Jerusalem after the "Faisaliah Era"

Written by: Jawad Boulos

As every year, twenty-one years ago, the month of May arrives in Jerusalem, and with it memories of the smell of salt hidden in the cracks of time, and the sad sounds of flutes that flow into faint whispers in the veins of the stones of its walls. Jerusalem, the abode of angels and the abode of wrath, does not know the taste of sorrow, nor what remorse should be like; She is the daughter of that eternity, falling asleep on his sacred heavenly horns and waking up like a frightened deer of legends after the hustle and bustle of a brutal hunting party.

It is Jerusalem, to which I return at the end of every spring, tired of the treachery of the seasons and the farewell of loved ones. May he sneaks, with his proud giggles, to where the burners of hope are, leaving on its walls the sighs of its slaughtered dawn and the mutterings of widows and their torments. Mayarna, when we used to match hammers to machetes, was a well for the sweat of the poor, the simple, and the toiling, and an artery for their pure blood. Since “the people of the East ate their breasts,” the month of oppression and death has come to remind us of our ignorance and absent wisdom, and to heal the open wound of Jerusalem, since Faisal al-Husseini, the protector of her dreams, traveled And we develop its castles, on his last journey towards those treacherous deserts.

The memory of Faisal Al-Husseini's departure will remain while he was at the peak of his activity and gave him a taste of renewed bitterness. This is not because we expected, at the time, that his heavy loss would not only be compensated, but rather because we felt that his absence, in the complex circumstances faced by the city of Jerusalem in particular, imposed a logical question about who were the beneficiaries of the incident of his departure and getting rid of his pivotal role in successfully confronting most of the machinations. Which was woven against Jerusalem and against its status as a Palestinian capital, imposed by Faisal and the Jerusalemites with him on the world's conscience and in daily life.

This would not have been possible had it not been for Faisal’s distinctive qualities and insightful and determined vision of the necessity of building the unifying Palestinian national Jerusalemite identity and bestowing it on all the residents of the city, who infiltrated it, with satisfaction and pride, and acted to protect it and defend it in the face of the Israeli occupation, and in front of all its enemies from abroad. and tucked in. Why Faisal?

It is easy to answer, as many have often done; Because he was a pure person par excellence, a gentle, shrewd and wise political interlocutor, and a fierce and stubborn fighter for the dignity and freedoms of the Jerusalemites. All the streets and squares of Jerusalem testified to Faisal. And I knew him in all the international platforms in which he was received with great respect and apparent hospitality, just as he should receive a leader who knows how to harness all his limbs and tentacles in order to win the battle or avoid the expected defeat.

Faisal possessed all of these qualities, but he deliberately fertilized them with additional “Faisalian” characteristics that brought him into the hearts of the Palestinians, and of course all Jerusalemites, and enabled him to become the beloved Knight of Jerusalem, the protector of its faithful umbrella, and the officer of its national ruler, whose “code” drew the boundaries between betrayal and its opposite.
Among those advantages was his conviction that differences in Palestinian viewpoints are a normal and acceptable phenomenon, provided that these differences do not turn into disputes that tamper with the single Palestinian body and destroy the foundations of its struggle, which must remain directed and unified against the Israeli occupation. Faisal, with his sophistication, integrity, and integrity, sought to embody this conviction in Jerusalem, and succeeded in bringing together all political factions and forces, national and Islamic, under one umbrella.

Faisal exercised his leadership with the guidance of what is called in the world of modern politics "the entity of the supreme state", or the supra-factional or partisan practice; Or what is known idiomatically as statehood, which is one of the unfamiliar terms in the lives of Arab peoples and regimes, for understandable reasons, of course.

And because he believed in the vitality of work according to this principle and prioritizing it over all traditional incentives, he deliberately, during his political career, not to take advantage of the influence of his prestigious family lineage, and to always appear as an independent person as Faisal Al-Husseini, bearing in mind that he was proud of his struggling father, the well-known leader Abdul Qadir, and the history of the Al-Husseini family, which is well-known. through decades. Even his "conquest" was a militant political identity devoid of any recognizable factional adolescence. Faisal chose to be the son of all of Palestine, the servant of its sanctity and the eternally haunted, and a popular leader at the forefront of the squares, like a shield and like a spear together. Because he simply believed that whoever fears and lowers the ranks, taking refuge in the breasts of the youth of Palestine while defying the arrogance of the occupation, is not worthy of being their leader.
Faisal and the theory of deterrence and raising the Palestinian flag,,,

I do not know how many of those who discussed the phenomenon of Israeli brutality, police and popular gangs, against those who raise the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem and inside Israel, know the history of this phenomenon and its defining stations. But I will recall, in this haste, one of those beautiful stations, especially as we write about the features of the "Faisaliah" era.

Faisal confronted Israel's policy in East Jerusalem on several fronts and through several means. And he relied on the field to follow what he called the "positive deterrence" approach, which led to the abortion of many of Israel's hostile plans. The battle against the order to close the Orient House in 1999 may be the most prominent of those cases in which Jerusalem demonstrated the importance of its true readiness to resist the occupation and the meaning of its people rallying around Faisal al-Husseini and his companions in the leadership. I will not, in this haste, address that incident and will suffice to point out that intended deterrence sometimes requires that you take the initiative in a measured harassment of your enemy and not be content with just reactions. This also depends on two basic principles, which Faisal used to repeat in front of the Israelis: The first says: “Do not miscalculate! Whoever can impose calm, security, and security in the streets of East Jerusalem can light fires and awaken the giant from his bottle.” He meant, of course, that Orient House and its leadership are the ones that control the city. Jerusalem street pulse. And the second says: “If your enemy is good at wrestling or boxing, do not concede to him with what he is good at, but rather try to lure him to a board where you are more skilled and skilled. Which he has tried to do over and over again.
The Netanyahu government failed in the face of the Jerusalemites' steadfastness and retracted its decision to close the "Orient House" after it understood the meaning of Faisal and Jerusalemites' readiness to defend their Jerusalem or ignite the two banks of the city.
Months after that battle, the Vatican announced Pope John Paul II's decision to visit Jordan, Israel and Palestine, including Jerusalem. Vatican representatives coordinated the details of the visit with each country; As for the Pope's visit to Jerusalem, their title was "House of the Orient" and its president, Faisal Al-Husseini. I held several meetings at the house of the Apostolic Nuncio in the "Al-Sawana" neighborhood to coordinate every major and minor matter related to the arrangements for the visit, as requested by the Vatican and despite Israel's objections and protests. The Pope refused to sleep in hotels in West Jerusalem and insisted that he stay in the house of the Apostolic Nuncio, and that his visit to Jerusalem begin from there, and then directly to the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinian educational institutions in Jerusalem announced sending school students to stand saluting the Pope on the roadsides from Al-Sawanah to Al-Aqsa courtyards. Israel objected to the decision, but Faisal and Jerusalem insisted on its implementation. The Pope expressed his satisfaction with that. I contacted the Israeli police chief and quoted Faisal as saying, "Either the welcome line up, or there is no security and no security for anyone." The police understood the significance of the message, and their leaders knew that Faisal could carry out his threat; They agreed on the condition that the welcoming students carry only flowers and not raise the flags of Palestine. Faisal refused to accept their condition and insisted that every cub raise a rose and every baby girl raise a Palestinian flag. The Israeli side got angry and the Vatican was relieved, once again, so I conveyed a second message from Faisal to the police chief, to the effect: "We will inevitably carry the flag, and you have to choose, either the flag or the stone." The Israelis acquiesced, in order to avoid the scandal of throwing stones at the Pope's convoy, which walked, according to the agreement, on Palestinian roads protected by the children of Palestine whose hands were decorated with roses and Palestinian flags. It was a visit of Faisaliah and Qudsia flavor.
A year after the visit, Faisal traveled to Kuwait and did not return. The rest of the story is written by the youth of Jerusalem, the sons of Faisal, and told by the yellowness of the neglected grass in the courtyards of the “Oriental House”, which was closed by the order of the Israeli police.