Silwad Remembered

Silwad (*) lies between Ofra and Shiloh.

Until the first intifada, we used to travel through it, as well as Ma'zarat Al-Sharqiya, as a short cut from Ofra to Shiloh, what we would call the 'back way'. After an incident when Orit Rappaport and children were stopped while driving back from Ofra by Arabs who were looking for guns in 1988, that route became off-limits (a reverse apartheid development, one could say).

Why do I recall Silwad?

I read about it here:

I want to begin by asking about your personal background. You were born in the village of Silwad in the West Bank, but were raised in Kuwait. Kuwait was known as one of the main bastions of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Fatah, during the 1970s and 1980s, yet you became a member of the Islamic movement. How did this come about?

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. As you said, I was born in Silwad, near Ramallah, in 1956. I lived there until 1967, when I was 11 years old, having completed the fifth grade in Silwad Elementary School. After 1967 and the defeat, I, like hundreds of thousands of our people, experienced a new exile.

You were in the West Bank during the 1967 War?

In the West Bank, of course. The war occurred while I was in Silwad. I lived through this experience as an 11-year-old, whose memory was fully awake. I can still remember the war and how it affected people and their morale, how suddenly things changed from expectations of victory and liberation (under the influence of the Arab media, which unfortunately gave false accounts of developments on the ground) to the shock of the entire [Arab] nation [umma] being defeated in just a few days and losing yet more land. In addition to what we had lost in 1948, we had now lost the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. So this of course left a deep impression on me, my mind, my heart, my being, my thought, and without question influenced the subsequent course of my life.

My father had been in Kuwait since 1957, where he worked both in agriculture (he was, of course, a fallah) and as an imam in a mosque, based on his religious background and culture, and memorization of a very large part of the Quran. My father, by the way, had participated in the 1936 Rebellion with `Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and that generation. So because my father was in Kuwait, our family followed. We went to Jordan immediately after the war, and after a month or two, during the summer of 1967, we continued on to Kuwait.

Given your father’s background, could one say that you were raised in a more religious environment than your peers and schoolmates?

Yes. First of all, my village, Silwad, is well-known for its religiosity. It is a small place, but it had a number of ulema who were graduates of al-Azhar University in Cairo—we had about six al-Azhar graduates. In addition to the village’s generally religious climate, religiosity and conservatism tend to reign in rural Palestine as a whole. So this was my environment and the environment of those around me. I was, thank God, raised in an atmosphere of religion, morality, conservatism, and commitment. I did not experience lost or wayward years in my youth, but was committed to prayer and religiosity from a young age.

By the way, occasionally, traffic on the new bypass road got shot at just north of Ofra, from locations in or near Silwad.


And who is being interviewed?

Khalid Mishal (Abu Walid), a founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the head of its politbureau since 1996, has been the recognized head of the movement since the assassination of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin in spring 2004.

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(*)


Silwad is located 12 Km to the North-East of the City of Ramallah, the town is 5 Km away from the Nablus-Jerusalem highway. Silwad altitude is 860 Meter above sea level. The overall area of Silwad is estimated at 75 000 Donom.

The three tribes in Silwad are Hamed, Hammad and Ayyad. It is believed that Hamed and Hammad were brothers, Ayyad is thought to have been accompanying the two brothers. According to the estimates of Silwad Association in Jordan the population of the people of Silwad in Diaspora exceeds 25 000 (1996 estimates). Among these, 8000 resides in Silwad while the remainder are spread throughout the world.

More.