The Price Is Cheap, Abul Gheit

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The chief foreign minister of the Arab regimes has announced that the Palestinians will be compensated with the sum of 40,000,000,000 US dollars, should peace be reached — as compensation to the Palestinians for their properties, or rather for their homeland, and to support the establishment of a Palestinian state (a security subcontractor for Israel, of course) in the West Bank and Gaza, once a peace agreement is signed. I do not believe Abul Gheit alone came up with this figure; it must be a number already circulating in various diplomatic circles, ones the Palestinian Authority never strays from. In other words, Abul Gheit’s figure is a number the Arab negotiators and their backers have already agreed upon, and the gradual disbursement awaits only the gradual dragging of the Palestinian people into the final pit of disgrace.

According to Abul Gheit’s figure, each Palestinian’s share comes to about $4,000, given that the Palestinian people number close to ten million. Since my own family consists of six people, our share would come to $24,000. At first glance the sum does not seem too bad — but the matter looks different once we actually do the math properly.

In 1948, my grandfather lost 240 dunums of olive-planted land (about 60 acres), and my own share of that land today comes to about six dunums. A dunum today is worth roughly $25,000, meaning the land’s value comes to $150,000. I myself lost, to the [separation] wall, 9 dunums of irrigated agricultural land, each dunum worth around $15,000, for a total value of about $135,000.

My wife’s family, meanwhile, lost about 25,000 dunums in the Marj Ibn Amer plain in 1948, and my wife’s own share of that today comes to 27 dunums. A dunum there is worth about $30,000, for a total value of $810,000. My wife’s grandfather also lost a house in Haifa; the land it now stands on is estimated to be worth about $1,000,000, and my wife’s share of that today comes to about $75,000.

That means the value of my own and my family’s properties today comes to $1,170,000.

And note, Mr. Abul Gheit, that you have not even factored in two things:

The gains accrued from the use of the land over the years, and the rent owed for the house and the land it stands on;

And you have failed to take into account that what you are asking me to sell is a homeland — not merely parcels of land. A homeland, Abul Gheit, is worth more than a piece of land. Do you have a price for that too?

It is plain, Mr. Abul Gheit, that you are a grand, world-class swindler — how else could you propose to pay me and my family members a mere $24,000, when the price of my properties alone is sixty times higher, and the homeland is beyond price altogether?

And it is entirely possible that you will not even give me this sum, and will instead hand it over to the Palestinian Authority, which I would not trust with a dead chick’s carcass. In other words, you and those with you — Palestinians, Arabs, and foreigners alike — want to feast on my property and my homeland, and on everyone else’s. Isn’t that so?

I would also like to ask you whether the honor of Arab women is likewise up for sale, since you know full well that whoever sells his homeland sells his mother, his sister, and his wife along with it. You might ask the leaders of your Arab regimes what price has been paid, if the honor of Arab women happens to please the people of the West, and then announce the matter to us in one of your upcoming statements.

Mr. Abul Gheit: Palestine is not for sale, and neither are Egypt, Najd, or the Hijaz. Arab land is not for sale, not for bargaining, and not for negotiation; and you, who broker and haggle over it, will have your heads ground down beneath the millstone. You are brokers whose heads are crowned with disgrace and shame, fit for nothing but the mire.

Do you know, Mr. Abul Gheit, who holds the towel at the door of the brothel? It is you, and those with you.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الثمن بخس يا أبو الغيط” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.