PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 69

Terror in Al Dawayima
Rushdieh Al Hudeib, deceased in 2018 at the age of 80
There are places from the Palestine of before 1948 that do
not exist any more. Whole villages that have disappeared,
razed to the ground, replaced by Israeli settlements, given
new names the better to erase them from the collective
memory, from any memory.
There are between 418 and 530 names of villages
that have disappeared from Palestine and that the Israeli
authorities are trying to obliterate at any cost. 1 This deter-
mination to erase a name, a building, the slightest trace,
demonstrates the extent to which the memory of absentees
is frightening.
Al Dawayima 2 is one of the places silenced by Israel.
And yet, in spite of that silence the voices of its victims
continue to whisper in the wind in defiance of the settle-
ments built directly on the site of the massacre. There are
cacti growing now where the houses of the Palestinians
used to be.
Al Dawayima was a Palestinian village. Here Moshe
Dayan’s 89th Battalion carried out a massacre on Friday,
October 29, 1948, a massacre that cannot be erased, as
proven by the words of Rushdieh Al Hudeib, the niece of
the mukhtar 3 of the village at the time. Here she tells us
what she lived through – a story she has told to her chil-
dren, her grandchildren, her neighbours and all those she
has met throughout her life, and who will, in turn, tell it
throughout their lives.
 Al Dawayima, Friday October 29, 1948, the day
of prayer. As soon as he saw the column of Israeli sol-
diers and tanks coming towards our village, my uncle,
Hassan Mahmoud Al Hudeib, started to run, shout-
ing out to warn as many people as possible. He was the
mukhtar of Al Dawayima – as his father and grandfa-
ther had been before him. As fast as he could my father
loaded up two camels with bags of provisions, caught
up my little brother and hoisted him onto his shoulders,
took my mother, my sisters and me (I was ten years old
at the time) by the hand and we fled, having locked the
wooden door of our house. As he put the big key into
his pocket my father reassured us that this was just a
bad patch and we would be coming home again soon.
About 20 women, cousins, aunts, nieces, were following
us. At first we were running, but soon after we were
marching across the wet earth and loose rocks. We all
knew, without it needing to be said, that we had to hurry
if we wanted to stay alive. We went in single file along
narrow paths that ran along the side of the ravines. At
the end of the day, exhausted, we reached a cave where
we spent the night. I will remember October 29, 1948
as long as I live, even if I were to live to a hundred.
It must have been midday when Moshe Dayan’s
89th battalion entered Al Dawayima. There were about
20 tanks in three columns, 4 and as was their practice
they completely surrounded the village, leaving a small
Rushdieh
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