Salman Abu Sitta
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Salman Abu Sitta (Arabic: سلمان ابو ستة; born 1938) is a Palestinian researcher. He writes about Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian right of return.[1]
Contents
Biography
Abu Sitta was born in 1938 into a tribe of Bedouin Arabs of the Negev,[2] in Beersheba, Mandatory Palestine, in what is now Israel. His family's land and the town bore their name, Maein Abu Sitta (the Abu Sitta springwell).[3] One morning in April 1948, he and other schoolboys were sent home for safety reasons, after being summoned by the headmaster and told that the Jews had occupied central Palestine. Abu Sitta made the 40 km journey from Jerusalem back to his home on foot, and some days later the family joined the first wave of Palestinian refugees in Gaza.[3] Abu Sitta moved to the prestigious al-Saidiya secondary school in Cairo, Egypt, where he graduated with "excellence", ranking first in Egypt. After graduating from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering in 1958, Abu Sitta went to the United Kingdom to continue his post-graduate studies, receiving his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of London, in what is now known as UCL.[3]
- Former member of Palestine National Council (20 years)
- Researcher on refugee affairs and author of over 200 papers on the subject
- Director of international development and construction projects
- Founder and President of the Palestine Land Society (PLS)[4]
- General coordinator of the Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition
He is now a wealthy contractor.[2] Abu Sitta has engaged in many debates with Israelis, including Uri Avnery and Rabbi Michael Lerner.[5]
Documentation of the 1948 Palestinian exodus
Abu Sitta has spent 40 years digging for any detail of information about or related to Palestine before, during and after the creation of Israel. Abu Sitta's self-imposed mission has encompassed not only documenting the nakba in which something like 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes and villages, but also ensuring that "the memories and identity of the occupied homeland are never lost". He is regarded by Uri Avnery as perhaps 'the world's foremost expert on the nakba'.[2] The documentation process began when he was 30 years old, when he stumbled on the memoirs of the Turkish chief of Beersheba,[3] when Palestine was under Ottoman rule. The document dated back to the early years of the last century.
"It sort of started from there, and it has never stopped," Abu Sitta says. "I kept collecting all and any material on every inch of my homeland."
In an interview which aired on the Egyptian Dream2 TV channel on February 14, 2015 (as translated by MEMRI), Abu Sitta stated that: "The same country that has extorted the world with its "holocausts" in Nazi Germany – which was not directed only against the Jews – has perpetrated, and perhaps still is perpetrating, its own holocausts in the Palestinian lands." He also stated that "Only three years after [the Auschwitz camp] was shut down in Europe, this was done again, and by people some of whom had been held in those camps...I found that the Israelis used the same methods [as the Nazis] on the Palestinians. They had the necessary experience, because the Nazi camps were shut down only three years earlier."[6]
Published works
- The Return Journey (2007) Palestine Land Society ISBN 0-9549034-1-2
- Atlas of Palestine, 1948 Palestine Land Society (January 2004) ISBN 0-9549034-0-4
- The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of depopulated localities in Palestine (Occasional Return Centre studies) (1998 reprinted 2000) Palestinian Return Centre ISBN 1-901924-10-6
Articles
- Peace Palestine Traces of Poison: Israel’s Dark History Revealed
- Google video Geography of Occupation
- Palestine Remembered Palestine Right Of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible
- Jerusalemite 7 June 2007 "Atlas of Palestine 1948: Reconstructing Palestine"
Youtube
- 'Right of Return Conference, Day 1:Keynote Address 13 May 2013.
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Address to 4th International Convention, San Francisco.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Uri Avnery, 'The Moral Right of the Refugees to Return,' Counterpunch 16–18 May 2014.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Amira Howeidy , 'Salman Abu Sitta: Right of Return, A Palestine perspective on life,' Al Ahram 13–19 May 2004 Issue No. 690.
- ↑ Palestine Land Society
- ↑ 'Debate Between Salman Abu Sitta and Michael Lerner of Tikkun on The Right of Return,' CounterPunch 12 February 2003.
- ↑ Palestinian Historian Salman Abu Sitta: Israel Perpetrated Holocaust against the Palestinians, MEMRI, Clip No. 4832 (transcript), February 14, 2015 (video clip available here).
