Ayoon Wa Azan (A Thief from Moldova ... Claims Ownership of the Land)

On 29/11/1947, Hazem Zaki Nusseibeh was editing the news at the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation in Jerusalem, when the news came about the UN General Assembly’s decision to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews and to make Jerusalem a separate entity, causing him and his colleagues a lot of grief and sorrow.

On 10/6/1967, I was the head of the news shift at Reuters in Beirut, and on the sixth day of the war, while we were writing about East Jerusalem, i.e. Arab Jerusalem, and West Jerusalem, or the Jewish city, the news about the fall of Jerusalem into the hands of the enemy came from Israel. I cried, and went to the nearby Sanayeh Park so the staff would not see me crying.

It is thus that I remembered the worst news I heard throughout my entire career as I was reading the memoirs of our great brother Hazem Zaki Nusseibeh, the former Jordanian Foreign Minister and Court Minister, and former ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, the United Nations and envoy to the east, up to Indonesia, and to the West up to Latin America in defending the Palestinian cause and garnering support for it.

Hazem Nusseibeh studied at the American University of Beirut, my alma mater, before moving to the United States where he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. While I did study at Georgetown University, I did not manage to write my doctoral dissertation.

Nusseibeh mentioned Katie Antonois, the wife of historian George Antonois, and her intellectual salon in Jerusalem; I recall the daughter of this historian, who wrote the book “The Arab Renaissance” in Beirut; the daughter was highly intellectual and a champion of the cause like her parents.

Nusseibeh says that people who taught him included Constantine Zureik and Charles Malik. While Dr. Zureik, the writer of the Arab Nationalist Manifesto, had already left when I was in the university, I knew him in Washington after his retirement. He has also written a number of op-eds in our newspaper Al-Hayat until shortly before his death. As for Dr. Malik, I studied one course under his tutorship at the university in Beirut. However, I had always considered him to be a friend, and he used to sometimes write in the Daily Star in Beirut, of which I was the chief editor.

Nusseibeh even mentioned that he saw the historical president of AUB Bayard Dodge after the latter had retired in America, while I saw the President of AUB who succeeded Dodge, Steven Penrose, whom I heard giving a lecture when I was in the beginning of my adolescence.

The book written by our brother Zaki was entitled “Jerusalemites: A Living Memory”. It was written in English and was published by Dar al-Rimal in Cyprus. Its author is a witness of his time and era, and writes with modesty and humility, and places objectivity above his own personal emotions. He does not add anything to his stories except by saying that they are true and simple accounts, and the only ‘boasting’ I have come across, if the term applies, is him saying that when he was the head of media affairs at the foreign ministry, he did not block the publication of a single article, although some chief editors used to ask him to block the publication of some articles in order to avoid any problems with King Abdullah I, without angering the articles’ authors.

The author also talks about his city with love and passion, and remembers the days before Palestine was lost when Muslims, Christians and Jews were living in peace side by side in Jerusalem. In fact, he said that he used to hear the Muezzin calling for prayer, and then used to hear the Shofar being sounded to mark the Jewish Sabbath on Friday night.

He also offered a detailed account- that only living witnesses can provide - of the revolution of Al-Buraq and the strike in 1936 which lasted for six months, and an account of when he was a founding member of the YMCA while he is a descendant of the companions of the Prophet. He then ends the book with a chapter entitled “Who Am I? A Question of Identity”, in which he compares between the east and the west. I say here on his behalf that he is a believing Muslim Jerusalemite, who is well rooted in the traditions of his country and his people.

I want to apologize to our great brother Zaki as I compare his history in Jerusalem to that of the brothel keeper who came from Moldova a couple of years ago, and is now asking the Palestinians to forget Al-Nakbah [the catastrophe], and celebrate the establishment of Israel while chanting its national anthem.

The ancestors of the Nusseibeh family came to Jerusalem with the Caliph Omar in 636 AD, after the latter was given the keys to the holy city by the Patriarch Sophronius (nicknamed the Golden Tongue for his eloquence), and after he gave the Jerusalemites what is known as the Umari Treaty which “offered the people of Illyaa’ protection for their selves, their money, their churches, their children, their lowly and their innocent, and the remainder of their people. Their churches are not to be taken, nor are they to be destroyed, nor are they to be degraded or belittled, neither are their crosses or their money, and they are not to be forced to change their religion, nor is any one of them to be harmed. No Jews are to live with them in Illyaa...”

The expulsion of the Jews mentioned here was at the request of the Patriarch and the Christians in the city; nonetheless, Caliph Omar guaranteed the safety of everyone and said: “whoever amongst the people that wishes to depart their selves, their trading goods and their children is secure until they reach their destination, and whoever decides to stay then they are safe, and are to pay the Jizya along with the people of Illyaa.”

I maintain here that the Umari treaty is better than the Fourth Geneva Convention after 1313 years, because it guaranteed the safety of people under occupation, while the Caliph Omar also guaranteed their money, even if they left the city, and agreed to guard them until they arrive in Roman lands.

The Caliph Omar found the Christians to be in dispute over the Church of the Resurrection, their most important church ever. He then decided to give the church’s key to the Nusseibeh family’s first great grandfather, and the key is still in their possession, passed from generation to generation over 1313 years to which the years of the Ghassanid rule should be added; then a thief comes from Moldova or Poland, and claims to own the land, and rewrites history as it suits his liking.

khazen@alhayat.com [1]