California Contractor Describes Israeli-Palestinian Showdown in Gaza

by Pat McDonnell Twair

Construction of the Gaza International Airport has been underway for months, but it was only when 400 dignitaries arrived at the site for the Jan. 18 dedication ceremonies that the Israelis realized the Palestinians actually are going to have an airport.

"The ambassadors from Egypt and Morocco were on hand for the ceremonies, and I guess that when the Israelis viewed aerial shots of the airport, reality set in" recalled Mahmoud El Farra, whose company is in charge of building the airport. "They took a look at the foundation being laid for the terminal and they went berserk."

Israeli commanders ordered the crew to stop working. Orders were issued to Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat that the terminal could not be constructed in autonomous Gaza, but would have to be moved inside the "yellow section" closest to the Israeli border. This area, the Israelis claim, is under Israeli security.

According to Gaza-born California businessman El Farra, the Palestinian construction crew paid no attention to Israeli commands. As soon as Israeli authorities would withdraw, bulldozers resumed their work and so did building crews. "If an Israeli military vehicle would drive on the runway, the bulldozers would dig on either side of it so it had nowhere to go but backwards," El Farra explained.

Soon Israeli and Palestinian teams on the highest level were meeting three times a day to work out the controversy. As tensions mounted, El Farra says, about 500 Israeli troops faced the airport, while as many Palestinian police looked down the barrels of their machine guns at the Israelis. For more than one week, a showdown seemed imminent.

Palestinian commanders decided to place the bulldozers and tractors between the opposing troops. Then, El Farra said, the engineers and drivers insisted that they, not soldiers, face the enemy astride their construction vehicles.

The standoff cooled down after the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat met to work out some compromise.

"The Israelis may have the power to control immigration into Palestine, but they can't physically put their military forces in our airport," El Farra stated unequivocally. "If it comes to an Israeli occupation of our airport, 100,000 Palestinians will go there to pray and to protect our equipment and workers. Let them come and see what our reaction will be."

El Farra anticipates more Israeli interference before the runway is completed in May of this year. The entire airport is scheduled to open next December.

"You can't imagine how proud our people are of their airport," the California contractor, who originally was from Khan Younis, said. "The people are telling the Israelis enough is enoughlet us live the way we want tostop trying to control us.

"We know we will prevail. It is imperative. The Israelis have alternatives. We do not."

LA Library Collects Photos of Middle East Immigrants

Los Angeles is the ultimate international city, with more ethnic groups living within its boundaries than any metropolis in history. What's more, it is estimated that of the nine million people living in Los Angeles County, roughly 33 percent are foreign-born. Perhaps for this reason, the refurbished historic Central Library in downtown Los Angeles decided to establish a photo archive containing family photos of the diverse racial and cultural groups who have emigrated here. Dubbed "Shades of L.A.," the project is directed by Carolyn Cole. The first drive for family photoswhich are copied and returned to participantswas directed toward Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander groups. The second appeal for photos focused on people of Middle Eastern origins who have settled in Los Angeles; the library defined them as Arabs, Armenians, Iranians, Israelis, Turks and Jews.

A culmination of the second "Shades of L.A." project was a symposium at the library, entitled "From Albums to Archives," at which six academics and project participants discussed the photos, their selection and significance to the community at large.

The most enthusiastic response to the project came from the Armenian community, stated Sylva Manoogian, department manager of international languages at the Central Library.

Manoogian touched on her own arrival at Ellis Island in 1946. The non-English speaking fourth-grader was put into a remedial class, but within one year her love for words in the new language she rapidly learned amazed educators.

Noting the Los Angeles-Glendale-Pasadena area is the heartland of the Armenian diaspora, Manoogian said the community supports 40 churches and 20 schools. The archivist stressed that libraries have been an integral part of Armenian history. Once the Armenian alphabet was created in 402 A.D., libraries were institutionalized, often as part of monasteries.

The initial speaker was Jonathan Friedlander, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. He pointed out the oldest Middle Eastern community in Los Angeles is made up of Jews who established a religious congregation on Wilshire Boulevard as early as 1862.

Friedlander said the first Arabs who settled in the United States were often identified as Turks or Armenians. He added that Armenians began to arrive in California, particularly the Fresno area, in the first two decades of the 20th century; whereas Muslim Arabs began emigrating from the Middle East after World War II. Initially, Friedlander said, some Palestinian refugees arrived after 1948. In the 1960s, male laborers from North Yemen came to the San Joaquin Valley to work on farms. The last wave of Arab immigrants were professionals who began arriving in the 1970s.

Explaining that Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran, Friedlander said this ranges from Iranian Kurds and Azeris to Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians, Assyrians and Baha'is.

He noted the Turkish community is the smallest Middle Eastern group in Los Angeles, but its members still responded to the library's call for family photos.

More than three-quarters of a million people of Middle Eastern origins live in Los Angeles, Friedlander concluded, but they have not united as a bloc nor have they made as strong an impact on the city as the Mexican, Korean or Japanese communities.

UCLA anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi took exception to Jews being included in a Middle Eastern category. "Jews don't fit, they represent Eastern Europe," she commented. "And if Jews are a category in this grouping, then why aren't Muslims?"

Taking an academic approach to the selection of émigré photos, El Guindi said the photo collection should weigh the intent of the donor and the means of selection by the library staff. A missing genre in the collection, she noted, is ethnic art. (An article by anthropologist El Guindi concerning the exhibit will be published in the May/June Washington Report.)

In closing, El Guindi showed slides of three Israeli photos: an infant being circumcised, a toddler in red beret and military fatigues brandishing a toy Uzi, and an Israeli soldier and religious youth with forelocks and black orthodox garb jumping up and down on a military tank.

When a member of the audience criticized El Guindi for her selection of Israeli photos, she responded that no photo submitted by an Arab contained a military motif be it a gun, uniform or soldier.

Other speakers were Steve Gold, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University; Wendy Meryem Kural Shaw, Ph.D. candidate in art history at UCLA; and Ali Behdad, associate professor of comparative literature and English at UCLA.

An analysis of the speakers' presentations was offered by Sheila Pinkel, associate professor of art at Pomona College.

In response to El Guindi's comments, Pinkel stressed the collection is not a scientific research project. And, after sorting through the 6,000 to 7,000 photos, she found that what was not represented was of significance. But then, she asked rhetorically, how could a photo reveal the oppression, the overwork, and the over-crowded conditions in which early immigrants lived and worked?

"The absence of this dimension is not surprising," she continued, "because these photos reflect memories these people wanted to include in their family albums."

Pinkel criticized the Jewish contributors for failing to make any reference to the Holocaust or their East European context. On the other hand, she praised the Armenians for the ability to trace the evolution of families through generations and their photos that reflected the horrors of their genocide at the hands of the Turks. Pinkel voiced regret over the absence of dynamics between Middle Eastern groups and wondered if newspapers from each community might not complement each group's photos.

(Following the seminar, the writer notified project director Cole and Sylva Manoogian Feb. 10 that she could supply the Los Angeles County Central Library with bilingual publications of the Arab community in Los Angeles for the past 25 years. Subsequently, Michael Hopper, head of the Middle Eastern Division of Harvard University's Widener Library, has communicated his acceptance of the offer.)

Christian Leaders Convene at Jerusalem Conference

The Rev. Darrell Meyers, who chairs the Southern California Middle East Fellowship, joined 250 other delegates to a January conference in Jerusalem entitled "The Significance of Jerusalem for Christians and Significance of Christians for Jerusalem." Since his return, he has been speaking to local organizations about the May deadline set for the beginning of final-stage negotiations to determine the Holy City's future.

"It was pointed out to us," Reverend Meyers stressed, "that ground has been broken for the final settlement of Har Homa (Jabal Ghneim) which, if constructed, will complete a ring of cement around Jerusalem."

Each Sunday, worried Christians assemble on the Jabal Ghneim hillside and conduct religious services to call attention to the threat looming over the last piece of Palestinian land bordering Jerusalem. "Environmentally, the settlement would be a disasterit will remove whatever forestation remains on the fringes of Jerusalem," Rev. Meyers noted.

He met with Jad Issak, the leader of environmental issues on the Palestinian negotiating team. "If we can forestall settlement plans until May, we have a chance of saving Jabal Ghneim," Issak told him.

And if the Israelis push ahead with their plans?

"I'll be the first to stand in front of the bulldozers," Issak answered.

Venue for the conference was the YMCA building in East Jerusalem. However, owing to Israeli refusal to permit Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to enter Jerusalem, Rev. Meyers said, conferees often took their sessions to Christians unable to attend in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Lyda and Ramle.

"It was important to let these isolated townspeople know not all Christians are pro-Israel fundamentalists," Rev. Meyers concluded.

AAPG Hosts Arabic Poetry Festival

Poetry may be an esoteric field of literature in the West, but it is an essential and highly popular aspect of Arab culture. And for Southern Californian Arabs separated from their homelands, the poetry festival presented each year by the Arab American Press Guild is a much-anticipated event. This year's turnout of more than 300 poetry lovers was the largest in the AAPG's 11-year history. Seventeen poets from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt read selections from their works in the social hall of St. George Syrian Orthodox Church in San Fernando City.

A special plaque of appreciation was presented to Hasib al-Jouhari, an Arab American who makes his home in California, Venezuela and Lebanon. Al-Jouhari's poetry has been published for four decades; his latest volume is in press.

In his introduction, AAPG President Samir Twair stressed that in the two centuries preceding Islam, poetry played a critical role in preserving the Arabic language. Thereafter, the language retained its purity in the words of the holy Qur'an. Arabic, Twair explained, developed in the Fertile Crescent along with other Semitic languages. The origins of poetry can be traced as far back as the earliest known epic, Gilgamesh, from Mesopotamia, modern Iraq.

Poetry inspired ancient civilizations that rose between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Twair said. Much later, Arabic poetry reached its heights in the mouwashahat that combined music and singing in Andalusia and the qudud of Aleppo.

"Poetry can mirror the heart of a nation," Twair continued. He offered, for example, the poetry of Chile's Pablo Neruda. Closer to home, he said, the famous Arab-American broadcaster Casey Kasem has said he first came to appreciate the power of the human voice as he listened to his father and his friends recite Arabic poetry for hours at a time during weekends in Detroit.

"Poets influence our culture, our literature and our lives," Twair concluded, "and we should help them in every way."

In this spirit, he recommended that efforts should be undertaken to found an Arab American Poets Society.

A highlight of the program was a performance by the Kan Zaman folkloric troupe led by Maestro Wael Kakish. Fourteen members of the ensemble sang poetry and performed music for a half hour, offering selections from Andalusian mouwashahat. Yusef Elias Haddad was master of ceremonies.

Participating with al-Jouhari were poets Dr. Jihad Batah, Bilal Haidous, Solomon Saddi, Salah Kanakri, Suhad Rashad, George Harmoush, Maher Fayad, Moussa Chahla, Mirhij Grair, Muaza Kifah al-Aridi and Ibrahim Suwidan.