In the winter of 1974, the newspaper Al-Fajr published a cartoon showing the mayor of Hebron, Sheik Mohammed Ali el-Ja’abari, with a slipper stuffed in his mouth. Ja’abari, the all-powerful mayor of Hebron at the time, a friend of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and of King Hussein of Jordan, was the one who, four years earlier, had allowed the establishment of the Jewish neighborhood in Kiryat Arba. His close relationship with the Israeli administration became a thorn in the sides of Palestinian nationalists.
The editor of Al-Fajr at the time was Yusuf (Joe) Nasser. For the sheik’s loyalists, the cartoon was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Veteran journalist Danny Rubinstein, who covered the Palestinian territories for the newspaper Davar at the time, recalled this week how, at a conference that Ja’abari attended, an elderly man stood up and called out, “Don’t worry, your Excellency – we will bring you the decapitated head of Yusuf Nasser on a tray of food.” Several days later, Yusuf Nasser disappeared from his home on Salah a-Din Street in east Jerusalem and was never seen again. Although the people suspected in the kidnapping, Ja’abari’s men, were arrested and interrogated, they were released due to lack of evidence.
Thirty-seven years later, as the Palestinians advocate in the U.N. for a state of their own, the mythical sheik's successor, his nephew Sheik Farid Khader el-Ja’abari, faces a similar test. This time, it is not an insulting cartoon at issue, but a more serious matter. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, has made open threats on his life. The reason is the sheik’s firm statements against the Oslo Accords and the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, and his close ties with the settlers of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has demanded that Ja’abari retract his statements. Those loyal to the sheikh, who has hundreds of armed men at his service, are seething with anger, but the 63-year-old has ordered everyone to show restraint.
Sometimes
restraint is power, and sometimes it is not. Five years ago, the
Palestinian police killed Mohammed Ja’abari, 17, a member of the
Ja’abari clan, by mistake. The sheik asked that the shooter be turned
over to him. The Palestinian Authority demurred. That night, his people
raided a building belonging to Force 17 in Hebron, torching 14 jeeps and
capturing 34 Palestinian police officers. Only after Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas contacted Ja’abari and pleaded for a sulha [a formal ceremony of reconciliation] were the police officers released. The PA, which declared the young man a shahid [martyr], continues to pay a salary to his family to this day.
“A state contradicts Islam”
Ja’abari,
one of the strong men in the Hebron region today, heads a clan of
approximately 35,000 people. The proud descendant of an old
tribal-religious line, he is known as al-Hut al-Abiad – “the white
whale” – a nickname that stuck because of the white robe that he often
wears. Ja’abari’s connections and influence extend far and wide: from
the settlers, the Civil Administration and the IDF to officials of the
Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the jihadist organizations. His
opinions and worldview are hard to label. On the one hand, in recent
years he has become the ally of the settlers and of the state of Israel.
On the other, he is one of the most vigorous opponents of the
establishment of a Palestinian state, but not for the reason that the
settlers oppose it. Rather, he opposes it for the same reason that Hamas
and Islamic Jihad do: Ja’abari believes that it is tantamount to
treason and territorial concessions, which Islam strictly forbids.
The
latest conflict between Ja’abari and the Palestinian Authority took
place over statements that he made several weeks ago at the end of a
meal marking the conclusion of Ramadan. The statements barely made waves
at the time, perhaps because they were published in the Israeli press
only on the Arutz Sheva website [a media outlet associated with the
settlement movement], but in Hebron and in the Arab media, they spread
like wildfire.
“A
Palestinian state,” said the sheik, “has no basis to exist here. Perhaps
in Jordan, but not in Israel. It has no land in reality; the Jews will
not erase a single chapter from the Torah, and the Muslims will not
erase a single verse from the Koran. This is holy soil, and we must not
sell it or give it up in negotiations or in return for compensation. The
governments of Israel made a mistake in that instead of talking with
the sheikhs, they talked with the leaders from Tunis. Before Oslo, all
the heads of Palestinian families met and sent a delegation led by
Khaider Abu Shafi, but Israel laughed at them and met with the PLO
without their knowledge. Israel did not contact the real leadership,
which knows the street and the Palestinian population. All the political
organizations – Hamas, Fatah and the Popular Front – are no more than 5
percent of the Palestinian people."
"Recognition
of a Palestinian state violates Islam. Even if the government should
evacuate all the settlements, there will not be peace ... Oslo was a
catastrophe for the Palestinian side as well. If only we might have
stayed in the time before Oslo. Then the situation was better
economically. Today, there is more than 40 percent unemployment ... In
principle, we are a conservative society. Now there is no conservatism.
There is nothing at all.”
The
response to these statements was not long in coming. In a flier that
they issued, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades accused Ja’abari of making light
of the basic rights of the Palestinians, who had made many sacrifices.
His statements against the Palestinian Authority and in favor of the
settlers were made out to be more extreme. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
demanded that Ja’abari’s relatives distance themselves from the sheik
and condemn his statements. They warned that anyone who published an
opposing opinion “would find the barrels of our rifles stronger than he
or his response ... We declare that the man Farid Khader el-Ja’abari is
under our surveillance step by step, and if he does not retract, our
response will be made with guns ... We will not hesitate to take revenge
upon all those who betray the Palestinian issue.”
A man of “not one inch”
Ja’abari
is not to be underestimated. He is no pet Arab or pet sheik. The
constant dialogue that he holds with the army and with the Jews in
Hebron are motivated by a well-thought-out religious doctrine.
Approximately two weeks ago, we spoke with a contact person and asked to
interview him. He agreed, but after a threat from Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, the interview was “temporarily postponed.”
Nevertheless,
we decided to write to him both because he is a major figure in
Palestinian life in Judea and Samaria and because his conflict with the
PA is taking place as the PA is working at the U.N. to declare a
Palestinian state, which Ja’abari sees as a disaster.
He
is a man of “not one inch.” He calls Mahmoud Abbas, who “chatters about
dividing the country,” a crook, and says that he has no authority.
Ja’abari is not willing to give up “even a millimeter of sacred soil,”
not only in Judea and Samaria, but also “in Jerusalem, in Ramle, in Lod
and in Haifa.” On the other hand, Ja’abari is a man of honor and of
coexistence and practicality, a firm opponent of terrorism and violence
who supports dialogue and discourse as values in themselves. Regarding
the Jewish presence in Hebron, he says, “It is an indisputable
historical fact, and so we must find a way to live with each other.”
How
can the contradiction be resolved? How can an ideology held in common
with Hamas about the “wholeness of the land” and an alliance with the
settlers, who wish to wrest the land from Islam’s power and make it
Jewish, live side by side?
One
of the sheik’s close associates, a constant visitor to his home, tries
to explain. “The sheik is a man of truth and is not willing to
participate in games of war and peace. The sheik’s truth is based upon
the Koran, which forbids giving up Islamic land, period. One who gives
up even a centimeter of it – his blood be upon his own head. Therefore,
the formula of evacuating settlements is nonsense. It will solve
nothing. In the same breath, the sheik also remembers the statements of
the Prophet Muhammad, who said that if the enemy wished for silam (half-peace), half-peace could be made with him, a kind of hudna (temporary cease-fire), until you become stronger and can defeat him."
“The
sheik says: I walk in the way of Islam and combine religion with
pragmatism and humanity. He understands that Israel is a fact that
cannot be changed, and says: I want to live with the people here in
mutual respect. I will help them and I will protect them, and they will
help me and protect me. In the end, the Messiah will come. If our Mahdi
comes first, all the Jews will become Muslim. If the Messiah of the Jews
comes first, we will all become Jews.”
Compromise and dialogue
The
sheik has been putting his unique worldview into practice for several
years. Statesmen and generals from both peoples come to see him. He
spends most of his time in arbitration and mediation between Arabs and
Arabs and between Jews and Arabs. In 1978, he left the country to become
a successful contractor in Saudi Arabia. Two years later, his uncle,
Sheik Mohammed Ja’abari, the mayor of Hebron, died, but only in 1994 did
he accede to his family’s command, returning to take up the reins of
the tribe.
Dialogue
groups that include Rabbi Yaakov Meidan of Gush Etzion, Noam Arnon of
Hebron and Malachi Levinger of Kiryat Arba have been started in his home
near the Cave of the Patriarchs. When Eliakim Haetzni was wounded in a
road accident, Ja’abari visited him in the hospital. And when an Arab
contractor who built in Elazar tried to “sting” his customer by
demanding an astronomical price, the Jewish party contacted Ja’abari,
who brokered a compromise between them. Israeli Arabs also contact him,
and Civil Administration and IDF officials see him as the go-to person
when they have a local problem that needs solving. He is considered one
of three clerics in Israel and in the territories who have the power to
stop blood feuds, which are still customary in some segments of Muslim
and Bedouin society.
The
anarchists who operated in Hebron almost drove him out of his mind with
anger. He saw them as instigators and troublemakers, and also as a
danger to Islam because of their permissive ways and immodest manner of
dress. The Jews of Hebron did not like the anarchists in Hebron for
exactly the same reasons, and so an unusual cooperation took place that
led to the placing of an Arabic-speaking Jewish modesty observer in the
streets of the city.
On
the Jewish New Year five years ago, Ja’abari put out a large
conflagration. The Palestinian landlord on which the Hazon David tent
synagogue was erected in Kiryat Arba was about to give the anarchists
power of attorney to evacuate the settlers from it by force. This was
supposed to take place at the height of the New Year holiday. Ja’abari
scuttled the plan. His actions astonished the army, which had tried to
evacuate the outpost from the privately-owned Palestinian lot dozens of
times. Then came the well-publicized meeting with the settlers in the
sheikh’s home, which was attended by additional Arab dignitaries and the
brigade commander of Hebron. The Jewish community in Kiryat Arba gave
the sheikh its own certificate of appreciation.
The
sheikh’s intervention led to a solution to the water problem in the
Givat Ha'Avot neighborhood in Kiryat Arba. A pipe to the neighborhood
was supposed to pass through privately-owned Palestinian land. The
Palestinian Authority threatened the land owner, warning him not to
allow the pipe to go through his land. Once again Ja’abari intervened,
and an agreement between the land owner and the Jewish community
stipulated that the residents of the nearby Arab neighborhood would also
benefit from the water that flowed through the pipe. Instead of
everybody losing, everybody won.
One
of the best-known stories in Hebron, which made a strong impression on
the Arab residents and showed that the relationship between the Jews of
Hebron and Ja’abari’s people had become a kind of covenant, took place
several months ago.
Amir
el-Ja’abari, a 16-year-old youth of the Ja’abari clan, quarreled with a
youth from the Zreir family and was stabbed in the throat. The injured
youth, who lost a great deal of blood, was taken to Al-Ahli Hospital in
Hebron, but his condition deteriorated rapidly. His family decided to
transfer him to an Israeli hospital. The Civil Administration opposed
it, but the medical staff of Kiryat Arba joined in the mission. At a
certain stage, a military ambulance sped after the ambulance of Kiryat
Arba after it received an order from the Civil Administration to return
him to the Palestinian hospital. The Kiryat Arba ambulance ignored the
order, bypassed the IDF checkpoint and sped toward Soroka Hospital. When
hospital officials discovered the patient’s identity, the youth was at
death’s door and about to undergo cranial surgery. The hospital demanded
a financial guarantee of payment. Within an hour, the sheikh
transferred NIS 58,000 to Soroka Hospital. The youth underwent a
difficult operation on his brain from which he never recovered. He died
three days later.
Tribal loyalty
What
sets the Ja’abari clan apart from the rest of the Palestinians in
Hebron is their tribal loyalty. The Ja’abaris have thousands of armed
“representatives” in Hamas and in the PA’s security services, but their
tribal loyalty takes precedence over all other loyalties, and the
sheikh’s word is considered sacred.
When
Ja’abari returned to Israel in 1994 and took up the reins, the
Palestinian Authority entered the area as well. They were two parallel
lines that had difficulty meeting. The clerk with the insignia
represented the Palestinian Authority. The sheikh represented the tribal
authority. After Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened his life, the
sheikh kept silence. Several days later, representatives of Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades came to his door, swearing that the flier was a
forgery. The sheikh investigated. He did not believe them. Now, there is
a tense quiet between the two sides.
What
will he do if a Palestinian state ends up being established after all?
His close associates say that if Israel supports it, he will resign
himself to its existence, “as he resigned himself to the existence of
the Palestinian Authority, all of whose power and existence," he says,
"depend on Israel. If Israel does not support the PA,” the sheik tells
his close associates, “the PA will not last more than two hours. It will
be swept quickly from the streets.”
Jordan's King Abdullah must be feeling awfully insecure.
Jordan's King Abdullah must be feeling awfully insecure.
