Where Arabs and Jews Work Together

By A. B. Magil (by mail), Nathanya, Israel

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“A dead village and a live one—Tantura and Fureidis, jostling each other, two miles apart. Tantura had to be taken by force. Fureidis peacefully surrendered and agreed to cooperate with the Jewish forces. Tantura, which formerly had a population of about 2,000, not a single Arab is left.

Of its men, some fled, some were taken prisoners, while the women and children were evacuated by the Haganah to neighboring Arab villages… In the abandoned fields of Tantura we see Arabs and Jews working together under the supervision of the special government department for Arab property… By American standards—for that matter, by Jewish Palestine standards—this home is hardly fit for more than the donkey and the chickens that are part of the household… The mutcha (village chairman), a portly man named Ismael Abd el Halim Baree, greets us… The mutcha makes only one request: that a doctor be sent to look after the sick.

By now I know better than to ask the question I put to the mukhtar of another Arab village: whether his people would be content to live in the Jewish state. No doubt I would have received the same reply: ‘If I answer your question I may not live.’”

Context added by this archive

Mutcha is the paper’s own spelling of mukhtar and is kept as printed.

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"Where Arabs and Jews Work Together," Daily Worker, 28 June 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-037. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-037