Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
17 April
US PRESIDENT BUSH GREENLIGHTS ISRAELI ASSASSINATION
On this day in 2004, an Israeli helicopter killed Hamas leader in Gaza, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Israel had killed his predecessor in another high-tech killing of the group's founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a few weeks earlier. The Rantisi killing came three days after President Bush met with Ariel Sharon and backed Sharon's proposal to withdraw soldiers to the Gaza perimeter. Palestinians saw the support as a green light for Sharon to act aggressively.
رئيس الولايات المتحدة بوش يعطي الضوء الاخضرللاغتيالات الاسرائيلية
17 أبريل
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2004 قتلت مروحية إسرائيلية زعيم حماس في غزة الدكتور عبد العزيز الرنتيسي. وكانت إسرائيل قد قتلت سلفه الشيخ أحمد ياسين مؤسس حركة حماس في عملية قتل أخرى عالية التقنية ، قبل بضعة أسابيع. وجاء مقتل الرنتيسي بعد ثلاثة أيام من لقاء الرئيس بوش مع أرييل شارون ودعمه اقتراح شارون بسحب الجنود إلى محيط غزة. ورأى الفلسطينيون في الدعم بمثابة ضوء أخضر لشارون للعمل بعدوانية
Rantisi was born in Yibna, near Jaffa in October 1947.
After the Nakba of 1948 and the occupation of his village by Zionist forces, his family sought refuge in the Gaza Strip and settled in the Khan Yunis camp for Palestinian refugees. Rantisi was six months old at the time. He grew up in the camp, along with nine brothers and two sisters.
An outstanding student, he obtained an UNRWA scholarship to study in Egypt. He enrolled in the medical faculty of Alexandria University where he graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1971.
Rantisi worked first as a doctor in Nasir Hospital in Khan Yunis and then returned in 1974 to Alexandria University to specialize in pediatrics, earning a masters degree in pediatrics in 1976. Returning to Gaza in 1976, he resumed his work in Nasir Hospital where he became head of pediatrics. He would frequently roam the city on foot to treat the sick children of the poor for free.
Nakba survivor Yusuf Al Hums describes the lost world exemplified by Yibna:
“If they put all the gold in the world within my hands and asked me to give away my home in Yibna, I would never give it away!” Ysuf Al Hums was born in 1932 and was a teenager in Yibna during al-Nakba - Arabic for “the Catastrophe". He remembers everything about that fateful year from December 1947 to December 1948. Like most of the 750,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims forcibly removed, ethnically cleansed or massacred by Zionists, including members of the terrorist Irgun and Stern gangs and the Haganah, predecessor to the Israel Defense (aka “Occupation”) Forces, Al Hums relives the days that transformed his life and made him a refugee in his own land. Keeping the oral history alive is essential, lest each new generation forget the atrocities and injustice visited upon them by gun barrel, fire and terror...
In his hand he holds a copper key, a legacy of the home and the self-sufficiency he once enjoyed. In time, he will pass the key to his grandchildren, along with the stories of what once was and the freedom and dignity that can be again. He explains the key’s significance to his grandchildren gathered around him—that it is “kept because if we can’t return to our homes today, then you are going to return to your grandfather’s home in Yibna village.”
Yibna is one of the 675 towns and villages the Zionists destroyed - 350 of them before Israel became a state. After the residents were forcibly removed, fled from terror, or massacred, each town was razed or occupied and claimed on behalf of Jewish people worldwide. Later these same towns were either built over with villages for Jews only or hidden through the planting of evergreen forests under the campaign of “Plant a tree for Israel.”
The future leaders of the new state promised to treat as equals the 85 percent of the population who were not Jewish but whose families had lived in Palestine for centuries. Realizing the Zionist goal of a Jewish-only state, however, required that despite such promises, 750,000 people were ethnically cleansed and forced off their land into refugee and internment camps, where the fourth generation of survivors still live today. Those who stayed behind found themselves living under martial law, discriminated against, vilified and forced into poverty. All of this occurred within one year—and three years after the end of the Nazi holocaust, an event in Europe where, over a period of six years, martial law, ethnic cleansing and terror were used to force Jews and others who did not fit Nazi ideals into concentration camps. Palestinians now enter their 60th year of such treatment.
“Those days were the most beautiful days of my life,” he recalls happily. “Anyone needing support in our village could count on all the people to stand by him.”
Then, at age 15, everything changed for Al Hums. Holding up his hand, he shows the scars from an injury received from a British helicopter. At the time, the British still controlled Mandate Palestine. Following the riots of 1936-1939, when the Arab population rose up against their British rulers, unequal treatment under the law, and the continued influx of Zionists, the British disarmed the Arab population—but not only allowed the Jewish population to retain its arms, but proceeded to train them. From these fighters emerged the all-Jewish Haganah militia, as well as members of the terrorist Stern and Lehi gangs...
Remembering that fateful day in May 1948, he says, “It pains me still today. It was around 2 o’clock [a.m.],” he recalls. “We all had to run after hearing the Haganah invaded Yibna in the middle of the night. We’d heard horrible stories about Deir Yassin and other towns. Pregnant women with their stomachs sliced open and babies taken out and killed by throwing them into water wells.”
One of Zionism’s enduring myths is that its forces were outnumbered and underdogs. In reality, by the time of statehood, Zionist forces numbered 60,000. These fighters were heavily armed with the latest weapons smuggled in from Europe and paid for with funds from the American Diaspora. As mentioned, they also had been well trained by the British...
“At first Jewish groups arrived as guests in our homes. Some slept in our big two story house,” Al Hums adds, noting that his property once boasted 225 dunams of citrus, grapes, wheat and barley.
It has since been revealed through declassified documents that as early as 1937 Zionists took advantage of the Palestinian custom of hospitality to case out each village, document the number of men, arms and any escape routes. Typically, an agent would offer to buy out Palestinians for amounts well below market value. If the landowner sold, the land immediate became the property of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Once the land became part of the JNF, non-Jews were prohibited from owning or residing on it. Shortly after statehood, non-Jews would be barred from leasing, working on or traversing Jewish-only land, and Jewish landowners and businesses that refused to adhere to this policy often found themselves fined, terrorized or worse.
Most Palestinians refused these below-market offers. The Al Hums land, fully cultivated with a mill, was valuable. Menachem, the British Jewish man making the offer, warned Al Hums’ father that he had better take the offer...Six months later, British forces and Stern groups forced the family to leave, firing tank shells and using helicopter gunships. Zionists claimed the family’s farm for the JNF.
The Al Hums family escaped, carrying nothing but “this key to our house.” In the course of one night they went from being a prosperous, self-sufficient family to poverty-stricken refugees...
Asked if there had been any resistance to the Zionist military and terrorist groups, Al Hums says that a small group armed with farming implements, rifles and guns did attempt to stop the invasion...The British military worked in concert with the Zionists, securing the area, closing all the roads and preventing exit. The only path out led to Gaza, so the new refugee family finally settled in Rafah....
Al Hums has managed to see his property twice since 1948, first in 1976 and again in 2000. The first time he noted that the Israelis had destroyed the irrigation system and all of the equipment, rendering the fertile land nearly useless. By 2000, they had erased all indications of the once-prosperous farm...
“I am ready to offer my soul for my land and roots. This is our land; Why would we give up on it? It is our right!”
Yibna today is a scene of desolation
"A railroad crosses the village. The dilapidated mosque and minaret, together with a shrine, still remain. At least two of the remaining houses are used by Jewish families and one by an Arab family. One of the houses occupied by Jews is made of concrete; from its flat roof rise an electricity-post and a TV antenna. The other has a gabled roof. The house in which the Arab family lives is quite small and deteriorating; it has a tiled, slanted roof. Nearby is a nonfunctioning well with a circular mouth. A half-cylindrical stone structure is built on a segment of the well and is enclosed by a stone wall at one end."
8-minute video without commentary: all that remains of Yibna today.
https://youtu.be/w5UavJyjfoE
2012: More than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike on 17 April to protest arbitrary detention and other forms of mistreatment by Israeli authorities.
Original in Electronic Intifada May 3rd 2012