The Haj - Leon Uris [238]
The third phase of the plan dealt with industry and called for an ambitious factory complex. Food from the farm would be processed, packaged, and canned. Dead Sea minerals would be refined and shipped through Jordan’s single port in Aqaba. That meant the building of a major new road as well as other support roads.
Light industry within the capabilities of the refugees would be installed, and a training school for boys would be built to develop needed skills. Small factories would make rugs, building tools, cloth and clothing, utensils, building materials. A stone quarry would make blocks, and the sand and gravel pits would provide the materials for a glass factory.
As the experts began furnishing their thick booklets of data and projections, it fell to Haj Ibrahim to sell the Jericho Project to our people. I went with him to meeting after meeting, watching him extol the scheme.
‘We will beat the Jews at their own game!’ he bragged. ‘We will turn Aqbat Jabar from a place of despair into a proud, self-sustaining city. Our families will work and earn salaries. This is our great opportunity to take off our rags and build decent homes. We have lived too long in uniforms of striped pajamas.’
Do not think the Haj a fool. Even as he sold hard, I knew that rivers of doubts were overrunning their banks within him. Had our people gone too long without work or hope? Had they become content to continue on as the world’s charity wards? Would they respond?
Oh Allah, the bitterness of the disenchanted!
It started when UNRWA sent out a call for several hundred construction jobs. Only a third of them were filled by Aqbat Jabar residents.
Despite my father’s prodding and threatening and downright pleading we finally had to go to outside contractors and labor had to be shipped in. The same happened when road building and farm jobs became open.
School enrollment scarcely filled half the classroom seats, and most of those attended did so on an irregular basis.
Tribal avarice moved in and the grandiose scheme died aborning. Every man of some kind of clan authority staked out a claim for a supervisory or executive position, and along with him brought an entourage of employees from his own people. The fight for positions was truly a fight for authority. Endless haggling led to endless haggling. Fists flew and guns were pulled at planning meetings. The losers sulked. The winners extended their power on the principle that a one-man job could be better handled by five members of the same family.
When building materials began to arrive, pilfering became rampant. Construction went on at a nearly motionless pace. There was a lack of labor, a lack of competent supervision, a lack of planning. Confusion and lethargy surrounded the scheme.
In our world, when five men do the work of one, four justify themselves through obstruction. Cruel games were played by an army of rubber stamp wielders. Permits and inspections were held up endlessly. People with no expertise made a farce of trying to figure out complicated installations. It could take a week to requisition a bag of nails.
In came the fedayeen gangs, who organized the theft of materials, then set up a security service to prevent further thefts. The fedayeen also demanded of Father and the other Arab leaders that they set up a clandestine factory to make arms and munitions.
The imams from the mosques got into it. Priests demanded large outright bribes, threatening to impede work by delivering sermons against the plan from their pulpits.
Chaos begat chaos.
What was pounded into the minds of our people was that UNRWA was their new government, a mystical father to care for them. Yet they wanted no responsibility toward it or for bettering the lives of their families. UNRWA would provide. Did they not deserve that for the loss of their lands?
Although the heartbeats of life were provided by UNRWA, it was deeply resented. Should