Posted on: 2002

By Sami Rami

The late Faisal Abd al-Qader Husseini, as the head of the Orient House in East Jerusalem–occupied by Israel in June 1967–and PLO Executive Member in charge of Jerusalem File, used to tell foreign dignitaries who visited him at his office in the Orient House– which Israel reoccupied on orders from Sharon in the summer of 2001– that Israel should ultimately accept the fact that undivided Jerusalem is the capital of two states: East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and West Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in 1948 outside the UN partition plan of November 29, 1947—as Israel’s capital.

Husseini, more often reminded his visitors, including Israeli peace groups, that Arabs accounted for 70 percent of West Jerusalem’s property. The Arab residential quarters of Qatamon, Talbieh, Baqa’a, and the villages of Ein Karem, El Malha, and DeirYassin. Arabs remember the later village as the ground of a horrible and premeditated Zionist massacre against civilian population.  While Abd al-Qader Husseini was battling successfully the Haganah at the Castel, eighty Zionist terrorists from Irgun and Stern Gang, on orders from Menachem Begin, attacked in April 9,48 the village of Deir Yassin killing in cold blood at least 100 Arabs (reports at the time said as many as 250), including children and pregnant women. The gruesome massacre of Deir Yassin was widely publicized intentionally by the Zionists, causing a wave of unprecedented panic and demoralization to spread through Arab Palestine. About 60,000 Palestinians fled the western section of the City of Jerusalem.

But four days later Arabs retaliated. Palestinian irregulars ambushed Haganah escorted convoy to the Hadassah Hospital; 39 Jews and 6 Palestinians were killed.

Accordingly, the British authority in Palestine, and Jerusalem in particular, had totally collapsed. And on May 14 Sir Alan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner, left Jerusalem for the last time, and the mandate was terminated.

On May 16,1948 King Abdullah, overriding Brigadier Glubb (Pasha), the British commander of the Arab Legion, ordered the Arab Legion back to Jerusalem. The next day, he telegraphed to the UN Secretary General:

We were compelled to enter Palestine to protect unarmed Arabs against massacres similar to those of Deir Yassin. We are aware of our national duty towards Palestine in general and Jerusalem in particular and also Nazareth and Bethlehem. Be sure that we shall be very considerate in connection with Jews in Palestine while maintaining at the same time the full right of the Arabs in Palestine. Zionism did not react to our offers made before the entry of our armed forces.

At 11:30 a.m. on May 17, Glubb was ordered by King Abdullah to “ advance towards Jerusalem from the direction of Ramallah”. As a matter of fact, Jerusalem was the area in which the King turned down all British and Zionist attempts for reaching a compromise on its Arab identity.

A cease-fire agreement came into effect on November 30, 1948 giving the first acknowledgement of the de facto division of Jerusalem. An Armistice Agreement was formalized on April 3, 1949, but considered at the international level to have had no legal effect on the UN partition plan of November 29, 1947 under which Jerusalem and its surrounding villages were envisioned as acorpus separatum. 

According to the final report of the UN Conciliation Commission (UNCCP) Land Expert, the total area of Jerusalem Sub district (excluding Hebron and Ramallah) was estimated at 296,943 dunums of which 222,482 (74.59%) dunums owned by Arabs. The remaining was considered to be Government, public, and Jewish properties. The figures of UNCCP were not specific on Arab and Jewish properties of West Jerusalem, which came under Israeli control in 1948. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) “ Village Statistics 1945” estimated the total area of Jerusalem, prior to 1948, at 20,790 metric dunums, of which 16,261 dunums (80.5 %) fell in 1948 under Israeli occupation.