Palestine-Mandate

Israeli police and special forces prevented the holding of a memorial meeting in honor of the memory of the late Jerusalem political figure, Faisal Husseini, who died in Kuwait on 31 May 2008. The memorial was scheduled to take place at 4: 00 pm Sunday afternoon in East Jerusalem’s Hakawati Theatre,

This would have been the seventh Feisal Husseini memorial meeting in Jerusalem. Last year’s event was held in the Dar al-Tifl school, originally established sixty years ago by Hind Husseini to house and educate 55 orphans who survived the 1948 massacre and expulsion of Palestinians from the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem by the Jewish Irgun and Stern Gang militias, during the fighting that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel.

But, although all previous six annual Faisal Husseini memorial meetings went ahead without interference, this year’s event was not allowed to take place.

“The Israeli police brought with them ‘the brass’, and on the side they had special forces ready”, said Adnan Abdel-Razek, a former UN official and then an associate working with Faisal Husseini in the Orient House, who was there to attend Sunday’s memorial. “They did not even have a court order – which would have meant they would have had to go to the court and explain why they wanted to prevent the memorial, and we would have had the opportunity to explain why we wanted to hold it. No, in Jerusalem, in this supposedly ‘united Jerusalem’, the Israeli police relied on the British Military Regulations of 1947″.

Abdel Razek explained: “They told us to leave, and then they started chasing people. We decided to regroup in front of Orient House. They were brutal – and they were more than brutal, they were nasty. They hit some people. Then they detained Abdel-Qader Husseini, the son of Faisal, who was the sponsor of the memorial meeting. We have 40 witnesses who say that Abdel-Qader did not do anything to provoke this detention. He did not even open his mouth. But the officer in charge said ‘It’s my decision’. Fifteen minutes later Abdel-Qader was released. Then, the officer said that he would not allow even two people to gather together. We know the law and argued with him, saying that the exact stipulation in the military regulation prevents three people (not two) assembling. So, eventually, the officer said that three people could not gather together, then he changed it back to two”.

He continued: “The Israelis have zero tolerance for any Palestinian voice, and it’s getting worse and worse. We have no government, the PLO does not weigh in, and the Palestinian National Authority is not active in stopping the march of the occupation. The Israelis are building settlements, continuing construction of The Wall, confiscating land, and our people are busy discussing ‘important matters’ to advance the negotiations. But there is no way the Israelis can prevent people forever from exercising their basic human rights to political expression and free speech.”

Both Dar al-Tifl, which is located behind the American Colony Hotel, and the Hakawati Theatre, are in the same neighborhood and very close to Orient House, described on its own website as the “Palestinian national gathering place for Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem …which aspires to develop Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of the emerging Palestinian state”.

Orient House, a Husseini family property, was closed for a long period after the June 1967 war. It was renovated in the early 1980s to serve as Faisal Husseini’s office and headquarters, first for his Arab Studies Society, and later, when Husseini served as a member of the Palestinian team to the multilateral negotiations that emerged from the Madrid Peace Conference, Orient House became known as the unofficial Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Jerusalem,.

Husseini, a member of Fatah, was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee Member in charge of Jerusalem.

Faisal Husseini’s offices in the Orient House were shut down by the Israeli authorities during the first Intifada from 1988 until 1992, and again on 10 August 2001, during the second Intifada. It has not since reopened. The only current occupant of the building, the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) non-government charity organization, works out of rented office space on the upper floors.

Ma’an, a Palestinian news agency, wrote on Friday, the 90th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, that “Despite the condition that the creation of the Jewish homeland should not prejudice the rights of Palestinian communities, that ill-fated decision has led to a continuing state of conflict, the deaths of thousands of people and created a huge refugee problem, with many Palestinians exiled from their ancestral homeland”. The Ma’an article on the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is here.

On the same day, Kol Israel Radio reported “Minister Isaac Herzog [Minister of Welfare and Social Services, Minister of the Diaspora, Society, and Fight Against Antisemitism] will speak about the declaration at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. Herzog said the event is an important historical milestone towards the creation of the state of Israel. Herzog will also participate in an event in Tel Aviv on Monday, together with British Ambassador Tom Philps, marking the anniversary”. The Kol Israel report on the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is here.

Ma’an called the Balfour Declaration “117 words that changed the face of the Middle East”.

The Balfour Declaration is a typed letter, signed by then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, and addressed to a member of the British Parliament, Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Jewish community in Britain, at the height of the First World War.

It is a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations”, and was approved by the British cabinet.

The image above was found on the website of
the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs here.

It says that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

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General Allenby led a sweep of His British Majesty’s soldiers out of Egypt in 1917 and up to Jerusalem and beyond, claiming a swathe of territory that had belonged, until then, to the Ottoman Empire for some 500 years.

On his way to Jerusalem, General Allenby took Beersheba — in no small part thanks to an apparently magnificent charge by some 800 Australian cavalrymen - the “Light Horse” Brigade.

“On 31 October 1917 British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers captured Beersheva from the Ottomans. This was the first victory in the campaign to capture the Holy Land during World War I.”, says a press release from Shoresh Study Tours, sent around to announce a big 90th anniversary commemorative bash in Beersheva tomorrow.

The Jerusalem Post has a stirring article today, reconstructing and analyzing the event: “Victory by 800 mounted Australians over 4,000 well-trained Turks seems a bit far-fetched. But that’s exactly what happened on October 31, 1917, at the Battle of Beersheba, which 90 years ago arguably changed the direction of the Sinai and Palestine campaign during World War I. It was a day of surprises for the Turks, one that had been planned far in advance: Already in May 1917, General Philip Chetwode wrote his Notes on the Palestine Campaign, which outlined a suggested plan of attack. There he suggested that the approaching Third Battle of Gaza should move inland and center around a relatively loosely guarded east flank of Beersheba. The Turks, he suggested, would not anticipate the mounted attack due to the scarcity of water for horses and soldiers alike. Chetwode, however, claimed that it would be easier and more efficient to secretly engineer water access to the area than to break through the more heavily guarded Gaza area. At the same time, the Turks were led to believe through a series of British subterfuges that they would - for the third time - indeed choose a frontal attack on Gaza. General Sir Edmund Allenby, who assumed command in July, adopted Chetwode’s suggestions and by late October the British were ready for the Battle of Beersheba.

“The attack on the unsuspecting Turks took place at dawn. However, the Anzac Mounted Division was delayed at Tel el Saba, causing the British forces to fall behind in the master battle plan, which had charted the capture of Beersheba before nightfall.

“As a risky last-ditch effort, the commander of the Desert Mounted Corps, General Henry Chauvel, ordered the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade (made up of the 4th and 12th regiments), under Brigadier William Grant, to secure the capture of Beersheba just before sunset. Charging directly into the sun, the horsemen kicked up thunderous clouds of dust as they rode against the Turkish trenches. The frightened Turks, who assumed this was the beginning of a larger force, fled. The Australian soldiers secured the city and intact wells and reservoirs. (The story goes that a torrential downpour saved the remaining horses from dehydration.)

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