[Ras al-Ayn was abanodoned at start of century] CAMERA ALERT: The PA
"Condemns" - and Justifies - Terror Attack
August 12, 2003 by Alex Safian
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=7&x_issue=5&x_article=52
6

Mangled history in the service of terror

Following the Palestinian terror attack against the Israeli town of Rosh Ha'
ayin, in which one Israeli was killed and at least four were seriously
wounded, the Palestinian Authority released a statement "condemning" the
"operation." Most of the statement, however, concerned not the suicide
bombing, but Israel's alleged "crimes against the Palestinian people" and
its continuing "attacks on the Palestinian cities especially Nablus and
Jenin."
http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_News/news2003/2003-08/052.html

What was especially noteworthy about the PA's statement was not its rather
tepid deploring of terror attacks against Israelis - that's par for the
course, when disapprovals are even voiced. No, what was most significant was
the last paragraph outlining the PA version of Rosh Ha'ayin's history. Rosh
Ha'ayin, according to the PA:

is an Israeli city build (sic) on the rubble of the Palestinian city Ras
Al-Aa'ain after being occupied by Israeli occupation forces in the 1948 war.

The import of this couldn't be clearer: Ras Al-Aa'ain, it is implied, was
cleared of its ancient Palestinian population by marauding Jewish forces,
who then built the Jewish town of Rosh Ha'ayin on its "rubble." And it also
couldn't be clearer that this nugget of history is included to provide
justification for the terror attack: Who can blame dispossessed Palestinians
for striking out at the cruel occupier?

Except that this Palestinian history of Ras Al-Aa'ain and Rosh Ha'ayin is
nonsense. Ras Al- Aa'ain had been abandoned by its Arab inhabitants at the
turn of the last century. Even Walid Khalidi admits this in his tendentious
All That Remains, a supposed history of Palestinian towns that were occupied
by Israel (the book is published by the PLO-founded Institute for Palestine
Studies). According to Khalidi, Ras al-Ayn (as he spells it) was a "village
that was deserted at the beginning of this [ie the 20th] century." (p 251)

So there was no Arab population there to be dispossessed and there was no
one there to expel. But the Jews who began to live there in 1949 had been
expelled - by Arabs. These were Jews from Yemen, and Israel built a refugee
camp for them at what had been a British military base. The Jewish refugee
camp later became the Israeli town of Rosh Ha'ayin (Head of the Spring),
named after the local springs. But, of course, the town has a longer history
than that - in the Bible it was known as Aphek, after the neighboring
riverbed.

It is only to be hoped the PA's condemnation of the terror attack against
Rosh Ha'ayin is more legitimate than its bogus history of Rosh Ha'ayin.