Meir Ya’ari shifted in his tunic, uncomfortable and sweaty in the heavy, starched cotton. Still, the occasion called for a degree of ceremony, and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Palestine was not much for formal wear of the Arab or Western variety. That left military uniforms, once pulled together from scraps or from the lifeless bodies of His Majesty King Edward VIII’s most loyal soldiers. Now, soldiers wore simple khaki or grey fatigues in the fashion of the Volkswehr, officers marked only by brass emblems on the shoulders and chest. While Ya’ari had never served in combat, his long and distinguished political career granted him the rank of Major-General.
The car, a Volkswagen, was the closest a nation of the socialist bloc could come to a luxury vehicle. Flanked by Shomrim on motorbikes, the car meandered along Derech Borochov, Tel Aviv’s central avenue, part of a seemingly endless column of tanks, halftracks and cars full of dignitaries. Tel Aviv had grown greatly since its founding, from a small Jewish suburb to one of the twinned cities of Palestine’s largest metropolis. However, it had gone from a commercial center to one of austerity. Apartment blocks, all between 20 and 35 stories tall, towered over the streets like concrete sentinels. They were stamped out, eight of them to a block, over one thousand of them scattered through the Jewish satellite city. Each building had a small shop on the ground floor, each one selling something different: paper, groceries, falafel and hummus, flowers, maybe vodka and arak.
Along Derech Borochov there was more commercial space. Stores shared space with cafes and restaurants. On a normal day the street would be full of Arabs and Jews of Palestine’s beamten, browsing merchandise and sipping coffee or arak while listening to the syncopated rhythm of Neo-Klezmer. Today, only the locals filled the streets: pale-faced Jews, the children of refugees from the Pale of Settlement. Palestine, despite its austere living and restrictive government, was a sanctuary free of the regularized violence of the Russian Empire’s successor states. The Yiddishim cheered, waving the flag of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic: a solid red with the black, green and white bars of Arab Palestine running vertically down the left side and the gold Star of David set in the upper right corner.
“Amazing, isn’t it, habibi?” chuckled the man to Meir’s right. Sami Taha, former Chairman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine puffed his cigar, the haze filling the car like clouds of smoke from an artillery battery.
Meir smiled. “Put that thing out, idiot. You know what it’s doing to your lungs?”
Sami, in lieu of a verbal response, made an obscene gesture. The two men were some of the last of the nation’s Generation of Martyrs, and were longstanding friends. They had together negotiated the Nazareth Declaration and the Ten Points that formed the core of Palestine’s national compact.
“How’s Fatima?” asked Meir.
“Happy for me to be out of the house, as always. She hates these as much as you do,” said Sami, gesturing at his cigar. “They relax me though.”
“And you aren’t relaxed enough? I’m still not quite sure what it is you do all day.”
Meir joked, but despite being formally retired, one could never really get out of Palestinian politics. There wasn’t the same interdicine violence that characterized the early days –many of Palestine’s martyrdoms, from Ben-Gurion to the Nashashibi brothers, were self-inflicted– but if you tried to leave, something would always pull you right back in.
“You know, this and that. I tend my garden well, and the plants too,” laughed Sami. The old Secretary-General, while he had retired more than two decades previously, still held enormous sway among the party’s reformers.
The two men continued to chat, exchanging the kind of mindless, comfortable small talk that did nothing but pass the time between old friends. The roar outside grew louder as the car crossed into Yafo and rolled slowly towards Mīdān at-Taḥrīr. Thousands upon thousands of people lined the streets, with tens of thousands more in the square. Some held signs celebrating the march of global proletarian revolution or Palestine’s brotherhood of peoples, while others waved oversized portraits of Palestine’s soon-to-be Premier, David Khenin, the first Jew to hold such a position. Finally, the car pulled past the crowd and to the doors of the palatial Hall of the Revolution, its yellow limestone walls shining like gold in the sun. An honour guard of Shomrim, moving among the blocks of soldiers stiff at attention, opened the doors and helped Meir out. Sami, his war injuries compounded by the march of time, needed a wheelchair.
The two elders were escorted into and through the palace, to the grand balcony watching over the central square. Even after all these years, Meir marveled at the interior of the Hall, which housed meetings of the Palestine Popular Socialist League Central Committee, along with the permanent offices and staff of the Premier of the Republic. White marble, lush carpets and Lebanese cedar panels combined with a simple, almost brutal aesthetic, half-Turkish and half-socialist. Murals along the stairwell depicted the Revolution, larger-than-life scenes of death, suffering, sacrifice and the final glorious liberation from the British Empire. Meir and Sami were in there somewhere, signing the Nazareth Declaration.
Finally in the fresh air, Meir and Sami took their positions as elders. They stood in the second row of notables, right behind Khenin and the party’s General Secretary, Bashir Barghouti. From the balcony, the view of Tahrir was beautiful, the sea visible beyond the screaming crowds. British warships had once sat there, first menacing the city and later covering the withdrawal of their erstwhile khaki-clad companions. Now, Palestinian destroyers fired their guns and cheered in salute of the new Premier. Foreign dignitaries stood to either side. The German Vice-Premier, a Jew from Hamburg, smiled broadly in a display of socialist solidarity and Jewish pride, while the Egyptian ambassador –known to be religious even for a country governed by fanatics– looked as though his mother was very ill.
Then, the speeches started, and carried on, and on. As always, the Party was not known for its brevity of words. Meir began to doze off, disconnected snippets of dialectic and dogma floating through his brain, punctuated by cheers: “the global proletariat”, “Luxembergism”, and “the Palestinian brotherhood of nations”. Sami gave him a few sharp pokes in the ribs, which only helped momentarily.
The portraits below depicted the signing of the Nazareth Declaration as a light-filled meeting of Ishmael and Yitzhak, seeking peace and justice together. That was decidedly not how Meir remembered his week in the PFLP’s bunker, sleepless nights running into days of vicious argument fuelled by vats of coffee and adrenaline. They had nearly come to blows several times. The Yishuv hadn’t embraced the popular struggle yet, and the Popular Front was being shredded by British repression. Their activists disappeared daily, their bodies inevitably turning up beaten to a pulp, electrocuted or ridden with bullets in wadis or public squares. They were understandably furious that their Jewish brothers and sisters sat doing nothing as they were murdered by imperialist thugs.
Yet, the Jews had no good choices: armed rebellion seemed potentially fatal, as did the failure to participate in a successful uprising against the Empire. It was only the Ten Points –promising self-governance for the Jews, recognition as a co-equal member nation of Palestine, and promises of granting persecuted Jews asylum– that brought the Yishuv into the war. They were needed after all, controlling major ports, a well-armed militia and a capacity for mobilizing financial and diplomatic resources that the PFLP could only dream of. Four years of war had followed, four long, bloody years. Meir had lost many friends in the initial insurgency, the Siege of Beersheva, and the battles against the Hashemites in the east. Sami was nearly one of them, ambushed by al-Husseini’s Fedayeen. Only revolts in Egypt, Iraq, Iran and finally bread riots in London had pushed the Empire to its knees, willing to withdraw from Palestine to save what scraps it could.
Finally, the nasal monotone of Minister for Industry Marwan al-Dimshaqi died down, and the real ceremony started. This was the part that Meir cared about. Khenin swore an oath to uphold “the self-determination of the working class, defend them from subversion and counterrevolution, and further the global proletarian revolution.” The sash of office, a simple piece of red felt, was draped over Khenin’s shoulders, signifying his ascension to the highest office of the Republic. The crowd screamed louder than ever, the sounds of their voices shaking buildings.
Meir clapped, and yelled himself hoarse. As tears ran down his face, he grabbed his friend’s shoulder. Herzl’s dream had come to pass, even if Ishamel and Yitzhak sat at the same table.
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