6 / Black September

IN 1969, Fawaz was in grade 10. Like many of his generation, all his thoughts and questions were about our lost land and the ways to gain back our freedom. He had many friends that he spent lots of time talking to and playing with, and with whom he also shared similar ideas, enthusiasm, and anger against the occupation. On the other hand, Hussein, my eldest son, rarely played in the streets like the others, but concentrated on studying, reading, and learning English. As we are a family who highly values education, Ibrahim decided that he would take Fawaz to Egypt to join Hussein so he could better focus on his studies. They went through Amman to Cairo, where Ibrahim registered Fawaz in school.

While Ibrahim and Fawaz were in Cairo, two armed attacks took place in Israel, and Ibrahim was accused of planning one, a big explosion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He had suddenly left to travel with his son, and so the Israeli authorities thought he had escaped. On every Israeli radio news bulletin, Ibrahim was accused of planning operations in Jerusalem. I was boiling when I heard this. In fact, there was no connection between Ibrahim and these incidents. But because he was a respected community leader and active in the nationalist cause, the Israelis wanted to keep him out and make him afraid of returning, because they didn’t have any evidence to use to get rid of him.

One night, while Ibrahim was in Egypt, Israeli soldiers came at midnight to search our home. I knew they would come, and I knew it was them because it was curfew, and nobody knocked at the door during curfews except soldiers. I had already searched the house and burned all the papers relating to the PLO, even invitation cards for special occasions—anything that could harm Ibrahim, because I expected them. The only thing I didn’t find was a copy of a letter that Ibrahim had sent before 1967 to Abd Al Nasser through the Gazan governor, complaining about the Egyptian administration. When I didn’t find it, I thought that Ibrahim must have gotten rid of it, so I told them they wouldn’t find anything. I had also hidden my gold and money at the bottom of the flour container under the flour.

Soldiers went upstairs and downstairs searching every corner, and our dog barked as I went with them from room to room. They found the letter I hadn’t been able to find, and a soldier asked about it. I said, “I kept this paper for you because I expected your visit. Do you know what it says? It’s a letter from Ibrahim to Abd Al Nasser complaining about the administrative governor in Gaza, and it was sent through the same governor. I kept it to show you how much freedom and democracy we enjoyed during the Egyptian era. So, you can take it to learn about freedom and democracy.” He asked for a copy, and I told him to take it because we had one hundred copies. Then someone came from the downstairs library with a book. He asked about it, and I asked him if he could read Arabic. He said, “Of course,” and read the title, so I asked him who the author was: “Is it Ibrahim Abu Sitta? This book is sold on the streets and we bought it like anyone else. What’s wrong with that?” He didn’t say anything more, but he took the book.

The built-in wall closet in one of the rooms had an upper storage shelf for suitcases, blankets, and mattresses, and I didn’t have time to check there, but the soldiers climbed up and looked inside and found Egyptian army boots. They asked me what they were, and I replied, “Boots.”

“We know,” they said.

“As you know, they are boots that belonged to the Egyptian army, who escaped after you occupied Gaza. My children brought them to wear, but I didn’t agree. So, I hid them so they wouldn’t wear them.”

They kept searching, but didn’t find anything to accuse Ibrahim with, so they left. I was astonished at the large number of soldiers and jeeps and tanks surrounding the whole house. Anyone looking from outside would have thought that they had come to occupy a military establishment. They thought I was stupid because I had young children and would not be aware enough to know they would search my home, and so they thought they would find something to accuse Ibrahim of and imprison him. But thank God, I was aware of this. They came and left without finding anything.

There were no phones to Egypt or Jordan, so I sent letters to Ibrahim with people who travelled outside Gaza, and asked what he was going to do, return or stay abroad. He replied that he would return to his home and his family whether they agreed or not, because he was innocent and had nothing to do with those explosions. I once sent him a letter with my midwife, who put it in her shash over her tawb. In that letter, I told him that if he knew he was innocent, to return and not think about them because they wanted to keep him out and fragment the family.

His brother in Kuwait, Suleiman, and his lawyer friends in Gaza advised him not to return because he would be arrested. They asked me to write telling him not to return, because he would be arrested on the Allenby Bridge and taken to the Al Mascobia prison in Jerusalem. They said that a short time before, a Palestinian prisoner from Nablus had been killed in that prison, and that if Ibrahim returned and the Israelis decided to get rid of him, they could assassinate him and create a story. So, I sent him another letter telling him of his friends’ advice not to return because of the things that had happened to this man. But he wrote back saying he was innocent and would return to his home, and to wait for him on April 7th. If he hadn’t returned after this date, I would know that he had been arrested and I was to find a lawyer for him, at least to transfer him to Gaza prison. After he had settled Fawaz in Egypt, he went to Amman, crossed the Allenby Bridge, and returned to Gaza.

The night before, I didn’t sleep even for a moment. I read verses from the Quran and prayed to God to return him safely. The next day I waited for him, and in the late afternoon, Ibrahim arrived. When I saw him, I couldn’t believe that he was there with me, and he told me not to be afraid because he was innocent and didn’t have any connection to the Jerusalem explosions. Ibrahim returned at the start of a week-long Jewish holiday in April 1969 and was surprised that he hadn’t been arrested. He spent that night at home, and the next day phoned the Israeli administration to say he had returned and whether they wanted anything from him. They sent for him the same day and he went in his car, a Peugeot, which was then the only such model in Gaza and Israel. The soldiers always looked at it, and even touched it, when they saw it. Since it was a holiday, no officers were present to question him, so he was detained and the car taken, but he was treated politely and the car was later returned. He was put in an officer’s room and able to keep his own clothes, not made to wear the prison uniform, and I was even asked to bring him a change of clothes. When the Jewish holiday was over, he was taken to see the administrative governor of the Gaza Strip, who was a good man. Ibrahim told him that he wasn’t involved in the attacks or anything political or related to the military, but only in improving the situation of the people in terms of education, health, and their living standards, and in helping them in this difficult situation. They had a long conversation, at the end of which the governor apologized for his detention, released him, and asked to see him a week later.

When the news spread that Ibrahim had been released, people visited him during that week, and then he returned to the governor, who asked him about the situation in Egypt the month before. The only thing that Ibrahim could tell him was that they were very self-confident about defeating the Israelis and regaining their occupied land. Ibrahim had felt this when he attended the funeral of a martyr while he was there. The governor was very polite and told him that he would be happy to help with any request he might have. After 1967, the Israelis had tried to impose their curriculum rather than the Egyptian tawjihi curriculum, but as many know, Arab countries would not recognize the Israeli tawjihi, so our children were not able to attend universities in Arab countries. So, Ibrahim asked that the Egyptian education curriculum be reinstated in Gazan schools, and for tawjihi to be put under Egyptian responsibility. The governor agreed as long as there was no Egyptian interference in Gaza. He advised Ibrahim to take a delegation from the education department in Gaza to discuss this matter with the Egyptians, so they went to Egypt and met with the education ministry and organized the curriculum. Before they left, Abd Al Nasser met with them, and at that meeting he decided that Palestinian students, who were mostly refugees, would receive free higher education in Egyptian universities and also be given financial assistance to help with their living expenses. That was the beginning of the return to the Egyptian curriculum and tawjihi in Gaza. In July 1969, UNESCO brought the sealed examination papers to Gaza, which were sealed again after the students finished their examinations before being taken to be marked in Egypt. Then, the results were sealed once more and sent back to Gaza.

On July 2, 1969, Ibrahim, Faisal Husseini, and Dr Haidar ’Abdel Shafi were exiled to the Sinai. All were respected community leaders and active in the Palestinian cause, but the Israelis had no evidence of wrongdoing; if there was any, they would have been taken to court and imprisoned, but instead they were exiled. Ibrahim was sent to Al Hassana and the others were sent to two different places, all in separate vehicles so they couldn’t speak with each other. They were detained for three months before being allowed to return, again in separate vehicles, at midnight on the 2nd of October. The next day, people came to welcome Ibrahim. The administrative governor gave the order for them to return. He finished his work as governor of the Gaza Strip at the end of September, and before he left, he ordered that detention in exile was not to be extended for these three people. I still have the letters with the Israeli deportation order, including the option to extend the period of detention.

The Palestinian resistance increased after the occupation. In 1970, a group of high school students, including our neighbour, was accused of throwing a hand grenade at Moshe Dayan’s jeep on ’Omar Al Mukhtar Street. Unfortunately, it missed him and injured some bystanders. Our neighbour was not part of that attack, but Israel arrested all of those who had any connection with this group. He was jailed for a few months. The soldiers raided his home in the middle of the night, and after his home was searched, he was arrested. We woke up to the screams of his mother that night. He was released on condition that he lose his identity card and not return to Gaza, and his family agreed because there was no other choice if he was to be released. He became displaced. His family did not visit him during the four months of his imprisonment because the situation was very difficult. It was only in 1995 that he was able to come back, after the Oslo II Agreement was signed. Life in the refugee camps was even worse than in Gaza City, and the Fedayeen were stronger there. To diffuse and quell the resistance, in 1971, Sharon demolished rows of residential homes in the Khan Younis and Rafah camps. Entire families ended up in the streets and became displaced for the second and third time. Those were horrible days.

We suffered a lot in our lives, and as a mother, I was always worried about the future and about my children. The future under the occupation with a husband like Ibrahim and with young children was difficult. In 1970, Ibrahim and I travelled to Cairo to see our children. We flew to Amman, and from there we flew to Egypt. After we crossed the Allenby Bridge and reached Amman, we heard shooting from the clashes between Palestinians and Jordanian soldiers, although Black September hadn’t yet started.1 We flew from Amman to Egypt on September 1st, stayed for two weeks, and then quickly left for Amman, so we could return to Gaza before something happened. Hussein was then studying engineering at Alexandria University, and Adala was studying history at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Moeen, who had joined his siblings that year, was not happy in Egypt, so Adala suggested we send him to study in Kuwait and live with his uncle there. Eventually, Moeen returned to Egypt to study medicine and be with his brother and sister.

There is a big Palestinian community in Jordan, and before 1970, there was also a large number of Palestinian fighters there with the PLO. King Hussein was afraid of the increasing power of the Palestinians and accused them of planning to overthrow him, and he decided to get rid of them. Ibrahim’s brother Abdallah was then the leader of a group of fourteen hundred Palestinian fighters with the PLO outside of Amman. He didn’t allow his group to go into the area of Amman because he knew that they would be killed if they did. Abdallah was a really good and strong man who cared about his people and his nation. By the end of May 1948, the Gaza Strip was full of refugees, as many Palestinians had been forced to flee from different parts of Palestine, leaving behind their lands and homes. The people of Gaza and the West Bank, represented by their makhatir, mayors, and other active people, then formed a committee for refugee affairs. Abdallah was elected as the general secretary of the Executive Committee of the Refugees’ Conference in Gaza, which was supported by the Egyptian government. Initially, there was another committee in the West Bank, but its representative agreed with King Abdullah of Jordan to the transfer of the West Bank committee to Jordan, so there was only one committee situated in the Gaza Strip. Abdallah participated in many international conferences around the world and travelled to many Arab countries to bolster support for refugees, representing them and liaising with the UNRWA and other organizations to guarantee that they would receive the essential services that would sustain their life in the camps until their return to their homes. Together with Ibrahim, he also received many delegations visiting the refugee camps in Gaza, including those of Che Guevara on June 18, 1959 and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960. He worked in this capacity until the defeat of 1967, after which he was not allowed to return to Gaza, instead joining the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. After 1967, the work of the committee stopped; then the committee reformed when several active people in the community told Ibrahim they would support him if he replaced his brother and revived its work, and he did. Abdallah was also the general secretary of the PLO during the time of Al Shuqairy, and he became the PLO ambassador to Qatar. But, as he believed he was born to be a fighter on the ground and not in an office, he resigned and went to Jordan, where he wore a uniform and led the resistance groups in Jerash.

Ibrahim and I returned to Amman from our trip to Cairo in 1970 in the late evening of September 16th. We were worried when we arrived. The atmosphere was frightening, and you could feel that something terrible was going to happen. The streets were empty, with very few taxis to take us to my brother-in-law’s place. Then we discovered that one of our bags was missing, and when we called the airport, the telephone lines there had been cut.

The next morning, martial law was declared. Curfews were imposed and people ran to shops for food supplies. I asked my sister-in-law to buy some flour, but she said she already had some, and the next day when the bread was finished and I wanted to make more, she brought a small packet, enough for cakes or small things. It wasn’t enough for one meal, but in fact we didn’t care much about flour or food. We only cared about staying alive.

We were stuck at my brother-in-law’s home from September 16th to 30th. The situation was very hard and dangerous, and we heard the sounds of shooting and clashes all the time. A curfew was imposed for a long time, and we listened to the news on a small battery-operated radio. There was no food, water, or electricity, so whoever had food ate and whoever didn’t starved. A respected religious man, whose name I have forgotten, opened his home to anyone who wanted shelter during the curfew. He asked the supermarket in front of his home to bring all the food to him to feed the hungry people, and he promised to pay for it later. Many people went there, and he saved their lives.

Once during the curfew, Jordanian soldiers knocked at the door of our neighbours’ home. We heard a lot of shooting and then they left. One week later, when the curfew was lifted for an hour and people rushed to the vehicles that brought water to the area, we thought about our neighbours and wondered who would go to see what happened in their home. Ibrahim said he would go, because he was a fighter with his brother from 1936 and was strong and brave. Another neighbour, a woman, went with him, and as they got close to the house, they saw the door was broken and they could smell something very bad. As soon as she entered, the woman started screaming and quickly left. We asked her what was in there, and she said, “What is there is a horrible thing. I can’t tell you what’s there. I can’t tell you what I saw.”

Ibrahim found the bloated bodies of a pregnant woman and her two teenage sons, and her husband huddled in a corner smoking, while two other young children, four and five years old, were just sitting there. Ibrahim took the two children and shouted for an ambulance. At that moment, a boy from the neighbour’s family came on his bicycle to ask about them, and when he saw what had happened, he shouted, “What did those sons of dogs do? They weren’t Palestinians, they were Sharkas.” He left on his bicycle, shouting and crying, to tell his family. Then the ambulance came and took away the three bodies, and meanwhile the curfew was imposed again. We brought the two children home and I quickly brought them some milk, but when the girl saw it, she cried, “We don’t want milk. We hate it.” So, we searched for other things to feed them. I later found out that after the murder of their mother and brothers, the children had survived on a can of milk powder by dipping their fingers in the can and licking them.

There were many horrible stories during Black September. One Palestinian woman had married in Amman and had a small son. She was in her last month of pregnancy and during the curfew she felt the baby coming. There were no doctors or midwives in her area, so her husband went to their neighbours for help. Four of them came, but Jordanian soldiers saw them go from one house to the other, breaking the curfew. They broke down the door and burst into the house and asked why they had broken the curfew. The neighbours explained, and the soldiers saw the woman screaming in pain, so they said they would help in their own way. They shot the pregnant woman in her head and stomach, then the four neighbours, the child, and the husband. This was one family’s tragedy, but I am sure there are many similar stories.

Once, soldiers knocked at my brother-in-law’s door and ordered him to open it, but he was hesitant. I was wearing my prayer dress, with a long white skirt and white waist-length veil, as I was reciting the Quran day and night and seeking God’s protection. I opened the door—and maybe I could do it because I had been through similar situations before and I was strong. I faced the soldier and spoke in a Bedouin accent, “It is shameful that you are coming to a Jordanian home. What do you want from us? Do you want to kill your own people? It will be to your shame to do this.”

He said, “We heard you are hiding Palestinians in your home.”

“What are you saying? We are your guides to Palestinians! We are from Al Tayaha tribe, and if anyone harms you, we will eat him with our teeth!”

He asked to see our passports, so I quickly brought mine, and said, “Look, my name is Madeeha Albatta from Al Tayaha tribe!” while he looked at it, and I don’t think he knew how to read. He told me to show him the house, but there was no electricity and it was so dark that I had to light matches while they looked under the beds and sofas and in the corners, and then they left. As soon as they left, we heard shooting as Palestinian fighters shot at the soldiers leaving the house and I think one of them was killed. The Palestinians thought that these soldiers had killed us because usually when soldiers entered a Palestinian home, they killed everyone inside.

After the shooting stopped, we heard knocking on the door again. When I asked who it was, a soldier said, “Open the door! Palestinians are shooting at us, and we are sure they are hiding somewhere in your house.” I opened the door, and he said, “Look! We were three, and now we are two because one was killed.” I was like the best actress, screaming and pretending to be very angry and sad about the soldier who had been shot. They wanted to search the house again, so I let them in, and again we searched the same places using matches for light. When they were sure that nobody was hiding, and while I was crying for the dead soldier and saying bad words about Palestinians, the soldier asked if I needed flour or wanted bread. I told him no, the only thing I wanted was for them to be safe. So, they left, and I closed the door again and heard the sound of an ambulance coming to take the soldier’s body away. In fact, we saw many horrible things in our lives, and in my opinion not even a big book is enough to contain all of them.

On September 28th, we heard the news of Abd Al Nasser’s death, and Ibrahim went crazy because he couldn’t believe this had happened. We didn’t sleep that night because his death added to our tragic problems. The next day, we heard a jeep stop beside our house and soldiers went to speak to some neighbours. One of the soldiers told them that they had been sent by a high official in the Jordanian army who had a relationship with them and who had arranged for them to be taken to another place. When we heard this, we went outside and told them that we were from the Amman tribes (which was almost correct) and asked them to take us out of the area, because my father-in-law, Sheikh Hussein, was very sick in Gaza and we had left our children alone there. We said we only wanted to be taken to a place where we could find a taxi. The soldier told us he couldn’t do it that day because they had come to take this family, but he promised to take us the next morning and told us to be ready at nine o’clock. He was very good, and we trusted him, but during the night I wondered whether he would come or not. The next morning, he came and took us out of the area in a jeep, and at the same time the curfew was lifted. When we arrived in the other part of Amman, we found life going on as normal: coffee shops were open, radios were playing songs, and people were walking in the streets. I burst out crying. I had some Jordanian Dinars, and before the jeep left us at the taxi station, I bought chocolate and biscuits and asked the soldier to take them to the house we had come from. Later, my brother-in-law’s daughter said it was the most delicious chocolate she had ever eaten.

As the Israeli women soldiers checked our bags at the border, they asked our opinion of the situation in Amman, and I told them the Jordanians were doing the same as the Israelis did to us. We went through the border and there were no other people or workers, so Ibrahim carried our bags one by one to a certain point, and I stood beside them as he brought the rest. Then we went to my aunt’s home in Jericho for a short rest. I hadn’t washed in the fifteen days we had spent in Amman because there was no water—we had hardly managed to find water to drink—so the first thing I did was wash. Then we ate a little and left for Gaza. My aunt asked us to stay the night, but we refused because we wanted to return as quickly as possible to our children and Ibrahim’s sick father. We took a taxi and arrived home, and I kissed the ground and the steps of our house one by one because I couldn’t believe that we had arrived safely. My children had prepared a meal, and I cried when I saw the food because I remembered the Palestinians starving in Amman, and I knew they couldn’t find any food to keep them alive. Many Palestinians were killed in Amman and there wasn’t enough room to bury them, so their bodies were carried to the mountains and burned.2 The sky was full of smoke from the bodies, and it looked like the pictures that came from the World Trade Center. I heard that King Hussein flew his plane and watched from the sky.

On November 3, 1970, my father-in-law died, and on December 8th, almost forty days after his death, Abdallah was murdered in Jordan. When the events of Black September ended and an agreement was reached between the PLO and the King, the Jordanians pursued some of the PLO leaders. Abdallah’s relatives in Jordan who had connections with the army warned him that he was on a death list and to escape, but he refused to leave his men. He said he would live or die with them, but he would not leave until the last one’s safety was guaranteed. On the morning of December 8th, Abdallah was with his two-year-old son, Suleiman, when agents from the Jordanian Intelligence service came for him. He was ordered to leave his son and go with them, and still we don’t know exactly what happened to him. Some people told us that they saw his body among thousands of other bodies, and others said they saw his body being dragged by a Jordanian tank through the streets of Jerash.

Thank God, Abdallah died after his uncle, because if Sheikh Hussein had been alive, he would surely have gone mad from the shock. He loved Abdallah very much, and before his death, he wrote his will, giving Abdallah five hundred dunum of Al Ma’in land in addition to his inheritance. In his will, he wrote, “When you return to our land, divide it amongst you as I will mention later, but Abdallah is to have the biggest part. In addition, I give him a certain piece of land, about five hundred dunum.” This piece was the best of his land, and this gives an idea of how much land the Abu Sitta family owned before the Israelis occupied it in 1948.