by the occupiers, and each family has been housed in a residential apartment commensurate with its number in the vicinity of the village, This is done temporarily until the completion of the transitional procedures.
Everyone noticed a tangible awareness of the people not to prejudice any capabilities or dispose of their lands due to the awareness campaign carried out by some of the preparatory committees of the Promise of the Hereafter. Which preceded and coincided with the liberation process and guided the people on how to deal with the liberated lands and make room for the competent committees to intervene, Popular committees spread throughout Palestine began to protect everything on earth.
The responsible authorities have gained experience from the evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, which were looted and destroyed in an abusive manner, and the need to guard against the recurrence of this abusive scene has emerged.
We wandered around our village, We have noted how marginal the occupation exploitation of the land was, He built on part of it a small settlement of no more than fifty dunums. and planted hundreds of dunams for its benefit, He set up a train and railway station that ran through the village. We were surprised that the occupation, through an occupation that lasted for more than seven decades, did not exploit the land. Which means he doesn’t need it, So why was the Palestinians expelled from it?!
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The Governor General called on all refugees to go to his headquarters in Gaza to confirm their properties looted or destroyed and destroyed by the occupation. To authorize the Governor-General to pursue occupiers throughout the world to collect the value of their property wasted by the occupation, He also established a department to assess the value and potential of the occupation’s exploitation of the land during all those years. I went with my brothers returning from outside Palestine to register our properties, and authorize the Governor General to pursue the occupiers in order to compensate us for their exploitation of our land, Within six months, the inventory and stabilization of property was completed. Estimating compensation, those compensations to be paid by the Palestinian sovereigns from the liquid funds seized in the financial institutions spread in liberated Palestine, As well as the legal financial prosecution of all Jews who smuggled money out of Palestine during the liberation process, or have established companies with dual nationality, When they felt that their end in Palestine was near, they fled to their foreign companies, which they would not have established without their plundering of Palestine’s wealth throughout the years of occupation.
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As for the residents who returned from outside Palestine and were temporarily housed by the competent committees in the existing buildings, The census was completed in less than a year. Hence the sovereign authorities proceeded to hand over their respective properties to each family. Or barter them for some equivalent buildings whenever necessary. As for my brothers and I, we returned to my grandfather’s land, which had no buildings or institutions. So we shared it and decided to build it next to a farm, We participated in building a mosque for the village in part of our land in the spirit of my grandfather and father.
Before the end of the transitional year, the Governor-General issued a decree depriving every traitor of his property. registration of such property for the State, Priority shall be given to the children and descendants of traitors who are not guilty of renting such land from the authorities for agricultural purposes, In order to encourage them to uphold their citizenship in Palestine, And a declaration to confirm their Palestinian status and to prevent the recurrence of punishment. As for the many lands of the Islamic Waqf, part of which were built with railways and paved roads, It has been exchanged for equivalent government land, For the public benefit, This is also the case with private property.
With the completion of the process of returning the property to its owners, The large owners in the village decided to make an agreement between them on the cultivation of grapes in particular, And the development of this agriculture, which Berbera was famous and distinguished before the Nakba, To be the first at the level of Palestine, Everyone agreed to turn Berbera into a city full of its people. The green grape leaf is the emblem of its municipality.
