WHO OWNED JAFFA?

After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, many questions have been asked about Arab refugees and land ownership. Jaffa provides an excellent case study to provide some insight into these vexing questions.

Before 1948, the biggest landowner in the Jaffa district was the government (the British under the mandate), followed by the churches, absentee (Turkish) owners, Jewish residents and lastly, Arab or Palestinian owners. When the United Nations gave Jaffa to a future Palestinian state, only the tenant majority of Arabs were considered. The reality of the majority of residents of Jaffa who owned their properties being Jewish, was ignored. As no compensation or protection was offered, the Jews with right could refuse to leave and ask for the protection of the newly formed Jewish state.

This situation came about because of the snowball effect on Palestinians, of the Ottoman land reform, of 1858:

• Some lost their land without even knowing they no longer owned it.
• Some gave their land as surety to unscrupulous moneylenders.
• 'Real estate agents' pretended to secure land and then secretly sold it to a third party.
• The village leaders were corrupt and took land for themselves.
• The average villagers did not understand the Turkish tax system and they gave their land into the 'protection' of the most powerful families who sold the land to the Jews.

Often, the duplicity wasn't discovered until the new owners drove them off their land and by then Palestinian society had become too fragile to hold people in the country. They had no reason to stay and the possibility of becoming caught up in a war, even one they had started, provided a strong self-preservation reason to leave. This they had done many times before - sometimes to return, sometimes to move to new countries within the Ottoman Empire. This 'wandering' has always been the way of the Middle East.

Before the land reform of 1858, the Turks had a complex system which they applied throughout the Empire. 

In Ottoman Palestine:

• The state was the major property owner inside the 'city walls' of the four official cities, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Tiberius and Safed - this was 'wakf' or endowment land. People lived in 'wakf' houses for generation after generation without paying rent - they paid 'tax' and this gave them the 'right' to a house.
• Land, outside but close to the walls of the cities, was 'mulek' or privately owned land. This valuable well-cultivated land of gardens, orchards and vineyards were mostly owned by absentee landlords or the churches. They charged rents, which were seldom paid. 
• In the countryside, all land was 'miri' or state owned and cultivated by taxable tenants. The tenant system had complicated user rights based on law, tradition and religion. Before the new laws came into being, most of the cultivatable land was allocated by the state to a group (family - 'village') who used the land as a collective land user, called a 'musha' but the state remained the owner. When land was no longer cultivatable, it reverted to the state and new land was allocated to the 'village'.

The 'musha' system destroyed farming and made it impossible for a tenant to make a profit because of ridiculous laws:

• No permanent improvements were allowed - like removing stones from a field or putting up a wall.
• It was illegal to plant trees - so no new olive groves, plantations or orchards for 300 years.
• Nobody owned land - it was all communal, so nobody really cared.
• Every year the land was reallocated - a bad farmer would get good land and a good farmer poor land.

The system is still being followed by some Arab farmers resulting in poor land development with the only viable Arab farming being the keeping of goats and sheep on the hills.  

In 1863, the 'musha' system was supposed to end and the land given to individual private owners. This only happened to a significant degree in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Everywhere else, the tenants were forced to bid for the land they lived on at open auctions. The villagers could not compete with speculators and lost their land. Tenants went from having permanent and hereditary rights to cultivate the land, to having nothing - Ottoman law did not recognize squatter's rights.

Before 1880, the area southeast of Jaffa was virtually unpopulated. Along the southern shore, there were only uninhabited sand dunes. The Arabs in this area was subsistence farmers living in mud huts or nomads who appeared from time to time. The land they farmed on and regarded as their own, because they never paid rent, was owned by absentee landlords in Turkey or Christians in Jaffa. The owners were more than happy to sell to the Jews. It was here the six major Jewish colonies in the Jaffa area were established. They had contracts to deliver grapes to the winery in Zichron Ya'akov and it was grapes which got them through the hard times. The Arab farmers had no equivalent system and were powerless when disaster struck.

The Arabs had a deep respect for Baron Rothschild and while the Jews were under his protection, they were safe from attack. He was fair in his dealings with all groups and ensured that on his properties the Arabs enjoyed job security. In 1899, the Baron transferred his business interests and land ownership to the local Jews. The Arabs started losing their jobs and financial hardship spread. This was exacerbated when in 1903, the Jewish owners of land refused to renew contracts with the Arab tenants who in some cases had worked the land for generations - but without paying rent.

The Arabs had no support system to get them through hardships like the 1915 locust plague. Their only option was to take loans with their land as guarantees or sell.

In 1908, the Arabs were on the wrong side of history when the Jewish Poale Zion supported the Young Turks in their revolution. The Arabs stayed loyal to the Sultans and Pashas who sold everything they could to the Jews, to finance their extravagant lifestyles.

Due to a severe financial crisis after WWI, the Greek Orthodox Church started selling its properties in British Palestine. It had lost the financial support of the 'Russian' church after the Bolshevik revolution and due to a world recession after WWI, pilgrim numbers dropped. The patriarch, Damianus I had no choice but to sell and the only willing buyer was the various Jewish groups. Amongst the Arab members of the Orthodox Church, there was an absolute fury and it is understandable because it was farms, industry and housing that was sold. The Arabs lost their employment as well as their homes to the Jews.

The British transferred rights to tenants where it was still possible to do so but the Palestinian leadership was too corrupt for this to work. Arab families like the Husseinis would swindle land from the peasants - who were not allowed to sell to the Jews under the threat of death. They would then sell the land (often knowingly) to middlemen who sold it to Jews and foreign investors. These families became incredibly wealthy and built themselves palaces like the original building that is now the American Colony Hotel.

The majority of Palestinians who became refugees in 1948 were landless. They had the keys to the house but not the title deeds and they had years of rent and taxes outstanding. More than anything, it was the fear of scrutiny which made Palestinians leave - both Jaffa and Israel. 

THE ORANGE AND THE SWASTIKA (AND ALI SALAMI)

The Jaffa orange has become a symbol for Palestinians of an idealistic past, of the better and wealthier life they imagined they had. This makes the Jaffa orange of some interest but it would have been noteworthy, both as a fruit and as a bit of history, in any case.

The courtyard of the Saint Nicholas Monastery on the waterfront of the Jaffa harbor is one of the oldest structures in Jaffa. Here, in the grounds of the Armenian Church Napoleon purportedly visited the victims of the plague. The monastery is no longer used and there are few Armenians left in Jaffa but their association with the town goes back to the Hellenistic period. Later, they, and not the Turkish rulers, were responsible for rebuilding Jaffa at the beginning of the 18th century.

Back then, the Armenians were a prosperous people and could afford to build and expand as they traded all across the Middle East. Armenian 'priests' went on 'missions' visiting their widely dispersed fellow countrymen. As well as spiritual comfort, they did some business as the line between trade and religion was blurred. When one such travelling priest from Saint Nicholas Monastery saw an orange with economical potential, he brought some pips home with him. It was the 'shamouti', which was already famous in 1519 in eastern Persia for being good to trade, because it travelled well. This was due to its thick skin - in general, all good travelers are thick skinned. It was not a particularly nice orange but it made long distance trade without cooling facilities possible.

The initial trees must have been a disappointment because the crop was a nasty little orange completely unlike the oranges the priest saw in Persia. Then one day, on one of the trees there was a branch with the good fruit. The 'shamouti' is a naturally occurring mutant - only the branch mutates, not the whole tree. This was great but nobody in Jaffa knew what to do about it.

Many years later, in 1868, a group of Germans turned up in Israel. They were a Christian breakaway group from the Lutheran Church who had particular ideas about the Messiah and they established communities in Haifa, Bethlehem in the Galilee and Jaffa. They called themselves 'Templars', bought a piece of land from the Greek Orthodox Church, and called it 'Sarona' from 'Sharon'. They were dirt poor and struggled to tame the land and overcome malaria. But they were quick to notice the branches with 'shaouti' oranges. These they grafted onto hardy trees, like the lemon and in no time at all, they were exporting and marketing oranges in Europe and as far as America. It was a true success story. They expanded their operations and bought land from all the Arabs around them. They became wealthy and employed thousands of Arabs who they brought in as cheap labor from Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. In their ears, they whispered anti Allied propaganda at the start of WWI.

The British took offense and shipped them to Egypt. Upon their return in 1920, they were furious with the British because their farms and homes had been ruined. They started spreading a strong anti British and anti Jews (especially the Bolsheviks) message amongst the Arabs. After Hitler came to power, the Nazi swastika flag flew over Sarona (and Haifa and Bethlehem) and they boycotted Jewish shops. When WWII started in 1939, some went back to Germany to join the Nazis. The rest were deported to Australia.

From the Templar communities of Palestine, 322 joined a 'special tasks' Nazi SS regiment. As a select group within the foreign Waffen SS (SSf) associated with the Amt VI (Foreign Intelligence Service), they formed the backbone of a unit carrying out small team missions across the Middle East. One such mission, 'Operation Atlas' was under the command of Colonel Kurt Wieland, a Templar from Sarona.

The objective of the mission was to have the Arabs attack Jews in Mandated Palestine in a variety of ways. The British would then have to send troops to defend the Jewish communities and so weaken their forces in Europe.

Wieland had a successful career in the Waffen SS and worked as a commando with Otto Skorzeny. With experience of small team operations in the Middle East and an understanding of the Arab situation and knowing the Jews of Israel, he must have known the mission was a load of rubbish.

The rest of his team consisted of two Arabs and two Germans. The Germans were both from Mandated Palestine and the Arabs were close confidants of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The notorious, Hassan Salami was one of them. Salami had commanded Palestinian forces during the 1936 uprising, fled, received training from the Iraqis, fought the British, and received paratrooper and commando training in Germany.

The unit was dropped on 6 October 1944 over Jericho and being a night-drop the altitude was incorrectly calculated and with strong winds the group and their equipment was scattered - as was the large amount of money they had with them to bribe the Arab leaders into the war. Hassan Salami, though injured in the drop, managed to get to Jerusalem and made contact with local leaders but without money, they weren't interested in him. He escaped as did one of the other Germans but Wieland made no moves except to surrender at the first opportunity.

Salami went into hiding and then turned up as the commander of the Mufti's forces (the 'Army of the Holy War') in Jaffa in 1947. He died in combat with the Israelis soon after.

Ali Salami, the son of Hassan Salami was 39 when the Mossad assassinated him in 1979. It was the final act of retaliation for the Munich Massacre. In the words of Ankie Spitzer who was left a widow by the Munich Massacre, It cannot be that people can terrorize other people and kill them - somebody has to pay a price. And somebody did.

 Ali Salami was born to substantial wealth in Jaffa. He received the best education at schools in Europe and was trained by the masters of terrorism in Moscow. In Fatah, he became Yasser Arafat's right hand man and head of 'Black September' - and organized and took part in horrific acts of terrorism. His honeymoon in Disneyland with a Miss Universe was a gift from the CIA - he fed them lies about the peaceful intentions of the PLO, which influenced US policy toward Israel. He was considered the best and most flamboyant terrorist in the world. But not even the best could escape the Israeli operation against the planners and executioners in the PLO - they were all eliminated, every single one - even Salami with his CIA contacts and protection. Like his father, Ali Salami, achieved nothing for the Palestinian people. He was a failure and towards the end of his life, a ridiculous figure.

In 1948, the Israeli army took over the Sharona property and paid compensation to the German families. The property was too valuable for an army to sit on so it was sold it to developers who created an up-market, outdoor indoor market with luxury shops and restaurants. It is nice.