From afar, the seventieth pilgrim Rizkallah Aqtash (Abu Amjad) stood staring with his eyes sunken into his face and his sharp eyesight despite his old age, at young men digging a grave near the entrance to his village Beita, south of Nablus, in the West Bank. He used to do the same thing one day, but as a preparation for burying a martyr and not to take him out, as is the case now.
Recently, Israel began constructing a settlement road south of Nablus to connect its settlements there to each other, and after distributing the new road maps and aerial photos to the Beita village council, it became clear that it was cutting the grave of the Jordanian martyr, so they rushed to move it before it was buried after formal coordination with the Palestinian and Jordanian authorities.
For more than half a century, the story of the "unidentified" Jordanian soldier buried near Nablus by Sheikh Aqtash, his father, and his siblings, like other dozens of Jordanian rebels who sacrificed their blood in defense of Palestine in its war against the Israeli occupation in June 1967.
Cold-blooded execution
Hajj Rizkallah led us to the grave of the Jordanian martyr in the land of "Al-Saffaih", and there he told us a story that he is still the only witness to among his family members. His father and his brothers who helped him bury the martyr at that time all died. He said, "Here, Israeli soldiers got off and took from one of their military jeeps a handcuffed man and put a sack on his head, then threw him to the ground and shot him."
For some time - according to Hajj Rizkallah - the man continued to bleed without any of the soldiers moving a finger, and they did not leave him until they were sure of his death.
The martyr was lying on the ground for several days, and no one was able to approach him for fear of being shot by the occupation soldiers. On the 20th day, they managed to reach him, and in a hurry they dug a grave for him and buried him in the same place, after noticing that his body was decomposing, Aqtash said.
The unknown soldier
Al-Hajj Rizkallah says that they searched the martyr and did not find in his possession any identification papers in his name or what identifies him, so they called his grave the unknown "Jordanian" soldier, adding that he was a Jordanian soldier, but they did not know his exact name.
The story that the Palestinians are circulating in that area says that the Israeli army captured 4 Jordanian soldiers who were fighting alongside the Palestinians in a village south of Nablus, and transported them with military vehicles to different areas, and later executed them, each one on his own, far from the others.
On this basis, Mrs. Amna Dagher (Umm Muhammad) and her family came from the village of Kafr Thulth in the district of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, to search for any traces of her uncle, the Jordanian soldier, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Dagher, who was one of the missing in that war.
Amna told Al-Jazeera Net that they had received promises to conduct a DNA test to determine the identity of the martyr, especially since they have been searching for many years for a thread that gives them hope to know where he is buried and that his remains were transferred to their cemetery, and she added, "Even if the martyr was not My uncle, this is a great honor for us to participate in his funeral. "
A majestic funeral
At 3 pm on Thursday afternoon, the Palestinians were able to take out the remains of the martyr and transfer them in a military funeral, in the presence of the official Palestinian and Jordanian, represented by the governor of Nablus, leaders of the security services and the Jordanian ambassador to the Palestinian territories, in addition to high-ranking Jordanian military leaders, to the martyrs' cemetery in the town of Beita.
The martyr - who was wrapped in the Jordanian flag - was carried on the shoulders of the Palestinian mourners, before being buried in the martyrs' cemetery. The Palestinian and Jordanian national anthems were played, and speeches were made of mourning for the martyr and others urging the virtues of martyrs and those who died in defense of Palestine and that Jordan and Palestine are one people and country.
The youths wore T-shirts bearing the Palestinian and Jordanian flags intertwined with each other, and hung the flags of the two countries on lighting poles in the town of Beta and its main street, in addition to pictures of the Jordanian king and the Palestinian president.
Fuad Maali, head of the municipal council in Beita - to Al-Jazeera Net - said that they rushed in coordination with the various Palestinian and Jordanian authorities to transfer the body, when the occupation army notified them of the road.
He added, "We preferred to transfer the martyr to the village cemetery so that later it could be transferred to Jordan in the event that he was identified." He pointed out that all the evidence and information they gathered confirms that he is a Jordanian martyr, and that the presence of the Jordanian military and official delegation confirms this.
one nation
In his comment to Al-Jazeera Net, the Governor of Nablus, Major General Ibrahim Ramadan, said that it is not permissible to say Shaaban is Palestinian and Jordanian, but rather, “We are one people.” He added that no one will know the secret of this relationship unless he is Palestinian or Jordanian, “This blood and land is one”, and alive Jordan is a king, people and government, for all their positions in support of the Palestinians.
Several tombs
And spread in various Palestinian territories individual and collective graves of Jordanian and Arab martyrs, who were martyred in several battles to defend the Palestinian land, whether during the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 or the occupation of the West Bank in 1967.
Palestinian researcher and notary on heritage issues, Anwar Dawabsheh, says that Palestine contains about 36 sites that contain cemeteries for Jordanian martyrs, especially in the occupied city of Jerusalem and its environs. And their burial here is due to various reasons, the most important of which is the state of laxity that the war front was suffering, the communication cuts, as well as the weak political position at the time.
He explained to Al-Jazeera Net that no one can deny the role of the Jordanian volunteers, especially the tribesmen who came to defend Palestine, as is the case in the battles of "Bab Al-Wad" and "Al-Latrun" in Jerusalem, "and this indicates the cohesion and unity of race and blood."
As he was leaving the grave he dug with his hands 50 years ago, Haji Rizkallah Aqtash was looking behind him saying goodbye to the martyr who throughout those years had visited him and read al-Fatihah on his soul, and he said with tears surrounding his eyeballs: “I was hoping to move him from my first land, where he is now, to the cemetery near My home is in my second land, to continue my loyalty to him. "