The Kill Artist
were debating this issue with a group of French students. They said that the Jews didn't have to expel the Arabs from Palestine because the Arabs left on their own."
Yusef laughed and shook his head. "I'm afraid you have fallen for the great Zionist myth, Dominique. The myth that the Palestinians would voluntarily trade the land where they had lived for centuries for exile and refugee camps. The myth that the Arab governments told the Palestinians to leave."
"It's not true?"
"Does it sound as though it could be true?"
"Not really."
"Then trust your instincts, Dominique. If it doesn't sound plausible, it probably isn't. Do you want to know the truth about what the Jews did to my people? Do you want to know why my family ended up in a refugee camp in Beirut?"
"I want to know about you."
"I'm a Palestinian. It's impossible to separate me from the history of my people."
"Tell me," she said.
"By the way, which nightclub in Paris?"
"What?"
"The nightclub where you met the Israelis. Which one was it?"
"I can't remember. It was so long ago."
"Try to remember, please. It's important."
"We call it al-Nakba. The Catastrophe."
He had pulled on a pair of loose-fitting cotton pajama bottoms and a London University sweatshirt, as if suddenly self-conscious about his nakedness. He gave Jacqueline a blue dress shirt. It was unspoken, but the implication was clear: one mustn't discuss something as sacred as al-Nakba in a state of postcoital undress. Jacqueline sat in the middle of the bed, her long legs crossed before her, while Yusef paced.
"When the United Nations presented the plan to partition Palestine into two states, the Jews realized they had a serious problem. The Zionists had come to Palestine to build a Jewish state, but nearly half of the people in the new partition state were to be Arabs. The Jews accepted the partition plan, knowing full well that it would be unacceptable to the Arabs. And why should the Arabs accept it? The Jews owned seven percent of Palestine, but they were being handed fifty percent of the country, including the most fertile land along the coastal plain and the Upper Galilee. Are you listening, Dominique?"
"I'm listening."
"The Jews devised a plan to remove the Arabs from the land designated for the Jewish state. They even had a name for it: Plan Dalet. And they put it into effect the moment the Arabs attacked. Their plan was to expel the Arabs, to drive them out, as Ben-Gurion put it. To cleanse Jewish Palestine of Arabs. Yes, cleanse. I don't use that word lightly, Dominique. It's not my word. It's the very word the Zionists used to describe their plan to expel my people from Palestine."
"It sounds as though they behaved like the Serbs."
"They did. Have you ever heard of a place called Deir Yassin?"
"No," she said.
"Your view of the conflict in the Middle East has been shaped by the Zionists, so it's hardly surprising to me that you have never heard of Deir Yassin."
"Tell me about Deir Yassin."
"It was an Arab village outside Jerusalem on the road to the coast and Tel Aviv. It isn't there anymore. There's a Jewish town where Deir Yassin used to be. It's called Kfar Sha'ul."
Yusef closed his eyes for a moment, as if the next part was too painful even to speak about. When he resumed he spoke with the flat calm of a survivor recounting the last mundane events of a loved one's life.
"The village elders had reached an accommodation with the Zionists, so the four hundred Arabs who lived in Deir Yassin felt they were safe. They had been promised by the Zionists that the village would not be attacked. But at four o'clock one April morning, the members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang came to Deir Yassin. By noon, two thirds of the villagers had been slaughtered. The Jews rounded up the men and the boys, stood them against a wall, and started shooting. They went house to house and murdered the women and the children. They dynamited the homes. They shot a woman who was nine months pregnant, then they cut open her womb and ripped out the child. A woman rushed forward to try to save the baby's life. A Jew shot the woman and killed her."
"I don't believe things like that happened in Palestine."
"Of course they did, Dominique. After the massacre word spread through the Arab villages like wildfire. The Jews took full advantage of the situation. They mounted loud-speakers on trucks and broadcast warnings. They told the Arabs to get out, or there would be another Deir Yassin. They
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