42

In the morning, our leader stood in his military costume, with the hatta around his shoulders, before a number of journalists who had responded to our invitation. He told them, confident and hopeful, “We shall be victorious. God willing, we will win. The forces of the holy struggle, al-jihad al-muqaddas, are in total control of the Jerusalem region, as well as the Jewish transportation lines in Jericho and Bethlehem. The fate of the one hundred thousand Jews is not better than that of the fate of the thousands of Jews in Tel Aviv, because the struggle is a single entity that cannot be divided.”

Rabie whispered in my ear, as if answering a question that had been troubling him since yesterday evening, “This is how fighting is managed, in unison. It should not be fragmented. It also means that the revolution cannot be divided. This is what the respectable pashas fear. Isn’t that the case?”

I hushed him because I wanted to hear what our leader was saying.

“As a military leader in charge of defending the security of the Arabs in Jerusalem, I am not interested in the discussions and the negotiations taking place in London. As long as the partition plan is still standing, the fighting will continue. We will not allow the establishment of a racist state that excludes us as Muslims and Christians. Our nation is open for all religions and sects and beliefs. Our nation will be a modern nation.”

Rabie pinched my arm and said in a quavering voice, “This is the reason, because our nation will be a modern nation and they are against modernization and modernity. Isn’t that so?”

I said to him, once more, “Stop talking and listen.” But the leader had ended the press conference and said, speaking quickly, “I apologize, my friends, I gathered you here to tell you that we need concrete support, more than words. The end of the plot is near, and if Jerusalem is lost, all Palestine will be lost, and if Palestine is lost, the whole Arab nation will be lost. I hold you witnesses to that. I bear witness before God that I warned you.”

I looked around and saw the journalists, some staring and others with their heads bent, writing or pretending to write. The leader had triggered their sense of pride as well as their concern. Most of the journalists present were young and highly educated, with nationalist inclinations. Some knew the reality of the situation and others did not; those who were well informed were listening intently to the young leader in his military costume and understood his words, being well aware of the divisions, the rifts, and the old-fashioned thinking in Palestinian society. Those who did not know the reality of the situation were overcome with emotion and optimism; they approached him, shook his hand, and hugged him, saying, “You are our hope, you are the revolution, the liberation, and freedom.” They meant that the revolution, as he had presented it to them and the way they understood it, was a whole that could not be divided; it began with the land and went beyond the surface to the inner soul of the homeland, its social structure and its traditions—meaning the family and the tribes, religious tolerance and liberation. This is what I later understood to be the reason for the leader’s failure and ours. I will describe the issue in what I write next, so that the experience becomes a historical document for what we endured in the Damascus encounter, and what we will endure in the future, in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and what Saudi Arabia has kept secret.