A celebration to one is an affront to the other

PALESTINE:For Palestinians, the 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel recalls the beginning of their national tragedy, writes Michael Jansenin Beit Safafa and Battir

NO FLAGS fly in Beit Safafa and Battir, stone-built Palestinian villages riding the rocky backs of the Judean hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

For Palestinians the blue and white Israeli banner, brandished in celebration of Israel's 60th birthday this week, is an affront. The red, green, black and white Palestinian flag means little to stateless people, and Israeli soldiers tear down the black flag of mourning whenever it is raised.

Palestinians regard May 15th, 1948, as the formal beginning of their naqba, the "catastrophe", that is still depriving them of homeland, identity and self-determination.

Beit Safafa and Battir are sole survivors of 40 Jerusalem-district villages cleared by Israeli forces between the end of November 1947 and May 1948. Beit Safafa still exists because it was sammud, steadfast; Battir because it had a charismatic leader, Hassan Mustafa.

Beit Safafa was a village of farmers and stone-cutters who worked in Jerusalem, five kilometres distant. When Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages in west Jerusalem came under Israeli attack in early 1948, some men from Beit Safafa took up arms. Five were killed on April 30th during the Battle of Qatamon, a middle class Palestinian area where many worked.

This three-day encounter between Palestinian irregulars and Israel's underground arm took place six weeks before the proclamation of Israel. At that time, the Jerusalem area was flooded with refugees who had fled towns and villages located between the Mediterranean coast and the Judean hills.

By May 15th, there were a quarter of a million destitute Palestinians seeking safety and succour. Some slept in orchards and fields, others in schools, churches and mosques. Boy scouts collected blankets and clothes while host communities cooked cauldrons of rice and lentils to feed them.

Mustafa Othman, a retired history teacher and author who lives in a handsome house on a Beit Safafa hilltop, was four-years-old in 1948. Most of the villagers stayed put in spite of constant firing from Israeli positions on surrounding hills. Those who fled went to Bethlehem or adjacent Beit Jala.

Beit Safafa's fate was settled by the armistice commission that drew the ceasefire line in 1949. Othman explained: "They put a three-metre fence down the middle of the main street of the village, dividing the village between Israel and Jordan. We lived on the Jordanian side, my uncle and his family on the Israeli side. We became Jordanians, the others Israelis.

"We could approach the fence only on feast days. We were not allowed to touch or pass notes . . . Men on our side left for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to get jobs. The village was full of women and children. The men came back to marry and for a month's holiday in summer. Some built houses."

Othman went to secondary school in Bethlehem and to the Arab University in Beirut; his cousin studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where he now teaches Arabic to foreigners. "The Arab world was open to me, Europe and the US to him."

After Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967, Beit Safafa was reunited by Israel but Jordanians remained Jordanian and Israelis Israeli. Othman married a kindergarten teacher, Rab'a, who had grown up on the Israeli side of the village and studied in Haifa.

"Since she is Israeli, our three sons and daughter are Israelis," he observed. Othman taught in the local school. "It is unique. There are separate classes for the two sides. Jordanians follow the Jordanian curriculum, Israelis the Israeli syllabus. I taught my students about the tragedy of the naqba while my colleague taught the history of Israel. Israeli students learn in Hebrew, Jordanians have one hour of Hebrew a week. We have two very different mindsets. The fence is gone, but there is still partition.

"Most [ Arab] Israelis get jobs in Israel in hotels, coffee shops, factories. They are not educated. Israel does not encourage them to become doctors or lawyers. Jordanians do not finish high school and seek work outside. The literacy rate has fallen since '67."

In 1948, Beit Safafa had 1,500 inhabitants; today there are 6,000 living in the village and 4,000 dwelling outside. Beit Safafa had 3,314 dunums (a dunum equals 1,000 square metres) of agricultural land; now it has none, and Israel grants very few permits to build homes inside the village, which is squeezed by Israeli East Talpiot and the West Bank settlement of Gilo.

Battir sprawls up hill and down dale, five kilometres from Beit Safafa, and looks to Bethlehem rather than Jerusalem. Ribhi Mustafa, who was 18 in 1948, lives on his land in a four-storey house he began to build in the 1950s with money he earned in Saudi Arabia.

"Everyone left during the fighting," he said as we sipped small cups of Turkish coffee. "Some went to Bethlehem, others to a refugee camp at Shuneh on the Jordanian side of the [ Jordan] river."

His brother, Hassan Mustafa, the armistice commission and the Israelis negotiated an agreement which allowed Battiris, who became Jordanians, to keep and farm their 7,000 dunums of land on condition that they did not attack or sabotage the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway line that runs through the village.

Once the deal was done, Hassan Mustafa called upon the refugees to return to looted homes and ravaged fields. "He was a trusted person. A graduate of the American University of Cairo. People came back to work their land just as they did in 1947. He also cultivated the village, using voluntary labour.

"We enlarged the school near the train station, established a girls' school, and opened a road to Jerusalem.The main thing in this village is co-operation. We call a meeting to ask everyone to approve a project. We pay . . . After 1948, we re-established our village ourselves."

On the death of his brother in 1961, Ribhi Mustafa took over the unfinished job of building Battir while serving as governor of the Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah districts when Jordan ruled, and in the Jordanian parliament after Israel's 1967 occupation.

"We established a local council, built roads, a clinic, a medical laboratory and secondary schools for boys and girls. In 1980, I brought electricity and [ piped] water from Bethlehem. We stayed very calm in order to continue our way of life."

Since Israel seized the West Bank in 1967, they have had "no relations with the Israelis" although, as the occupying power, Israel is obliged, under international law, to provide utilities and services. In 1948, Battir had 1,000 residents; today it has 5,000, while another 1,000 live elsewhere, most in Amman in Jordan, and in the Gulf. While they can visit, they cannot build on their land. Some of it has been confiscated.

When the Israelis threaten confiscation, the Battiris remind them of the land-for-railway deal. "The train still goes, there are no obstacles, no problems," Mr Mustafa observed before giving my driver directions to the line.

A yellow repair vehicle rolled down the track in front of the boys' school at the bottom of the deep bowl Battir inhabits. As we ascended to the main road, I asked a student who hitched a ride whether eggplants are in season. "Not yet." Today Battir is as famous for its eggplants as it once was for the arrangement reached by Hassan Mustafa 59 years ago.

The Palestinians 60 years on

When the first Arab-Israeli war ended in March 1949, 85 per cent of the 1.3 million native Palestinians had been driven or had taken flight from the 78 per cent of geographic Palestine conquered by Israel.

Thousands more departed through the 1950s.

Of the 62,000-72,000 who remained in Israel, half were displaced and their homes razed. Some 320,000 stayed on in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to the UN, 914,000 had become refugees: 500,000 in Jordan (which had taken East Jerusalem and the West Bank), 198,000 in Gaza (which came under Egyptian rule), 127,000 in Lebanon and 82,000 in Syria.

A quarter of a million, the majority of them refugees, fled the West Bank in 1967, when Israel conquered it, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Today 1.3 million of the global population of 10 million Palestinians still live in refugee camps. Four million dwell in the 1967 territories, 1.2-1.3 million are citizens of Israel, and the rest are spread across the diaspora.