Page Twelve

THE JEWISH NEWS

Jews

and

1

Friday, April 12, 1946

Arabs

at work

In Palestine

EDITOR'S NOTE: Meyer
Levin, well known Ameri-
can novelist, newspaper-
man and war correspond-
ent, 'is back in Palestine.
In the following vivid des-
cription'of a visit to a pic-
turesque Arab village, he
highlights the reason why
t h e f e are difficulties be-
tween Jews and Arabs in
Palestine, and, at the same
time, points out how the

t w o peoples c a n live to-
gether in peace.

A group of Arab leaders showing their friendship with Jewish colonists at the dedication o
a new agricultural settlement, one of more than 230 scattered over Palestine.

smaller huts constructed out of cane mat-
ting, walls, roof, and all. In these, lived the
poorer of the Arab families, though the in-
habitants of the adobe houses were poor enough. At
the far side of the village, we came to the single stone
house of Sulkeia. It was a one-story house with some
goats on the roof. Here lived the richest landholder;
and consequently the sheikh.
A few Arabs stood near a cane-mat but in the
yard, and we halted, some steps from them, and said
"Salim, Shalom."
In this moment I understood the real content of
the greeting of Peace, which is so widely regarded as
a most beautiful and wholesome tradition. In this
moment, the greeting recalled to me the primitive
games between street-gangs of children, who are al-
most constantly at war. They invent a token-word,
and during their periods of truce this word serves to
indicate "our gangs are just now at peace; you may
pass in safety.

By MEYER LEVIN

4

JERUSALEM
HE only place to find out whether Jews and
Arabs can live together is, of course, on the
Tgrou
nd. Beyond the waters of Meron, near
the source of the Jordan River, are several Jewish
and Arab settlements. .The Jewish settlements are
among - the newest in Palestine, some a few months
old, and the oldest not more than a few years. So
that if Arab were to be expressed anywhere,
it should be toward these new establishments. The
Arab villages are adobe dwelling, built from swamp
mud, for this is the Huleh swamp region. „
It happens that one Jewish and one Arab village
are practically contiguous; nowhere in Palestine have
I seen two settlements so close together. The Jewish
village is Kfar Blum, named after Leon Blum of France
at a time during the war when it was not known
whether he was still alive or had been executed by
Arab Can Change Overnight
the Nazis. The Arab village is known as Sulkeia. It
O
so happens, that the Jewish village is one of the few
Not all of this was implied in the simple greeting
in Palestine where there are a considerable number
between Yehuda and his Arab neighbors, for the far-
of young American pioneers. It is a communal set-
ther implications are lost in antiquity, yet in meeting
tlement of about 150 persons, half of whom come from
Arabs I always experience an element of uneasiness,
English-speaking countries, the United .States, Canada,
for one senses the primitive quite close to the surface,
England, South Africa, while the others come from and the example of this is the sporadic pogroms that
Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia.
break out, sometimes 10 years apart—pogroms like the
Hebron massacre in 1929, and the Tripoli massacres
The chairman, or maskir, of the commune is an
last fall, when Arabs, who have been living door-to-
ex-lumber dealer of Minneapolis, who spent his first
door with century-old settlements of Jews, suddenly
three years in Palestine as a shepherd, and there
respond to some deliberately circulated rumor of reli-
developed great patience. His name is Yehuda Strim-
ling.
gious desecration, and fall upon these people whom
they have been greeting hourly with "Salim, Shalom,"
The other morning we went to pay a call on the
and
hack them to pieces.
neighboring village of Sulkeia. Several things were
on Yehuda's mind. First, he wanted to see how the
They are volatile, and as Yehuda put it, "You
never know where you are with an Arab, he can
boycott was affecting the attitude of the Arab villagers
change overnight." But if you study this, you can
toward their Jewish neighbors. Secondly, he wanted,
live with them, and improve your relations, and
if possible, to arrange for the commune to -take sand
out of a silted-up part of a wady, where the Jordan
diminish the risk.
had once branched off to flow through the Arab
So we made the statement of peace, and then
village.
waited for the visit to show precisely how Much at
peace we were. We stood there a moment while
This operation would prove of mutual advantage,
the Arabs went into the stone house to notify the
since it would provide the Jews with an at-hand
master. He emerged, a tall young man wearing rid-
supply of building material, and it would re-open the
flow of water through the Arab village, considerably
ing pants, oddly combined with a citified velvet-
collared black overcoat.
shortening the daily water-carrying chores of the
Greetings were exchanged, and I was introduced
Arab women. Finally, it would stream through many
simply as a friend of Yehuda's, an American, Our
of the pools that now collected from rainfall in the
host excused himself and went into the hut, which,
wady, and put an end to • these stagnant mosquito-
breeding spots.
Yehuda explained to me, was used for the reception
of visitors, though poorer families lived in such huts.
After a moment, Jamil bade us enter.
Villages' Separated by River
Two elderly Arabs, family servitors, sat opposite
Jamil, tending the small fire which burned on the
While the bodies of both Jewish and Arab villages
open earth space_ For fuel, Jamil explained, they
were a - few hundred yards on either side of the Jor-
used bamboo roots, from the nearby Huleh swamp.
dan, the outlying houses of each village were separated
The conversation began with exchanges of opinion
scarcely more than the river itself. The Jordan,
'on the weather. Would it rain? This had been an
at this point, looks more like a canal than a river.
exceptionally dry- year, thus far, and Arabs and Jews
The commune has land on either side, and uses
were beginning to worry for their crops, even though
a little boat on a towline to get across.. But some
this swamp area had • abundant waters available for
comrades working in the new vineyard had taken
irrigation.
the boat to the other - side, and Yehuda and I didn't
O
O
want to bother them to come and fetch us. So we
Scornful of Such Devices
crossed the Jordan as Abraham had crossed it. We
removed our nether garments and waded up to our
Jamil asked, was there perhaps any indication of
hips.
rain from the scientific instruments at the settlement?
"Now you see why the Arabs wear skirts,"
(He meant the barometer, Yehuda explained to me
Yehuda said, as we dressed on the other side.
later. "They always speak a little scornfully of such
"All they have to do is hoist up their skirts and
devices, still, when they begin to get worried, they
walk across."
come around and ask what we know. Not that they
From where we had crossed, there was a good-
are going to pay any attention to it. But they are'
sized pasture between us and the village, and small
willing to take it into account. We say the instrument
herds of small Arab cattle were grazing there, tended
reads thus-and-so, but naturally everything depends
mostly by boys.. The first herd we reached was tend-
on Allah, the will of God.")
ed by a lad of about 14, and another of perhaps 8.
So Yehuda made a disparaging reply about the
They smiled, said "Salim," peace, to which we res-
barometer, and said, "But surely your people have
ponded `;.Shalom." Then the older boy held out his
great knowledge of the weather, and can feel when
hand and asked "cigaria." Yehuda replied in Arabic
"the rain is coming. Do you think it will rain today?"
that he did not have any.
"I think perhaps," said the son of the Sheikh.
"It depends on the will of_ God," said Yehuda.
The boy asked again, still smiling, but more in-
"Yes. Of course. Everything depends on the
sistently. He pattered after us. Yehuda repeated
will of Allah. Of course."
that he had no cigarets, and we walked on. The boy
Yehuda leaned on a cushion, and said, most cas-
began to curse. He stood, hurling curses after us.
"What's he saying?" I asked Yehuda.
ually, "Jamil, a little incident happened as I was com-
ing into the village. I though perhaps you would like
"Things about dogs and sons of dogs and so on."
I heard another voice, and glanced back. Now
to know about it." And _he related the incident of the
cigaret.
•
the little 'kid had taken up the cussing.
Jamil was instantly upset.
I understood of course that Yehuda had been right
in refraining from giving the boy a cigaret, since it
Yehuda said the boys had refused to tell their
names, but described where they could be found. Now
had been asked for first in a beggarly, and then in
a petremptory fashion. It would have been the be-
a great deal of excited talk took place. It seemed to
me that it would have been a most simple matter to
ginning of a Baksheesh, a custom of bribery, a kind
of toll which would then have been demanded by
send someone to find the boys, a matter of three
minutes walk. But several people were called into
every - Arab child of every Jew entering the village,
the hut, and the -matter was discussed more and more
and it might have increased from a cigaret to a
coin,
loudly, and no one went to find the boys.
and so further.
While the servant brewed coffee, the conversation
The village itself was one of the cleanest Arab
went on but returned always to the question of rain.
villages I have seen. It consisted of a scattered col-
Yehuda observed that the settlers already were having
lection of adobe huts, almost entirely windowless, and
to irrigate their vegetables, though this should be the
among these comparatively substantial dwellings were
rainy

*

season. ..

"You are irrigating with your motors?" Jamil
asked.
Yehuda nodded. "Do you think you will dig
a well, and use the water for irrigation?" he said,
apparently touching upon a long-discussed project.
"Yes," Jamil said decisively. "We will dig a
well. Of course."
"When do you think • you will dig it?"
"I think we will dig it soon. Of course. Next
month we will dig the welL"
(Water was not far down, Yehuda explained to
me later, and the well would have been only a matter
of a few days of labor. It would also save the women
their walk to the Jordan, for each jug of water.)
`If water were to flow from the Jordan through
the wady again, it would bring water through your
entire village," Yehuda mentioned. "Is it long since
water flowed there?"
"It is not so many years," Jamil said. "But the
sand has stopped up the entrance to the wady."
"We are obliged to send our trucks some miles
away, to bring sand for our buildings," Yehuda said.
"Take all the sand you need from the wady!" Jamil
said, with generosity. "I have much sand there, and
it is of no use to me. Take it!"
Yehuda suggested that perhaps it would be
well to sign a paper, so that there would be no
confusion about the removal of the sand. And
certainly villagers would be paid for loading the
sand on to wagons.
O
•

*

Paper Was a Delicate Point

But the paper was a delicate point. (Later, Ye-
huda explained to me that Arabs had a great fear of
a bit of paper. Laughingly, he told me how one old
sheikh had said to him, "Today I give you a piece of ,
paper, and tomorrow you will be plowing 'my land."
And yet, disputes, and attempts, to extract payment
over the most trivial matters, might arise if there
were no specific agreement. "For instance, when we
had to build our road, from the main road. That few
hundred. yards of road crosses through the patches of
30 different Arabs, and it took us half a year to get
them all lined up. But no sooner did we start build-
ing the road, than more and more Arabs, shepherds,
Bedouin, everybody began to appear, each one asking
a couple of pounds for road rights. They don't get
sore. You have to understand how to deal with them.")
I saw a continued illustration of this, as .Yehuda
dropped the matter of the bit of paper for the re-
moval of sand. He now turned to general topics, as
the servitor handed us the first small cups of coffee.
And Yehuda spoke, meanwhile, of cattle, and sheep,
and goats. From his three years as a shepherd, he
produced many bits of observation and advice; which
the Arabs appreciated, and matched. Yehuda spoke
of land, asking "Jamil, how much land does your fam-
ily own?" Though he well knew- they owned 1,500
of the village's 5,000 dunam.
Jamil said: "We are the richest. Of course."
Yehuda went on to enquire whether a member
of the family had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
"Yes, my uncle has been to Mecca four times.
"Of course I will go. But I think my father will
go first."
"When do you think he will go, Jamil?"
"I think he will go next year."
-
We had finished three cups of coffee each, and
now Jamil had his coffee. Just at this point, his
father entered. We passed through the formalities;
he sat by the fire, and was immediately served with
coffee.
Before we left, Yehuda, said to the son of the
sheikh, "You must come to visit us again. You must
come to listen to our •radio."
"I will come soon. Very soon." Jamil smiled.
We said our farewells.
On the way back to the Jewish village, Yehuda said:
"You see, we have always got along very well. But
now there is the boycott.- These Arabs didn't start
the boycott, but how can they know anything? They
clon't have a radiol--Jamil used to come over to our
place all the time to listen to our radio. They even
believe it is a government order, and thit if they are
caught having anything to do with the Jews, they will
be arrested.
"How can they believe such a thing? Some Arabs
who happen to be members of the Palestine police
force have been going into the villages, and spreading
such threats. Why do these Arab. policemen do this?
Baksheesh from the politicians. Anyway, there it is."
He summed up the results of his temperature-
taking: "Those boys might have cursed us at any time,
but still, it would have been very unlikely before.
It just shows how .this Arab League. poison propaganda
is taking hold. Well, I think we stopped it all right,
because the whole village will be talking about it
tonight—I think we kind of counteracted their poison,
a little, there."
But he pointed out another. item. "You noticed
how vague Jamil was, about returning my visit?
He
used to come all the time, but now he won't come.
He's scared on account of the boycott.
(Copyright 1946, JTA).

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