PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 127

24.  It was through Haifa that the Haganah re-
ceived the supply of weapons that enabled it to
act. Port activity ceased in April 1948: the Iraqi
government closed the Mosul–Haifa pipeline,
and the offices and employees of the British
companies Iraq Petroleum Company and Steel
Brothers were transferred to Lebanon.
25. Palestinian Arabs were fleeing for several
reasons, according to Israeli historians such as
Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé: the actions of the
Zionist militias ended several times with hun-
dreds of dead on the Arab side, then the Zion-
ists spread the story that whole villages had been
massacred, while threatening the Arabs and ad-
vising them over loudspeakers to leave the city
‘before it’s too late’, and finally, the Arab leaders
encouraged the departure thinking thus to par-
alyse Haifa, which was not the case.
26. The story of these children was told by
Ghassan Kanafani in his book Palestine’s Chil-
dren. Returning to Haifa, Boulder & London:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.
27.  Aharon Hoter-Yishai was a close advisor of
David Ben-Gurion. In 1961, he was a witness
at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war
criminal.
28.  The Absentees’ Property Law, promulgated
in 1950, stipulated that the property of Pales-
tinian absentees could not be sold but could be
transferred and managed by the development
authority. In practice, it has allowed the confis-
cation of the property and land of Palestinians
whom Israel has forbidden to return home, and
then for the property of these forced “absentees”
to be ceded to third parties.
Jaffa oranges, 1908
Suad
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