PALESTINE Memories of 1948 - Photographs of Jerusalem | Page 173

1.  See the link on the Unesco World Herit-
age site, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1492/
Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines – Cultural
Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir.
2.  See René R. Khawam translation, The Sub-
tle Ruse: The Book of Arabic Wisdom and Guile,
East–West Publications, 1980. This book, writ-
ten 100 years before Machiavelli, discovered
and edited by Khawam in 1976, is a classic.
The author introduces the reader into the world
of Arab politics by specifying that the word
“ruse” (hila) means ‘a machine that economizes
human work thanks to the application of the
laws of physics domesticated by an ingenious
inventor, sage or artisan’. The ruse, here, is not
considered to be a means intended to fool an
adversary by using treacherous methods.
3.  An application, iNakba, launched in 2014
by the Israeli NGO Zochrot (Hebrew for “they
remember”), makes known the names of Pal-
estinian villages which have been destroyed
or depopulated since 1948, based on the book
of Walid Khalidi, All that Remains: the Pal-
estinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by
Israel in 1948, Washington D.C., Institute for
Palestine Studies, 1992. The number of these
villages, on the ruins of which the Israelis have
often built anew, varies according to the sourc-
es between 418 and 530.
4. Jawad Botmeh, “Civil Resistance in Pales-
tine: The Village of Battir in 1948”, (master’s
thesis), University of Coventry, England, 2006.
The author speaks of Hassan Mustafa, his
grandfather, born in 1914, a writer and jour-
nalist, who was opposed to the British policy
in Palestine. In 1945, he belonged to a group of
intellectuals in Jerusalem who came from rural
backgrounds, Nadi Al Ittihad Al Garawi (The
Rural Union Club). In March 1949, he worked
for the Red Cross then for Unrwa.
5.  The Deir Yasin massacre happened on April
9, 1948, more than a month before the British
retreated from Palestine. It played a central role
in the exodus of the Palestinians.
6.  Israel wanted to link West Jerusalem to the
coast by creating a “Jerusalem Corridor” and
Battir was meant to be part of it.
7. Five hundred and fifty-four kilometres of
walls, the longest network of terraces in Palestine.
8.  The Jerusalem–Jaffa railway line was built
and inaugurated in 1892, during the Ottoman
Empire.
9.  The exact date of the creation of the Order
of St John is unknown, but it is known that
around 1070 a hospice was established in Je-
rusalem by monks to take care of Christians
on a pilgrimage to the Holy City. The hospice
became an independent hospital in 1113, then
the Order of the Hospital in 1187. Since the
late nineteenth century, the British monarch
has been at the head of the modern Most Ven-
erable Order of St John, which consists of three
foundations, one of which is the St John Eye
Hospital in Jerusalem, established in 1882.
10. Once the territorial partitioning was en-
dorsed, the question was: who would get Je-
rusalem? The Palestine partition plan of 1947
decreed that the city would be an internation-
al zone, but after the first Arab-Israeli war of
1948–1949, the status of the city changed. It
was, in fact, separated into two parts by the
armistice line (green line). The smaller eastern
part was administered by Jordan. West Jeru-
salem was under the control of the new Israeli
state, which considered it to be their capital
and set up the government, the Knesset (Parlia-
ment) and the presidential palace there, despite
opposition from the international community.
11.  On April 3, 1949, after ten months of war,
the bilateral armistice was signed; one of its
main points of agreement was the creation of
a Committee which would finalize the division
of Jerusalem. The Rhodes Agreement outlined
a green line that followed the military positions
of both parties at the time of the agreement.
In case of disagreement, which was the case in
and around Jerusalem, there were two lines,
one green and one red, the first marking the
position of the Jordanian forces and the second
of the Israeli forces.
12.  The village of ‘Ayn Karim was emptied of
its inhabitants and occupied by Jews. Al Jura
was erased from the map.
13. In his Knesset speech on April 4, 1949,
just after signing the armistice in Rhodes, Da-
vid Ben-Gurion said: ‘I would like the Knesset
to be aware of the fact that… these Armistice
Agreements are not yet peace… nor are we even
near to making peace with the Arab countries.
Neither have we determined stability and secu-
rity for all the areas covered by the agreement,
particularly in and around Jerusalem… regard-
ing which negotiations will still be held be-
tween us and Transjordan, without the partic-
ipation of the U.N. Negotiations will also still
be held about assuring free access to Mount
Scopus, enabling work to continue at the He-
brew University and Hadassah and renewing
the railway connecting Tel Aviv-Jaffa with Je-
rusalem and Haifa…’ in Armistice Agreements
with the Arab Countries, p. 500, on the web-
site: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
14.  This meant that 16 of the houses in Battir
then belonged de facto to Israel, as did part of
the irrigated land. Furthermore, it had been
concluded that even though some of Battir’s
lands were now on the Israeli side, the farmers
would still have access to them and would re-
tain ownership of them. On the other hand, no
inhabitant of Battir would be allowed to cross
the railway line.
15. In the 1950s, girls’ schools were being
opened everywhere in rural Jordan and the
West Bank. The school in Battir, with 13 class-
es, received aid from Unrwa.
16. Jerusalemites who were not physically in
Jerusalem after the Six-Day War when this
status was granted (among others, those who
fled to the West Bank because of the conflict or
people working abroad) were unable to obtain
the blue card and lost the right to reside legal-
ly in Jerusalem. It should be pointed out that
Palestinians holding a blue card may lose their
residency status at any time. They must contin-
ually prove that they live in Jerusalem and pro-
vide evidence (e.g. payment of regional taxes,
water bills). Between 1967 and 2008, 13,000
Palestinians lost their homes in Jerusalem.
17.  Pine trees were imported in the 1920s by
the British, then planted by the Israelis.
18. Since 2002, a separation wall has been
built around Jerusalem, along the Green Line,
but on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The
United Nations General Assembly passed a
resolution in 2003 condemning the construc-
tion of this wall encroaching on occupied Pal-
estinian territory. The International Court of
Justice ruled it contrary to international law in
2004. This wall means that some non-residents
(holders of a green card, like the majority of the
inhabitants of Battir) suddenly find themselves
on the Jerusalem side of the wall, but since
they do not have a blue card, they have no ac-
cess to health services nor to schools. In other
words, the existence of this wall means that
Israel treats Palestinian residents of Jerusalem
as immigrants who are granted the favour of
living in their own homes, not because they are
entitled to it.
19. See Ryvka Barnard and Hassan Mua-
mer, “Ongoing Dispossession and a Heritage
of Resistance: The Village of Battir vs Israeli
Settler-colonialism”, in Rami Isaac, Michael
Hall and Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, The
Politics and Power of Tourism in Palestine, Rou-
tledge, 2016. The authors point out that the
signatories of the petition against the construc-
tion of the wall handed to the Supreme Court
speak of “open space” to designate Battir farm-
land, which is in fact property privately owned
by Palestinians.
20.  This inscription has revealed the extreme-
ly destructive effects of the wall which Israel is
building.
Hassan
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