We left for a few weeks

[Margie]

Arabs became refugees following leaders' promise:
"A week, two weeks... and you'll return to Palestine"

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

An Arab refugee in Lebanon described in an interview on Palestinian Authority TV how he and other Arabs left for Lebanon from Israel during the 1948 war, after Arab leaders said their absence would be temporary:

"They [Arab leaders] said: 'A week, two weeks, approximately, and you'll return to Palestine,'" said Sadek Mufid.

This refugee's testimony is yet another example of how Palestinian leaders, writers and refugees themselves have begun to speak out in recent years and openly blame the Arab leadership for the creation of the Arab refugee problem. Mufid describes a large departure to Lebanon from Israel, which led to the creation of "11 or 15 refugee camps." He does not place the blame on Israel. As Palestinian Media Watch has previously reported, other recent Palestinian accounts likewise describe a deliberate exit from Israel under orders by Arab leaders, which contradicts the Palestinian leadership's charge that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who left in 1948 were expelled by Israel.

Sadek Mufid, who left Dir Al-Qasi (Acre region) in 1948, was interviewed on PA TV's weekly program entitled Returning. Each program focuses on a different refugee camp.

The following is from the text of the interview with the refugee Sadek Mufid:

"We headed first from Dir al-Qasi [northern Israel] to Rmaich [Lebanon], considering what they (Arab leaders) said at the time: 'By Allah, in a week or two, you will return to Palestine.' The Arab armies entered Palestine, along with the Arab Liberation Army. We left - we and those who fled with us - and we all headed for Lebanon. Some people came to Rmaich and others came to the villages on the border, such as Ein Ibl and also to Bint Jbeil. People scattered. And we have about 11 or 15 [refugee] camps in Lebanon."
[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 9 and Feb. 12, 2010]

To view PMW's earlier bulletin citing Palestinians blaming the Arab leadership for the refugee problem, click here.

To view statements on Arab leadership's responsibility for the refugee problem on PMW's web site, click here.

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1646

[Margie]

Historically important
Confusion about Israel-Arab affairs is often the result of incomplete or false historical information. This section clarifies some of the pressing questions of Israeli-Arab history by showing actual events, eye witness accounts, and other documentation of historical significance.
Arab responsibility for refugees
In recent years, known Palestinian leaders, writers and refugees themselves are speaking out and candidly blaming the Arab leadership for the creation of the refugee problem. According to these Palestinian accounts the massive departure of Arabs from Israel was willful, the result of orders by the Arab leadership. This contradicts the Palestinian charge that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who ran in 1948 were expelled by Israel.

In this interview, an elderly Arab resident of a refugee camp, recounts the reason his family left Israel during the war and became refugees:

"This picture was taken a week before we left Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem] in June 1948, in front of our house. The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: "Get away from the battle lines. It's a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we'll bring you back to Ein-Kerem." And we said to ourselves, "That's a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That's a lot!" That's what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by." [PATV, July 7, 2009]

Another aspect of Arab refugee history is that the PA intentionally restricts the rights of refugee camp residents, both political and humanitarian rights, in order to prevent their natural absorption into society.

The following are more examples clarifying this important period of history:
Refugee: Arab regimes told us to leave in 1948
Source: Palestinian TV (Fatah), July 7, 2009
Arab resident of a refugee camp recounting the reason his family left Israel during the war and became refugees:
"This picture was taken a week before we left Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem] in June 1948, in front of our house. The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: "Get away from the battle lines. It's a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we'll bring you back to Ein-Kerem." And we said to ourselves, "That's a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That's a lot!" That's what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by." click here to view


Refugees told: Leave so we can destroy Israel
Source: Al-Ayyam, May 13, 2008
Jawad Al Bashiti, Palestinian journalist in Jordan:
“The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe [establishment of Israel and the refugee problem] are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today... The first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the "Arab Salvation Army" told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (liquidate Israel) in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion.”


Refugees left homes in 1948 because of Arab promises
Source: Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), Dec. 13, 2006
Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Palestinian Journalist:
"The leaders and the elites promised us [refugees] at the beginning of the "Catastrophe" in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave until they put their trust in those Arkuvian* [worthless] promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events.."
[Note: The term "Arkuvian" is after Arkuv - a figure from Arab tradition - who was known for breaking his promises and for his lies.]


Refugee: Arab leaders told us to leave in 1948
Source: Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2006
Refugee who fled Israel in 1948, Asmaa Jabir Balasimah:
“We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the "Catastrophe" [1948]. They [Arab leaders] told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours."


PA denies camp residents housing rights and democracy
Source: Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), June 29, 2004
Refugee camp residents not permitted to integrate into better housing or vote in elections, in order to preserve their “unique status”
“The Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return, announced yesterday that it opposes the participation of the refugee camps in the local elections that are expected to take place in the Palestinian territories. The committee justified its objection as protecting the unique status of the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, considering them testimony to the crime that the occupation state made against our nation for 56 years. The committee warned of the dangers of integrating the refugee camps into the urban housing units.”


Palestinian writer blames Arab leaders for refugees
Source: Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), Mar. 19, 2001
Palestinian Authority columnist:
"I have received a[n imaginary] letter from a Palestinian prisoner in Acre [Israeli] prison, to the Arab summit leaders:
'To the [Arab] Kings and Presidents: Poverty is killing us, the symptoms are exhausting us and the souls are leaving our body, yet you are still searching for the way to provide aid, like one who is looking for a needle in a haystack or like the armies of your predecessors in the year of 1948, who forced us to leave [Israel], on the pretext of clearing the battlefields of civilians.'"


Arab MK curses leaders who told Arabs to leave Israel
Source: Palestinian TV (Fatah), Apr. 30, 1999
PA TV: Question by refugee’s son to Arab Muslim leader, Ibrahim Sarsur:
Son of refugee: "Mr. Ibrahim [Sarsur]: I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the "Catastrophe" [in 1948], our District Officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine and in Majdel [southern Israel] is a traitor, he is a traitor."
Ibrahim Sarsur, then Head of Islamic Movement in Israel, now MK:
"The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the Afterlife throughout history until Resurrection Day." Click here to view

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=567

[Robi]

The well-known facts* described above are excellently and factually written down in the book of Leon Uris, The Haj, a favourite book of mine.

It also describes the dramatic fate of Palestinian families who wanted to return to Israel and tried to represent their cause on the negotiations in Geneva which Israel conducted with Arab countries to allow that for thousands of families but the Arab leaders were stronger in their rejection.

Their fear that entering seriously in such negotiations could be interpreted as a recognition of Israel had been much stronger than the realisation of the RoR for thousands of their co-patriots.

P.S.: * Well-known facts for open-minded people who are realy interested in history and not want to be manipulated by bunch of lies serving inhonest political interests.

[Robi]

For those who are interested in 'The Haj' a plot summary can be found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haj_(novel)

BTW, the conference I wrote about --- where the pragmatical Palestians lost their RoR-possibility against the more strongly represented Arab countries --- has been in Zurich not in Geneva.

[Margie]

The dig dividing Jerusalem
The search for the City of David may offer tourists a reminder of Jerusalem's ancient past. But for the Palestinians whose homes are threatened by the excavations, archaeology is merely the latest weapon being used against them

If you walk out of Jerusalem Old City through its south-eastern gate and on to the perimeter road encircling it, you will most likely see several large coaches with elderly western tourists climbing out of them. You will see them stand at the low wall at the edge of the road and peer down into the lush valley with its pretty houses that nudge and lean against each other. The tourists may notice the woman marking exercise books on her sunny terrace, they may smile to see the bright-haired four-year-old riding her tricycle round the yard. Some of them will think of a favoured grandchild back in Kansas or Ottawa.

Now, if this were a scene in Italy, Spain, or even Turkey, we might have left it there: the tourists come, stare, spend money and go. But here their effect is devastating – and most of them don't even know it. For the town that nestles here, in this valley on the southern flank of Jerusalem, is Silwan, home to some 55,000 Palestinians, annexed by Israel along with east Jerusalem in 1967, and currently one of the hottest spots in the contest between the rights of the Palestinian townspeople and the plans that Israel has for the area – plans put into effect through a series of administrative measures, clandestine coalitions, and progressive-sounding projects. None of which could work without the funding that floods into Israel from the west.

What do the tourists know of this? These gentle, grey-haired folk have come here, on their Jewish National Fund coaches, to visit the archaeological dig for Ir David, the City of David, which, it is claimed, lies below the Wadi Helweh neighbourhood in Silwan and justifies the digging, the shafts and the tunnelling going on in the belly of the hill and under the homes of the people who live here.

Maryam puts aside the exercise books: "This road, from Jerusalem all the way down the valley, was a main road. People did good business here, if you had an ice-cream shop, a cafe, a barber, food shops, souvenirs. Then Elad came, the City of David Organisation; they take the people into their centre and they never see us."

Silwan, and particularly the beautiful Wadi Helweh – the Valley of Sweet [Water] – has always welcomed strangers. Traditionally, it has been the last resting spot for travellers approaching Jerusalem from the south and a favourite recreation area for Jerusalem's residents. People would come here for picnics, and in summer the cool caves of Ein Silwan spring were a much-loved playing space for children. Even now people ask if I am visiting Silwan for a shammet hawa, a breath of air, though there is hardly air to breathe with the dust and the noise Elad is generating.

Elad is an acronym in Hebrew meaning "To the City of David". Dedicated to "strengthening Israel's current and historic connection to Jerusalem", it was founded in 1986 by David Be'eri, who, "inspired by the longing of the Jewish people to return to Zion", left his elite army unit to set it up. For a long time Elad refused to reveal the names of its funders; eventually they submitted the names but successfully requested they be kept under privilege. Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich have been present at Elad events.

Elad set up a two-pronged strategy: to strengthen Israel's "connection to Jerusalem" they started to dig – under Silwan and into the land under the al-Aqsa mosque – for the biblical City of David and to create the Ir David tourist site. They called it "salvage excavation" to avoid getting official permits. The "salvage" has lasted for more than 10 years and Wadi Helweh's houses have started to sink into the hill.

To help "the Jewish people to return to Zion", in 1991 Be'eri started to acquire Palestinian property (supported by Ariel Sharon, then minister of construction and housing). His target was principally two Silwan neighbourhoods: Wadi Helweh and al-Bustan (the Garden).

The Abbasi family's home, with its nine apartments and two warehouses, was Be'eri's first target. Be'eri's wife, Michal, has described how he acquired it: "Davida'leh took a tour guide card and put in his picture, and for a long time he would take bogus tourists on a tour . . . and slowly he befriended Abbasi . . . Of course, it was all staged." In 1987, Elad pressured the government to declare the Abbasi house "absentee property" and in October 1991, Be'eri led a settler invasion of the house with the intruders singing and dancing and waving the Israeli flag on the roof at daybreak. The Abbasi family went to court and the Jerusalem district judge found "no factual or legal basis" for the takeover; indeed, he found it characterised by "an extreme lack of good faith". Yet still the property continues to be caught up in legal proceedings and Elad people continue to live in it – and to acquire more Palestinian property: to date Elad has gained control of a quarter of Wadi Helweh.

What is happening in Silwan is not unique; it is part and parcel of what is happening across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Only the specific tactics are different. Before I came to Silwan, I had been travelling in the West Bank for a week, noting how every Palestinian community has its appointed settlement, its stalking "other". There is hardly anywhere you can look up and not see a settlement lowering at you: bristling with barbed wire and flags and antennae and cameras and floodlights and – although you can't see them – arms.

Most scholars agree that, to this day, no evidence of the presence of Kings David or Solomon has been found at the site. But our group of elderly American tourists are spellbound by the stories they are hearing from Elad's guides, stories which are conjecture, projection and myth .

"I found a Byzantine water pit," Professor Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiquities Authority says. "They [Elad] said it was Jeremiah's pit. I told them that was nonsense." But for a long time the guides would tell the tourists that this was the hole Jeremiah was thrown into. Close to half a million visitors come here each year and are treated to the Elad version of history. Professor Binyamin Ze'ev Kedar, chair of the Israel Antiquities Authority Council, wrote in 2008: "The Israel Antiquities Authority is aware that Elad, an organisation with a declared ideological agenda, presents the history of the City of David in a biased manner."

None of this activity would have been possible without the support of the Israeli state. An Israeli activist tells me: "If you ask the Israeli government what is happening in Silwan, they say it's not a government matter; these are private people buying and moving in legally. But now [the east Jerusalem settlement of] Nof Zion is being built. The Zoning laws permit building there only on 37.5% of a piece of land. But Nof Zion has permission to build on 125% of the land! And inside Ras el-Amoud, above Silwan, they are building five-storey apartment blocks for settlers. But they refuse to allow Palestinian families to build a third floor on their house. A settler organisation buys a police station from the government. A bus line in Ma'ale Zeitim is diverted to serve a settlement. In Silwan, the City of David Organisation is telling the archaeologists where to dig and what to look for. So one has to ask the question with regard to the City of David Organisation and the state of Israel: which is the tail and which is the dog?"

A critically important study by the independent monitoring organisation, Ir Amim, reaches the same conclusion: "Elad, which is officially a private organisation, serves as a direct executive arm of the government of Israel, and enjoys comprehensive and deep backing by the Israeli administration." More chillingly, Doron Spillman, Elad's director of development, has said: ". . . We are almost a branch of the government of Israel, but without getting buried under government bureaucracy."

The main government project right now is for Jerusalem. And in Silwan and Jerusalem, on 12 May, Jerusalem Day, the day I visit, you can see it clearly. This morning, Silwan is blockaded by the police, and it's on alert. The settler, security, police and army vehicles racing up and down the roads are quietly monitored by the neighbourhood watch people. In the cafe at the bottom of the valley, three young men wipe tables and stock the fridge while keeping an eye on the jumpy young security guard who patrols in front of them.

"These are private security for the settlers. They don't go anywhere without them. They cost around 50m shekels a year. And they're paid for by the government. Out of taxes," says one of the young men.

"And the security are protected by the police, and the army's always round the corner. Just think what it's costing."

On the eve of Jerusalem Day celebrations, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: "Jerusalem is our city and we never compromised on that, not after the destruction of the First Holy Temple, nor after the destruction of the Second . . . There is no other nation that feels this deeply about a city."

Now, in the pleasant afternoon, I stand in the Solidarity Tent in al-Bustan with two men whose homes are among the 88 threatened with demolition to make way for an "archaeological garden in the spirit of the Second Temple".

"So they distribute bits of paper that say that since King David used to go for walks here, it's wrong that our houses should be here and it must just be a park. You notice that for them he is King David but for us he is el-Nabi Daoud: David the Prophet. So who holds him in higher esteem? Plus there's no evidence he ever walked here," says one.

"And what if he did? It was empty. You know, there's one thing we've held against our parents, our grandparents: that they left their land. They thought they'd be back in a couple of weeks. We don't have the excuse of ignorance. We are not leaving. And my children will not wash the dishes in their national park," says his friend.

In Silwan and Jerusalem, the conflation between settler rightwing ideology, government policy, big money, real estate interests and bad taste produces its unique blend of kitsch and nightmare. Under cover of excavation, massive infrastructure work is done in Wadi Helweh in preparation for the construction of a 115,000 sq m commercial centre, without a town plan scheme and without permits. The work stops only when it comes up against the foundations of Palestinian homes.

"The streets cave in," says one of the men. "You see that darker stretch of tarmac? We had to patch up the road. And the school: the floor of the classroom collapsed under the girls. Fourteen girls fell 2m into the tunnel they'd dug below the school. And we had to hush it up because they would have said the school was unsafe and closed it down." The Israeli military barricade continues to block Silwan's high street.

In Jerusalem earlier, I had seen thousands of young people who had been bused in from the settlements stream through the streets. Military police with guns and flack-jackets guard them. The Old City is closed – except to them. Women trying to take their children home are turned away from the gates of the city. Men carrying briefcases sit on raised pavements. More soldiers watch from the ramparts of the old city walls. From time to time the police come up to us: "You speak Hebrew?" No. "You speak English?" Yes. "Back! Move back!" A man standing next to us says maybe they want us to back off all the way to Spain. "Where are you from?" he asks me. Egypt. "Cairo?" Cairo. "May God forgive Cairo," he says.

Darkness settles. The Palestinian residents of Silwan feed their kids and hush them. They visit each other, chat, watch the news. In the cafe at the bottom of the hill the young men are courteous but not chatty. On their TV screen Alan Curbishley talks about the match that's about to start: the final of the Europa Cup. The young men keep one eye on the screen, the other, vigilant, is on their town. On the ledge above their heads, but hidden from their view, is the stage set up by Elad, with its "Lion of Zion" banners. And we can hear the amplified voices celebrating the three Israelis each being awarded the $50,000 "Lion of Zion" Moskowitz award for deeds that "deal with the challenges facing Israel in the fields of education, research, settlement, culture, security and more".

From the al-Aqsa mosque further above comes first the call for evening prayer, and then, for good measure, the Chapter of the Merciful: "Which then of our Lord's signs do you deny?" The lights in the Palestinian houses dot the hillside and the trees around the small cafe where I sit are also strung with fairy lights. In a layby 20m away an Israeli army personnel carrier stands poised, its blue lights flashing.

The Palestinians sense that Israel has moved from ihtilal to ihlal; from occupation to replacement, and that making life unlivable for Palestine's Palestinians is the prelude to transforming Palestine itself. This is what the money coming from the west will achieve. To see the future projected for Jerusalem, you need only visit the spanking new Jewish Quarter. Go into the Temple Shop and buy teatowels and doilies and puzzles featuring the Third Temple rising out of al-Haram al-Sharif in place of the Dome of the Rock. In this approaching future it will be impossible to look out at the landscape and think of continuity, or eternity.

In place of the old, mellow stone, of the interdependent structures, softened and polished by time, there will be the jagged and the new and the fake. In place of trodden paths along the valleys and children playing freely, there will be chairlifts and viewing points and fast food outlets and always, always the iron gates and the security checks and the ticket kiosks and the merchandising. In place of the thousands of stories laid down over the ages above, below and around each other, there will be one story – and it won't, actually, be the Jewish story, because the Jewish story in Jerusalem is indivisible from the Roman, the Byzantine, the Arab, the Muslim, the Christian. It will be a fake. Like the fake inscribed prayers or mezzuzas the settlers carve into the Arab houses when they take them over. Soon, in Jerusalem, if the world does not wake up, there will be one voice: the crash of the cash register.

© Ahdaf Soueif 2010. The writer is the author of Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (Bloomsbury, £8.99)http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/26/jerusalem-city-of-david-palestinians-archaeology

[Margie]

Freda Kirchwey, legendary editor of the magazine [the Nation]] from 1933 to 1955, who led a lobbying effort at the United Nations for the creation of a Jewish state. In the spring of 1948, she reported from Israel on the armed struggle that erupted after the UN passed the November 1947 partition resolution dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. She noted in a dispatch to The Nationthat hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians were leaving areas under Jewish control. For the most part, the Arabs weren’t fleeing because they were forced to by Jewish military forces, but rather because they were ordered to get out by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinians’ political leader during the 1948 war. She also reported firsthand that among the forces sent to wipe out the Jewish state at birth were “assorted Europeans fighting in the Arab ranks—Nazis, Chetniks from Yugoslavia, and Balkan Moslem soldiers.”
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/bc0608ss.html

[Margie]

What Hazem Nusseibeh told the BBC
about Deir Yassin

The video focuses on an interview with Hazem Nusseibeh, a member of one of Jerusalem's most prominent Arab families. In 1948 he was an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news.

In this interview with the BBC he admits that in 1948 he was instructed by Hussein Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate claims of atrocities at Deir Yassin in order to encourage Arab regimes to invade the expected Jewish state. He made this damming admission in explaining why the Arabs failed in the 1948 war. He said "this was our biggest mistake", because Palestinians fled in terror and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity claims.

Nusseibeh describes an encounter at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi... 'I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story,'. He said, "We must make the most of this. So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped, all sorts of atrocities"

In the video clip Abu Mahmud, who was a Dir Yassin resident in 1948, told the BBC that the villagers protested against the atrocity claims: We said, "There was no rape. But Khalidi said, We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews."

This false press statement was released to New York Times correspondent, Dana Schmidt leading to an article in the New York Times on April 12, 1948, claiming that a massacre took place at Deir Yassin that was reprinted worldwide and cited even in Israel as proof of Israeli atrocities

Dr. Hazem Nusseibeh was a representative of Jordan at the Mixed Armistice Commission and he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.He was also the Permanent Ambassador of Jordan to the UN and has authored several books, including The Ideas of Arab Nationalism, Palestine and the United Nations and A History of Modern Jordan.

http://www.youtube.com/v/GkhSHiwzaIY&am ... 3E%3Cparam VIDEO

http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/deir_yassin.html

[Margie]

http://www.jstreetjive.com/2010/07/excl ... ments.html

A contemporaneous unpublished book by John Roy Carlson reporting conversations with refugees from 1948 Israel who when asked said they ''left because of the shooting'' or because they don't like Jews and don't want to live with them