Palestinians struggle to keep Nakba memories alive in Tantura

A crumbling stone structure nestles on the beach. Its arched entrance and carefully laid stones hint at a grander past but the building looks out onto the Mediterranean alone. There is little to suggest that it was once part of a thriving fishing village in what was then northern Palestine.

It’s one of the only remaining structures of Tantura, a village once home to 1500 people about 24 kilometers south of Haifa, Israel’s third largest city.

“Here we find the harbour,” recalled Abu Jamil Masri who grew up in the village. “The boats used to go fishing for sardines.”

The 84-year-old walked carefully towards the beach, his cane steadying him as he recounted childhood memories.

Seventy years ago this month, the residents of Tantura were forced to flee their homes as part of the Nakba, or the catastrophe. With each passing year, the memories of what Tantura and Palestine were was once like fade. Masri is one of the few people left who still remembers life in the village, but others are working to preserve his memories.

Abu Jamil, 84, sits in the remnants of the Palestinian village of Tantura. Willy Lowry / The National

“What to tell you? It’s hard to express,” Masri said nostalgically. “During the harvesting season, they would plough the land, like this, form a furrow to throw in the seeds. The produce of watermelon was bountiful, 20 to 25 kilos each.”

Masri's childhood came to an abrupt end. Late in the night on May 22 1948, Israeli soldiers known as the Haganah came to Tantura.

The village was in the area that the UN's partition plan had designated for an Israeli state. Moreover, Tantura lay on the strategic road between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Israeli government had decided to expel or subdue the villagers.

“There was a commotion I asked my friend what this was all about,” said Masri. “He told me we are being attacked by the insurgents, then I prayed.”

Masri say the soldiers killed unarmed villagers. He said his father and brother were among the dead.

The story of Tantura is complicated and disputed. In many ways it is a microcosm of what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. According to the surviving Tantura residents, they were victims of unprovoked Israeli aggression. But the Israelis say that anyone who died there was killed as a result of fighting.

According to an article published in the New York Times on May 24, 1948, Tantura was a key weapons smuggling point for Palestinians and one of the last Palestinian strongholds along the strategic coast road. The article quoted an Israeli communique issued after the village fell. "Hundreds of Arabs and a large quantity of booty fell into our hands," it read.

Masri doesn’t remember much more from that night, he says, hit on the head and left unconscious for much of it. The next morning he was put on a bus and sent to the nearby village of Fureidis, where he still resides.

What is not in dispute is that during that night all the residents of Tantura fled. They have never returned to live there.

In the immediate aftermath of the founding of Israel, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homeland. At the time there were 64 Palestinian villages along the coast from Jaffa to Haifa, including Tantura. Today there are only two left.

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The violence against Palestinians in Tantura was more severe than nearly anywhere else. "According to what I know, Tantura was the second place in the number of people that were killed,” said Teddy Katz, one of the first Israelis to research the recent history of Tantura.

After an Israeli newspaper published some of Katz’s findings in 2000, Israeli veterans who fought in Tantura sued him for libel, forcing him to retract his master's thesis.

But today Katz is adamant that something terrible happened in the small village.

He’s not alone.

Jihad abu Raya and his wife Hazzar run a small palestinian NGO called Falestaniyat, which documents the events of 1948.

“Fear and horror discouraged people from talking about these matters,” said Abu Raya. "[But] we have managed to obtain some people’s responses and extract some of these stories to document and present them at Palestinian activities and events.”

Every year on the anniversary of the fall of Tantura they organize a march. Most of the surviving townspeople live in exile in Syria and beyond but Falestaniyat brings back as many as possible.

Abu Jamil Masri will be there this year. He’s one of the few left still living near Tantura.

But with each passing year there are fewer in attendance.

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”