Bahjat Abu Gharbiyeh...a fighter whose life is summed up by the Palestinian cause

Bahjat Abu Gharbiyeh was born in the Gaza Strip and grew up in Jerusalem (Al Jazeera)

A Palestinian fighter who witnessed a large part of the history of the British Mandate, and is familiar with the secrets of the occupation of Palestine and Jerusalem, his life sums up the Palestinian issue. He is known as the sheikh of the freedom fighters and mujahideen. His birth coincided with the First World War, where he suffered the bitterness of the British occupation, then the cruelty of the Israeli occupation. He lived a life full of giving and jihad and left it on January 26, 2012 in Amman at the age of 96 years.

Birth and upbringing

Bahjat Alyan Abu Gharbiyya was born in 1916 in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, but he grew up in the city of Jerusalem, which he loved madly, and he lived in its embrace for nearly 50 years. He only left it under duress after the 1967 setback.

His memoirs indicate that he comes from the ancient and famous Abu Gharbiyah family in the city of Hebron, and that his father is Abdul Aziz Alian Abu Gharibiya.

He learned Arabic and Turkish to read and write, traveled to Istanbul and settled there for a few months, and during World War I he was able to obtain a job as a district director (Ottoman administrative governor).

His mother, Fikriya Hassan, was of Turkish origins and immigrated with her family to Palestine and settled in the city of Hebron, where his father married her in 1900, and she gave birth to Bahjat, who was the fourth of his three brothers, Sabri, Rashad, and Nihad. While his father's second wife gave birth to other brothers, Fouad, Shafiq, Hassan, Hussein, and Ihsan.

His father named him Bahjat because of his friendship with Commander Bahjat Bey, one of Jamal Pasha's assistants, commander of the Fourth Turkish Army. The quality of the father’s work made the family move frequently between the cities of Palestine until they settled in Jerusalem, where he spent his childhood and youth years and became a Jerusalemite to the core, and his personal life was mixed with the Palestinian cause and the Arab struggle.

He was greatly influenced by his family upbringing, which instilled in him the spirit of resistance and awareness of the dangers of colonialism and occupation. He remembers how his mother encouraged him to participate in demonstrations and protests, and advised him to be careful so as not to fall into the hands of enemies.

Study and scientific training

He began his academic career in the city of Hebron. In 1923, he joined the Maaref Government School and left after two years because his family moved to Jerusalem.

He joined the government training school and continued his education in the second and third grades of primary school. After the severe earthquake that struck the region in 1927, he joined the city of Haifa and continued his education in the fourth grade of primary school.

After his family returned to Jerusalem in 1928, he joined the Rashidiya School, where he attended the fifth grade of primary school until the second grade of secondary school in 1931. However, because he expected that he might suffer from an eye disease that might prevent him from obtaining a government job, a decision was issued against him requiring him to stop studying and go to school. To learn a craft that guarantees his future.

The choice fell on learning watchmaking in a shop in Jerusalem, and it was a good opportunity not only to learn Hebrew, but also to learn about the ambitions of the Israelis in Palestine.

In 1943, in parallel with his work as an informal teacher in the Ibrahimiyya School, he returned to academic studies, joined the night school of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and extinguished the burn of interruption that had had a major impact on his life.

During his studies, he studied at the hands of national teachers, and received a school education filled with the spirit of struggle, resistance, and longing for independence.

In addition to studying, he loved reading, and it was not strange that he loved books on Sufism, history, revolutions, and literature, to the point that from a young age he learned the details of the French Revolution, the October Socialist Revolution, and the American War of Independence, in addition to the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Hitler.

Struggle experience

Bahjat did not hesitate to attend most of the demonstrations and armed battles against the occupation, as he was injured and thrown into prison several times. He launched his struggle experience by participating on October 13, 1933 in the first major demonstration that roamed the streets of Jerusalem, when he was only 17 years old, in protest against the policies of the British and Jewish immigration, where he was in the front rows.

He was greatly affected by the brutal way in which Britain dealt with the demonstrators, and by the death and injury of dozens of people. He was also pained by the martyrdom of a family friend, Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who paved the way for the Great Palestine Revolution. His reaction was to join secret revolutionary cells and dedicated his life to the armed struggle for the sake of the homeland. .

In the 1936 revolution that broke out against Britain and its policy aimed at encouraging Jewish immigration, he assumed a key position in carrying arms and was tasked with forming a military division that he called the “Freedom Organization.” He tasted the bitterness of arrest for the first time at the beginning of April 1936 as a result of his collision with a British policeman on Jaffa Street and exchanging blows with him.

On June 12, 1936, he participated with his friend Al-Ansari in the assassination of Jerusalem Police Chief Alan Seacrest, an Englishman of Jewish origin, near the Lions’ Gate police station, after planning and waiting for a full month.

He attended the 1939 revolution with all enthusiasm and struggle to resist Britain, which strove to suppress the revolution by assassinating its leaders or imprisoning and exiling them. He also took up arms in the 1947 to 1949 war and contributed to the leadership of the Holy Jihad Army, in addition to his participation in many battles, most notably the Battle of Qastal.

His martial skill made him a reliable leader in the field, and he developed an armed and organizational plan in Jerusalem with Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini (commander of the Holy Jihad Army) during April 1947.

In the following year, following the outbreak of the Battle of Al-Qastal, west of Jerusalem, in April 1948 between Holy Jihad and the Israeli forces, he arrived in Al-Qastal and carried out, along with Jerusalemites, several successful armed operations that ended with tightening the cordon around Jerusalem and protecting it from the grip of Israel. However, the joy was not complete due to the martyrdom of Al-Husseini, who He was buried in Jerusalem.

He was forced to search for another field of struggle after ending his relationship with the leadership of the Holy Jihad Army in March 1949. He joined the Arab Socialist Baath Party between 1949 and 1959.

His joining the party was an essential milestone in his political career, and he was elected a member of the party’s regional leadership in Jordan, where he was arrested several times during the 1950s. He disappeared from sight between 1957 and 1959, then he was imprisoned in Jordan between 1960 and 1962, then he was released with a general amnesty.

He joined the administrative body of the Hotel Workers Union in Jerusalem from 1962-1963, then joined the ranks of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and gained his membership in its first executive committee in 1964. His relationship with the leadership of the organization became tense, especially because of his position rejecting the Oslo Accords. On October 21, 1991, he submitted his resignation from the organization based on its agreement to engage in the peace process.

He tried to form a nucleus for the resistance during the defeat of 1967, and despite his forced departure from Jerusalem, he played a role in supporting the guerrillas in Jordan. He also later moved from battles in the field to resisting all forms of normalization.

Jobs and responsibilities

In addition to the teaching job that he practiced in the Ibrahimiyya School, he entered the world of journalism and practiced the profession in 1937. He was a correspondent for the newspaper of the Islamic University of Jerusalem, which was published in Jaffa, and he became a name that competed with major journalists such as Shukri Qatina, agent of the “Defense” newspaper, and Farah Al-Sayegh, agent of the newspaper. Palestine".

He participated in publishing a map revealing the plan of England and Israel to move the Palestinian railway junction from the city of Lod to the suburbs of Tel Aviv. This scoop resulted in a media uproar, which led to the abandonment of the entire project.

During his youth, he participated in the scouting movement, and was a leader and coach at the Ibrahimi School, then in a number of sports clubs and paramilitary organizations.

The struggle experience enabled him to assume positions and responsibilities, most notably his membership several times in the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, especially in the years 1964-1965, and between 1967-1969.

He joined the leadership of the armed struggle in Amman, and became a member of the leadership of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front between 1968 and 1991, and a member of the Palestinian National Council and the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, but he resigned from it in 1991 due to the National Council’s approval of Resolution 242, which recognized Israel and required entry into Negotiations with them. At the same time, he joined the National Arab Democratic Rally in Jordan between 1990 and 1992.

He served as Chairman of the Arab-Jordanian Committee to Confront Normalization between 1993 and 1995, and became a member of the Executive Committee of the Jordanian National Conference to Protect the Homeland and Confront Normalization.

Writings and achievements

He collected the juices of his struggle and struggle in two-thousand-page memoirs, addressed to future generations, to convey to them the message that fathers and grandfathers fought honorably for the freedom of the Arab nation.

In 1993, he published the first part of his memoirs, titled “In the Midst of the Palestinian Arab Struggle 1916-1948,” in which he discussed in detail the events of an important era in the history of Palestine and the march of resistance of its people from the declaration of the Balfour Declaration until the signing of the Arab-Israeli armistice agreements in 1949.

As for the second part of the memoirs, it was published in 2004 under the title “From the Nakba to the Second Intifada 1949-2000,” and it was devoted to talking about his participation in the Arab Baath Party, his struggle with the Jordanian National Movement, and his membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization and other organizations in which he worked. He also touched on it. With all courage and detail, it covers important facts and events in the history of the Palestinian cause during the Nakba period.

His death

Bahjat Abu Ghraibah died in Amman on January 26, 2012, after a long struggle for Palestine. He died full of hope that the occupation would end and the State of Palestine would be established.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites