The city of Jaffa was the largest Palestinian population center before al Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Known to Palestinians as the “Bride of the Sea,” it was the center of cultural life. Jaffa’s economic and demographic growth had resulted in it becoming the cultural and financial capital of Palestine. In the shadow of Jaffa was Tel Aviv, created in 1909 which became the cultural and economic hub for Zionists.
In 1921, as protesting Jews from Tel Aviv marched into Jaffa, violence broke out between Palestinians and Zionists. Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Jaffa politician, stated: “Of course 1921 happened in Jaffa; it was the center of Zionist as well as Palestinian life, so we could see what was on the horizon by then. But even a century later, with Jaffa’s Palestinians only one percent of Tel Aviv’s population, there is barely an attempt to treat us as equal citizens. Because of that, the youth today continue to see themselves as part of the Palestinian nation, even if their ID card is Israeli.”
First Uprising
The Palestinian uprising or the first intifada of 1936 began in Jaffa. It arose from Palestinian concerns over British rule, economic disorder and floods of Jewish arrivals. The Palestinians were met with imperial brutality from the British police, who targeted them with night raids, arrests, torture, beatings and imprisonment. Military reinforcements were called in and large areas of Jaffa’s Old City were demolished. On June 16, 1936, in Jaffa the British forces blew up between 220 and 240 residential buildings so as to make roads through Jaffa’s old city for rapid troop deployment in vehicles. As a result, 6,000 Palestinians were left destitute but the resistance was undaunted. Britain therefore reacted with war crimes. Between 1936 and 1937, the British killed over 1,000 Palestinians, including conducting village massacres. Punishment through destruction of Palestinian property was the main weapon of oppression after 1936. British soldiers also stole money, in one case even looting children in the street. British troops enjoyed themselves by blowing up houses, preferably the most expensive ones. The British did not adhere to the rule of law so troops could shoot Palestinians at random much as the Israeli do today. A British doctor named Forster described the British forces as trigger happy. For this reason, Palestinians moved about Al-Khalil (Hebron) and the surrounding areas fearing for their very lives.
The insurgents were murdered without mercy by the British: ‘At one time the Ulsters and West Kents caught about 60 of them [Arab guerrillas] in a valley and as they walked out with their arms up mowed them down with machine guns. I inspected them afterwards and most of them were boys between 16 and 20 from Syria…No news of course is given to the newspapers, so what you read in the papers is just enough to allay public uneasiness in England.”
Captain Orde Wingate was a diehard British supporter of Zionism and operated ‘Special Night Squads’ that had combined British servicemen with Zionists to fight Palestinians in Northern Palestine. Methods employed by Orde included torture and murder of Palestinians. Essentially Orde operated death squads against a population he despised as racially inferior ‘Arabs’. Wingate taught the Zionists how to raid Palestinian villages successfully, a knowledge they would put to good use in 1948. The heavy-handed tactics had official approval; Sir Charles Tegart, a senior police officer who had experience from the Indian police, introduced torture centers, described as ‘Arab Investigation Centers.’ These were death camps where Palestinians experienced waterboarding. Detainees were held in open metal mesh cages in the sun without food or water for days on end. Men were beaten with wet ropes, pummeled by repeated punches until unconscious, having their teeth smashed and feet burned with oil.
British troops also engaged in collective punishment so when troops were killed, their colleagues committed massacres in the nearest village. A soldier was blown up by a mine near the village of Kafr Yasif in February 1939. Soldiers destroyed 70 houses, blew up 40 more at Kafr Yasif and then told nine villagers from a neighboring village to run away after which the soldiers immediately opened fire, killing them. In such search missions, British troops also sexually abused Palestinian women, including one young woman found asleep in her bed by a group of soldiers searching her village. Even a 12-year-old girl was gang raped by the British gentlemen. Very rarely were British troops punished for abuses of civilians.
By 1937, Palestinian resistance had been defeated by the British, though fighting continued sporadically until 1939. The year 1937 represented the military defeat and disarmament of the Palestinian people. The British could now do with Palestine as they pleased. In July 1937, the British recommended the partition of Palestine, drawing the frontiers of the Zionist state upon 1/3 of historic Palestine, and a Palestinian state in the remainder, to merge with Jordan. A corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa would remain under British control. The commission also recommended transferring where necessary Palestinians from the lands allocated to the new Jewish state. In effect, the British had stolen Palestine and were biding their time to hand it to the eastern European Zionists.
Jaffa in 1948 was supposed to remain a Palestinian city according to the UN partition plan. 53 percent of Palestine had been allocated to the Jewish minority and 47 percent to the Palestinian majority. However, the Zionists had devised a plan named Operation Dalit to attack and ethnically cleanse the whole of Palestine. The Zionists had obtained a detailed list of Palestinians villagers which had participated in the anti-British uprising. The Zionist village attack involved executing all those villagers who had participated in the 1936-39 uprising against the British, which would ensure that the military organizing skills of the Palestinians would be wiped out. In each Palestinian village the Zionists killed these veterans numbering from 10 to 30 men. The Zionists hoped that future Palestinian resistance against Israel would consequently be nullified. Operation Dalit commenced in 1948 even whilst British mandate forces were present. Haifa was attacked and Palestinians expelled under British noses. One British police officer who was present said if the order had been given to put a stop to this, the British could have done so. However, the British assisted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and expelled the people of Tiberius from Palestine. The majority of historic Palestine beyond the allocated 53 percent was seized by Zionist forces. The Jordanian army had British officers at the time so were in cahoots with the Zionist plans. Like much the rest of Palestine Jaffa fell to Israeli occupation during 1948. The Palestinians had no military with which to face the Zionists and when the British left on 15 May 1948 the situation got worse. The Zionists were given the weapons, tanks and an airforce of the kindly British, to use against the Palestinians. The Zionists therefore had a free hand to engage in ethnic cleansing of Jaffa’s 120,000 residents – over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from Palestine. Abu Ahmed Barakeh, 82, has painful memories of the Zionist attacks on the city: ‘Jaffa was attacked from all sides; we had no guns to defend ourselves. I saw many people killed. Finally I was put on a boat with my mother which sailed to Port Said in Egypt.’ However there was a happy ending since Abu Ahmed was able to return but “All the people we knew had gone and everything was being run by Jews... Jaffa wasn’t Jaffa anymore.” Only 4,000 Palestinians remained in Jaffa from a population of more than 120,000. Even those remaining had their properties confiscated by Israel. Mansions of Palestinian notables were looted and taken over by Israeli state institutions and Palestinian homes were given for free to newly arrived Jewish immigrants.
In 1948, UN peace mediator Count Bernadotte surveyed devastated Palestinian villages and visited refugee camps in both Palestine and Jordan. The count saw for himself the harsh living conditions, long queues for food and scarce medical aid. In 1948, during the Nakba, Palestinians were left starving and without medical aid. Children died of simple medical conditions. One Palestinian recalled that his mother made food from hay and onions which they ate without bread since that was unavailable. The count viewed the villages in Palestine devastated by Zionists as though they were crops devoured by hungry locusts. Bernadotte demanded the Palestinian’s right to return to their homeland and to their own homes, writing to the UN on 16 September, “It would be an offence against the principles of elementary justice if these innocent victims were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” However, the following day the count was ambushed and murdered by a future Israeli PM and member of the Stern gang Yitzhak Shamir. Zionists were in no mood to give up their bloody gains in Palestine as is the case today.
As many as 400 villages and 11 cities were destroyed and 13,000 Palestinians killed and 30,000 defenseless people wounded by Israel in 1948. The Palestinians left with little of their personal possessions and their 30,000 books were appropriated by the National Library of Israel. The Palestinian women in refugee columns were stripped by the avaricious Zionists of their jewelry. One woman was with her husband and the Zionists forced her to take off her jewelry which one of the thieves remarked he would give to his girlfriend. The Palestinian husband was taken away and executed without having a chance to exchange any last words with his wife.
Tel Aviv took control of Jaffa following Israel’s establishment in 1948. The city’s Palestinian population were forced into one fenced-off area – a veritable Palestinian ghetto, which turned overnight into an internment camp, complete with barbed wire, guard dogs, and a military curfew - military rule only ended in 1966. This formerly rich district next to the Mediterranean was now reduced to people with high levels of drug use and crime because of municipal neglect, unemployment and a housing crisis. Palestinians were not permitted to renovate or expand, forcing them to live in neglected homes, or to turn to unauthorized construction. Jaffa, the bride of Palestine, was ravished by Zionism, having lost the bulk of its Palestinian character. The inhabitants today consist of 18,000 Palestinians, about a third of the total population of Jaffa. In recent times, Israel has issued hundreds of expulsion orders to tenants who breached contract conditions, such as by house renovations without permission, or overstayed the protected tenancy agreements, which expire after the third generation. These Palestinians were forced out by Israel’s underhand laws designed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians using the cloak of ‘legality.’
While the Israeli state denies the mass expulsion of Palestinians took place in 1948, today 6 million Palestinian refugees continue to live abroad, a third of them in desperate conditions. While Israelis enjoy a land of milk and honey, a Palestinian man asked if it was fair to make him live for sixty years in the sadness of exile. To deny the right of return is a war crime as well as is the original expulsion.
Today we can see the operation of al Nakba on television, the continuing slow expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Al Quds (Jerusalem). Sheikh Jarrah is named after Salahuddin Ayubi’s surgeon. Israeli settler organizations using Ottoman land archives have fabricated documents claiming Jewish ownership of the land at Sheikh Jarrah. Upon this land are the homes of Palestinians such as Mohammed El Kurdi and his sister Mona El Kurdi. They both hail from an ethnically cleansed family from Jaffa. Their family came to Palestine from Kurdistan in the time of Salahuddin Ayubi during the liberation of Palestine from the crusaders. In 1956 Jordan built homes for such Palestinian refugees like the El Kurdi family to replace the homes they had lost in Jaffa. In 1967, Israel occupied the old city of Al Quds (Jerusalem). Today Israel wants to deprive these refugees of what little they have and expel them from their home a second time.
Israel’s apartheid law gives no right to the El Kurdi family to reclaim their Jaffa ancestral home. The Israeli Al Quds plan for 2020 envisages a Palestinian population of 12 percent as opposed to the present 35 percent. The Mosque of Omar and the dome of the rock remind the world that this is a city with an Islamic heritage dating back to the earliest days of Islam and will not be erased by Zionists. However, it must be noted that Zionists are not respecters of holy sites so that in Al Ascalon (Ashkelon) the Zionists destroyed the Al Hussain Mosque. Therefore, other countries need to ensure the safeguarding of the religious rights of Palestine’s Christians and Muslims as well as their holy sites.
The writer is the author of Afghanistan in the Age of Empires and a London-based barrister
In 1921, as protesting Jews from Tel Aviv marched into Jaffa, violence broke out between Palestinians and Zionists. Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Jaffa politician, stated: “Of course 1921 happened in Jaffa; it was the center of Zionist as well as Palestinian life, so we could see what was on the horizon by then. But even a century later, with Jaffa’s Palestinians only one percent of Tel Aviv’s population, there is barely an attempt to treat us as equal citizens. Because of that, the youth today continue to see themselves as part of the Palestinian nation, even if their ID card is Israeli.”
First Uprising
The Palestinian uprising or the first intifada of 1936 began in Jaffa. It arose from Palestinian concerns over British rule, economic disorder and floods of Jewish arrivals. The Palestinians were met with imperial brutality from the British police, who targeted them with night raids, arrests, torture, beatings and imprisonment. Military reinforcements were called in and large areas of Jaffa’s Old City were demolished. On June 16, 1936, in Jaffa the British forces blew up between 220 and 240 residential buildings so as to make roads through Jaffa’s old city for rapid troop deployment in vehicles. As a result, 6,000 Palestinians were left destitute but the resistance was undaunted. Britain therefore reacted with war crimes. Between 1936 and 1937, the British killed over 1,000 Palestinians, including conducting village massacres. Punishment through destruction of Palestinian property was the main weapon of oppression after 1936. British soldiers also stole money, in one case even looting children in the street. British troops enjoyed themselves by blowing up houses, preferably the most expensive ones. The British did not adhere to the rule of law so troops could shoot Palestinians at random much as the Israeli do today. A British doctor named Forster described the British forces as trigger happy. For this reason, Palestinians moved about Al-Khalil (Hebron) and the surrounding areas fearing for their very lives.
The insurgents were murdered without mercy by the British: ‘At one time the Ulsters and West Kents caught about 60 of them [Arab guerrillas] in a valley and as they walked out with their arms up mowed them down with machine guns. I inspected them afterwards and most of them were boys between 16 and 20 from Syria…No news of course is given to the newspapers, so what you read in the papers is just enough to allay public uneasiness in England.”
Captain Orde Wingate was a diehard British supporter of Zionism and operated ‘Special Night Squads’ that had combined British servicemen with Zionists to fight Palestinians in Northern Palestine. Methods employed by Orde included torture and murder of Palestinians. Essentially Orde operated death squads against a population he despised as racially inferior ‘Arabs’. Wingate taught the Zionists how to raid Palestinian villages successfully, a knowledge they would put to good use in 1948. The heavy-handed tactics had official approval; Sir Charles Tegart, a senior police officer who had experience from the Indian police, introduced torture centers, described as ‘Arab Investigation Centers.’ These were death camps where Palestinians experienced waterboarding. Detainees were held in open metal mesh cages in the sun without food or water for days on end. Men were beaten with wet ropes, pummeled by repeated punches until unconscious, having their teeth smashed and feet burned with oil.
The year 1937 represented the military defeat and disarmament of the Palestinian people
British troops also engaged in collective punishment so when troops were killed, their colleagues committed massacres in the nearest village. A soldier was blown up by a mine near the village of Kafr Yasif in February 1939. Soldiers destroyed 70 houses, blew up 40 more at Kafr Yasif and then told nine villagers from a neighboring village to run away after which the soldiers immediately opened fire, killing them. In such search missions, British troops also sexually abused Palestinian women, including one young woman found asleep in her bed by a group of soldiers searching her village. Even a 12-year-old girl was gang raped by the British gentlemen. Very rarely were British troops punished for abuses of civilians.
By 1937, Palestinian resistance had been defeated by the British, though fighting continued sporadically until 1939. The year 1937 represented the military defeat and disarmament of the Palestinian people. The British could now do with Palestine as they pleased. In July 1937, the British recommended the partition of Palestine, drawing the frontiers of the Zionist state upon 1/3 of historic Palestine, and a Palestinian state in the remainder, to merge with Jordan. A corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa would remain under British control. The commission also recommended transferring where necessary Palestinians from the lands allocated to the new Jewish state. In effect, the British had stolen Palestine and were biding their time to hand it to the eastern European Zionists.
Jaffa in 1948 was supposed to remain a Palestinian city according to the UN partition plan. 53 percent of Palestine had been allocated to the Jewish minority and 47 percent to the Palestinian majority. However, the Zionists had devised a plan named Operation Dalit to attack and ethnically cleanse the whole of Palestine. The Zionists had obtained a detailed list of Palestinians villagers which had participated in the anti-British uprising. The Zionist village attack involved executing all those villagers who had participated in the 1936-39 uprising against the British, which would ensure that the military organizing skills of the Palestinians would be wiped out. In each Palestinian village the Zionists killed these veterans numbering from 10 to 30 men. The Zionists hoped that future Palestinian resistance against Israel would consequently be nullified. Operation Dalit commenced in 1948 even whilst British mandate forces were present. Haifa was attacked and Palestinians expelled under British noses. One British police officer who was present said if the order had been given to put a stop to this, the British could have done so. However, the British assisted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and expelled the people of Tiberius from Palestine. The majority of historic Palestine beyond the allocated 53 percent was seized by Zionist forces. The Jordanian army had British officers at the time so were in cahoots with the Zionist plans. Like much the rest of Palestine Jaffa fell to Israeli occupation during 1948. The Palestinians had no military with which to face the Zionists and when the British left on 15 May 1948 the situation got worse. The Zionists were given the weapons, tanks and an airforce of the kindly British, to use against the Palestinians. The Zionists therefore had a free hand to engage in ethnic cleansing of Jaffa’s 120,000 residents – over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from Palestine. Abu Ahmed Barakeh, 82, has painful memories of the Zionist attacks on the city: ‘Jaffa was attacked from all sides; we had no guns to defend ourselves. I saw many people killed. Finally I was put on a boat with my mother which sailed to Port Said in Egypt.’ However there was a happy ending since Abu Ahmed was able to return but “All the people we knew had gone and everything was being run by Jews... Jaffa wasn’t Jaffa anymore.” Only 4,000 Palestinians remained in Jaffa from a population of more than 120,000. Even those remaining had their properties confiscated by Israel. Mansions of Palestinian notables were looted and taken over by Israeli state institutions and Palestinian homes were given for free to newly arrived Jewish immigrants.
While the Israeli state denies the mass expulsion of Palestinians took place in 1948, today 6 million Palestinian refugees continue to live abroad
In 1948, UN peace mediator Count Bernadotte surveyed devastated Palestinian villages and visited refugee camps in both Palestine and Jordan. The count saw for himself the harsh living conditions, long queues for food and scarce medical aid. In 1948, during the Nakba, Palestinians were left starving and without medical aid. Children died of simple medical conditions. One Palestinian recalled that his mother made food from hay and onions which they ate without bread since that was unavailable. The count viewed the villages in Palestine devastated by Zionists as though they were crops devoured by hungry locusts. Bernadotte demanded the Palestinian’s right to return to their homeland and to their own homes, writing to the UN on 16 September, “It would be an offence against the principles of elementary justice if these innocent victims were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” However, the following day the count was ambushed and murdered by a future Israeli PM and member of the Stern gang Yitzhak Shamir. Zionists were in no mood to give up their bloody gains in Palestine as is the case today.
As many as 400 villages and 11 cities were destroyed and 13,000 Palestinians killed and 30,000 defenseless people wounded by Israel in 1948. The Palestinians left with little of their personal possessions and their 30,000 books were appropriated by the National Library of Israel. The Palestinian women in refugee columns were stripped by the avaricious Zionists of their jewelry. One woman was with her husband and the Zionists forced her to take off her jewelry which one of the thieves remarked he would give to his girlfriend. The Palestinian husband was taken away and executed without having a chance to exchange any last words with his wife.
Tel Aviv took control of Jaffa following Israel’s establishment in 1948. The city’s Palestinian population were forced into one fenced-off area – a veritable Palestinian ghetto, which turned overnight into an internment camp, complete with barbed wire, guard dogs, and a military curfew - military rule only ended in 1966. This formerly rich district next to the Mediterranean was now reduced to people with high levels of drug use and crime because of municipal neglect, unemployment and a housing crisis. Palestinians were not permitted to renovate or expand, forcing them to live in neglected homes, or to turn to unauthorized construction. Jaffa, the bride of Palestine, was ravished by Zionism, having lost the bulk of its Palestinian character. The inhabitants today consist of 18,000 Palestinians, about a third of the total population of Jaffa. In recent times, Israel has issued hundreds of expulsion orders to tenants who breached contract conditions, such as by house renovations without permission, or overstayed the protected tenancy agreements, which expire after the third generation. These Palestinians were forced out by Israel’s underhand laws designed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians using the cloak of ‘legality.’
While the Israeli state denies the mass expulsion of Palestinians took place in 1948, today 6 million Palestinian refugees continue to live abroad, a third of them in desperate conditions. While Israelis enjoy a land of milk and honey, a Palestinian man asked if it was fair to make him live for sixty years in the sadness of exile. To deny the right of return is a war crime as well as is the original expulsion.
Today we can see the operation of al Nakba on television, the continuing slow expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Al Quds (Jerusalem). Sheikh Jarrah is named after Salahuddin Ayubi’s surgeon. Israeli settler organizations using Ottoman land archives have fabricated documents claiming Jewish ownership of the land at Sheikh Jarrah. Upon this land are the homes of Palestinians such as Mohammed El Kurdi and his sister Mona El Kurdi. They both hail from an ethnically cleansed family from Jaffa. Their family came to Palestine from Kurdistan in the time of Salahuddin Ayubi during the liberation of Palestine from the crusaders. In 1956 Jordan built homes for such Palestinian refugees like the El Kurdi family to replace the homes they had lost in Jaffa. In 1967, Israel occupied the old city of Al Quds (Jerusalem). Today Israel wants to deprive these refugees of what little they have and expel them from their home a second time.
Israel’s apartheid law gives no right to the El Kurdi family to reclaim their Jaffa ancestral home. The Israeli Al Quds plan for 2020 envisages a Palestinian population of 12 percent as opposed to the present 35 percent. The Mosque of Omar and the dome of the rock remind the world that this is a city with an Islamic heritage dating back to the earliest days of Islam and will not be erased by Zionists. However, it must be noted that Zionists are not respecters of holy sites so that in Al Ascalon (Ashkelon) the Zionists destroyed the Al Hussain Mosque. Therefore, other countries need to ensure the safeguarding of the religious rights of Palestine’s Christians and Muslims as well as their holy sites.
The writer is the author of Afghanistan in the Age of Empires and a London-based barrister