City of Oranges

by Adam LeBor

  That same year, 1933, Arab demonstrators fought with police in Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nablus and Haifa. Thirty people were killed, and more than two hundred wounded. Across Palestine sniping and bombings were ever more frequent, and the lack of any political solution accelerated the violence. In November 1935 British officials checked a consignment of cement that arrived in Jaffa. It concealed 800 rifles and 400,000 rounds of ammunition for the Jewish underground. In protest the Arab leadership called a one-day general strike, and demanded that Britain stop all Jewish immigration, halt land sales, and set up a democratic government for Palestine which would automatically have an Arab majority. The demands were refused.

  The following spring Arab political leaders established the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), to unite the fractious political groupings. Its leader was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, head of Palestine’s Muslims, and a great admirer of Hitler. Others included Ragheb al-Nashashibi, the mayor of Jerusalem, and Alfred Rock, a Jaffa Christian grandee. The al-Husseinis had for years been engaged in a bitter feud with the al-Nashashibis. The Jewish Agency, the Zionist organisation that was the government-in-waiting of the Jewish state, deftly exploited this intra-Arab enmity. It facilitated secret ‘loans’ to al-Nashashibi, keeping him in its debt. Behind its nationalist bluster, the Arab leadership was one of the Jewish Agency’s greatest allies. The a’yan, the notables, had been selling off Palestine for decades.

  One of the oldest Zionist settlements, Rishon Le-Zion, was established on land sold by the Jaffan Dajani family. Together with the Mufti of Jaffa, Tawfik al-Dajani, Alfred Rock sold off holdings south of Jebaliyyeh, now the Israeli town of Bat Yam. Arthur Rock, his brother, sold land to the Jewish National Fund. Omar el-Bitar, mayor of Jaffa at various times, sold the land where the religious Jewish settlement of Bnei Brak was founded. Ragheb al-Nashashibi sold the site on which the Hebrew University was built. Relatives of Hajj Amin al-Husseini also sold land to the Jewish National Fund.6 Only a fraction of the fellahin, the Palestinian Arab farmers, were prepared to part with their holdings. But at times there was so much land owned by the a’yan for sale, that the Zionists lacked enough funds to buy it all.

  Under the direction of the Mufti of Jerusalem, the Arab Revolt began on 15 April 1936, when militants set up a roadblock outside the northern city of Tulkarm and shot dead three Jews. In response, Jewish gunmen killed two Arabs near Petach Tikva. On 17 April a Jewish victim was buried in Tel Aviv, triggering a violent demonstration. The next day Jewish extremists beat up Arab street traders and shoe-shine boys. That in turn triggered a rampage through Jaffa by a mob of peasants and immigrant workers from Syria, who killed nine Jews and injured sixty.7 Once again, Jews fled Jaffa for Tel Aviv. Once again fighting raged through the border quarters between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, as rival mobs looted and burnt shops. The lack of political progress meant that the cycle of violence was condemned to endlessly repeat itself, over the same causes, between the same protagonists, even around the same buildings.

  Arab leaders called a general strike and a boycott of Jewish businesses. By the summer of 1936, a low-intensity guerrilla war was raging across Palestine. 17 June was an average night. Arab riflemen opened fire on a police patrol from the outskirts of Jaffa, and the police returned fire, killing one and wounding several, reported The Times. Two bombs exploded by the railway line, causing little damage, while ‘ineffective shots were fired at police and Jewish colonies in various localities.’8 In Jaffa that summer the Old City echoed almost daily with the sound of shootings. Two Jewish nurses were murdered and Arab gunmen sniped at Jewish homes and cars. Crops were burnt, and trees cut down. Jewish farmers travelled only in convoys, with British troops protecting them. In response, Zionist militants sniped at houses in Manshiyyeh, killing several civilians, bombed the Jaffa train, and attacked a Bedouin encampment north of Tel Aviv.

  Parallel with the fighting, the economic line of separation was drawn ever more clearly. Jews launched the Product Loyalist Alliance (PLA) to boycott Arab goods. PLA zealots inspected Tel Aviv’s shops. ‘Traitors’ were denounced by public announcement or graffiti. Arab strong-arm men demanded ‘donations’ to the national struggle, while business rivals denounced each other to the Jews. In June 1936 Khalil Yousif Rizk informed the Jewish Agency that one George Abou Alice was ‘dealing in the smuggling of arms, ammunitions, etc. for the rioters in the districts of Ramleh and Jaffa.’ The letter was received with surprise, noted E. Sassoon, as ‘we have never had any connections whatsoever’ with Rizk.9 With Jaffa’s port shut down, Tel Aviv decided to build its own. ‘I want a Jewish sea,’ David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed: ‘The sea is a continuation of Palestine.’10 The Zionists’ confidence was unshakeable. The Anglo-Palestine Bank founded a new company, the Marine Trust, and issued shares to finance the port’s construction. When building started, Tel Aviv’s mayor Meir Dizengoff dropped a stone in the sea. He announced: ‘I remember when Tel Aviv did not have a harbour,’ as though it had already been built and had been there as long as the city itself.

  Arab newspapers mirrored the separatist rhetoric of the Zionists. Falastin sneered, ‘if the Jews think they can do without Jaffa they are wrong, but Jaffa can do without Jews and their city… We are the ones who will proclaim economic war on them, cutting them off for ever.’11 Ad-Difaa declared: ‘We here repeat and state over and over again, that this port has been Arab since time immemorial and that it will keep its Arab feature until the end of time.’12

  Yet everyday life continued. Amin Andraus bought land in Jebaliyyeh, not far from the Hammami house. There he built a stylish cream-coloured 1930s art-deco villa, overlooking the sea. It was surrounded by a large curved terrace and garden in the front and the rear, and there was plenty of land to raise chickens and rabbits. Every visitor praised its beauty and location, and Hanneh’s industriousness in keeping such a wonderful home. On days when politics did not intrude, life was good. Amin’s business was thriving. He had his own car showroom in Jaffa, by the old German colonies. He was a freemason and the Jaffa lodge brought useful commercial contacts, and good connections with British officials. Amin had the franchise for Nash cars, and Kelvinator refrigerators, for Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. Amin and Hanneh’s first child was born in 1934: Salim, named in memory of his grandfather. Two years later came a sister for Salim, Leila. The nights were mostly quiet, as the waves lapped at the beach. There was only occasional gunfire.

  4

  A Widening Divide

  1936

  The most important immediate effect of the explosions, however, has been on the morale of the inhabitants of Jaffa. They are docile again.

  Report in The Times of British army demolitions

  of parts of the Old City, datelined Jaffa, July 6 1936

  By June 1936 Jaffa was under curfew and the Arab Revolt was in full flow. The winding lanes of the Old City offered the perfect cover for snipers and gunmen to attack Tel Aviv, or Jewish vehicles. ‘This oldest quarter of the town is a maze of sunless and insanitary lanes with congested tenements and catacomb-like cellars’, reported The Times, which was why British planes were flying over Jaffa, dropping leaflets onto the city. The authorities planned to demolish at least forty-five houses, and probably twice that number would have to be evacuated. Few believed the British claims that the work was to be carried out in the name of ‘urban improvement’. About five hundred people would need new homes, The Times opined, ‘chiefly of the poorest class of lightermen and hawkers’.

  The Royal Engineers used ten tons of gelignite to clear a T-shaped space in the heart of the Old City, to blast a path through the ancient warren for armoured and military vehicles. Dozens of centuries-old buildings were blown to bits, while others were so badly damaged they had to be demolished. Thousands were made homeless. It was far worse than anyone had imagined. The destruction caused widespread anger and bitterness. ‘Onlooker’, an anonymous pamphleteer, published a coruscating English-language account of the demolitions, de
scribing them as ‘official terrorisation, despotically enforced and ruthlessly promulgated’. The residents were given just twenty-four hours to vacate their homes. ‘Great fissures run like flashes of black lightning the whole height of thick stone walls. Half-demolished vaults hang perilously in the air. Arches, unkeyed by the detonations, have slipped into sad mis-shape. The privacy of humble bedrooms is laid bare, the simple furniture, battered and broken, standing pathetically exposed to the public gaze. The lower chambers and little streets are filled with fallen masonry from above.’ The homeless were rehoused in schools, huts, basements, the boats in the harbour or tents in the cemetery. Mandate officials offered compensation of about three shillings per person. ‘What would the Jews in Europe have to say if this had been done to members of their race?’ demanded Onlooker.1

  Arab homeowners applied for a court order to stop a second wave of demolitions. But the Chief Justice, Sir Michael McDonnel, rejected the application, as there were no legal grounds to stop the demolitions, which were taking place under emergency powers. Sir Michael was deeply unhappy about the whole affair, noting the ‘singularly disingenuous lack of moral courage displayed by the [Mandate] Administration in the whole matter’ and strongly criticised the Mandate leadership. The Times newspaper – then the voice of the British establishment – took a different view. Its correspondent wrote: ‘The results have certainly justified the Government’s decision. Since the demolitions began sniping and bomb-throwing have entirely ceased in Old Jaffa, and I was able to wander freely about the tortuous alleys of this ancient labyrinth where a fortnight ago no policeman could go.’ Even better, he noted, while on his strolls he ‘received cheerful greetings from the inhabitants’.2 As for Sir Michael, he was sacked and left Palestine.

  As the Royal Engineers prepared their charges, three excited young Arab boys ran through the Old City to watch the destruction: Fakhri Geday and his friends, the Damiani boys. The Damianis, like the Gedays, were Christians, and the families were so close they were almost relatives. Both had lived in Jaffa for many generations. When Napoleon had invaded in 1799 the Damianis’ diplomacy had helped prevent a massacre of Muslim civilians. The family owned a soap factory in the heart of the Old City, a Jaffa landmark. Would it survive the demolitions? ‘The British had blown up a lot of houses by the factory. The boys came to me and said, “Come on, let’s go and watch them destroy the buildings. Don’t say anything, let’s just go”, so we ran down into the Old City,’ recalls Fakhri. ‘Their father was sitting there when we arrived, watching that the British did not destroy his factory. I always remember what he said, that your money is the equal of your life. When he saw us, he sent us straight back home.’

  Born in 1927, Fakhri still works at the green-painted pharmacy at 65 Yefet Street that he inherited from his father Youssef Kamel. The Ajami shop is a Jaffa institution, and customers pop in all day for medicines, salves and treatment for minor ailments. Dressed in his white coat, Fakhri deals with them all with courtesy, effortlessly switching between Hebrew, Arabic and English. With his lively eyes and courteous manner he has the appearance of a favourite uncle. But beneath his jocular exterior are anger and regret. The Jaffa where he grew up is gone for ever, and Palestine with it. ‘I always say it was something exceptional, in all aspects: education, social, cultural. Even in politics, as many of the national figures in the nationalist leadership came from Jaffa. Now the only thing that remains of Jaffa is the name. There is nothing left of the old Jaffa. The glorious days, the peace of mind, the people, they are all lost. Christian or Muslim, we were all Palestinians before 1948, and we were proud of it. When we travelled abroad, we said we were Palestinians. Palestine then was the jewel of the Middle East. People lived in every corner. This is our country and I don’t believe that God promised it to anyone else.’

  The Gedays were related to the Rock family, which sold substantial tracts of land to the Zionists. Youssef Kamel Geday refused to sell his holdings, despite attempts by Arthur Rock to persuade him to part with them. The Gedays were rooted in Jaffa, and would never leave. During the Ottoman era, in the early nineteenth century, Fakhri’s forebears lived in the city’s heart, behind the city walls. Once Jaffa spread south along the coast, down the Gaza road – now Yefet Street – Fakhri’s grandfather Dimitri bought land in Ajami. There he built the family house, where Fakhri and his family still live, a spacious stone villa with a garden of flowers and jasmine trees. Fakhri went to school at nearby St Joseph’s, founded in 1882 by French monks. It enjoyed an excellent reputation, both in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. ‘We learned Arabic, English and French. It was a wonderful life, we had school every day, and half-days on Sundays and Thursdays. We had our club at St Anthony’s church, the most famous club in Jaffa. It was a family place, you could play billiards, ping-pong, backgammon. We met our friends there, drank lemonade and ate ice cream. There was a big library, even a small pharmacy.’

  The foreign mission schools were also popular with Jewish families. Over twenty years earlier Julia Chelouche had studied at Tabeetha, which had been founded by two Scottish missionaries in the late 1860s, on the edge of Ajami, not far from the Geday pharmacy. Julia’s father had wanted her to learn English, the language in which the curriculum was, and still is, taught. But only a minority of Arab families could afford to send their children to one of the foreign schools. Many Arab boys and girls received at best, a rudimentary schooling, or remained illiterate. Arab girls were often not allowed to attend school at all by their parents. Yet a lack of formal education did not reduce the hunger for knowledge about Palestine’s situation, and the conflict between Jew and Arab. Newspaper articles were read aloud in cafés, while listeners gathered around in a circle. This was less profitable for Palestine’s publishers, as they sold fewer papers, but it gave each writer’s view a wide audience. The most popular articles were even memorised and recited by heart.

  The Arab press did not always serve its readers well, as Mark Levine notes. Falastin often propagated hoary old clichés about Jews. One cartoon showed two women, one Jewish and one Palestinian. The Jewish woman stands provocatively, representing a dangerous, forbidden sexuality. She wears shorts, a revealing blouse and she is smoking. The Palestinian woman wears traditional dress and sits meekly. As in eastern Europe, Jews were portrayed as simultaneously representing the twin threats of rapacious capitalism and godless Communism. In July 1936 Falastin demanded to know: ‘Who harbours, maintains and pays Communism and the Communists. Does Mr Dizengoff not know that a Communist and a Jew are synonymous in this country and throughout the Levant?’3 The Communists were a tiny minority of the Jewish left. Jews had lived in Palestine and Jaffa for centuries, long before the Arab Muslim conquest in the seventh century, yet they were relentlessly portrayed as outsiders, intruders, bringers of foreign vices. Both Christianity and Islam were rooted in Judaism, but Al-jamia al-Islamiyyah advised its readers to wear a tarbush whenever they visited Tel Aviv, as the traditional Ottoman headgear would be a symbol of ‘holding onto our eastness’.

  Literature, too, was highly politicised. The new generation of Palestinian writers and their works were avidly discussed at Jaffa’s literary clubs. The Angel and the Land Broker, by Muhammed Izzat Darwazah, recounts how a fellah, a peasant farmer, is enticed to visit Tel Aviv. There he meets an attractive Jewish girl, the archetypal sexual temptress, who encourages him to spend money he does not have. Once in debt he is forced to mortgage his land. He cannot meet the payments and sells the land for a fraction of its worth. The farmer leaves his family, becomes a beggar and eventually goes insane. Arab literature (and contemporary Palestinian life) might have been better served had Darwazah dealt with the uncomfortable truth that it was the a’yan, rather than the fellahin, who were selling off Palestine to the Jews.

  Jaffa’s cafés offered more secular enjoyments as well: gambling, alcohol and hashish, even the company of women. Many were crowded with young men who had migrated from the villages, where there was little or no work. The countryside boys
were lonely, impoverished and bewildered in the anonymous city. Café Baghdadi, on Shabazi Street in Manshiyyeh, was typical. ‘All hours of the day it is crowded with very shady characters, who sit and gamble, playing all manner of card games and dominoes. Many women, undoubtedly prostitutes, gather in this café, and hang about, passing from table to table,’ noted one Mandate police report.4

  The political turmoil radicalised many educated Palestinian women. No longer were they prepared to sit meekly in traditional dress. Many spoke foreign languages and were active in the network of social and charitable organisations such as the YMCA and YWCA. They began to articulate their own voice. As early as the 1920s Falastin published a series of articles on women’s issues, many of them actually written by women. Headlines included: ‘The Veil and the Duty to Lift It’ and ‘The Veil is an Obstacle to Girls’ Education’. Falastin’s pages hosted a lively debate on women and Islam, with correspondents from both the conservative and progressive sides quoting from the Quran to back up their arguments. One article explained ‘The Necessity to Liberate Women’, although it was written by a man. The Arab Women’s Association gathered different women’s groups across Palestine into one organisation. Members demanded, and obtained, meetings with Mandate officials, wrote letters and petitions; and even demonstrated on the streets, to the consternation of both the British and Arab men.

  Jaffa’s women, Muslim and Christian, also had their own space at home. They organised ‘receiving days’, known as istiqbal, an opportunity to gossip and show off their culinary skills. The hostess served drinks made from pomegranates or almonds, tiny cups of Turkish coffee, sweets and savoury snacks such as bureks, tiny pastries stuffed with cheese, meat or potato. The delicacies were consumed, and the hostess’s cooking expertise suitably praised. The women then discussed potential matchmaking among eligible young people. They would plot happily, and a family outing or a picnic would be arranged. The two young people would be left alone – but within sight – to get to know each other. Sometimes the little push worked, sometimes not. Either way there would be something new to discuss at the next istiqbal, away from the ears of prying males.