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Photo by Jane Scherr |
Beilin-Husseini Dialogue: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Photo by Jane Scherr |
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Mr. Husseini, Mr. Beilin, welcome to Berkeley.
[Husseini]
Thank you very much.
[Beilin]
Thank you.
Mr. Husseini, tell us about your family's involvement in the Palestinian national struggle.
[Husseini]
My father, Abdel Khader al-Husseini, was more a military leader than a political one, but his education was not in the military. He started his involvement with the national movement in the thirties. So he was part of the Palestinian revolution against the British Mandate in the fights of 1936 and 1937, until 1938 - 1939. He was injured twice. He was even imprisoned once, but he succeeded in escaping. From Palestine in 1939 he was forced to go to Lebanon and Syria, and from there to Iraq. He was leading the revolution from 1936 to 1939. Then he was forced to leave Palestine because he became wanted by the British Mandate. From Lebanon to Syria, from Syria to Iraq, where he was also part of the fighting against the British army when it occupied Iraq. And then I was born, in Iraq, in Baghdad. In 1947 he was sent back to Palestine and he led the Palestinian forces in Jerusalem.
My father was educated and graduated from the American University of Cairo in the thirties.
He was so important in our history, and in Israeli history also, because he succeeded in creating a big problem for the Israelis and the Hagannah while he was working with a very small number of soldiers. But his strategy was important -- he was concentrating on the roads. He knew that he didn't have enough soldiers so he was attacking the roads. He concentrated on creating what became known after that as "road battles." He was attacking the Israeli forces on the move, or even in their positions, but not giving them the opportunity to start attacking him. So he was usually starting his battle with a small number of his forces, which were small forces, but he was able to mobilize people from the villages, from the other Palestinian cities, so he could start a battle with 30 soldiers, ending with 1,000 fighters.
So sort of a guerrilla operation?
Not exactly, but something like that. He started out in a certain place with a small amount of soldiers and then sent to the villages, asking for help. And so he would start with 30 fighters, and he ended with 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000. So all the time he would have the ability to have the upper hand. That went on for about three to five months, until he was killed in the '48 war in a village called Al Qastal, which was a village on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. From this position the village controlled the entrance to Jerusalem. Al Husseini was leading Palestinian forces called al jihad al muqaddas, the holy war forces. And he knew that the forces that he had were very limited, very small compared with the Hagannah forces or other Jewish forces. And for about five to six months he led a battle in which he caused a very big problem for the Israeli side, and he succeeded in sieging Jerusalem. And from his point of view, he was hoping that by succeeding in seiging Jerusalem that he would start negotiations with the Jewish side from a better position.
Was this an opportunity to create advantage, by going on the offensive and finding points of vulnerability and symbols that would be important in the ultimate resolution of the conflict?
Yes, I believe that he realized the importance of Jerusalem, for the Palestinians and for the Jews. And he knew that he didn't have enough forces to go and liberate or even defend far places, so his idea was to concentrate his efforts in Jerusalem, and he succeeded in that in the beginning, to seize this area, to keep 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem under his control. And from this point he can go and start talking. This was the idea, and he was thinking about a Palestinian state for sure. He was not against every Jew, but he was for a Palestinian state.
How he was killed in the conflict?
He was killed in the battle, a battle that he won by the way. He won that battle.
For Jerusalem?
For this place, for Jerusalem, and the Israeli forces which occupied the place were forced to leave the place. But the price was his own life. The problem was that after that this army, al jihad al muqaddas, couldn't find another leader and it was a very big shock for the Palestinians to the extent that every responsible one left his position and went to the funeral. And they had a big funeral at the same time that the Israeli forces, (the Jewish forces in those days), started attacking another time this location and other locations, including Deyr Yasin. So it became two hits in the same week, the killing of Al Husseini and then the massacre of Dayr Yasin, which put the Palestinians in a sort of fit that they'd lost their leader that they'd depended upon.
And it turned the tide of battle?
Yes.
How old were you when he died?
I was eight years old and he was forty-one.
So you experienced this great loss at the same time that it was the beginning of the Palestinian diaspora?
Yes, actually we were from the beginning in such a diaspora because he was wanted by the British Mandate in the thirties and then he was expelled from Baghdad to Syria and we were following him. So we were all the time living outside Palestine. But to see the new future, a new history of the Palestinians as refugees, I started seeing it from Cairo. I was, yes, eight years old but I was living in a political family and I was hearing politics during the day and at night from people coming from the outside visiting us. And so I grew up, actually, with all these political talks and historical stories about Palestine, about battle, about the differences between the Palestinians.
So one part of your education was the story of your own people, and being part of that struggle?
Yes, for sure. This was the beginning and it was the most important thing that occupied me. I remember during school the only matter that I was able to communicate on was this matter. And I became an important source for the Egyptian students about the history of Palestine, and sometimes even about the history of the Arab world. Because of the Palestinian case I became also more interested in the history of the Arab states around us.
You were educated where? What form of education?
I finished my elementary and secondary school in Egypt. Then I started studying geology in Baghdad. I went to the University of Baghdad. I only spent nine months there and then I was forced to come back to Egypt. And I continued there, but I can say that all the time there I was busy in student activities more than busy in the university itself.
So it was inevitable that you would go into politics and into the national struggle?
Yes. I actually started the Palestinian Student League in Cairo and I became active with other students there. We created a Palestinian Union of Palestinian students in Cairo. GUPS was the name, General Union of Palestinian Students. And from there I started to have more relations with other Palestinians in other branches all around the world, including Europe and Asia. And at the same time, it was our window between the Arab world and the Western world, through meetings with other students.
One of the things that emerges in your early talks in your previous visit to Berkeley is that you have a sense of the difficulty of resolving conflicts, questions of equity and justice. What education is that a product of? Is that a product of the political struggle? of Arab and Islamic culture? or what?
As I told you, I was the son of a man and a family which was involved in a certain case where the only thing which was concerning me was our country, that we lost it, that we have an enemy who was occupying our homes, our country. But gradually, with the days, I started to see it was not only this problem that must be solved. I started to see that there were other problems in Egypt, in Syria, in Lebanon, between the Palestinians themselves, between the Arabs themselves, between the Arabs and others. So the problem became to me not so easy that it is black and white. No, there were some other problems which were there.
I started my political work as a nationalist activist, with a movement, with the organization of the Arab movement. The Arab national movement, which was [started] by Georges Habash, who became after that leader of the Popular Front. And I went with this thinking, as a nationalist. Only maybe after 1961 I started to think more about myself as a Palestinian than as an Arab.
In 1967, it became really that if I would like to do something the benefit of our people, I must do it through the Palestinians, in Palestine. And that's what pushed me to turn back to Palestine immediately after the war. And then I started to have two new kinds of contacts. The first one with the Palestinians on the West Bank, inside Israel and in Gaza, which was not possible for us before 1967. And during that time I also started to make some contacts with Israelis. It was the first time that I began to see the Israelis as people. Before that, for me, the Israelis were always soldiers, tanks, army, gangs, who took our land, who killed our people. But then I started walking the streets. Even before I started talking with any Israeli, I started seeing them in the streets as human beings. And this, I believe, was the beginning of the connection that I started to build with some Israelis, and started searching also to understand their problem. I remember that I made a tour inside Israel visiting people ...
What year?
That was in 1968 and '69, when I met some people and even spent some nights in one house. It was the house of a Russian Jew who was a member of the Revolution in Russia. He was very old. I started talking with him about common things, because we were then admiring the Russian Revolution. Then I started to know the other side of the coin.
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