years by the fellahin.
Ibrahim watched with mounting tension as his own landowner, Fawzi Kabir, sold off parcel after parcel in the Ayalon Valley until all that was left was Tabah and a few outlying villages.
Suddenly the land sales stopped. Tabah had been spared. Why, Ibrahim wondered? Tabah’s fields were the richest in the valley and would certainly bring a king’s ransom. Fawzi Kabir did not do it out of kindness.
Ibrahim brooded about this as he had never brooded in his life. Slowly it began to occur to him. Kabir was in constant strife with other great Palestinian families for financial and political control of the country. Tabah sat in a preeminent strategic position. Any takeover by one of the dominant Arab families would require a consolidation from Jerusalem to the key Arab towns of Ramle and Lydda. Tabah blocked that ambition. In order to control Palestine itself, someone would have to make a deal with Fawzi Kabir.
One day Farouk came up to the knoll to remind his brother that Fawzi Kabir would soon be making his annual trip to Jaffa to collect his rents. Farouk looked forward to the trip as the highlight of the year, for it meant a week in the fleshpots of Jaffa.
‘Go to Jaffa,’ Ibrahim told his brother, ‘and see Kabir. Tell him that if he wants to collect his rents he is to come to Tabah for them.’
‘You are telling the mountain to come to Mohammed! He will sell everything out from under us, if he doesn’t have us slaughtered first.’
Ibrahim smiled sweetly. ‘He will come,’ he said.
7
F AWZI K ABIR WAS AN Ottoman remnant who still carried the old Turkish title of Effendi. For well over a century the Kabirs had been one of the most powerful families in the Palestine district. Their loyal service to the sultans in Istanbul had been generously rewarded. The Kabir clan had been granted, or otherwise acquired, over a million dunams of land in various parcels from Gaza in the south to the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
The Kabirs had made Damascus, administrative capital of the province, their home and headquarters since the beginning of the century. In Damascus there was always room for one more Kabir in a lucrative government post, and sons, cousins, and other relatives were deeply integrated into the Establishment. When the Turks were forced out of the region, the Kabir fortunes declined.
The French were now in Damascus and could be dealt with. They knew the oblique art of giving and getting favors and ‘how the world worked.’ While the Kabirs continued to fare well under French control in Syria and Lebanon, the Palestine district was another matter. British civil servants, for the most part, kept business aboveboard and free of bribery.
Since the British had taken control of the mandate, Fawzi Kabir had been receiving bills for taxes and petitions from his villagers for things like better roads, schools, and farming methods. A couple of Christian Arab villages asked for clinics and one had the temerity to inquire about electricity.
Fawzi Kabir had paid virtually no taxes under the Turks and, in turn, the Turks had given virtually no services to a peasantry that walked a tightrope over a chasm of destitution.
Kabir had political troubles in Palestine as well. His archrival for power, Haj Amin al Heusseini, who had fled to escape a fifteen-year prison sentence, returned. The British not only exonerated him, they appointed him the Mufti of Jerusalem, the highest Islamic post in the mandate.
Another political enemy popped up in the form of Abdullah, who had been brought from the Arabian Peninsula by the British and crowned Emir of the newly formed state of Trans-Jordan. Abdullah harbored ambitions of annexing Palestine to his kingdom.
With his agricultural income shrinking, a British demand for taxes, demands of the villagers for schools and roads, and serious political enemies, Fawzi Kabir went into a reevaluation.
It was the Jews who salvaged his Palestine situation. After the world war,
Ibrahim watched with mounting tension as his own landowner, Fawzi Kabir, sold off parcel after parcel in the Ayalon Valley until all that was left was Tabah and a few outlying villages.
Suddenly the land sales stopped. Tabah had been spared. Why, Ibrahim wondered? Tabah’s fields were the richest in the valley and would certainly bring a king’s ransom. Fawzi Kabir did not do it out of kindness.
Ibrahim brooded about this as he had never brooded in his life. Slowly it began to occur to him. Kabir was in constant strife with other great Palestinian families for financial and political control of the country. Tabah sat in a preeminent strategic position. Any takeover by one of the dominant Arab families would require a consolidation from Jerusalem to the key Arab towns of Ramle and Lydda. Tabah blocked that ambition. In order to control Palestine itself, someone would have to make a deal with Fawzi Kabir.
One day Farouk came up to the knoll to remind his brother that Fawzi Kabir would soon be making his annual trip to Jaffa to collect his rents. Farouk looked forward to the trip as the highlight of the year, for it meant a week in the fleshpots of Jaffa.
‘Go to Jaffa,’ Ibrahim told his brother, ‘and see Kabir. Tell him that if he wants to collect his rents he is to come to Tabah for them.’
‘You are telling the mountain to come to Mohammed! He will sell everything out from under us, if he doesn’t have us slaughtered first.’
Ibrahim smiled sweetly. ‘He will come,’ he said.
7
F AWZI K ABIR WAS AN Ottoman remnant who still carried the old Turkish title of Effendi. For well over a century the Kabirs had been one of the most powerful families in the Palestine district. Their loyal service to the sultans in Istanbul had been generously rewarded. The Kabir clan had been granted, or otherwise acquired, over a million dunams of land in various parcels from Gaza in the south to the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
The Kabirs had made Damascus, administrative capital of the province, their home and headquarters since the beginning of the century. In Damascus there was always room for one more Kabir in a lucrative government post, and sons, cousins, and other relatives were deeply integrated into the Establishment. When the Turks were forced out of the region, the Kabir fortunes declined.
The French were now in Damascus and could be dealt with. They knew the oblique art of giving and getting favors and ‘how the world worked.’ While the Kabirs continued to fare well under French control in Syria and Lebanon, the Palestine district was another matter. British civil servants, for the most part, kept business aboveboard and free of bribery.
Since the British had taken control of the mandate, Fawzi Kabir had been receiving bills for taxes and petitions from his villagers for things like better roads, schools, and farming methods. A couple of Christian Arab villages asked for clinics and one had the temerity to inquire about electricity.
Fawzi Kabir had paid virtually no taxes under the Turks and, in turn, the Turks had given virtually no services to a peasantry that walked a tightrope over a chasm of destitution.
Kabir had political troubles in Palestine as well. His archrival for power, Haj Amin al Heusseini, who had fled to escape a fifteen-year prison sentence, returned. The British not only exonerated him, they appointed him the Mufti of Jerusalem, the highest Islamic post in the mandate.
Another political enemy popped up in the form of Abdullah, who had been brought from the Arabian Peninsula by the British and crowned Emir of the newly formed state of Trans-Jordan. Abdullah harbored ambitions of annexing Palestine to his kingdom.
With his agricultural income shrinking, a British demand for taxes, demands of the villagers for schools and roads, and serious political enemies, Fawzi Kabir went into a reevaluation.
It was the Jews who salvaged his Palestine situation. After the world war,
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