Some good history in the New York Times. Joshua Hammer first visits the village of Abu Ghosh outside Jerusalem
The Muslim town has maintained close ties to Israel’s Jews, who arrive here en masse for weekend brunch, especially in spring and summer…. Abu Ghosh sat out the 1948 war, when Arab gunmen used the surrounding hills to ambush convoys bringing supplies to besieged Jerusalem….Today, the town is one of the only surviving Muslim villages in the area.
I’ve been to Abu Ghosh, and the simple question the town raises is, What’s so demographically upsetting about Palestinians living in Israel? Of course the Times doesn’t touch that angle. Then Hammer goes on to Ein Karem.
During the war of 1948, 300 Arab guerrilla fighters from Ein Karem, with support from Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian troops, battled Jewish soldiers and ambushed convoys on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. After the April 1948 massacre by Jewish paramilitary forces of 120 Arab civilians in the nearby village of Deir Yassin, Ein Karem was evacuated, and resettled by Israelis. The Muslims are all gone now, and as I wandered through the village, one of the few to survive the 1948 war with most of its buildings intact, I was keenly aware of Ein Karem’s controversial past and couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention — in tourist guides or signs at historic sites — of the Arab evacuations.
