The Haj - Leon Uris [94]
As payment for this, Kabir was to be assured of the return of all his lands in the Valley of Ayalon. Most importantly, he was to receive title to Shemesh Kibbutz and fifteen other Jewish settlements. The Jewish lands were a gold mine. The strategic location of his fiefdom would put him into a position of a major political power in any future division of Palestine.
Dandash was sent off to put it to formal documents.
‘What of Haj Ibrahim,’ Abdul Kadar said. ‘Will he evacuate? There has always been the rumor that he cooperated with the Jews during my uncle’s rebellion.’
‘Haj Ibrahim is a pragmatic man. He will take his people to Jaffa when we tell him to do so.’
‘That fart eater will pay for what he did to my men,’ Kaukji said. ‘I have waited ten years for my vengeance.’
‘I am directing him to Jaffa for you, am I not?’ Kabir said. ‘Once he is in Jaffa, he will be in your hands. I see nothing. I hear nothing. I speak nothing.’
‘Now then,’ Abdul Kadar said, ‘the first moneys due us.’
‘It has been held up by some minor bureaucrats. Do not give it a second thought. I will take care of everything.’
7
Late 1947
‘THERE WILL BE NO negotiations, no settlement, no recognition, no peace with the Jews. All solutions that do not give us Palestine in its entirety are rejected. Our policy issues will be settled at the point of a gun.’ Thus spoke the entire Arab world, which generally ended each new statement with a battle cry of the ancient Romans: ‘Perish Judaea!’
Arab Palestine mobbed and struck. In cities with mixed populations, accordions of barbed wire set up demarcations of communities. The British, neutral in theory but pointedly pro-Arab in reality and action, continued to blockade the Palestine coast. The country’s only large airport at Lydda was due to go into the Jewish state, but the British permitted a large buildup of Arab irregulars to control it, within range of their guns.
As in the past, it was the hit-and-run raid and ambush on the highways where the Arabs would have their best results. It began with the ambush of a Jewish bus near Lydda and the massacre of the passengers.
A sudden chilling, rapid, and unforeseen panic swept the Arab community. As they observed the Heusseinis and Kaukji preparing for war, a flash flood of fear raced through them. The wealthy and influential Arab families, the leaders of the community, recalled the days of the Mufti’s revolt. The militias had been the same two forces who had all but destroyed their brother Arabs a decade earlier. The Palestinian Arabs knew they were in for blackmail, extortion, and murder from Abdul Kadar and Kaukji.
By the dozens, hundreds, and thousands, the crème de la crème of Arab Palestine liquidated their holdings, withdrew their savings, and fled the country. The Arab community was suddenly stripped of its doctors, lawyers, landowners, social leaders, politicians, professors, principal merchants, bankers, manufacturers, intellectuals, and writers. Within weeks of the partition plan, some thirty thousand families, representing over a hundred thousand people, simply quit Palestine, opting to sit out the coming war in the more comfortable surroundings of Beirut, Cairo, or the European continent.
No warnings had been issued and no shots had been fired at them by the Jews, but they showed neither the desire nor the courage to enter the struggle to liberate Arab Palestine. They had no feeling whatsoever for a Palestinian nation, for there had never been one. They knew that an Arab victory would mean a state of chaos in which they would be victims rather than victors. This Palestinian Arab leadership simply abandoned its country in a self-serving manner, uncaring