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| 1951 Survey of Israel map based on 1946 British Survey of Palestine Map. Via Palestine Open Maps. |
In his 1979 study of the Gaza Strip, the Marxist political economist Hussein Abu al-Naml (1943 – 2020) wrote:
Individual crossing operations towards the occupied territory from the Gaza Strip have not ceased since the Nakba itself: “A few months after the Nakba, the individual infiltration of the occupied land began. A hungry rebel carrying a weapon enters his village to retrieve one of his cows or a sheep. Another kills an Israeli and seizes his weapons. And a third recovers his money buried under the dirt in the courtyard of his house. A group of rebels seizes a herd of cattle from the enemy and drives it to Arab lands to satisfy the hunger of refugees with fresh meat. Thus the myth of Israel became an illusion…”
Although the political horizon of these individual invasions was not clear, they were closely intertwined with the economic and social problems of the Gaza Strip. Especially since the political and economic situation was not difficult for ordinary people to understand. Their land was right there in sight. The refugees could simply look east and see the vast fields that were once Arab land.¹
Abu-Naml quotes here the work of Subhi Yasin (1920 – 1968), the Palestinian militant and historian. Born in the village of Shifa‘amr in the Galilee, Yassin went to school in Haifa. As a teenager, he participated actively in the Arab revolt of 1936-39. After the nakba—during which he fought and was wounded—he lived in Damascus’ Yarmouk refugee camp where he poured himself into political work. He later moved to Egypt and participated in the activities of Palestinian nationalists in the Gaza Strip. Alongside his organizational efforts, Yasin also wrote a series of historical and theoretical texts on Palestinian liberation. His first book, an important history of the same 36-39 revolt he participated in, was published in Damascus in 1959. The book remains a touchstone for all subsequent historians of the revolt thanks to Yasin’s deft narration and first-hand view of the events. Yasin founded the Vanguard of Arab Sacrifice for the Liberation of Palestine (Tala’i al-Fida’ ‘Arabi li Tahrir Filastin) and was always a militant before being a writer. He introduced his 1964 book, A Theory of Action for the Recovery of Palestine with a typically defiant admission: “I would have preferred this book to be printed while I was carrying my machine gun and fighting the enemies of the Arab nation in the streets of Tel Aviv.”²
The last book Yasin wrote was a study of guerrilla war in Palestine, covering some of the same material as his other works. His is an especially useful account of the “infiltrations” of the fidayeen, those Palestinian and other Arab commandos who entered Israeli controlled territory in the years after 1948, especially in the period between 1952 and 1956. Palestinian political and militant activity during this period, before the emergence of the PLO, is relatively understudied. Journalistic accounts that see the actions of the fidayeen as just one prelude to the 1956 war and a small number of somewhat critical Israeli histories (critical of Israeli means but not critical of Israeli ends) are most of what we have on the period.³ Yassin’s account then, thoroughly and unabashedly nationalist and anti-colonial, is an essential counter. In the passage I’ve excerpted below, he recounts the largest guerrilla operation ever launched from Gaza until that point. The action was precipitated by the Israeli bombing of Gaza's largest hospital.
This all took place less than two weeks before Israel’s eighth anniversary of independence. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's stance on ethnic cleansing had been clear since the state's very beginnings (before, too). "Every additional Arab in the country increases the danger," Ben-Gurion put it in October 1949, "it is impossible to expel them by moralizing...rather they must be expelled at the point of a gun."⁴ And indeed, thousands of Palestinians were killed seeking to return to their land in the years after 1948. In his Independence Day address to his nation on April 15th, 1956 (5 Iyar in the Hebrew calendar)—after a ceasefire was brokered under the eye of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld—Ben-Gurion immediately turned to the “guerrilla war which Egypt, Jordan and Syria have been treacherously waging against us.” “We shall not fear,” he continued, “the murderous gangs dispatched by the Egyptian dictator, nor will the hosts of Amalek, from the South, the East and the North, who are now concentrating on the other side of our borders, be able to subdue us.” The IDF, he concluded, “will give back the aggressors two blows for one, as they have done before.”⁵
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| A portrait of "al-mujahid" Subhi Muhammad Yasin. Included in the Egyptian edition of his Al-Thawra al-'Arabiyya al-Kubra (Cairo: Dar al-Huna li al-Taba'a, 1959). |
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The Israeli gang decided to attack Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, hoping to gain a cheap victory by killing patients. At two in the afternoon on April 5, 1956, the Israelis began bombing the Gaza hospital with heavy artillery for five continuous hours. More than a hundred patients were killed.
The leaders of the aggression imagined that mass killing of the sick would terrorize the Arabs of Palestine into oblivion. But the opposite of what they expected happened. Their plan failed and their plot was turned inside out.
In the evening, Commander Mustafa Hafez gathered his men and put together a plan for a comprehensive attack on the enemy’s hideouts. The violent retaliatory attack began before midnight on April 5, from open and secret bases simultaneously. Thereafter, Israel witnessed its darkest nights.
On the night of April 6th, the largest guerrilla group entered Israel, numbering 300 commando members. They pierced dozens of miles into the usurped land. Each detachment carried out its role with the best possible courage and organization, hitting targets and taking revenge on those who knew no other language.
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| Headlines from Maariv (Tel Aviv) and Al-Ahram (Cairo), April 6, 1956. |
The attack continued for five days, during which hundreds of Israelis were killed and wounded, in addition to material losses.
1 - The number of raids on the night of April 7, according to Israeli Radio, was nine. These included a commando detachment that attacked an enemy military convoy on the Bi'r al-Saba' - Falujah road, in which a number of its soldiers were killed. At the same time, a second detachment attacked a military convoy on the Falujah-Iraq-Suwaidan road, killing a number of its soldiers, and damaging a military vehicle. A third detachment placed mines on the Falujah - Shufan settlement road, blowing up a military vehicle and killing its passengers. Other detachments were able to blow up a railway bridge on al-Saba’ road and a large water distribution station for enemy camps, blowing up huge water pipes in several places, and blowing up al-Majdal [Ashkelon, today] water tank. Another detachment attacked a military convoy south of al-Majdal, and a number of the convoy's passengers were killed. A detachment entered the same occupied town of al-Majdal, attacked the enemy barracks with grenades and machine guns from close range, and killed large numbers of the enemy. Another detachment attacked an Israeli military patrol near a village al-Jura.
2 - The number of raids on the night of April 8th was 16. These included: blowing up an enemy military vehicle south of the village of Bayt Jibrin and killing its passengers; an attack on a military convoy on the Falujah - Bi'r al-Saba' road, and a third attack on a military patrol on the Bi'r al-Saba' road; an attack on military patrols inside the town of al-Majdal, killing a number of enemy soldiers; an attack on the Uza settlement near Bi'r al-Saba'; blowing up a railway bridge between Bi'r al-Saba' and Fallujah. A daring attack on the enemy inside the Shapira colony. An attack on a labor camp near the Givat Rachel settlement.
3 - The number of raids on the night of April 9th was 14. An attack on the Tekish settlement (Abu Ghalioun) left a number of Israelis dead; an attack on a military patrol near the Oren settlement and a number were killed From its members. An attack on a third patrol south of Bi'r al-Saba', killing a number of enemy soldiers. The commandos sabotaged bridges, telephone lines, tanks and water pipes, and railway lines on a large scale.
When the free fidayeen were able to impose their presence inside the lost homeland, control the enemy’s lines of transportation, and record the most amazing victories over the enemy forces with few weapons and small numbers, their morale rose, and they began attacking the enemy’s convoys and colonies at four in the afternoon because the enemy, with his armies, equipment, and capabilities inside his lands, began to evade confronting the fidayeen.
For a period of time, the actions of the fidayeen made the enemy think their demise was imminent.
The 9th and the 10th of April 1956 were among the immortal and glorious days in the history of the Arabs of Palestine after the nakba, as units of the heroic guerrillas attacked an Israel military convoy south of the Rehovot colony, south of Tel Aviv, at Rabaa al-Nahar, and killed a large number of its members among the citrus trees. A second detachment blew up the wireless communication station that linked Israel with the world. A third detachment attacked the Zikim colony during the day and killed a number of residents. On the morning of April 10, 1956, units of the fedayeen attacked Israeli military convoys on the roads of Fallujah - Bi'r al-Saba' - Al-Majdal. They threw grenades at enemy vehicles from close range. Other detachments attacked an Israeli patrol near Dayr Sunayd. Other detachments also attacked a colony, killing six of its members, and performed acts of sabotage.
After five full days of continuous struggle and immortal Arab heroism inside their lost homeland, the nakba generation that would liberate Palestine returned to the Gaza Strip after losing eleven martyrs and three prisoners.
The heroes of redemption returned after teaching the enemy bitter lessons. The heroes of the struggle returned after they left every city, colony, and house of the enemy in mourning.⁶
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| The cover of the Beirut edition of Rashid Hussein's collection Sawarikh (Beirut: Dar al-Awda, 1982). |
In his 1958 collection Sawarikh (Missiles), the Palestinian writer Rashid Hussein (1936 – 1977) wrote a poem entitled “The Closed Door” addressed to “the Jewish friend who asked me: why don’t you describe the Negev, the kibbutz, and the moshav in your poetry?”
You’re asking me to describe the charms of the “Kibbutz” and the “Moshav” and the “Negev”
…
Brother, do you want me to forget that you shut the door on me
Do you think me a clown, a liar, or a fool?
You closed the door on me.
Hussein goes on:
How can I describe what lies behind the door?
When it is you who decides when I can enter
…
Or do you think that one of these days I jumped over your high walls?
You closed the door on me.
…
Unlock the door and take off the jailers uniform
open it!
When you open it you will know who I am
An artist who loves beauty and sanctifies humanity
But how do I praise the wine locked behind the bar
When the lock is high above the door?
Does someone who cannot enter the garden praise its flowers?⁷
¹. Hussien Abu al-Naml, Qita’ Ghazzah, 1948 – 1967: Tatwwurat Iqtisadīyah wa Siyasiyah wa Ijtima‘iyah wa ‘Askariyah (Beirut: Markaz al-Abhath, Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyah, 1979), 111-112.
². Subhi Muhammad Yasin, Nazariyat al-‘amal li istirdad Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Ma ‘rifah, 1964), 7.
³. Kennett Love, Suez: The Twice-Fought War (New York: McGraw Hill, 1969). Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) and Ze'ev Drory, Israel's Reprisal Policy, 1953-1956: The Dynamics of Military Retaliation (New York: Routledge, 2005). Both studies conclude that it was Israeli violence that spurred Palestinian violence. For a short account more attuned to Palestinian sources, see Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (New York : Oxford University Press, 1997), 58-70. The Arab and Israeli press covered the events widely and deserve thorough review, as do the relevant United Nations documents.
⁴. Drory, Israel's Reprisal Policy, 1953-1956, 78.
⁵.“Eight Independence Day Celebrated in Israel, P.M. Stresses Determination on Road Ahead,” Israel Digest 7:15 (April 20, 1956), 1.
⁶. Subhi Muhammad Yassin, Harb al-‘asabat fi Filistin (Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-Arabi li al-Taba'a wa al-Nashir, 1967), 186 - 190.
⁷. Rashid Hussein, “al-Bab al-mughlak,” Sawarikh (Beirut: Dar al-Awda, 1982), 56-57. First published in 1958 by Nazareth's Al-Hakim Press.
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Thank you. When I share the poem, shall I attribute the translation to you? All my best
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