Tel Aviv Tribune Net correspondents
London- Youssef Qandil was born a few years after the massacre in the village of Al-Dawayima, committed by Zionist gangs during the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, due to which his family was displaced, as the memory of the massacre remained engraved in their memories for years. From a young age, Youssef inherited the mission of publishing the forgotten issue of the Al-Dawayima massacre.
Qandil believes that among the reasons for forgetting the massacre was a spelling error that occurred at the time of reporting it, as he explained to Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the notification sent to the United Nations about the massacre stated that the massacre took place in the village of Al-Dawayma in the Galilee instead of Hebron, which prompted the Zionist delegate at the time to deny its occurrence at all.
Qandil narrates from his parents that the village was known for its commercial activity, and that the massacre occurred on Friday after the worshipers in the village mosque had finished performing Friday prayers and at the peak of the market being crowded with people, which was frequented by many Palestinians from neighboring villages, which led to an increase in the number of victims. Up to hundreds.
The forgotten massacre
Historian Dr. Salman Abu Sitta – who contributed to writing the “Palestinian Encyclopedia” – documented the massacre of the village of Al-Dawayima as one of the ugliest and largest massacres committed by Zionist gangs on October 29, 1948. The encyclopedia stated that the 89th “Palmach” battalion, led by its founder Yitzhak Sadeh, was Responsible for carrying out the attack.
According to Qandil – whose words agree with the encyclopedia – the Zionist gangs did not leave any of the worshipers who were in the mosque or the people who were in the market alive, and that the shooting reached caves in which the residents hid.
Qandil mentioned among the stories of survival that two women were able to hide behind luggage in a cave where everyone was killed. A small number survived the massacre and were able to convey to their families what they saw with their own eyes. Among the survivors was the Qandil family.
Estimates vary regarding the number of victims of the massacre. According to reports received at the time by the Hebron Police Station, about 200 residents of Al-Dawayma who took refuge in the village mosque were killed, and most of them were elderly people who were unable to escape. Information that reached the Egyptian garrison in Bethlehem also reported that 500 were killed. person.
The report of the American consul in Jerusalem, based on his sources, also indicated that between 500 and 1,000 village residents were killed in the massacre, while the Israeli side denied that fighting had occurred in the village based on the testimony of one Israeli soldier.
The village mayor, Hassan Mahmoud Hadib, witnessed the killing of 455 people, and at that time presented a list of their names to the Jordanian military governor. He indicated that there were a number of other victims who were in the village and had not been registered.
It was reported from the survivors at the time that they said that the Deir Yassin massacre was repeated in Al-Dawayma, which is what the Secretary of the Arab Refugee Conference in Ramallah relied on in his interpretation that the forces stationed in the Hebron area had a fear that the news of the Al-Dawayma massacre would spread, because it might cause a wave of migration. Large, as happened at the time after the Deir Yassin massacre.
Coding the massacre
Years after the massacre, the Qandil family moved to Jordan, after which Youssef moved to Britain to study civil engineering, where he specialized in city planning, and participated in building the most important commercial centers in London, but that did not prevent him from devoting a large portion of his time to talking about the massacre that took place in His village is Al-Dawayma.
I met Qandil, a Scottish activist who had inaugurated a group of memorials to raise awareness of the forgotten Al-Dawayma massacre. Qandil pointed out that there are many of them in the United Kingdom, such as the Palestinian Key to Return monument in front of St. Mary’s Church, and a gravestone erected in Scotland with some details of the massacre written on it. .
Qandil also personally supervised the erection of a monument in one of the main squares in Scotland near the American Consulate, but he was prevented from clearly writing on it who committed the Dawayma massacre.
He said that an oak tree was planted in a public park in the capital, London, on the occasion of Earth Day, near which some information about the massacre was written. Although those in charge of the event at the time submitted a request to plant an olive tree, the local authorities refused to plant a tree other than the one in the park.
Regarding the possibility of inaugurating such memorials, Qandil confirmed that the local authorities allow such requests to be submitted, which are sometimes in exchange for a financial fee that may reach a thousand pounds sterling, and sometimes by providing special places for the inauguration of the monuments by displaying some suitable places.
Qandil, along with researcher Shuri Mawlawi, a specialist in forensic architecture at Goldsmiths University, contributed to collecting testimonies from the survivors’ children, to build a miniature architectural model of what the village of Al-Dawayma was like before the massacre was committed, so that its memory could be commemorated and documented as a research thesis.
Qandil appeals to the members of the Palestinian community to strive to inaugurate such monuments, as he stressed the interest of activists and unions in such events and their sponsorship, pointing out that such events contribute to raising awareness of the massacre that has not received its right to be published and talked about, such as the Tantura massacre, about which a documentary film will be shown during the month. Next near one of the monuments.