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.