منتديات عجور - بيت كل العرب

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Ajjur remembered abu khader

Abu Khader was born in Ajjur thriving village with a population of between 20 and 30*000 on the Mediterranean coast* just north of what is now the border between Gaza and Israel. The family farmed land. If you look Ajjur up on the internet under Remembered Villages Palestine* you will read: "Five Israeli settlements have been established on village land. Only three houses remain: Two are deserted and one has been turned into a warehouse. The site itself is fenced in and used for grazing."

In 1948 when the British withdrew from Palestine* open conflict broke out between the newly emerged Israeli state and the Arab nations with which it was surrounded. The people of Ajjur heard rumours of what would happen to them if the village was captured by the Israelis* and they* like the inhabitants of the other fifteen villages in the area* decided to leave en masse. They moved eastwards with their animals and as many of their possessions as they could carry* towards Al Khalil (Hebron) and made a temporary halt outside that city* along with many other refugees. With the coming of winter and good grazing* the villagers began to split up. Adnan told us that the "Adjurris" can be found all over Palestine and also in Jordan. He said that although the family name is Abu Haniye* they are often referred to still as Adjurris. Abu Khader and his wife Miriam moved north to the village of Jiftlik in the Jordan valley. Together with about 3*000 others from Ajurr* they rented land from a landowner in Nablus* paying one third of their harvest as rent. During the years in Jiftlick Abu Khader* who at the time had two daughters* married a second wife* also called Miriam* who was fifteen years old and came from the Deheisha camp in Bethlehem.

They left Jiftlik because of arguments about land and some water problems. It was a cousin of Abu Khader's who first came to Yanoun* and he later settled in Huwarra. Abu Khader again rented land at first but in 1964 was able to buy about 100 dunams (100*000 square metres: a dunam was defined as "forty standard paces in length and breadth*" but varied considerably from place to place.) I asked him what had happened in the village in the second open conflict between the Arab nations and Israel in 1967. He said that many people thought they should leave Yanoun: rumours of wholesale rape and plunder such as had led to the abandonment of Ajurri were common. This was the time when the Adjurris of Jiftlik moved to Jordan where many live in refugee camps. But Abu Khader said he was determined not to become a refugee for a second time. There was a Jordanian military camp near Yanoun* but he said that the Jordanian soldiers simply took off their uniforms* put on the clothes of local farmers and fled back to their own country. The war lasted only six days. So he now lives surrounded by seven of his surviving sons and their families. Altogether his two wives bore him 18 children: eight sons and five daughters survived. One of the daughters is married to the head-teacher of the school in Yanoun.

I asked him whether he would return to Ajurr if he could* and his response was long and passionate and* Adnan maintained* largely untranslatable. He clearly still bears a deep bitterness that he was driven from his village and his land. Adnan said that in 1997 he and his brother Khader - they were twenty-five and thirty-one at the time - had planned to visit Ajjur* but that he had in the end decided not to go and persuaded Khader also to refrain. Adnan had been told since he was a child that Ajjur was like paradise: he did not want to see the reality nor to make a comparison with Yanoun. But he* like his father* would go back there if there was any possibility of a return.

http://im19.gulfup.com/2012-01-27/1327668845311.jpg
"By the end of the 1948 war* hundreds of entire villages had not only been depopulated but obliterated* their houses blown up or bulldozed. While many of the sites are difficult of access* to this day the observant traveler of Israeli roads and highways can see traces of their presence that would escape the notice of the casual passerby: a fenced-in area* often surmounting a gentle hill* of olive and other fruit trees left untended* of cactus hedges and domesticated plants run wild. Now and then a few crumbled houses are left standing* a neglected mosque or church* collapsing walls along the ghost of a village lane* but in the vast majority of cases* all that remains is a scattering of stones and rubble across a forgotten landscape.