BASRA,
Gaza, May 15 (IslamOnline) - Seventy-seven-year-old Hajj Mohammad
Soliman El-Banna, more commonly known as Abu-Haider, has a story to
tell.
Abu-Haider
clearly recalls how the Zionist Hagannah gangs expelled the residents of
his town, Beersheva. More than 54 years after the event, he remembers
how he was one of just three who managed to escape the slaughter his
town witnessed.
“Beersheva
was the target of several attacks aimed at forcing its residents to
leave,” he said. “Warplanes used to randomly shell the town every
day. And there was the news.
“We
would hear the news about the slaughter in all the villages and towns…
Deir Yassin, El-Led, Ramlah, and so many more… Their residents,
especially the elderly, women and children, fled in fear for their
lives.”
Abu-Haider
takes a breath and continues his story. “I stayed with my father in
the town. We didn’t leave with the rest of the family. I used to work
in the town security.
“The
night of the massacre, I was on duty. I told my father not to lock the
house door so I wouldn’t wake him up when I came back.
“The
Hagannah took us by surprise. They entered the town from the north. I
hid with twelve others in an abandoned outhouse, but they found our
hideout.
“They
found us by setting one of us, Yussuf Garada, on fire. He started
running towards us, and that gave us away.”
Abu-Haider
now lives in the neighborhood of Remal in the Gaza city of Basra. He
pointed to a picture hung on his wall and said, “We came out of the
outhouse with our arms raised, and they lined us up against a wall.”
“A
soldier sitting in an armored vehicle started firing at us. They killed
everyone except for me and two other men - Habib Gar’a and Hamdy
Herzallah.”
Abu-Haider
reeled off some of the names of those who were killed, “Hajj Ali
Garada Mokhtar was 80 years old, Yussuf Garada was 50, Hajj Ali Bessisso
was 70. His wife was also 70. And there was also another member of the
Shuwa family.
“Three
days after the massacre, the Hagannah caught up with me and my friend
Garada. They took us to a prison where I found several residents of the
town. They told me that the Zionist gangs had killed my father, and that
they had found him lying in a pool of blood in his bed.
“I
asked them: ‘Where did you bury him?’ And they answered that he was
buried in a mass grave with the rest of the town’s residents… in a
ditch lying across Beersheva’s main mosque.”
Abu-Haider
narrated how he spent his days in the prison, working as a servant for
the Zionist forces. One day, the forces brought in a truck to carry the
women and children who survived the massacres to Gaza. Abu-Haider seized
the opportunity and smuggled himself onto the truck, asking the women to
cover him up.
“They
discovered my presence at the outskirts of the town, and decided to send
me back,” he said.
“On
the way back, a high-ranking officer stopped us and took a look at my
drawn, haggard face. ‘He isn’t worth the bullet, what do you want
with him?’ he asked them.
“He
then talked to me: ‘Habibi [Arabic for ‘my love’], go to
Gaza. And tell Rushdi El-Shuwa, the mayor, that Gaza is like a ring on
the finger of the Hagannah. In just three days, we’ll catch up with
you, and take all of Gaza’s population prisoners.’”
Abu-Haider
couldn’t believe that he was going to be let free, and quickly set off
for Gaza.
On
the way, he met up with yet another setback: Egyptian officers took him
for a spy because he was one of the very few who got out alive.
“They
took me to a town center where some Egyptian officers were stationed.
They took pity on me and undid my bindings. They were actually very
hospitable.
“They
later took me to the Egyptian governor of the town who ordered me free.
I caught up with the rest of my family in Gaza.
“I
spent the next 30 days unable to lift a teacup from the terror that I
felt.”
Abu-Haider
then recalled the ‘60s when he worked in the newly formed state of
Israel. One day, he took his son Arafat to visit his father’s house in
Beersheva, and was surprised when he found that the house was turned
into a hostel for foreign workers.
“I
still remember Beersheva, and I still remember its old mosque which was
turned into a museum. I remember old Sheikh Fahmy Bessisso, the imam of
the mosque, and the boarding school and its Jordanian headmaster
Abdullah Al-Khattib. He was also killed.”
Abu-Haider
said that those who had survived Beersheva were now dispersed in
different places - Gaza, Egypt, the West Bank, and Jordan.
“It
has been 54 years since we were expelled from our lands, but we still
cherish the hope that one day, no matter how bleak the future may look
now, but one day, we will return.”
