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In the village of Salama, whose ruins are located today near the city of Jaffa The spark of the Palestinian resistance was ignited after the declaration United nations toPartition resolutionThat decision was issued in late November 1947. After that, the gangs started Zionism Armed with the latest weapons to kill Palestinians and seize their villages and lands, one of the largest displacement and genocide operations in modern times began, which is known in our contemporary history as the events of the Nakba.
The Palestinians did not stand by and watch these events, but I started Uprisings Early in the era of the British occupation in the revolutions of 1929 and 1936 AD, in addition to the many strikes and protests that did not stop, and also the armed action against the Zionist gangs that were entrenched behind the occupation British As we shall see.
Following the announcement of the partition resolution, the Military Committee was established, which emerged from a resolution issued by the Arab League to liberate Palestine. In contrast, the men of Palestine They organized themselves to resist the Zionists and their supporters, and many important Palestinian figures emerged in these events who led the armed action against the Zionist gangs, such as: Abdul Qader Al-Hussaini Sheikh Hassan Salama, both of whom were martyred in the battles of 1948.
The start of the resistance in Salama
Salama, which was named after the companion Salama bin Hisham bin Al-Mughira Al-Makhzoumi Al-Qurashi, who was martyred near it, was one of the Palestinian villages that suffered what the Palestinians suffered from the armed Zionist gangs.
The town was surrounded on all four sides by a number of armed Zionist settlements. To the north were the settlements of Montefiore and Ramat Gan, which were a training center for the Haganah gangs that committed many crimes against the Palestinians at that time.
To the east of the town of Salama was the settlement of Kfar Sarkin, to the south was Ezra, and to the west was the settlement of Hatikva. Hativka was one of the most dangerous settlements for the security and stability of Salama, and Tel Aviv was located to the northwest of the town.
In light of this complete Zionist coverage of Salama, the Jews were constantly exposed to it, and when the strike was announced on December 2, 1947, the souls of the people of Salama were in turmoil due to the crimes of the Zionists, so they clashed with their gangs in the area and killed two of them, and these events were the beginning of the military action against the Zionists.
The people of Salamah realized that organized work was what was needed in these difficult circumstances, and they gathered to form a committee to defend their city, from which a number of figures became famous, such as Mufleh Ali Saleh and Musa Abu Hashiya. The large families were represented by Hajj Najib Abu Najm from the Najm family, Abdul Rahim Hammad from the Hammad family, Hassan Abu Eid from the Khatatra family, Musa Mahmoud Suwaidan from the peasants, and others.
At the beginning of its resistance work, this committee was able to recruit 30 of its young men, equipped with 30 regular rifles and a fair amount of equipment. The commander of the western sector of the resistance in Palestine, Sheikh Hassan Salama, was able to provide them with equipment and weapons.
At the same time, the committee members and its resistance youth spread out in the neighboring villages, searching for more weapons and equipment. They even sent the secretary of this committee to Cairo to bring more weapons, and he returned carrying 60 boxes of ammunition and 30 rifles of English and German weapons.
At that time, the Resistance Committee in Salama had gathered a good number of rifles, two machine guns, a German Hoschke cannon, and a mortar. As soon as the partition decision was announced on November 29, 1947, the men of the city of Salama, near Jaffa, unleashed their weapons and launched their valiant resistance, which lasted for about 5 months with these few weapons and no support.
As Aref al-Aref, a historian of Palestine, says in his book “The Nakba of Jerusalem and the Lost Paradise between 1947-1949,” not a single day passed since the partition resolution was issued without the two sides clashing, and bullets raining down on them like rain. The brave sons of Salamah stood firm in the face of their opponents, and were like iron in front of them. They did not budge from their positions, nor did they leave their homes. They considered fleeing to be a disgrace.
Salama's men inside Tel Aviv!
The heroism of the resistance in Salama was evident when they warned the British army leaders not to allow their soldiers to pass through the town on their way to Lod Airport and to the nearby Tel Litvinsky where the British forces camp was located. They had become accustomed to passing through Salama day and night to reach the airport and the camp.
The people of Salama had warned the British to prevent passage, knowing that during the Nakba wars the Zionist gangs were wearing British uniforms and carrying out surprise attacks on the Palestinian resistance and expecting men from them, but the British did not comply with the people of Salama’s request despite its validity.
Two days later, on December 20, 1947, a British military vehicle passed by and the resistance fighters decided to attack it. They burned it, wounded its driver, and seized his rifle. The British commanders of the region decided to attack Salama with 30 tanks and 10 large cars full of soldiers. They warned the townspeople to return the rifle and pay a large sum of money in compensation for the burned car. However, the resistance fighters did not obey him, even after a large number of them were arrested. In the end, the British decided to block the road in Salama, which connected Jaffa to Lod Airport.
The closure of this road was a major blow to the resistance in the town, because it was the only road that was open and connected to the nearby Arab villages such as Lod and Abbasiya, from which supplies and support came. The Jews took advantage of this development until they attacked Salama from the direction of the Hatikva settlement. They were equipped with rapid-fire machine guns, and the mujahideen repelled them with great heroism despite the difference in equipment and men.
But the Jews intended by this attack to distract the attention of the resistance fighters; at the same time, Argon gangs And others in the nearby settlement of Ramat Gan to attack Salama from the other side far from the road, but the town’s fighters had prepared for this Zionist deceit and secured their backs, and when the vanguard of the Irgun forces began to advance, they appeared to them and resisted them, then overcame them in a way that astonished the Jews themselves.
The resistance fighters in Salama did not stop at this point, but developed their defense into a counterattack on the Hatikva settlement, and were able to overcome the residents of the settlement from the armed Jewish gangs and expel them from it and set it on fire. It is noteworthy – as the Palestinian historian says: Knower of the Knower– That the women of Salamah participated in this attack and encouraged the men to fight.
Among the high morals that appeared in the attack of the men and women of Salama on the settlement was that the Jews fled in their terror and left their children behind, so the mujahideen did not harm them. The number of Jewish children was 26 children, and they handed them over to the British forces, who in turn handed them over to a hospital in Tel Aviv.
With the defeat of the Jewish forces and the spread of news of the victory of the Salama resistance fighters, Palestinian fighters from Lod and nearby Abbasiya began to come to support their brothers, and everyone began to spread out around the other nearby settlements until they were able to reach Tel Aviv, striking terror into the hearts of its residents. They set fire to a number of houses in the Shapiro settlement, which is today a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.
Faced with this great defeat that the Jews were subjected to, the British intervened to save them and aid Tel Aviv, and issued orders to the Palestinian resistance from the men of Salama, Lod and Abbasiya to leave Tel Aviv or else they would be subjected to bombing by British aircraft and military attack. The resistance men were forced to withdraw due to the great difference in equipment and weapons, and 14 Palestinian fighters and two women were martyred in these battles, while 100 Jews were killed.
Thus, under the pretext of separating the Arabs from the Jews, the British were able to save Tel Aviv from falling into the hands of the Palestinian resistance led by Salama’s men. Had this happened, many of the equations of the Nakba would have changed, especially the battles of Jaffa and the northwestern Palestinian region at that time.
Peaceful end
But despite this British support at that time, which reminds us today of the endless American support for Israel, not a day passed without fighting between the resistance in the town and the Zionist gangs. Among the most important battles that took place at that time were those that took place on December 18, 1947, and February 1 and 28, 1948.
In the first battle, a large number of Jews were killed, two of the resistance fighters were martyred, and a number of Jewish fighters were lured into a building in the town that the resistance fighters had previously booby-trapped. When the Zionist soldiers entered it, they blew it up and it fell on everyone in it. This is the same tactic that we still see in Gaza to this day.
In the battle of February 1, 1948, the Jews launched a surprise attack on Salama from the direction of the Hatikva settlement, and in this battle two Arabs were martyred.
On February 28, 15 Jewish soldiers were killed, and the Salama resistance fighters were able to drag the bodies of 6 of them to the town. They also seized 4 cannons of different models, a rifle, a radio, a land mine, and a number of bombs. Three resistance fighters from the sons of Salama and those who came to support them from the Arab Salvation Army that was formed by the Arab League in December 1947 were martyred in this battle.
Because of the enormity of these battles and the exhaustion of many of the resistance's weapons, they were sent by them to seek help from the men of the Arab Higher Committee in Cairo, which had been formed to rescue the people of Palestine. But as historian Aref al-Aref says, because the Arab League at that time was influencing them with the Salvation Army that emerged from it, it did not give them weapons and did not listen to them. This was not specific to the people of Salama only, but rather extended to most of the Palestinian resistance.
This is what made the leader Abdul Qader Al-Hussaini He is furious with the leaders of the Salvation Army in Damascus AndCairoand it goes back to Jerusalem He met his Lord as a martyr in the battle of Qastal because of this huge gap in weapons between the two sides. Despite these difficulties, Salama's men were able to obtain 3 anti-armored cannons, 10 rifles, 40 boxes of ammunition, and 3 machine guns of the type known as the Bren, and they began to resist the Zionists again. In order to continue this resistance, the women of the village sold their jewelry and most of their portable belongings to buy weapons.
Meanwhile, in mid-April 1948, Salama was subjected to a strong attack by the Jews over the course of 3 days. The resistance fighters in the town showed great bravery in repelling this treacherous attack. They even began to strike the nearby settlement of Hatikva with mortars. However, due to the lack of money and the lack of support and assistance, the weapons, bullets and equipment ran out and they had nothing left to repel the successive Jewish attacks.
This internal situation of the resistance in Salama coincided with bitter events that the neighboring Arab villages were exposed to. Indeed, the greatest blow was the fall of the city of Jaffa on April 25, 1948 at the hands of the Zionists, as that event affected the morale of all the Arab villages and towns nearby, including Salama. Fearing the Jewish massacres that were committed in Jaffa and elsewhere, the residents of Salama and its resistance had no choice but to withdraw and leave their homeland and lands.
In the last days of April 1948, the people of Salama left their town without returning, and the Jews entered it a few days later, fearing the resistance and anticipating any ambush there. However, the heroes of Salama did not despair and participated in the battles that took place later in Abbasiya, Lod, Ramla, and the battle of Ras al-Ain, in which the leader of the resistance in this region, Sheikh Hassan Salama, the commander of the western sector, was martyred.
When this entire sector fell into the hands of the Zionists later, the sons of Salama were scattered in Ramallah And its villagesNablus AndQalqilya AndJericho AndGaza Amman and Zarqa andMadaba And Irbid, and some of them even went to Iraq!
Thus, the town of Salama, which at the end of the British Mandate era was home to about 12,000 people, wrote one of the most important epics of resistance during the wars of the Nakba and after the partition decision, and we saw how they were able to reach Tel Aviv and occupy one of its neighborhoods before the British forced them to withdraw.
