The attack and murder of not less than nine men on the Mavi Marmara, Turkish registered ferry delivering much needed aid to the Gazans by Israeli Commandos on the high seas off the coast of Gaza on 5/31, brings to my mind the picture of the old Holy Land, painted in words by Muhammad Asad in his book, “The Road to Mecca”.
The author beautifully described scenes of Palestinian life prior to the declaration of that illegal Zionist so-called state of Israel carved out of the region of southwest Asia between the eastern Mediterranean shore and the Jordan River. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10259646.stm
“The ‘Arab Stone House’ of which Dorian had written was really delightful. It stood on the fringe of the Old City near the Jaffa Gate. Its wide, high-ceilinged rooms seemed to be saturated with memories of the patrician life that had passed through them in earlier generations and the walls reverberated with the living present surging into them from the bazaar nearby- sights and sounds and smells that were unlike anything I had experienced before.
From the roof terrace I could see the sharply outlined area of the Old City with its network of irregular streets and alleys carved in stone. At the other end, seemingly near in its mighty expanse, was the site of Solomon’s Temple; the Al-Aqsa Mosque – the most sacred after those of Mecca and Medina – stood on its farthest rim, and the Dome of the Rock in the centre. Beyond it, the Old City walls fell off toward the Valley of Kidron; and beyond the valley grew softly rounded, barren hills, their slopes thinly spotted with olive trees. Toward the east there was a little more fertility, and you could see there a garden sloping down toward the road, dark-green, hedged in by walls: the Garden of Gethsemane. From its midst shone between olive trees and cypresses the golden, onion-shaped domes of the Russian Church.
Like an oscillating brew from an alchemist’s retort, clear and nevertheless full of a thousand undefinable colours, beyond words, beyond even the grasp of thought: thus you could see from the Mount of Olives the valley of the Jordon and the Dead Sea. Wavy hills and wavy hills, outlined, breath-like, against an opalescent air, with the deep-blue streak of the Jordon and the rounding of the Dead Sea beyond – and still further beyond, another world in itself, the dusky hills of Moab: a landscape of such an incredible, multiform beauty that your heart trembled with excitement.
Jerusalem was an entirely new world to me. There were historic memories seeping from every corner of the ancient city: streets that had heard Isaiah preach, cobblestones over which Christ had walked, walls that had been old when the heavy step of Roman legionaries echoed from them, arches over doorways that bore inscriptions of Saladin’s time. There was the deep blue of the skies, which might not have been unfamiliar to someone who knew other Mediterranean countries: but to me, who had grown up in a far less friendly climate, this blueness was like a call and a promise. The houses and streets seemed to be covered with a tender, oscillating glaze; the people were full of spontaneous movement and grand of gesture. The people – that is the Arabs: for it was they who from the very beginning impressed themselves on my consciousness as the people of the land, people who had grown out of its soil and its history and were one with the surrounding air. Their garments were colourful and of a Biblical sweep of drapery, and each of them, fellah or beduin (for you could often see beduins who came to town to buy or sell their goods), wore them in a manner quite his own, ever so slightly different from the others, as if he had invented a personal fashion on the spur of the moment.
In front of Dorian’s house, at a distance of perhaps forty yards, rose the steep, time-worn walls of David’s Castle, which was part of the ramparts of the Old City – a typical medieval Arab citadel, probably erected on Herodian foundations, with a slim watchtower like a minaret. (Although it has no direct connection with King David, the Jews have always have always called it after him because here, on Mount Zion, the old royal palace is said to have stood.) On the Old City side there was a low, broad tower, through which the gateway went, and a bridge of stone arched across the old moat to the gate. That arched bridge was apparently a customary place of rendezvous for beduins when they had occasion to come into the city. One day I noticed a tall beduin standing there without motion, silhouetted against the silver-grey sky like a figure from an old legend. His face, with sharp cheekbones framed in a short, red-brown beard, bore an expression of deep gravity; it was sombre, as if he expected something and yet did not feel expectant. His wide, brown and white striped cloak was worn and tattered – and the fanciful idea came to me, I do not known why, that it had been worn out in many months of danger and flight. Was he, perhaps, one of that handful of warriors who had accompanied young David on his flight from dark jealousy of Saul, his king? Perhaps David was asleep just now, hiding somewhere in a cave in the Judean hills, and this man here, this faithful and brave friend, had stealthily come with a companion into the riyal city to find out how Saul felt about their leader and whether it was safe for him to return. And now this friend of David was waiting here for his comrade, full of dark forebodings: it was not good news that they would bring David...
Suddenly the Beduin moved, started walking down the ramp, and my dream-fantasy broke. And then I remembered with a start: this man was an Arab, while those others, those figures of the Bible – were Hebrews! But my astonishment was only of a moment’s duration; for all at once I knew, with that clarity which sometimes bursts within us like lightening and lights up the world for the length of a heartbeat, that David and David’s time, like Abraham and Abraham’s time, were closer to their Arabian roots – and so to the beduin of today – than to the Jew of today, who claims to be their descendants...
I often sat on the stone balustrade below Jaffa Gate and watched the throng of people going into or coming out of the Old City. Here they rubbed against each other, jostled one another, Arab and Jew, all possible variations of both. There were the strong-boned fellahin with their white or brown headcloths or orange-coloured turbans. These were Beduins with sharp, clear-cut and, almost without exception, lean faces, wearing their cloaks in a strangely self-confident manner, frequently with hands on hips and elbows wide apart, as if they took it for granted that everyone would make way for them. There were peasant women in black or blue calico dresses embroidered in white across the bosom, often carrying baskets on their heads and moving with a supple, easy grace. Seen from behind, many a women of sixty could be taken for a young girl. Their eyes also seemed to remain clear and untouched by age – unless they happened to be affected by trachoma, that evil ‘Egyptian’ eye disease which is the curse of all countries east of the Mediterranean.
And there were the Jews: indigenous Jews, wearing a tarbush and a wide, voluminous cloak, in their facial type strongly resembling the Arabs; Jews from Poland and Russia, who seemed to carry with them so much of the smallness and narrowness of their past lives in Europe that it was surprising to think that they claimed to be of the same stock as the proud Jew from Morocco or Tunisian his white burnus. But although the European Jews were so obviously out of all harmony with the picture that surrounded them, it was they who set the tone of Jewish life and politics and thus seemed to be responsible for the almost visible friction between Jews and Arabs.
What did the average European know of the Arabs in those days? Practically nothing. When he came to the Near East he brought with him some romantic and erroneous notions; and if he was well-intentioned and intellectually honest, he had to admit that he had no idea at all about Arabs. I, too, before I came to Palestine, had never thought of it as an Arab land. I had, of course, vaguely known that 'some' Arabs lived there, but I imagined them to be only nomads in desert tents and idyllic oasis dwellers. Because most of what I had read about Palestine in earlier days had been written by Zionists – who naturally had only their own problems in view – I had not realized that the towns also were full of Arabs – that, in fact, in 1922 there lived in Palestine nearly five Arabs to every Jew, and that, therefore it was an Arab country to a far higher degree than a country of Jews.
When I remarked on this to Mr. Ussyshkin, chairman of the Zionist Committee of Action, whom I met during that time, I had the impression that the Zionists were not inclined to give much consideration to the fact of Arab majority; nor did they seem to attribute any real importance to the Arabs' opposition to Zionism. Mr. Ussyshkin's response showed nothing but contempt for the Arabs:
'There is no real Arab movement here against us; that is, no movement with roots in the people. All that you regard as opposition is in reality nothing but the shouting of a few disgruntled agitators. It will collapse of itself within a few months or at the most a few years.’
This argument was far from satisfactory to me. From the very beginning I had a feeling that the whole idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine was artificial, and, what was worse, that it threatened to transfer all the complications and insoluble problems of European life into a country which might have remained happier without them. The Jews were not really coming to it as one returns to one’s homeland; they were rather bent on making it into a homeland conceived on European patterns and with European aims. In short, they were strangers within the gates. And so I did not find anything wrong in the Arabs’ determined resistance to the idea of a Jewish homeland in their midst; on the contrary, I immediately realized that it was the Arabs who were being imposed upon and were rightly defending themselves against such an imposition.
In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised the Jews a ‘national home’ in Palestine, I saw a cruel political manoeuvre designed to foster the old principle, common to all colonial powers, of ‘divide and rule’. In the case of Palestine, this principle was the more flagrant as in 1916 the British had promised the then ruler of Mecca, Sharif Husayn , as a price for his help against the Turks, an independent Arab state which was to comprise all countries between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. They not only broke their promise a year later by concluding with France the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (which established French Dominion over Syria and the Lebanon), but also, by implication, excluded Palestine from the obligations they had assumed with regard to the Arabs.
Although of Jewish origin myself, I conceived from the outset a strong objection to Zionism. Apart from my personal sympathy for the Arabs, I considered it immoral that immigrants, assisted by a foreign Great Power, should come from abroad with the avowed intention of attaining to majority in the country and thus dispossess the people whose country it had been since time immemorial. Consequently, I was inclined to take the side of the Arabs whenever the Jewish-Arab question was brought up – which, of course, happened very often. This attitude of mine was beyond comprehension of practically all the Jews with whom I came in contact during those months. They could not understand what I saw in the Arabs who, according to them, were no more than a mass of backward people whom they looked upon with a feeling not much different from that of the European settlers in Central Africa. They were not in the least interested in what the Arabs thought; almost none of them took pains to learn Arabic; and everyone accepted without question the dictum that Palestine was the rightful heritage of the Jews.
I still remember a brief discussion I had on this score with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the undisputed leader of the Zionist movement. He had come on one of his periodic visits to Palestine (his permanent residence was, I believe, in London), and I met him in the house of a Jewish friend. One could not but be impressed by the boundless energy of this man – an energy that manifested itself even in his bodily movements, in the long, springy stride with which he paced up and down the room – and by the power of intellect revealed in the broad forehead and the penetrating glance of his eyes.
He was talking of the financial difficulties which were besetting the dream of a Jewish National Home, and the insufficient response to this dream among people abroad; and I had the disturbing impression that even he, like most of the other Zionists, was inclined to transfer the moral responsibility for all that was happening in Palestine to the ‘outside world’. This impelled me to break through the deferential hush with which all the other people present were listening to him, and to ask:
‘And what about the Arabs...?’
‘Well – how can you ever hope to make Palestine your homeland in the face of the vehement opposition of the Arabs who, after all, are in the majority in this country?’
The Zionist leader shrugged his shoulders and answered drily: ‘We expect they won’t be in a majority after a few years.’
‘Perhaps so. You have been dealing with this problem for years and must know the situation better than I do. But quite apart from the political difficulties which Arab opposition may or may not put in your way – does not the moral aspect of the question ever bother you? Don’t you think that it is wrong on your part to displace the people who have always lived in this country?’
‘But it is our country,’ replied Dr. Weizmann, raising his eyebrows. ‘We are doing no more than taking back what we have been wrongly deprived of.’
‘But you have been away from Palestine for nearly two thousand years! Before that you had ruled this country, and hardly ever the whole of it, for less than five hundred years. Don’t you think that the Arabs could, with equal justification, demand Spain for themselves – for, after all, they held sway in Spain for nearly seven hundred years and lost it entirely only five hundred years ago?’
Dr. Weizmann had become visibly impatient: ‘Nonsense. The Arabs had only conquered Spain; it had never been their original homeland, and so it was only right that in the end they were driven out by the Spaniards.’
‘Forgive me,’ I retorted, ‘but it seems to me that there is some historical oversight here. After all, the Hebrews also came as conquerors to Palestine. Long before them were many other Semitic and non-Semitic tribes settled here – the Amorites, the Edomites, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Hitties. Those tribes continued living here even in the days of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They continued living here after the Romans drove our ancestors away. They are living here today. The Arabs who settled in Syria and Palestine after their conquest in the seventh century were always only a small minority of the population; the rest of what we describe today as Palestinian or Syrian “Arabs” are in reality only the Arabianized, original inhabitants of the country. Some of them became Muslims in the course of centuries, others remained Christians; the Muslims naturally inter-married with their co-religionists from Arabia. But can you deny that the bulk of those people in Palestine, who speak Arabic, whether Muslims or Christians, are direct-line descendants of the original inhabitants: original in the sense of having lived in this country centuries before the Hebrews came to it?’
Dr. Weizmann smiled politely at my outburst and turned the conversation to other topics.
I did not feel happy about the outcome of my intervention. I had of course not expected any of those present – least of all Dr. Weizmann himself – to subscribe to my conviction that the Zionist idea was highly vulnerable on the moral plane: but I had hoped that my defence of the Arab cause would at least give rise to some sort of uneasiness on the part of the Zionist leadership – an uneasiness which might bring about more introspection and thus, perhaps, a greater readiness to admit the existence of a possible moral right in the opposition of the Arabs... None of this had come about. Instead, I found myself facing a blank wall of staring eyes: a censorious disapproval of my temerity, which dared question the unquestionable right of the Jews to the land of their forefathers...
How was it possible, I wondered, for a people endowed with so much creative intelligence as the Jews to think of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Jewish terms alone? Did they not realize that the problem of the Jews in Palestine could, in the long run, be solved only through friendly co-operation with the Arabs? Were they so hopelessly blind to the painful future which their policy must bring? – to the struggles, the bitterness and the hatred to which the Jewish island, even if temporarily successful, would forever remain exposed in the midst of a hostile Arab sea?
And how strange, I thought, that a nation which had suffered so many wrongs in the course of its long and sorrowful diaspora was now, in single-minded pursuit of its own goal, ready to inflict a grievous wrong on another nation – and a nation, too, that was innocent of all the past Jewish suffering. Such a phenomenon, I knew, was not unknown to history; but it made me, none the less, very sad to see it enacted before
