My 7th October Story
The day that the Hamas fighters broke out was a Saturday, and unusually I had a call with a client in my office on some matter that seemed pressing at the time. He’s a long standing client but not one that I’d really spoken to about anything other than business before. But it was the weekend and things were more relaxed than usual. I’m from Eastbourne, and there is something about Eastbourne that few people from outside of it know. In fact a reasonable number of people who live there don’t know it. It is home to a large number of Greek Cypriots who moved there in the sixties (I think). As a result of of this I know a lot of Greek Cypriot names. My client had a name that was reminiscent of those names. So out of curiosity I asked if that was his background. He acknowledged why I might think that, but his heritage is from a christian community the Lebanon which is similar to the Greeks of Cyprus in some ways.
In fact, he said, it was slightly more complicated than that. His grandfather had had a farm in what is now northern Israel, just over the border from Lebanon. In 1948 when there was a lot of fighting happening, he had packed his wife and children into a wagon and left to stay with family in the Lebanon until things calmed down. In the event things never did calm down and he found it impossible to return home.
He decided to move to London on the basis that Britain was likely to resume control of Palestine at some stage and he could then apply to get his farm back. It’s hard to imagine that Britain was perceived as so powerful so recently, but I guess most people don’t keep up with geopolitics that closely. In the meantime he kept all his titles to his farm and the large key to the front door in a suitcase. The family have kept the suitcase with all the documents – handwritten in Turkish – ever since. Nobody in the family can read them.
The family has done okay in the UK. If they are anything like the Greek Cypriots I knew growing up, they will have had a good set of cultural practices that would have enabled them to thrive here. I didn’t pick up any sign of bitterness. But it did make me realise that the situation in the Middle East is a very complicated one, and one that is changing all the time. Are the many or even any similar suitcases held by families around the world? My friend’s family seem to have a very healthy attitude to their setback and have just got on with their lives. It probably helps that there is no direct violence or mistreatment involved and none of them remember their original home. And they don’t align directly with either of the parties.
But nonetheless they have lost a significant asset and it is possible that the ageing documents that they possess could be put together into a case for compensation. If they turned up at a court in Tel Aviv, would they get a hearing? And if they did would they be backed by the British government? Or the Lebanese one? Or maybe even the Turkish one, given that their papers seem to be from the Ottoman Empire?
The current state of affairs in Israel no longer looks particularly stable and it is possible to imagine the situation changing dramatically in the near future. Will there turn out to be a large pile of claims for restitution that will turn up? Decolonisation is always messy.
