Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface
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al-Thawra al-Kubra (the Great Revolt)If you shoot the past with a bullet, the future will mow you down with artillary. Vietnamese proverb The year 1936 marked the emergence of an advanced awareness in the consciousness of the villagers towards both their own identity as Palestinians, and towards the rest of Palestine. The revolt against British rule and Zionist colonisation of Palestine is referred to in Palestinian history as al-Thawra al-Kubra (the Great Revolt). According to Jewish and British sources Lubya was central in the “disturbances” that took place across Palestine between 1936 and 1939. While most Lubyans took 1948, the year of the Nakba, as the starting point for their narratives, a small number of elderly people from the village began their narratives with 1936. Ahmad Okla and Abu Tala’t were among those who reflected in detail on the events of the Great Revolt. Although both participated actively in the uprising, they also reflect the two main political tendences in the village concerning relations towards the British and the Zionist movement. By the time British forces had quelled the revolt in 1939 with a series of draconian emergency measures, some 5,032 Palestinians had been killed and 14,760 injured. Many of the leaders were forced into exile. Disturbances and riots were the preferable words used by British and Zionist officials to identify the Palestinian Arab uprising. This is not how people themselves viewed these movements. The accounts of villagers themselves paint a picture of a period marked by curfews, repression, and daily harassment by British forces. Early awareness The great revolt of 1936-39 was actually the culmination of a struggle that ebbed and flowed throughout the country from the time the British government declared its support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Already in the early twenties, meetings and conferences held in Lubya and other localities in Palestine (e.g., Hebron, Ramla and Tulkarem) attested to the early awareness among Palestinians of the dangers posed by British support for Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Lubya was an active centre for political activities, involving not only neighbouring villages, but also representatives from towns and cities throughout Palestine. In 1921, for example, the first conference of the workers union was held in Lubya.141 Another popular meeting took place in September 1921 concerning the impact of the 1917 Balfour Declaration on the rights of the Palestinian people. Between 30 and 50 people from different parts of the country participated in this meeting. These meetings were held secretly to evade the angry reaction of British authorities.142 In April 1936, the Supreme Arab Committee, which would later be known as the Arab Higher Committee, was established with the Mufti of Jerusalem as its President. The Committee acted as an umbrella organization for the Arab community. One of the first acts of the Committee was to declare a general strike aimed to pressure the British administration o change course, and, in particular, bring a complete halt to Jewish immigration.143 Demands also included nullification of the Balfour Declaration and recognition of Palestine as an independent state. The general strike lasted six months and involved entire sectors of the Palestinian Arab community. When the Arab Higher Committee issued an order on 11 October 1936 to end the strike, some sectors opposed the decision, not giving much credence to the promises of the British administration. This sparked the beginning of the armed uprising led by Sheikh Iz al-Din al-Qassam that lasted until 1939. While it lasted, curfews were imposed and emergency regulations were brought into force throughout Palestine. Lubyans in the revolt Lubyans played a role in the 1936-39 revolt that exceeded their capacity as a village, especially in relation to the rest of Palestine. Contingents from the village were dispatched to Nablus, Tulkarem and the Jenin district. Iz al-Din al-Qassam visited Lubya, praised their courageous stand, and succeeded in recruiting the majority of young men to his side. Even village makhateer who were traditionally very cautious towards such events gave their support to the movement, siding with al-Qassam rather than Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Unlike other elderly Lubyans, Ahmad Okla chose 1936 as the starting point for his account about Lubya. I contacted his family in Lebanon, and they confirmed the information I had already collected from the archives of al-Ittihad newspaper in Haifa. Other elderly Lubyans also added their comments to the interview144 with Ahmad conducted fifteen years ago in ‘Ayn al-Hilwe refugee camp145 in Lebanon. Okla was apparently more conscious of this period because of his personal involvement as a leader of a resistance group, his awareness of the dangerous implications of Jewish immigration to Palestine, his personality as a respected and brave leader among Lubyans, and his continued work in the modern revolution in Burj al-Shamali refugee camp where he was a member of the popular committee responsible for camp affairs until his recent death. “When we began the struggle against the British and the Zionists in 1936, we formed three groups, each having 40 fighters. The leaders of these groups were Saleh Muhammad Taha al-Shanashri, Ahmad Muhammad Abdel-Qader Shihabi and me. We were in contact with the revolutionary leadership who supported us with a few weapons. Our relatives, under the leadership of their mukhtar Hassan Abu Dhais, also gave us support with men and weapons. We started by attacking enemy positions in the eastern Galilee. We were in contact with the leaders of the revolution in the Galilee, Abu Mahmoud and Ahmad Tubi [the latter was originally from Lubya], and we undertook common action against the enemy.” Abu Hassan remembers how a group of young people went to Nablus “to revive the revolution in 1937. Muhammad Abed al-Qadir B’Akkar died, and another from Dar ‘Asi was wounded.” Nayif Hassan, who was in school at the time, remembered how “[the students] began to call for demonstrations, but the teachers refused to allow us to demonstrate, saying that they were not helpful at all. The next day we noticed a wire near the school and notified the director, who sent the students home. It proved to be a bomb. The British soldiers came and exploded the bomb. At that time they were encamped in Dam’on’s house in a place called al-Kaffi and we thought then that they themselves had planted the bomb, but it was probably the Jews.” Another Lubyan active in the 1936 revolt was Tahir Mahmoud Husayn (Abu Tal'at) [See earlier intro to him] who later became mukhtar in Irbid, Jordan. I knew Tahir when I was in Jordan and used to visit him many times a year. His sense of humour and his way of analysing the evolution of the Palestinian struggle in the 1970s symbolized the wisdom of the elderly, which we, as young generation didn’t always appreciate. “In 1936, many young men, about forty to fifty, joined the revolution of Iz al-Din al-Qassam and Mufti Haj Amin al-Husayni. As a result we had direct contact with Abu Ibrahim al-Saffori and Ahmad Tubi who were the representatives of the revolution. I also remember Ahmad Muhammad from the village who died (istashhad) in the Nablus area.” Abu Tal’at provided a great deal of insight into what happened during the 1936 revolt, how Iz al-Din al-Qassam came to the village and those who participated with him in the battle that ended with the death of al-Qassem, together with three revolutionaries from Lubya. “When the revolution escalated, Iz al-Din al-Qassam came to Lubya with a big delegation, which included Sheikh Nooh Ibrahim, Abu Ahmad Haifawi, and Sheikh Suleiman. They met with all the makhateer of the different hamayil and the main active personalities of the village: Hassan Abu Dhais, Mahmoud Qwatiin, Jawhar Hamid, Sheikh Fawaz Ali Shihabi, Sheikh Yihya Said Shihabi, Sheikh Ahmad Suleiman Hajjo, Sheikh Mahmoud Husayn, Sheikh Ibrahim Diab and Mufaddi Muhammad. They praised the courage of Lubya and asked for its assistance.” “In response, the Lubyans readied a battalion and participated with Iz al-Din in the big battle in Ya’bad (Jenin district), which lasted eight hours. The Lubyans withdrew when they ran out of ammunition after losing three men: Muhammad Muhsen, Mahmoud al-Khatib and Ali Ahmad. We got more ammunition and headed south where a battle was going on near Dayr al-Ghosoun under the leadership of Farhan al-Sa’di. The leader Abdo Farhan died in this battle and from Lubya, the leader of the group Ahmad Muhammad Abdel-Qadir Shihabi and Muhammad al-Gharibi were also killed.” While Abu Tal’at was one of the main actors in the revolution, his views about Palestinian-British-Jewish relations at that time, are contrary to the majority of the people his age. “I think that had we given the leadership to Mustafa Abu Dhais, nothing bad would have happened to us. He had a good relationship with the Jews and they respected him. He also had good relations with the British and his business in Tiberias was very successful. He convinced one of the Jews to come and testify in the court case against his brother Ramzi in Tiberias that the accused was with him when the slaying of Saleh [Rukiyyi] took place.” During the revolt Lubya was visited by various other public figures seeking support for the revolt. Abu Majid recalled a visit to the village in 1937 by Sheikh Nooh Ibrahim. “Nooh Ibrahim, a poet and public speaker, came to our village one day in 1937 and addressed us saying: ‘Leave your women tonight. We are going to occupy Tiberias’. The men of Lubya reacted enthusiastically to his call and were given the task of cutting the telephone lines between Nazareth and Tiberias. Abu Ghazi (Mahmoud al-Ammouri) fell from the electricity post while cutting the wire and the administration of the revolution sent him to Sadat Hospital in Damascus [now called al-Tawfiq Hospital]. The doctor who took care of the wounded man was Kamil Shasheet.” According to Nahom Abbo, the attack on Tiberias “remained a sore point between us and Lubya. Zaki Hudaif was killed in the riots of 1938. He was the mayor of Tiberias. Actually, I suggested to the leaders to do something against the Arabs, but they refused. Yigal Alon, personally sent me away from Tiberias to prevent me from carrying out a revenge attack. When my brother was injured, the leader knew that I was determined to take revenge, so they ordered me to punish those responsible for the massacre, and I carried out the orders.” I later learned in an interview with one of the Lubyans that Hudaif was shot by Yousef Abdel-Ghani from the Black Hand Band. “In 1938 I was put in prison in ‘Akka for killing an Arab. I was the first of the Haganah forces to be condemned to death by the British court. But because I was young, 16 years old, they changed the death sentence to unlimited imprisonment. I remained in prison until 1945.” In a letter dated 19 August 1942, to the British District Commissioner, D. Headly, the Commissioner refused a petition for clemency to Abbo. “I can see no reason for recommending clemency as the murdered Arab was not in any way connected with the earlier attack on the prisoner’s brother and there appears to be no mitigating circumstances in a particularly brutal murder which has not been already met by the Court in passing sentence of death.”146 When I asked Nahom if he had killed a civilian he denied doing so. “No, I killed someone who was involved in the massacre.” Other Jewish Israeli officers, however, said that the Arab who was shot was an old man who was not involved at all in the riots. The name of the Palestinian killed on the 7 May 1939 was Rajab Ibn Haj Beid. Due to its location at the crosscroads between Palestinian villages and Jewish settlements in the Galilee, Lubya occupied a strategic position. The war of the roads was a reciprocal weapon between the Jewish forces and the Palestinian revolutionaries. Ahmad Okla participated in many of the battles with British and Jewish forces around Lubya. “I remember our participation in many attacks on enemy convoys near Kufr Kanna and one near Maskana on the road between Afula and Tiberias. Once we imprisoned the guard of Wadi al-Hamam settlement with its cattle, and took them over to the leadership of the revolution. I remember that Mahmoud Qwatiin, Nayif Abu Dhais, Mithkal Hassan, Ibrahim Hassan, Muhammad Ibrahim and Ahmad Ali participated in this attack.” “In the battle of Tiberias, under the leadership of Nooh Ibrahim and Abu Atif, we succeeded in occupying, among other buildings, the headquarters of the police where one of us made the adhan (the Islamic call for prayer). The battle lasted four hours. Many from Lubya and Hittin took part, among them sergeant Mit’ib Kuftan, Sergeant Muhammad Abdullah, Abdel-Latif Ibrahim and Muhammad Saleh. In another raid later on, Muhammad Abdullah and Abdel-Latif were killed. Many of us assisted the revolution in Safad as well. I remember that the leader died in that battle.” “Once we took the initiative and attacked Yamma settlement, one of the biggest settlements in eastern Galilee. Seventy-five men from Lubya joined us. The leader of the settlement, Elyahu Bin Hayim, and three of the guards were killed, and from our side, Durgham Mutlak Abdel-Rahman was injured. Enemy airplanes attacked us and three of our group were killed, Younis Rashid, Mufaddi Hassan and Suleiman Mustafa.” Another time “a group of boys captured a Jew from the settlement of al-Shajara and killed him,” said Abu Tal'at. “So the settlers took revenge by attacking the village and massacring a whole family. They entered the village wearing British army uniforms.” Whenever there were clashes with the British and Jewish forces, Lubyans would send delegations to assist neighbouring villages. “I went with Muhammad Hassan Yihya al-Shihabi as part of the delegation that attended the meeting at the house of Abdu al-A’idi, leader (za’im) of al-Maghar village, near Lubya,” said Abu Tal'at. “A few among those present at the meeting suggested sending a group from every village to support Lubya. I remember a priest from Rami village saying that they had no modern guns and suggesting that we send instead a delegation to the leadership of the Arab Higher Committee to ask them for modern weapons. Muhammad Shihabi said to him: ‘Have you fought against the Jews before? They are girls, and you are afraid of them? We don’t want either you or your help.’ The priest answered him, ‘This is my point of view and I have spoken it.’” Lubyans also undertook visits to neighbouring states in order to seek material and political support for the revolt. In 1936, Lubyans visited Damascus seeking help from Syrian authorities. According to Abu Tal'at, the delegation consisted of “Nayif Abu Dhais, Ibrahim Mufaddi, Mahmoud Hamaidi, Saleh Mahmoud Saleh, and Muhammad Hassan Shihabi [who] met with the leaders of the revolution. The latter included Abdel-Hamid Fahoum and Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir, [Palestinian representatives of the revolution in Syria] who promised to lend their support.” Another Lubyan known for his participation in the struggle against the British was Saleh Rukiyyi who was later killed by Ramzi Abu Dhais, the son of the mukhtar, in a personal dispute. “I remember how once, when Saleh Rukiyyi had reached Nimrin on our way back to our village,” said Abu Tal'at. “Saleh insisted on visiting nearby Lubya in spite of my objections, for I was at that time a member of the revolution. The British had been with Mustafa Abu Dhais (the mukhtar’s son) and I saw that they were driving a military Land Rover with a machine gun on it and heading in our direction.” “I shot a few bullets at the car and a British soldier shot Saleh in the shoulder. Saleh fell, and the British officer got out of his car with a pistol in his hand, thinking that Saleh was dead. The latter aimed his pistol at the officer and shot him. I was astonished to see that the rest of the British soldiers left their officer lying there and fled. I picked up Saleh, and with the help of people from Nimrin, took him to the revolutionary headquarters. The British tortured the people in Nimrin to tell them where Saleh was, but they refused.” Amina Ali Ismael had similar recollections of the same incident. “Saleh Mohammad (Rukiyyi) was seen by the English soldiers holding a gun while he was riding his horse. They began to shoot at him. We were looking at the scene, and we were sure that he would fall dead. He killed two of the English soldiers and wounded three others. He succeeded in reaching Nimrin, near Lubya, where he disappeared. We heard later that people from Hittin village took him to their house and helped him until he left for Damascus. He was wounded in the leg.” “A few men who worked with the English tried to follow him to Damascus to shoot him. One shoemaker helped him to hide in a roll of leather at his shop. They besieged the streets for three days while he was hidden in the shop. He was saved and he returned to the village.” “After this incident,” said Yousef al-Yousef, “the women in Lubya sung the following song: 'Saleh Ya Saleh Ya bo Shalishi, Katalt iddabit ma’ ishawish' (Saleh, O Saleh with the beautiful hair, You killed the officer and the seargent.) The role of Lubyans in the revolt was carefully documented by both the British and Zionist officials. A document from the Zionist archives named eighteen people who were involved in the fighting. Ahmad Muhammad leader of the revolt, killed by government forces in battle Sa’id Mufaddi killed in battle Suleiman Fatroush Fadil al-Hassan Younis Rashid Muhammad Shahin Ahmad Ibrahim Ahmad Kasim Saleh Muhammad Ali Husayn Abid Husayn Muhammad Husayn Mahmoud Shar’an Radi al-Hamaidi Fadil Yousef Hassan Thib Ali Mustafa
According to one eye-witness to the massacre, Husayn Muhammad Saleh, the son of his brother Hafiz Suleiman, his two sons and his wife, Fatima Muhammad, who was giving birth were all killed. The mid-wife, named Hafida, and one other woman survived the attack. British forces imposed a curfew on the village that lasted from six at night until six the next morning. The site of the attack was in an area of Lubya known as Harat al-Maddan. On Wednesday, 21 June 1939, the Arabic newspaper Falastin confirmed the details of the attack. The Histadrut daily Davar, whose editors still had not come to terms with the new turn of the Zionist Labor Youth Movement wrote the next day: A new crime was committed in the village of Libiya [Lubya], a frightful crime which shows that its perpetrators have lost the last remnant of their capacity for sound judgment, and that the last spark of human feeling in them has been extinguished…The memory of the Libiya action ….will doom its destructive perpetrators to ignominy, whoever they may be.148 At the time, the attack was attributed to Eztel (The National Military Organization), a Zionist militia established by Revisionist leaders of the Yishuv in Palestine. David Ben Gurion, the leader of the socialist wing of the Zionist movement, and others in the Jewish community officially condemned it and described those who committed the attack as criminals and terrorists. On 21 June 1939 Ben Gurion wrote in Davar Hayom: “These bloody explosives will pour oil on the fire which the terrorist leaders want to rekindle....”149 The Haganah’s Histadrut newsletter attacked the “minority of terrorists” who kill innocent civilians. Ironically, it was later revealed that the attack had in fact been committed by Haganah forces associated with Ben Gurion.150 Haganah forces attacked civilians, not only in Lubya, but also in the village of Balad al-Sheikh village, albeit without the knowledge of the Haganah leadership.151 But the strongest condemnation appeared in the Histadrut daily Davar on 22 June, under the title: 'Devastation was given a badge'. Another new crime took place in Lubya. A shameful crime that shows that its people have lost any possibility to differentiate, and have lost the last sense of human feeling in the historical struggle between the builders of the land and its destroyers. The building hand will be victorious and the memory of the criminal act in Lubya will equal all the preceding malicious operations. An eternal curse will fall on those who took part in this operation, because they are terrorists, whoever they are.152 Etzel justified the attacks committed by the Haganah against Lubya and the Balad al-Sheikh villages as an appropriate response to an earlier attack carried out by Palestinians. The following incident was kept secret by the Jewish administration until October 1939. On 15 June 1939, the guard of a vegetable truck from kibbutz Avikiim was injured in an ambush in Lubya while on his way to Haifa on the Tiberias-Nazareth road. Four days later, at 3 a.m., a group of Haganah forces picked one of the houses with light seen through the window, and attacked it with pistols and a -machine gun. Two men, a woman and two children were killed. One of the leaders of the attack said: ‘The situation was very tense among those who participated, but I knew that Lubya was not prepared and was able to calm the anxiety of the group, and so the operation ended without any injuries among our men who retreated peacefully before the police arrived with their tracker dogs to start the investigation.’153 According to the leader of the operation, this was “a revenge attack. It was necessary to enter the village as it had to be a direct revenge operation. It is unclear whether Haganah had practised such attacks before.”154 Three days before the Lubya operation, on 12 June 1939, a few men disguised as mechanical workers entered Balad al-Sheikh village, near Haifa, kidnapped five of its inhabitants and shot them. The leader of the operation said: 'The operation should have been carried out in army uniform so that everyone would know that the Jews committed it. A few days before, a Jewish train driver had been killed near the village, and the Haganah operation was in retaliation for it. It was a warning for the future as well. Balad al-Sheikh was accused, like other Arab villages, of supporting and protecting the band members.' He added: 'They knew that a leader of the band was from the village and planned to kill him; but in case he was not there, three or four men should be killed instead.'155 Through secret radio broadcasts, and after a few days of more such operations against Lubya, the secret organisation sent grateful greetings to Israel’s young men who had ignored the orders of their leaders and followed Etzel fighters in their war against the Arab enemy, and committed the operation in Balad al-Sheikh, near Haifa, and Lubya, near Tiberias. The responsibility for these operations was not known to the leadership of the organization until October 1939, when it was announced in the newspaper Bahairak. They confirmed that all the operations were committed by the Haganah’s leftist members who entered Lubya and Balad al-Sheikh without permission from their leaders. The secret organisation wished to show, by these operations, the new spirit that imbued our organisation and dominated the Jewish areas. This spirit, which was not apparent in the summer of 1936, came to predominate after the third bloody year, and was a strong blow against Macdonald and his White Paper.156 After numerous protests were lodged to commander Yohanan Ratnar, Ben Gurion moved to establish order and prevent random killing. “Orders were given not to harm innocent Arabs,” however, those who took part in killing Arabs did not comply with those orders.157 When I gave Nahom Abbo a copy of the article from Davar, he said that despite his wide knowledge of the history of the country, this was the first time he had heard such attacks committed by Haganah groups. He insisted that “it was impossible that Yigal Alon ordered the killing of civilians as revenge against Arab attacks. Even if I see it with my own eyes, as the Arabic proverb says.”158 |