The Palestinian resistance increased after the occupation. In 1970, a group of high school students, including our neighbour, was accused of throwing a hand grenade at Moshe Dayan’s jeep on ’Omar Al Mukhtar Street. Unfortunately, it missed him and injured some bystanders. Our neighbour was not part of that attack, but Israel arrested all of those who had any connection with this group. He was jailed for a few months. The soldiers raided his home in the middle of the night, and after his home was searched, he was arrested. We woke up to the screams of his mother that night. He was released on condition that he lose his identity card and not return to Gaza, and his family agreed because there was no other choice if he was to be released. He became displaced. His family did not visit him during the four months of his imprisonment because the situation was very difficult. It was only in 1995 that he was able to come back, after the Oslo II Agreement was signed. Life in the refugee camps was even worse than in Gaza City, and the Fedayeen were stronger there. To diffuse and quell the resistance, in 1971, Sharon demolished rows of residential homes in the Khan Younis and Rafah camps. Entire families ended up in the streets and became displaced for the second and third time. Those were horrible days.
We suffered a lot in our lives, and as a mother, I was always worried about the future and about my children. The future under the occupation with a husband like Ibrahim and with young children was difficult. In 1970, Ibrahim and I travelled to Cairo to see our children. We flew to Amman, and from there we flew to Egypt. After we crossed the Allenby Bridge and reached Amman, we heard shooting from the clashes between Palestinians and Jordanian soldiers, although Black September hadn’t yet started.1 We flew from Amman to Egypt on September 1st, stayed for two weeks, and then quickly left for Amman, so we could return to Gaza before something happened. Hussein was then studying engineering at Alexandria University, and Adala was studying history at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Moeen, who had joined his siblings that year, was not happy in Egypt, so Adala suggested we send him to study in Kuwait and live with his uncle there. Eventually, Moeen returned to Egypt to study medicine and be with his brother and sister.
There is a big Palestinian community in Jordan, and before 1970, there was also a large number of Palestinian fighters there with the PLO. King Hussein was afraid of the increasing power of the Palestinians and accused them of planning to overthrow him, and he decided to get rid of them. Ibrahim’s brother Abdallah was then the leader of a group of fourteen hundred Palestinian fighters with the PLO outside of Amman. He didn’t allow his group to go into the area of Amman because he knew that they would be killed if they did. Abdallah was a really good and strong man who cared about his people and his nation. By the end of May 1948, the Gaza Strip was full of refugees, as many Palestinians had been forced to flee from different parts of Palestine, leaving behind their lands and homes. The people of Gaza and the West Bank, represented by their makhatir, mayors, and other active people, then formed a committee for refugee affairs. Abdallah was elected as the general secretary of the Executive Committee of the Refugees’ Conference in Gaza, which was supported by the Egyptian government. Initially, there was another committee in the West Bank, but its representative agreed with King Abdullah of Jordan to the transfer of the West Bank committee to Jordan, so there was only one committee situated in the Gaza Strip. Abdallah participated in many international conferences around the world and travelled to many Arab countries to bolster support for refugees, representing them and liaising with the UNRWA and other organizations to guarantee that they would receive the essential services that would sustain their life in the camps until their return to their homes. Together with Ibrahim, he also received many delegations visiting the refugee camps in Gaza, including those of Che Guevara on June 18, 1959 and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960. He worked in this capacity until the defeat of 1967, after which he was not allowed to return to Gaza, instead joining the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. After 1967, the work of the committee stopped; then the committee reformed when several active people in the community told Ibrahim they would support him if he replaced his brother and revived its work, and he did. Abdallah was also the general secretary of the PLO during the time of Al Shuqairy, and he became the PLO ambassador to Qatar. But, as he believed he was born to be a fighter on the ground and not in an office, he resigned and went to Jordan, where he wore a uniform and led the resistance groups in Jerash.
Ibrahim and I returned to Amman from our trip to Cairo in 1970 in the late evening of September 16th. We were worried when we arrived. The atmosphere was frightening, and you could feel that something terrible was going to happen. The streets were empty, with very few taxis to take us to my brother-in-law’s place. Then we discovered that one of our bags was missing, and when we called the airport, the telephone lines there had been cut.
The next morning, martial law was declared. Curfews were imposed and people ran to shops for food supplies. I asked my sister-in-law to buy some flour, but she said she already had some, and the next day when the bread was finished and I wanted to make more, she brought a small packet, enough for cakes or small things. It wasn’t enough for one meal, but in fact we didn’t care much about flour or food. We only cared about staying alive.
We were stuck at my brother-in-law’s home from September 16th to 30th. The situation was very hard and dangerous, and we heard the sounds of shooting and clashes all the time. A curfew was imposed for a long time, and we listened to the news on a small battery-operated radio. There was no food, water, or electricity, so whoever had food ate and whoever didn’t starved. A respected religious man, whose name I have forgotten, opened his home to anyone who wanted shelter during the curfew. He asked the supermarket in front of his home to bring all the food to him to feed the hungry people, and he promised to pay for it later. Many people went there, and he saved their lives.
Once during the curfew, Jordanian soldiers knocked at the door of our neighbours’ home. We heard a lot of shooting and then they left. One week later, when the curfew was lifted for an hour and people rushed to the vehicles that brought water to the area, we thought about our neighbours and wondered who would go to see what happened in their home. Ibrahim said he would go, because he was a fighter with his brother from 1936 and was strong and brave. Another neighbour, a woman, went with him, and as they got close to the house, they saw the door was broken and they could smell something very bad. As soon as she entered, the woman started screaming and quickly left. We asked her what was in there, and she said, “What is there is a horrible thing. I can’t tell you what’s there. I can’t tell you what I saw.”
Ibrahim found the bloated bodies of a pregnant woman and her two teenage sons, and her husband huddled in a corner smoking, while two other young children, four and five years old, were just sitting there. Ibrahim took the two children and shouted for an ambulance. At that moment, a boy from the neighbour’s family came on his bicycle to ask about them, and when he saw what had happened, he shouted, “What did those sons of dogs do? They weren’t Palestinians, they were Sharkas.” He left on his bicycle, shouting and crying, to tell his family. Then the ambulance came and took away the three bodies, and meanwhile the curfew was imposed again. We brought the two children home and I quickly brought them some milk, but when the girl saw it, she cried, “We don’t want milk. We hate it.” So, we searched for other things to feed them. I later found out that after the murder of their mother and brothers, the children had survived on a can of milk powder by dipping their fingers in the can and licking them.
There were many horrible stories during Black September. One Palestinian woman had married in Amman and had a small son. She was in her last month of pregnancy and during the curfew she felt the baby coming. There were no doctors or midwives in her area, so her husband went to their neighbours for help. Four of them came, but Jordanian soldiers saw them go from one house to the other, breaking the curfew. They broke down the door and burst into the house and asked why they had broken the curfew. The
neighbours explained, and the soldiers saw the woman screaming in pain, so they said they would help in their own way. They shot the pregnant woman in her head and stomach, then the four neighbours, the child, and the husband. This was one family’s tragedy, but I am sure there are many similar stories.
Once, soldiers knocked at my brother-in-law’s door and ordered him to open it, but he was hesitant. I was wearing my prayer dress, with a long white skirt and white waist-length veil, as I was reciting the Quran day and night and seeking God’s protection. I opened the door—and maybe I could do it because I had been through similar situations before and I was strong. I faced the soldier and spoke in a Bedouin accent, “It is shameful that you are coming to a Jordanian home. What do you want from us? Do you want to kill your own people? It will be to your shame to do this.”
He said, “We heard you are hiding Palestinians in your home.”
“What are you saying? We are your guides to Palestinians! We are from Al Tayaha tribe, and if anyone harms you, we will eat him with our teeth!”
He asked to see our passports, so I quickly brought mine, and said, “Look, my name is Madeeha Albatta from Al Tayaha tribe!” while he looked at it, and I don’t think he knew how to read. He told me to show him the house, but there was no electricity and it was so dark that I had to light matches while they looked under the beds and sofas and in the corners, and then they left. As soon as they left, we heard shooting as Palestinian fighters shot at the soldiers leaving the house and I think one of them was killed. The Palestinians thought that these soldiers had killed us because usually when soldiers entered a Palestinian home, they killed everyone inside.
After the shooting stopped, we heard knocking on the door again. When I asked who it was, a soldier said, “Open the door! Palestinians are shooting at us, and we are sure they are hiding somewhere in your house.” I opened the door, and he said, “Look! We were three, and now we are two because one was killed.” I was like the best actress, screaming and pretending to be very angry and sad about the soldier who had been shot. They wanted to search the house again, so I let them in, and again we searched the same places using matches for light. When they were sure that nobody was hiding, and while I was crying for the dead soldier and saying bad words about Palestinians, the soldier asked if I needed flour or wanted bread. I told him no, the only thing I wanted was for them to be safe. So, they left, and I closed the door again and heard the sound of an ambulance coming to take the soldier’s body away. In fact, we saw many horrible things in our lives, and in my opinion not even a big book is enough to contain all of them.
On September 28th, we heard the news of Abd Al Nasser’s death, and Ibrahim went crazy because he couldn’t believe this had happened. We didn’t sleep that night because his death added to our tragic problems. The next day, we heard a jeep stop beside our house and soldiers went to speak to some neighbours. One of the soldiers told them that they had been sent by a high official in the Jordanian army who had a relationship with them and who had arranged for them to be taken to another place. When we heard this, we went outside and told them that we were from the Amman tribes (which was almost correct) and asked them to take us out of the area, because my father-in-law, Sheikh Hussein, was very sick in Gaza and we had left our children alone there. We said we only wanted to be taken to a place where we could find a taxi. The soldier told us he couldn’t do it that day because they had come to take this family, but he promised to take us the next morning and told us to be ready at nine o’clock. He was very good, and we trusted him, but during the night I wondered whether he would come or not. The next morning, he came and took us out of the area in a jeep, and at the same time the curfew was lifted. When we arrived in the other part of Amman, we found life going on as normal: coffee shops were open, radios were playing songs, and people were walking in the streets. I burst out crying. I had some Jordanian Dinars, and before the jeep left us at the taxi station, I bought chocolate and biscuits and asked the soldier to take them to the house we had come from. Later, my brother-in-law’s daughter said it was the most delicious chocolate she had ever eaten.
As the Israeli women soldiers checked our bags at the border, they asked our opinion of the situation in Amman, and I told them the Jordanians were doing the same as the Israelis did to us. We went through the border and there were no other people or workers, so Ibrahim carried our bags one by one to a certain point, and I stood beside them as he brought the rest. Then we went to my aunt’s home in Jericho for a short rest. I hadn’t washed in the fifteen days we had spent in Amman because there was no water—we had hardly managed to find water to drink—so the first thing I did was wash. Then we ate a little and left for Gaza. My aunt asked us to stay the night, but we refused because we wanted to return as quickly as possible to our children and Ibrahim’s sick father. We took a taxi and arrived home, and I kissed the ground and the steps of our house one by one because I couldn’t believe that we had arrived safely. My children had prepared a meal, and I cried when I saw the food because I remembered the Palestinians starving in Amman, and I knew they couldn’t find any food to keep them alive. Many Palestinians were killed in Amman and there wasn’t enough room to bury them, so their bodies were carried to the mountains and burned.2 The sky was full of smoke from the bodies, and it looked like the pictures that came from the World Trade Center. I heard that King Hussein flew his plane and watched from the sky.
On November 3, 1970, my father-in-law died, and on December 8th, almost forty days after his death, Abdallah was murdered in Jordan. When the events of Black September ended and an agreement was reached between the PLO and the King, the Jordanians pursued some of the PLO leaders. Abdallah’s relatives in Jordan who had connections with the army warned him that he was on a death list and to escape, but he refused to leave his men. He said he would live or die with them, but he would not leave until the last one’s safety was guaranteed. On the morning of December 8th, Abdallah was with his two-year-old son, Suleiman, when agents from the Jordanian Intelligence service came for him. He was ordered to leave his son and go with them, and still we don’t know exactly what happened to him. Some people told us that they saw his body among thousands of other bodies, and others said they saw his body being dragged by a Jordanian tank through the streets of Jerash.
Thank God, Abdallah died after his uncle, because if Sheikh Hussein had been alive, he would surely have gone mad from the shock. He loved Abdallah very much, and before his death, he wrote his will, giving Abdallah five hundred dunum of Al Ma’in land in addition to his inheritance. In his will, he wrote, “When you return to our land, divide it amongst you as I will mention later, but Abdallah is to have the biggest part. In addition, I give him a certain piece of land, about five hundred dunum.” This piece was the best of his land, and this gives an idea of how much land the Abu Sitta family owned before the Israelis occupied it in 1948.
7 / 1973 War
IN 1973, Hussein graduated in Alexandria. Ibrahim went to see him, because he had found work in Libya and wanted to go there directly from Egypt. To get there, Ibrahim travelled to Cairo through Cyprus because that was the only way to leave the Gaza Strip. The border to Egypt was closed to everyone except for the Red Cross, which helped university students obtain permission from the Israeli side and then took them in buses to Cairo through the Israeli/Egyptian border. For a long time, the Egyptians had secretly planned for the 1973 war, which started in October during Ramadan.1 The Egyptians placed advertisements in their biggest newspapers and international newspapers that stated that army officers were allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and listed hundreds of them as going. But this wasn’t true. It was a trick so the Israelis wouldn’t expect an Egyptian attack when their officers were thought to be away. Also, war usually stops during Ramadan, so the Israelis did not expect one to occur at this time. The Egyptians were at the peak of readiness and chose the holiest day in the Israeli calendar, Yom Kippur, and the Jewish Shabbat, to attack because the Israelis wou
ld be busy celebrating that day and would not be prepared. The Israelis then controlled the eastern part of the Suez Canal and the Egyptians controlled the western side, and the Egyptians prepared everything necessary to cross it. To reach the eastern part, the Bar Lev Line2 had to be destroyed and the Egyptians succeeded in breaking through different parts of it.
The first wave of Egyptian soldiers carried with them powerful pumps. They used them to draw water from the canal and direct it through water cannons to blast large openings in the high sandy embankments that the Israelis had built along the canal to protect the Bar Lev Line. This enabled the mass of Egyptian armoured divisions and vehicles to cross the canal on floating bridges and pass through those openings into the Sinai desert behind the Bar Lev Line. The Egyptians then attacked from behind and destroyed all the strong fortifications of the Bar Lev Line and captured many Israeli soldiers. The fall of the Bar Lev Line in such a short time was a miracle because it was very strong, so it was a very big victory. Israeli propaganda had declared that nobody could destroy the Bar Lev Line and that they were invincible, but the Egyptians broke this legend and defeated that army, entered the Sinai, and continued on their way to liberate the rest of their land.
I turned on the radio and heard that land troops had attacked the Israelis occupying the Sinai and a battle was in progress. I couldn’t believe the Egyptian troops were fighting the Israelis, and that they would liberate their land and our land from Israeli occupation. I kept listening to the news until midnight, and then I heard that the Egyptians had crossed the Bar Lev Line and thought they would soon reach Al Qantara, then Al ’Arish, then Gaza. Then I heard that the Egyptians had passed through Al Qantara and I jumped with happiness. I thought that they would take Al ’Arish the next day and then they might be here, and then the Israeli military occupation would end. We hoped the 1973 war would last a long time and liberate our land, but orders were given to stop it.3 If the war hadn’t ended, the Egyptians might have at least liberated the Gaza Strip.
A White Lie Page 13