Summary
Palestinian communist of the National Liberation League, one of the twelve comrades found by Israeli soldiers in the Abu ‘Ujayla detention camp in Sinai at the end of December 1948, whose imprisonment in Israel, release in June 1949, and five-year struggle to reunite his family — smuggled in from Hebron, hidden in comrades’ and Knesset members’ houses, a daughter born in secret in August 1952 — Manna tells in Chapter 5, in the section headed The Story of “The Prisoner” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.204-207).
Details
- Al-‘Ashhab and his comrades — Salim al-Qasim, Hasan Abu ‘Isha, As’ad Makki, ‘Ali ‘Ashur and Muhammad Khas among them — had been arrested by the Egyptians after distributing leaflets attacking the Arab armies’ intervention in Palestine; instead of medals for fighting for partition, they were moved from Abu ‘Ujayla via Beersheba to the POW camp at Ijlil, and admitted in their testimonies that they were well treated compared with other Arab prisoners, an officer’s treatment of them changing when Hasan Abu ‘Isha identified the communist married to a Jewish woman as “our comrade Jabra Nicola and his wife, comrade Eliza” — the officer’s sister (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.204-205).
- MK Meir Vilner raised their case in the Knesset and Maki and Mapam members pressed for their release; the twelve were freed as a group at the end of June 1949 and welcomed in Nazareth by League activists led by Saliba Khamis (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.204-206).
- Al-‘Ashhab settled in Haifa working on the party newspaper; his family-reunification application for his wife Mariam and daughter, who had remained in Hebron, was rejected repeatedly, Immigration Minister Haim Moshe Shapira telling the Knesset the family had never been permanent residents of a region now in Israel; he meanwhile paid a man from Sandala to smuggle them in, and Mariam lived in hiding for years, giving birth to Shadya at Rambam Hospital on 20 August 1952 without papers or a birth certificate, and later hiding in Jaffa and in MK Moshe Sneh’s Tel Aviv house (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.206-207).
- In 1954 Maki leaders brought the family to the Knesset with a prepared account and a sit-in banner; Prime Minister Moshe Sharett called Police Minister Shitrit and asked him to resolve the case immediately, and it was settled quickly (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.207).
- Chapter 3 (part 4) also used al-‘Ashhab’s memoir for the Habibi–Mikunis visas and Belgrade trip (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.128).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, National Liberation League, Maki, Saliba Khamis, Tawfiq Tubi