The Village of Deir Amr

Credit:
Courtesy of Sahar Huneidi
Deir Amr: A Haven for Palestinian Orphans That Inspired Awe Near and Far until It Was Forcibly Emptied in 1948
Snapshot
The village of Deir Amr in the western hills of Jerusalem was the site of the first agricultural school for Palestinian boys orphaned as a result of the 1936–39 Great Palestinian Revolt. For the first time, this Backgrounder details its full history, weaving together firsthand testimonies and archival research: its origination by Ahmad Samih Khalidi and founding by the Arab Orphan Committee, its golden years throughout the 1940s, its inimitable headmaster and his charming family, its fascinating guestbook featuring the names of visitors from around the world, and its tragic forced emptying in 1948 at the hands of Zionist forces. With its remarkable achievements and its immense promise and potential, Deir Amr demonstrates that what was taken from Palestinians in 1948 was not only what had already been built but, even more importantly, all that could have been.
Jerusalem Story is deeply grateful to Sahar Huneidi and Walid Khalidi for sharing their family histories, photos, and memories about Deir Amr, primary sources which greatly enriched this Backgrounder.
The village of Deir Amr, located 12.5 km west of Jerusalem on 3,072 dunams of mostly nonarable land, was a little-known medieval khirba (ruin) with a population of five recorded in the 1922 British census.1 Flanked to the east by the village of Suba and to the west by Beit Umm al-Mays, Deir Amr sits on a mountain that rises to 750 meters above sea level, one of the most elevated areas surrounding Jerusalem. Its location—overlooking the only road to Jerusalem from Jaffa—was highly strategic. The flat mountain peak included a shrine dedicated to Sheikh Amr, a local saint who was given the name of al-Sa‘i (the Messenger) Amr—the namesake of the village.2
In 1863, French archaeologist Victor Guérin described the khirba as having
around twenty small rooms, half of which have collapsed and enclosed within the same enclosure: they were constructed with materials of all kinds and date perhaps from the Middle Ages. Around, five cisterns were dug in the rock and appear older.
From the top of this plateau, the view embraces a large part of the mountains of Juda and the immense plain of the Philistines; the Mediterranean also unfolds in the distance before our eyes.3
By 1931, the population of Deir Amr and Suba was recorded as 434 Palestinians residing in 110 houses. And by 1944/45, the population of the village of Deir Amr alone was recorded at 10.4
But the significance of this tiny village to Jerusalem and to Palestine more broadly begins in the aftermath of the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936–39, which not only devastated Palestinian political leadership, effectively crushing any resistance to British rule, but also left behind a generation of orphaned children. Throughout the four-year popular uprising, which was largely centered in the countryside, over 3,832 Palestinians were killed and their villages largely destroyed. As Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi describes it:
The 1936–9 rebellion was dealt with brutally by the British. Artillery was used against the villagers; villages were bombed from the air by the air force. In those days, the bombs were not as big as today, but there were 250-pound bombs dropped on small villages, causing enormous damage and lots of casualties. The countryside was devastated. Many orphans were created, for whom there was no one to look after, because the British government, in the process of suppressing the rebellion, had disbanded all[Arab] political organizations, including the highest Arab political body, the Arab Higher Committee, which was the equivalent of the Jewish Agency . . . The British disbanded it, outlawed it, expelled its leaders, and put an end to Arab political activity in the country.5
Following the revolt, Walid’s father, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, who had devoted nearly two decades to developing a rural education program in Palestine—as inspector of education in Jaffa, Gaza, and Tulkarm between 1919 and 1923, and in Jerusalem starting in 19236—decided to do something about the plight of Palestinian orphans. In Walid’s words: “These were village children, and they had lost one or both of their parents. They had very few people to look after them. Most of them did not get schooling or training; they were a burden on the villages themselves and on the rest of their families.” Ahmad Samih’s solution was to establish a school for these children, one that would combine agricultural work with academic knowledge.
Ahmad Samih’s forward-looking scheme concerned rehabilitating the children into their villages following completion of a curriculum that he designed. As Walid explained, this would enable them “to return to their villages and be useful members of the village.” Regarding the curriculum: “They would first get literate . . . In the meantime, they would be receiving instruction in various areas that would be useful when they got back [to their villages]—poultry, dairy, beekeeping, terracing, planting, vegetable cultivation.”
Thus began an educational initiative that would transform the isolated mountaintop village into a thriving community with immense promise. As one visitor to the school in March 1947 remarked: “if we had ten Deir Amrs, we would ensure the future of all our children in our country”7—were it not for the expulsion of all the inhabitants of the school at the hands of Zionist forces in July 1948 and its permanent closure thereafter.
Setting Up the Deir Amr Agricultural School for Orphans
Ahmad Samih Khalidi, who by 1925 was also appointed principal of Jerusalem’s prestigious Arab College, was committed to solving the plight of the hundreds of orphans left at the end of the revolt. But with the British ban on political organizing and the closure of many Palestinian institutions, his most pressing concern was securing funding and representation. The Syrian Orphanage House8 (Dar al-Aytam al-Suriyya) was closed down by the British in 1940, and the Supreme Muslim Council’s Islamic Industrial House for Orphans (Dar al-Aytam al-Sina‘iyya al-Islamiyya), located in the Old City of Jerusalem, could not accommodate the large number of orphans. Likewise, church orphanages in Jerusalem could not rise to the challenge, nor were they equipped to.9
But Ahmad Samih had an idea. Upon learning of the Egyptian and Iraqi governments’ intentions to contribute 25,000 and 8,000 pounds, respectively, for “relief” work in Palestine following the revolt, he contacted the consuls of the two countries in Jerusalem, “both of whom he knew very well.”10 He managed to convince the consuls to direct the funds to his project, but he insisted that the goal be institutional rather than relief-based, thus ensuring its longevity. The consuls agreed and asked Ahmad Samih to form a committee that would receive the governmental funds and oversee the project. In January 1940, Ahmad Samih formed the General Arab Orphan Committee of Palestine (Lajnat al-Yatim al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Amma), consisting of 14 members, with a seed capital of 1,000 pounds contributed by the members.11 A copy of the committee’s founding document can be viewed here.
The committee’s elite membership, including nine Muslims and five Christians, was made up of lawyers, doctors, educators, businessmen, and civil servants. Of these, six formed the committee’s board: Raja’i Husseini, Yousef Heikal, Wadie‘ Tarazi, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, Shibly Jamal, and Nushi Beydoun. Ahmad Samih was chosen as chair of the board, and the collective decided that the “rural orphan challenge could best be met by a permanent, specialized agricultural institution.”12 Ahmad Samih thus went on the search for land that would be suitable for this large venture. What he found was a 3,000-dunam plot of land owned by waqf authorities in Jerusalem atop a very steep hill adjacent to khirbat Deir Amr. Ahmad Samih managed to negotiate a 29-year renewable lease with the authorities for a symbolic amount. Since the land was otherwise empty and uncultivated, waqf authorities had one condition: that the land continue to be used for the benefit of the orphans.13
But the Egyptian and Iraqi governments had still not sent their contributions to the committee, which worried Ahmad Samih. He spoke with the two consuls again, and they informed him that British colonial officials in Cairo and Baghdad had been blocking the transfers. As Walid explains, the “obstruction was certainly due” to Britain’s “awareness of the project’s underlying political roots: the orphans in question were indisputably the casualties of the British might—the children of martyrs killed in action by British troops.”14 The Egyptian consul advised Ahmad Samih to speak to British authorities in Jerusalem to urge them to reverse their course of action, which was threatening to divert Egyptian funds to the British Government of Palestine and to cancel the Iraqi funds altogether.
Ahmad Samih immediately met with the chief secretary of the British Government in Jerusalem, John Macpherson. Walid relays the conversation between his father and Macpherson as follows:
Macpherson: How many Arab orphans are there in Palestine?
Father: The British missionary authorities estimate the number at 10,000. This is probably an exaggeration.
Macpherson: What is your estimate?
Father: The government knows best. I think it’s in the hundreds.
Macpherson: What is your definition of an orphan?
Father: A boy or girl six to ten years old who has lost both or either parent through natural death or otherwise.
Macpherson: What do you mean “otherwise”?
Father: Death comes in different forms.
Macpherson: How much money does your organization have?
Father: One thousand pounds.
Macpherson: What is your annual income?
Father: About 500 pounds.
Macpherson: What do you expect to do with this money?
Father: We have leased a plot of land from the awkaf [sic] on which we hope to establish a small farm.
Macpherson: How many orphan boys will you start with?
Father: Ten.
Macpherson: Isn’t this too small a number?
Father: We start small and we grow with time. Half a loaf is better than no loaf.
Macpherson: What do you want from me?
Father: The release of the L25,000 contributed by the Egyptian government.
Macpherson: This is not my money. Egypt is an independent country.
Father: I know that. I also know you can advise the Egyptian government to pay the money to our committee to establish a permanent agricultural institute.
Macpherson: I shall convey the content of this conversation to His Excellency and let you know.15
A year later, the Arab Orphan Committee received only 5,000 pounds from the Egyptian government, though this did not deter Ahmad Samih, who hired an architect and began construction on the school building right away. The simple but functional structure was built from stone and included large, spacious rooms. As Walid describes, “It fit in to the area. It conformed to the village architecture because it had arches and domes.” Evidently, Ahmad Samih became “absolutely obsessed with it”; he would “rush from Jerusalem” every weekend to inspect the construction site, and he would take friends, colleagues, and visitors with him. From “very early on,” he even had a visitors’ book in the school, “and he insisted on people inscribing their impressions”—an invaluable source to which we return later.
With the significantly reduced contributions from the Egyptian government, money was certainly an issue, so Ahmad Samih and the Arab Orphan Committee devised two ingenious plans. The first was called the “Shilling Campaign.” In his capacity as head of the Arab College, which enrolled students from all over Palestine, Ahmad Samih had extensive networks of village school principals across the country, many of whom were graduates of the Arab College and knew Ahmad Samih personally. These principals became patrons of Deir Amr who regularly donated to the project. Walid explains the campaign as follows:
The British pound had 20 shillings, something like a quarter ($.25), which is not much. So, in other words, a small donor campaign—probably the first small donor campaign ever made systematically in an Arab country, because it had a network. The secondary school teachers and the faculty, using their own students, would go around on a shilling campaign for Deir ‘Amr, and they would collect 2,000 or 3,000 pounds. They did this every other year.
The second was called the “Sheep (kharuf) Campaign.” The committee decided that it would “visit every one of the 1,000 villages in the country.” And customarily, villagers would slaughter a sheep to welcome their guests. But instead of the slaughter, the committee resolved they would ask “for the cost of the sheep (estimated at 5 pounds per head) to be paid to it. The campaign was expected to raise 2,500 pounds. Instead, it raised 12,500 pounds.” Between 1939 and 1948, the committee raised 120,000 pounds, “mostly through small contributions” collected through these campaigns.16
Under the leadership of Ahmad Samih and the committee, Deir Amr became not only a successful educational venture, but a fully self-sufficient community. In Walid’s words:
The main objective of the entire enterprise was to create self-reliant individuals without complexes about their orphan status. The word “orphan” was banned from Deir ‘Amr. There was also to be no charity inside Deir ‘Amr. Students consumed what they produced. They did everything they were capable of doing with their own hands. Only heavy work that was beyond their capacity was done using outside labor. The students planted their own vegetables and crops, cooked their own food, kept their stories, and were otherwise unrestricted.17
The school was so successful, Macpherson left the following words in the visitors’ book following his visit on April 16, 1942: “I was mistaken. I should have given you the 25,000 pounds.”18 But Macpherson was not the only one fascinated by the school. Even the Palestine Post, a Zionist newspaper established in Jerusalem in 1932, found reason to praise the institution. On December 21, 1942, and marking the first anniversary of the establishment of the school, the Palestine Post published the following feature story about Deir Amr:
A Palestine School for Citizenship
Arab Orphans into Farmers
This picture is a picture of an orphan who is never reminded that he is an orphan, who lives and works and plays in an institution whose aim is to strip itself of institutionalism, an orphan who is learning to be cheerful, self-reliant, self-sufficient; a capable farmer, and enterprising worker, a valuable citizen. He lives at Deir Amr, about five kilometers off the Jerusalem-Jaffa road, near Abu Ghosh. Here he is seen halving tomatoes.
Until about two years ago, this orphan would have gone to an institution like the Syrian Orphanage; or a Catholic institution like the orphanage at Beit-Jemal; or to a Convent like those in Jerusalem, Bethlehem or Nazareth; or to a Moslem orphanage like those maintained by the Moslem Supreme Council from Waqf funds.
Now he lives on a farm, where the environment is planned on village lines, and where he himself takes a big part in building roads and planting food.
One Year Old
The Deir Amr Farm School celebrates its first birthday yesterday. The idea was launched on January 1, 1940, by a group of 14 people who formed the General Arab Orphans Committee, headed by Ahmad Samih Bey el Khalidi. It is maintained by public contributions, and 70 percent of its budget comes from monthly gifts from 30 to 250 mils made by private individuals. By June 1942, over LP 8,972 had been collected, and the figure has now reached over LP 10,000. When the farm school was opened a year ago, it had 16 children, but now there are about 40, ranging in age from 12 to 14. A Selection Committee is in contact with towns and villages, with Mayors and District Officers, with the Supreme Moslem Council, and probation offices and existing orphanages. The neediest cases are sifted out of the large number of recommendations and are accepted at the farm school. The maximum age, ultimately, is expected to be about 16 but none of the school’s children are over 15, and the problem of how long to keep them has not yet arisen.
The atmosphere is one of home, and the children are made to feel that it is their own farm that they are working. The farm is not of the ultra-modern type, but its instructors have been seconded from the Department of Education. They are graduates of the Government Arab College, and have been trained at the Kadoorie Agricultural School at Tul Karm, and the Acre Study Farm.
Self-Help
Their standing orders are: “What the boys can do, the boys must do. What they cannot do, will be done by labour.” Thus outside labour was employed to lay a road from the highway to the school, but a tree-edged walk about half a kilometre long was laid out and planted by the children. And they made their own roller from a tar barrel to do it. Last year vegetables were brought from Jerusalem, but this year the children grew enough for their own needs and had enough left over to make it worthwhile to market the surplus to Jerusalem. They breed rabbits and sheep for meat, and keep bees for their honey. They have planted under intensive cultivation 100 dunams of olive trees, 80 dunams of apples, 20 dunams of figs and grape vines, 15 of vegetables. The remainder of the 2,500 dunams of the estate (leased from the Waqf) is under extensive cultivation, and is sown with grain. In addition to the fruit trees, the young farmers have also planted trees for afforestation purposes.
At first there was a cook, but he resigned. Now the children prepare their own meals. At first a Jerusalem barber visited the school every 15 days; now several of the children are the barbers. In the morning the children are farmers in the field; in the afternoon they attend classes where they learn to be better farmers. They have built their own poultry run without cost, using only material available in Palestine—a poultry run any villager can build.
Girls School Planned
When they leave the school, these boys will go back to their villages, where it is hoped they will be able to introduce what they have evolved, and learnt at the school. In time, a technical and industrial section is expected to be opened, a girls school added and younger children accepted. Plans also envisage the establishment of a Health Centre at the school for surrounding villages.
An annual grant of LP 150 was given to the school by the late Sitt Amineh Khalidi.19
In 1947, Ahmad Samih and the Arab Orphan Committee laid the foundations for “a revolutionary project”—a boarding school adjacent to the Deir Amr orphanage—“for rural girls of any Arab or Muslim country at the time.”20 Even the Palestine Post reported on the school’s plans to expand on November 7, 1947:
Arab Orphans Farm Grows
Buildings Added, Road Being Laid
Palestine Post Staff
Continued progress has been made at the Arab Orphans Farm at Deir Amr, which was established in 1940, and almost all the 3,000 dunams are now under cultivation, the Arab Orphans Committee states in its annual report.
New works carried out during the last year were the building of a house for the assistant headmaster, a cowshed with modern dairy equipment, and carpentry and blacksmith workshops. A health centre was also opened and is used by the surrounding villages.
The Department of Public Works recently began to asphalt an eight-kilometre road leading to the main highway.
During the year, the farm received donations of LP 9,700, of which nearly LP 8,000 was given by the Nizam of Hyderabad. An annual grant of LP 3,600 is now being made by the Government Department of Social Welfare for the maintenance of 30 orphans.
Future plans include a new wing, to accommodate 100 girls, at an estimated cost of LP 82,000.
The Farm Committee includes Ahmad Samih Bey al Khalidi, Assistant Director of Education, and Dr. Yusef Haikal, Mayor of Jaffa.21
But by late November 1947, the situation across Palestine had grown untenable and before long, the Nakba would begin and end any hopes of growth at Deir Amr. The girls’ school never came to be.
The Headmaster and His Family Who Breathed Life into Deir Amr
By the end of 1941, the first building at Deir Amr was completed and housed 12 boys. Two years later, a second large dormitory building was added and the students numbered 100. Afterwards, new constructions included quarters for the school’s headmaster and his two assistants, a clinic, a carpentry shop, and dairy and beekeeping stations.22 To manage the expanding property and its growing population, Ahmad Samih and the committee hired Abd al-Ghaffar Katbeh Badr, a civil servant of the Colonial British Mandate working as headmaster of the ‘Abbasiyya school in Jaffa. Abd al-Ghaffar, from Hebron, was reputed for his unparallelled work ethic, dedication, and honesty. He was the perfect man for the job. In fact, he was so excited by the venture, he left his family in Jaffa to take part in the construction of the school in the depths of a cold winter.
Abd al-Ghaffar spent so much of his time in Deir Amr during these first months that his wife, Zahra, grew worried in Jaffa. One day, she set off to find him. Being from Damascus and not familiar with Palestine’s mountainous terrain, Zahra was joined by two friendly neighbors who showed her the way inland to the Jerusalem hills from Jaffa. With her two children, aged 9 and 6, courageous Zahra trekked up the steep snow-covered slope to Deir Amr. By the time they reached the top, Abd al-Ghaffar could see them and yelled: “What are you doing here?!”23 Their daughter, Lamis, 88 years old today, vividly recalls with eyes wide open and a warm smile how cold she and her younger brother, Azzam, felt that day so long ago—"the snow was up to our knees.”
By the time they entered the newly completed, empty building to escape the cold, their legs were soaking wet and they were shivering and hungry. Abd al-Ghaffar fetched his kids one of the few foods available, musalwa‘a, as the Jerusalemites called it—hardened, cooked yellow lentils eaten with bread—which the cook had prepared earlier that day. Laughing, Lamis still remembers that they ate it “on the floor” as there was nowhere else to sit.
Abd al-Ghaffar sent Zahra and the children, once they were fed and warmed up, back to Jaffa the same day—he was determined to get back to work and worried for his family. But rather than send them back down the snowy mountain by foot, Lamis recalls with a laugh, he got them a baghla (mule) that Lamis and Azzam were meant to ride together. But Lamis refused to get into the packsaddle. Kicking and screaming, she insisted to walk down the mountain, so she remembers humorously that they had to put stones in the opposite pouch to the one Azzam sat in to provide balance. Once they reached the nearby village of al-Qastal, Abd al-Ghaffar put his family in a car to take them to Jaffa, and he returned to work at Deir Amr.
A few months later, with the school complete, Abd al-Ghaffar sent for his family to join him in their new home. Lamis says:
When we finally moved to Deir Amr, the house on the mountain had furniture . . . It was a one floor house surrounded by verandahs. The glass was very thin. Anything could make it shatter. Hyenas could break the glass and enter the house. My mom would see hyenas on the verandah and she would stand guard so they wouldn’t come in.
But even in this wild mountaintop school, Lamis, Azzam, their parents, the staff, and the students thrived—at least whenever Lamis and Azzam visited on weekends and holidays. Their parents sent them to boarding schools in Jerusalem. Lamis attended Schmidt’s Girls College, which she remembers fondly: “I was very happy in the boarding school . . . I loved the nuns and priests. I still pray for them. When the nun Mama Paula held me, it was as if my Mama was there—I was so happy. There were girls there from Nablus, Haifa, Akka, Jaffa—all of them were boarding.”
Within a year, Lamis says, Deir Amr was yielding olive oil, honey, and cheese. Zahra was also very involved, and Lamis was in awe of her mother’s entrepreneurial, creative spirit: “Mama was a genius . . . Everything that would come out of the school she would prepare for sale and send to Jerusalem in tanks. She made large quantities and had some assistance . . . I used to follow my dad to the bee farm and watch how they took out the honey.” But beyond her business savviness, Zahra also cared for the students as though they were her children, an invaluable quality in a school administrator. As Lamis describes proudly, and in jest:
All the children were like her children. If a kid got sick, she tended to them as if they were her own. She didn’t leave their side until they got better. That was unless the child needed a doctor. The place had a doctor; Mohammed Dajani. Mama would stand in place of the nurse. They brought a nurse and let her go later. She was useless.
In addition to caring for their health, Zahra supervised the students’ hygiene with the assistance of muhafizat (orderlies). “Mama was responsible for the children’s baths even,” Lamis said. “She would go with them during bathtime and wait outside with the towel to make sure they would not get sick if they were wet.”
In a letter he wrote to his granddaughter Sahar Huneidi (Lamis’s daughter) from Damascus in 1991, Abd al-Ghaffar recalled an endearing account of the students’ washing habits:
On the first night of the opening of the school, God graced us with plentiful rain, al-hamdu lillah. I lived with the students on my own in the classroom, the dining hall, and the dormitory, so I started to get used to the daily chores like cleaning and bedmaking, or helping the cook. On the morning of the second day, I noticed the misuse of the toilets and sinks, so I grabbed a broom and asked two students to help me bring two buckets of water for cleaning. One of the students approached me and asked me to give him the broom. I was pleased with him and thanked him, but I told him, “no, because today is my turn, and tomorrow it will be yours, inshallah.” This is how we went about cleaning. The other students watched and whispered in disgust from the filth, learning how to properly use the toilets and sinks, and what needs to be done tomorrow and each day. Cleaning and bedmaking chores thus became easy habits based on an organized schedule of shifts for each group.24
Abd al-Ghaffar extended this daily cleaning regimen to the kitchen and other school facilities, teaching the children discipline, structure, and responsibility. He also taught them engineering, at least by observation. As Lamis describes, rainwater was the only source of fresh water around:
Baba built two water wells and lined them with cement. In winter, they filled up with rain and snow water. They were enough for the whole year. All the water used in the project came from those wells, even the service water. Baba made pipes to draw water to the children’s bathrooms. It was all “from the water of God” and we were never remotely short on water. No one ever complained about water scarcity. It was even increasing in quantity with time. What a miracle!
But Abd al-Ghaffar also learned from the students. In his letter to Sahar, he shared the following humorous details about shaving and cutting the students’ hair: “I agreed with a barber from the village of Suba to shave and cut the students’ hair weekly. After a while, I was disgusted by him and his tools, so I decided to do without him and bought a barber’s kit from Jerusalem. I learned to cut hair on their heads.”
Recruitment of Students
In terms of selecting the students for enrolment, Abd al-Ghaffar would visit villages across Palestine in search of orphans of martyrs from the Great Revolt. “Palestine was full of villages,” Lamis explained. “Baba would go to each village and meet the head of the municipality. He would say that he’s looking for awlad shuhada’ [children of martyrs]. The head of the municipality would know who they are. My father would take them all. Any children of martyrs.” Then, Abd al-Ghaffar would bring the children to the school, at which point “Mama would take them in. God chose her for this role.” For these bereaved children, Abd al-Ghaffar and Zahra were like parents, and not a minute of their time at the school would go to waste.
Abd al-Ghaffar also erected fences and pens for all sorts of animals to roam. Lamis recalled excitedly:
I lived with all the animals in Deir Amr! We had different types of chickens; one type that lays small eggs—Phar‘on, we used to call it—and regular chickens; cows of different types; lambs that were so clean that you would want to kiss them. It was all not near the house but at a distance. Baba made them a place to live and water throughs to drink from. We also had rabbits!
Lamis shared a funny memory of the sheep her father kept on the farm:
One day, I rode on the sheep and took him by the hair on his neck, and this sheep just took off and started running, running, and running. But I held on. Behind the house we had a big space for agriculture where my dad grew grapes on the ground, not like today where you grow them vertically. The sheep entered and kept running. I was still holding on to it. I fell off, and we both got entangled in the grape vines.
Deir Amr and its leading family turned the mountaintop orphanage into a paradise, a safe haven for Palestine’s orphans to learn and grow in a bucolic landscape filled with animals, fruits, and vegetables. Even Ahmad Samih brought his daughter Randa from Jerusalem to play with Lamis in the picturesque hills. As Lamis remembers:
We would go down to the spring where Baba was planting cucumbers and other plants. I would tell Randa to take off her shoes and socks. She was fair and her feet were tender, unlike mine. I would take her down and hold her hand in case she would fall. We would pick cucumbers and go back up to the school.
In fact, the existence of this spring in the valley south of the village is what made this otherwise barren stretch of land atop a steep hill attractive to its original and later inhabitants. As Walid wrote of the village:
A spring located south of the village provided potable water. Grain was planted in the bottom of valleys and in the lowlands, while olive trees and vineyards were located on the slopes. Wild trees, grass, and herbs covered the mountain tops around the village. Rainfed agriculture was the main source of livelihood.25
Before long, the agricultural school with a robust curriculum suited to its natural surroundings was full of children from all parts of Palestine. “All the children were orphans, children of martyrs. They were very happy there,” Lamis says.
The Deir Amr Guestbook
Ahmad Samih’s insistence on bringing a guestbook to the school from its early days may have seemed quirky and peculiar at the time, but today, the book—leatherbound by the famous Palestinian fine artist and calligrapher Jamal Badran—is the only record that remains from the orphanage. Filled with over 70 pages of signatures and written impressions of the school by an unexpected diversity of visitors, the precious book Abd al-Ghaffar managed to save on the day the school was invaded by Zionist forces in July 1948 is today stored safely with his granddaughter, Sahar.
That it ended up in the possession of the headmaster’s granddaughter, a historian herself, in Amman, despite decades of exile in Bethlehem, Damascus, Beirut, and beyond, is deeply significant. On the one hand, the book, like exiled Palestinians across the world, has undertaken an impressive journey worth recording; on the other, its arrival at its current location in the western hills of Amman overlooking Palestine is the closest it has been to its birthplace of Deir Amr since its expulsion from Palestine. A symbolic victory, certainly, but also one that holds profound meaning for Abd al-Ghaffar’s descendants who themselves await return to Palestine.
The Deir Amr orphanage attracted considerable attention locally, regionally, and internationally. As Walid describes: “Visitors to Deir Amr came not only from all over Palestine but also from the neighboring Arab countries: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon.”26 For example, on October 4, 1943, the Palestine Post ran the following story about the visit of a famous Egyptian singer to the school:
Took Each Other at Their Word
When the Egyptian Singer Leila Murad sang a monologue entitled “Who Will Buy Roses From Me?” during a recital at the Y.M.C.A. in Jerusalem on Friday night, a member of the audience rose and offered to do so.
Miss Murad immediately sold one flower for LP10 and other members of the audience spontaneously joined in, buying roses for LP180. The proceeds went for the Deir Amr Farm for Arab orphans.
A similar sale at a performance in Jaffa last week raised LP250 for the farm. Miss Murad is leaving Jerusalem for Cairo shortly but will visit the Deir Amr institution, at its Committee’s invitation, before her departure.27
Walid continues about the school’s visitors:
There was also a steady stream of foreign visitors—British, French, American, and even a Russian diplomat. The Americans included the American Consul in Jerusalem, the two Roosevelt brothers, Kermit and Archie, and the Pulitzer prize-winning Associate Press photographer Frank Noel. The British visitors included Sir Harold MacMichael, the chief secretary John Macpherson, the historian Steven Runciman, the Labor MP Francis Nael Baker, and Lord Oxford and Asquith.28
Regarding Macpherson’s visit, the Palestine Post printed the following on April 17, 1942:
Mr. Macpherson Visits Arab Farm School
The officer Administering the Government and Mrs. Macpherson, accompanied by the High Commissioner’s Private Secretary, yesterday afternoon paid an official visit to the Deir Amr Farm School which is run under the auspices of the General Arab Orphans Committee of Palestine.
The party was met by Ahmed Sameh Bey Khalidi, Principal of the Arab College, and Chairman of the Orphan Committee; Rajai Bey Husseini, the Treasurer; Dr. Yusuf Haikal, the Secretary; Shibli Eff. Jamal and Ahmad Eff. Touqan, members of the Committee.
After inspecting the buildings and watching the boys at work, Mr. Macpherson and his party had tea at the residence of Abdel Ghaffar Eff. Khatibeh [sic], the caretaker.29
Thanks to the guestbook, we not only know the identity of visitors to the school, but also their “laudatory comments in Arabic, English, and French” about Ahmad Samih’s pioneering initiative. Through the visitors’ written impressions, we are also afforded an invaluable account of the students’ experiences at the school: “Many of the visitors noted how happy and healthy the boys looked,” Walid tells us.30 As the following entries from the guestbook evidence, Deir Amr was an innovative institution for its students and Palestinian society more broadly, serving as an inspiration for Palestine, the region, and beyond.
On March 27, 1942, a delegation from the Arab Orphan Committee in Haifa visited Deir Amr, including four members of its board and eight of its members. They had the following to say:
We were honored to visit the Deir Amr institute established by the General Arab Orphan Committee in Palestine. We saw more than we had heard. What we saw was heartening and should make people proud of those who are carrying out this great project on stable and permanent foundations. We saw great work being carried out with tremendous efforts that could not be done in this difficult time and in these harsh circumstances, except by competent men of great merit and high determination. People like the president and members of the General Arab Orphan Committee in Palestine are the ones who have the first credit for launching this great charitable project. May God reward them with the best reward, and abundantly.31
They added the following before their signatures: “On the occasion of this visit, we presented an amount of 50 Palestinian pounds to the Arab Orphan Committee fund to purchase a souvenir for the institute from the Arab Orphan Committee of Haifa.”
On June 13, 1942, a delegation from the General Arab Orphan Committee of Bisan in northern Palestine visited the school and was moved by what it represented for the Arab collective: “We visited the farm of Deir Amr and found it to be an example of sincerity, zeal, and good management. Its growth in this short period heralds the Arab nation a bright future. May God bless those in charge of its management.”
Several British members of the Soil Conservation Board visited Deir Amr on June 30, 1942, to inspect the property. They, too, were compelled to praise what they saw:
The members of the Soil Conservation Board have inspected the lands of the school and discussed its problems with great interest. Apart from the human interest of the boys for whom the school has been established, the proper treatment of the hillsides and valleys will prove profitable, and should be a permanent and impressive object lesson to the surrounding villagers. The board will watch progress with sympathy and will always give any possible assistance.
The very next day, on July 1, 1942, a group of educators from St. George’s School in Jerusalem visited Deir Amr. The headmaster shared:
A party of staff and boys of St. George’s School, Jerusalem, greatly enjoyed a visit to Deir Amr on 1st July, 1942. We were struck by the good design and execution. The principles are excellent and are being very seriously applied. A magnificent site, well laid out. We hope to support you and visit you again; with many thanks for great hospitality, Ahmed Effendi!
Another member of the group added: “A mountain of vision! A great privilege to see it and may it help all the villages in the valleys!”
Later that month, on July 28, the school welcomed a women’s delegation including famous figures like Jamila al-Khoury, Fadwa Khoury, Lorice Khoury, Hajja Fatima Far’on, and Shafiqa Salam. They were deeply moved by what they saw:
Our visit to the Deir Amr institute left an impact on our souls that we cannot forget. Great efforts, truly. A great step, and work that is the first of its kind in our country by our hands. It demonstrates firmness, organization, and strong management. May God keep those who are responsible for making this nation proud.
On September 13, 1942, a visitor who signed their name illegibly said the following pithily: “to make things grow; plants in the ground; ideas in the mind. Nothing is better than this.”
On April 18, 1944, the director of education of the Near East Foundation, one H. B. Allen, noted the school’s regional importance: “The Deir ‘Amr Farm School, with its fine beginning and its great possibilities, is an inspiring place to visit. It will be, and in fact already is, a great credit to the Arab world.”
On May 26, 1944, Archie Roosevelt signed the guestbook: “With best wishes for the continuing success of your wonderful project.” And in an undated entry in the guestbook from 1944, British representative of the Government Hospital of Jaffa said the following about the health of the boys of the school: “A splendid achievement with infinite possibilities for the future happiness and welfare of many people. The boys look well and very happy and the empty clinic and sick rooms spoke volumes for the excellent care bestowed on them.”
On August 9, 1944, the famed British historian Steven Runciman visited the school and signed the guestbook: “In gratitude for the opportunity of seeing the development of a scheme that will revolutionise the social and agricultural life of the Near East.”
The school was a source of great pride for Palestinian visitors. On June 24, 1945, a visitor from the Saba family exclaimed: “Oh foreigner! Come and look!”—implying that foreigners, who tended to denigrate Arabs, would be impressed to see what they can create. And on September 17, 1945, another visitor declared: “I hold my head up high with my country’s great project.”
Deir Amr inspired hope. On March 30, 1946, a visitor shared: “With the likes of this beautiful project, Palestine will be revived. With the likes of this ingenious effort, it will overcome what haunts it today. Long live the administrators of Deir Amr.”
On May 13, 1946, a veterinarian visited the school and praised what he saw. At the end, though, he made a recommendation:
I was impressed by seeing this national humanitarian institution and the high spirit enjoyed by the institute’s students and those responsible for it. There is no doubt that this institute has filled a void that we desperately need, and I hope that it will continue to flourish through the efforts of the nation and those responsible for its success.
I would like to advise strengthening the branch of animal husbandry and poultry birds, as this is complementary to the agricultural aspect, and none of them is indispensable to the other.
On June 1, 1946, a visitor said: “For a nation among whose men are the likes of the members of the General Arab Orphan Committee, there is no fear for its fall. Without a doubt, success will always be its leader.”
On October 9, 1946, the American vice-consul signed the guestbook: “My congratulations to the Director, Headmaster and boys of Deir Amr School for a most impressive achievement.” A day later, Sari Sakakini, the son of Khalil Sakakini, Jerusalem’s renowned educator, exclaimed: “Oh if I were with you here always.”
On that same page, a visitor said: “Every Arab in Palestine should brag of this effort, instead of being so modest.” And on November 15, 1946, Sa’eb Salam, the interior minister of Lebanon, visited Deir Amr and was deeply moved: “I was looking forward to see Deir Amr and its staff after a not-so-short absence. My pleasure was satisfied by what I saw, my desire for this visit which always revives in me the hope of the renaissance of the Arab nation.”
On March 14, 1947, a visitor noted: “It is nice to see an establishment which is not surrounded by walls. I hope the boys, as they grow up, will not build walls around their minds, but will be inspired by their physical surroundings and cultivate open minds and bright hearts.”
On March 20, 1947, the director of education at the Department of Education shared: “A place from which we in the Department of Education have much to learn. Best wishes in all your good work.”
On May 5, 1947, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Syrian Consulate General made a powerful statement: “This project is a slap in the face of Zionist propaganda that portrays Arabs as lazy, not working or producing.”
On July 5, 1947, a man by the name of Richard Zaibar from Columbus, Ohio, said the following: “This will prove, I am sure, to be the cradle of leadership for Arab men in Palestine. May God prosper the good work which is done in this place.”
On the same day, a visitor by the name of Tawfiq Shakhshir said: “An institute that stands on the shoulders of the Arab people, graduating men who work in Arab society, worthy of every service and sacrifice from every individual of the Arab people.”
Kermit Roosevelt visited the school on July 20, 1947. He said the following: “The combination of orphanage school and agricultural project is obviously most successful. I am sure that Deir Amr will go on to greater and greater achievements.”
On August 2, 1947, Selwa Khalidi visited Deir Amr from New York City: “I have come a long way to find what Deir Amr embodies; beauty, progress, and inspiration. May the imagination, energy and will power that have built Deir Amr continue to flourish and God be with you!”
On November 24, 1947, the consul general of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Palestine wrote the following in the guestbook: “A project that raises the head of the Arab high in the world of humanitarian projects. It is the pride of the Arabs of struggling Palestine and a sharp weapon in calling for their just cause in countries whose civilizations flourish. It is also an ideal for every national action.”
The consul general of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Palestine left the last entry in the school’s guestbook on December 11, 1947. Much like his Jordanian counterpart who visited some three weeks prior, the Saudi diplomat was very impressed:
On this day, the 15th of Muharram 1367, I had the honor of visiting Deir Amr. I was very pleased with what I saw and inspected for myself of the good work and organization in this lofty humanitarian edifice. I thank His Excellency the chairman of the committee that supervised this glory, Mr. Ahmed Samih Al-Khalidi, who made this visit possible for me. I sincerely hope that the righteous men in charge, who have dedicated themselves to serving the noble project, will continue to succeed in their beneficial national work. For a project like Deir Amr, I call upon the men of the country and its religious leaders to pray, and I join myself in praying for it with them. And God is the source of intention.
The remaining half of the guestbook is filled with blank white pages—a reflection, perhaps, of Deir Amr’s stolen potential.
“All This Was Lost in Half an Hour”
The mountaintop sanctuary had been largely protected from the Zionist terror campaigns that spread across Jerusalem and its villages during the first months of 1948 and that culminated in the displacement of over 70,000 Palestinians. But the Zionist waves of ethnic cleansing did not cease upon the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14. For months thereafter, Zionist militias continued to storm and depopulate Palestinian locales across the country, including Deir Amr. On July 17, in the midst of Ramadan, Zionist forces of the Fourth Battalion of the Harel Brigade raided the village and expelled all the school’s residents, permanently shutting its doors.
In the early months of 1948, Lamis recalls that she and her family were always worried. The war was spreading across Palestine, and the school was growing more and more secluded. Residents of Deir Amr anticipated the war reaching them before long, especially when they saw it with their own eyes:
Our place in Deir Amr was so high that we could see the Jerusalem-Jaffa Road and even Jaffa’s beach . . . I remember hearing them say “al-qafilah bidha tumru” [the convoy will pass through]. The qafilah was a very long procession of cars leaving from Jerusalem to Jaffa. My mother would put chairs outside where she could see the far-away street . . . The procession was very long and took a while to pass. The fellahin of the village would make a kamin [an ambush]. The cars would start blowing up in the hills and falling into the valley . . . We would sit next to Mama, all of Deir Amr would sit and watch this spectacle as if it was a cinema.
But Abd al-Ghaffar was steadfast and determined not to abandon the school. As Lamis put it: “Baba would say that all the villages around us would say, ‘As long as Deir Amr is standing, we will not flee.’ So he insisted that Deir Amr would stay until the very last minute to give hope and determination to the other villages to remain. The Zionists were harassing everyone, but Deir Amr gave them a sense of safety and strength.” But by February 1948, the situation grew untenable and Abd al-Ghaffar sent Zahra, Lamis, Azzam, and baby Hala to Jerusalem where they would take a car to Zahra’s family in Damascus. A few months later in July, Lamis explains, “Baba was forced to flee. The bombing had reached our house.”
Lamis vividly remembers the horror of fleeing Deir Amr with her parents and siblings. In her own words:
My dad decided to send us to Damascus because, he thought, if the Zionists reached us and forced us to leave, we could not make our escape with him through the mountains to reach Bethlehem. That was his plan for escape and it would take about 10 days. We were too young, he thought, and we would die on the road.
At that point, all the roads were closed and it had become clear that the Zionists were going to come up to Deir Amr. It was clear they wanted to take the mountaintop. So, my father decided to send us to Damascus.
There was a man—Abu Ali—who would bring us mazot [kerosene] from Jerusalem. For some time, he couldn’t come up [to Deir Amr] because the roads were closed, but one day, the al-Qastal road was open, so he loaded his car with mazot and drove up the mountain to deliver it to us. As he was there, I remember my father telling my mother to pack some clothes and leave with Abu Ali to Jerusalem . . .
During those days, my mother was very terrified every single night. We did not have any electricity in Deir Amr at all. From the beginning to the end. Never. Everything ran on kerosene, whether in the house or at the school—everything. If we saw a dim light from afar, a car light or anything like that, we would die of fear. We would think they’re coming for us.
So, we got in the car with Abu Ali. My mother, my baby sister Hala who was less than one year old, and I sat in the front next to Abu Ali. My father came along for the ride. He sat with my brother Azzam in the backseat. The car was open in the back and the sun was intense, so my mother made my brother wear a cap to protect his head.
As Abu Ali drove, we passed by a quarry. It was a quarry that provided stones for the entire country. Jews and Arabs worked there. It was after al-Qastal on the way to the mountain. There was a Jewish worker at the quarry who my father knew. He would take my father to the quarry whenever father needed stones. He was called David if I recall correctly.
That day at the quarry, we saw tanks, military vehicles, and armed soldiers with machine guns. They saw us and immediately drew up their weapons. They were ready to shoot. Then David saw us. He was in military uniform and looked like a commander. He ordered them to stop when he saw my brother’s cap and realized it was us. They withdrew their weapons. He came over to our car and first hugged my brother Azzam and kissed him, then he took my hands in his and kissed them. He cleared the way for us. It was completely closed. There were a lot of tanks. No one could pass through, and they would immediately open fire.
If it wasn’t for that man, we would have been shot. We kept driving. We reached al-Qastal in peace and safety. The Jerusalem-Jaffa Road used by the qafilah passed by al-Qastal. Abu Ali had a feeling that the convoy was close. If we were to pass through at the same moment [as the convoy did], it was going to open fire on us. They used to shoot any Arab passing on the streets. They even shot animals. Abu Ali had an old car, but he was driving at a great speed. He was very scared . . . and we were as well. Abu Ali’s wheels flew off the ground because he knew how dangerous the qafilah was.
We drove on until we reached a roundabout with one street leading to Jerusalem and another that connects to the convoy’s trajectory. We almost met it at the intersection, but Abu Ali drove at an even greater speed. We passed the intersection, and were safe. We reached Jerusalem. My father found us a taxi, and told him: “directly to al-Sham” [Damascus]. That road was safe. We went one way to Damascus.
It was a miracle that we survived.
Abd al-Ghaffar went “back through the mountains. He arrived safely and stayed in Deir Amr for a few months.” But in April 1948, following the dramatic Battle of al-Qastal, which ended with Zionist Palmach forces capturing and destroying the village on April 9, the same day as the Deir Yassin massacre, unrest spread throughout Jerusalem’s Palestinian villages. Abd al-Ghaffar described these days in the letter he wrote to Sahar in 1991:
On the occasion of the turmoil in the region following the incidents of al-Qastal, Saris, Suba, and Beit Surik, on Tuesday morning 4/20/1948, I left the institute, accompanied by twenty young students, heading to Jerusalem via Ain Karem and al-Malha, walking on foot through the mountains and valleys. We arrived at about ten in the morning, and with the help of committee member Rifat Bey al-Habbab, the [students] were enrolled temporarily in the correctional school in Bethlehem, which we reached with the car of the merchant Abu Hamda.
Abd al-Ghaffar proceeded to list the students by name.
But this wasn’t the last time Abd al-Ghaffar would escape Deir Amr through the hills. In mid-July, Zionist forces surrounded Deir Amr and began to fire at the school. Abd al-Ghaffar acted quickly and decided to evacuate everyone. “They prepared the donkeys and packed some provisions; rice, flour and other necessities,” Lamis recounts. “They had to escape through the mountains.” But for some reason, Abd al-Ghaffar “dashed into the study and hugged the visitors’ book tightly to his chest,” Walid describes. It was the one thing he saved from the school. And as he led the Deir Amr community away from the school through the hills, Walid goes on, the Zionists “started shooting on the ground near them. They ran away, and they could hear them laughing as they ran away, while the bullets ricocheted off the walls. Abd al-Ghaffar hugged the book tightly to his chest and stumbled as he ran, dodging bullets.”
But one of the school’s main staff, Ali al-Khalidi, decided to stay. Lamis says:
He was a teacher and knew how to speak Hebrew very well. He said “I don’t want to leave. I’m staying” . . . He put up a ladder and raised a white flag. It was clear that they were arriving; they were walking up the hill. Baba had already escaped, hill by hill. Ali Khalidi spoke to them in Hebrew: “I am a teacher, I don’t want to leave, I want to stay here with you,” he said. They said, “OK, come down.” He went down the ladder. They blindfolded and beat him, then said “follow your friends.” They didn’t want him to stay. He escaped through the mountains until he found the others. The entire Deir Amr community left together—orphans, workers, peasants, and Omar Khatib, my father's assistant, who was his nephew.
As for the villagers, “the long and short of it,” Walid says, “is that one afternoon, out of nowhere, 35 to 40 young armed Jewish men and women with automatic weapons and walkie talkies just arrived and started shooting in the air. They said [to the villagers] ‘yalla, come together.’ Then, once they had gathered together, the forces said ‘yalla, imshu’ [walk].”
Abd al-Ghaffar’s escape to Bethlehem through the hills with the students took nine days. They couldn’t stay in villages along the way, as they were also being attacked and their residents were also fleeing, so “they slept at night, and walked during the day. There were wild animals, hyenas and snakes,” Lamis says. “They cooked rice and sugar. They kept walking in the wild mountains with only wohoosh [wild animals].” It was also Ramadan and very hot, and Abd al-Ghaffar insisted on fasting so the children could eat what provisions they had. As Abd al-Ghaffar described it to Sahar: “I was the only one fasting during Ramadan, and we stopped by a village well where people scoop water with buckets. Everyone drank due to the extreme thirst, and I was among them, hoping for God’s forgiveness.”
The intrepid band of students and their headmaster finally reached Bethlehem and headed straight to Abd al-Ghaffar’s friend’s youth correctional school. Mr. Saffouri greeted the escapees warmly, but Abd al-Ghaffar explained that he could not mix his students with the troubled youth, so Mr. Saffouri created a separate division for the orphans. “They were accommodated, fed, and provided with all necessities,” Lamis explained. “When Baba was sure that all the children were safe, he came to Damascus to take us to Bethlehem. He said we would go live in Bethlehem because a man by the name of Musa al-Alami had a lot of agricultural lands there,” and he would hire Abd al-Ghaffar. “We had no clothes. Nothing. We came from Damascus as refugees,” Lamis says. “My brother and I went to the English school . . . in the part of Jerusalem that stayed in Arab hands. That was in 1948.”
Abd al-Ghaffar recalled this painful period as follows to Sahar: “I stayed in the correctional school helping however I could, while my family stayed in Damascus with [Zahra’s] family since February 1948. I waited for the relief of the hope of return to Deir Amr,” which never came. Instead, he brought his family from Damascus and they stayed in Bethlehem for two and a half years. During that time, Abd al-Ghaffar remained in touch with Ahmad Samih, who had fled with his family to Lebanon. “I visited him in Baabdat [in Mount Lebanon] a few times,” Abd al-Ghaffar told Sahar, and on one of these visits, he gave Ahmad Samih the keys to Deir Amr. “They should be with the Khalidis now,” Lamis says, “but he didn’t give them the guestbook. It stayed with him.”
During his time in Bethlehem, Abd al-Ghaffar worked as a director in Musa Alami’s new project in Jericho, the Arab Development Society, which the prominent Jerusalem nationalist and politician established in 1945 as an agricultural development initiative.32 A few months later, Abd al-Ghaffar was summoned to Damascus by the refugee foundation affliated with the Syrian Ministry of Interior to run a school like Deir Amr. As Lamis tells it, “He took a group of 20 or 25 students with him” and went to Damascus. Rather than call the new school a maytam (orphanage), which “Baba didn’t like,” he named it the Deir Yasin Institute in honor of the depopulated Palestinian village west of Jerusalem whose residents were massacred by Zionist forces on April 9, 1948. Four years later, the Syrian government appropriated a large building in the Jewish Quarter of Damascus’s Old City and leased it to Abd al-Ghaffar, who relocated the Deir Yasin Institute there.
Lamis remembers the school in Damascus:
The building was four or five floors. The top floor was the director’s house. We lived there, and set up the other floors as classrooms and other facilities. It was beautiful. It had a beautiful fountain at the center like in traditional Damascus houses. It had landscaping and a playground. They tiled it and put a little dirt for trees and for the children to play there. Every morning, Mama would put on her white apron and supervise the children. She would check for lice and skin diseases . . . Mama was the nurse, from Deir Amr to Deir Yasin. The children healed and became healthy, all of them. Everything in the dormitory was in order, tidy and neat.
After his time at the Deir Yasin Institute, Abd al-Ghaffar worked as an education inspector for UNRWA in the north of Syria, and then as the assistant to the director of education in Damascus for 17 years. A devout and humble man, Abd al-Ghaffar ended his 1991 letter to Sahar as follows: “I ask God for forgiveness, wellness, and a good ending.” He died in 2010 in Damascus having surpassed the age of 100, and having outlived Zahra, who had passed away six years prior, also in Damascus. Their youngest daughter, Hala, still lives in Damascus, while Lamis and Azzam live in Amman today.
As for Deir Amr, Israeli forces laid siege both to the village and the school grounds in July 1948, transforming the latter first into a tuberculosis hospital for children and then into an Israeli mental hospital in 1952.
Walid describes what happened to the village and its school as follows:
The site is surrounded with a fence and a guarded gate. All the houses still stand and new extensions have been added to some of them. Large cypress and carob trees grow among the houses. There is an olive grove on the southern edge of the village. The [Israeli] Bezek telephone and television company has established a large facility, with radar equipment, at the southern edge of the site. The psychiatric hospital of Eytanim is nearby.33
Sahar visited the property in 2017. She described her experience as follows: “They didn’t let me in. I saw it from outside and there were cypress trees. I am sure that my grandfather planted those trees.”34
* * *
Though Deir Amr never again operated as an agricultural school for orphaned Palestinian children, the pioneering vision and guardianship that Ahmad Samih Khalidi and Abd al-Ghaffar Katbeh Badr began were inherited by Musa Alami, who was committed to revitalizing Palestine’s devastated landscape and to rehabilitating its traumatized children. In 1952, Alami expanded the Arab Development Society into a vocational training center for orphans and refugees.35 The project sought to improve the social and economic conditions of Palestinian villagers by enhancing health care and other services, improving industrial agriculture and planting trees, encouraging cooperative farming, and, after 1952, by “setting up institutes to give agricultural and industrial training to orphaned and disadvantaged Arabs free of charge.36 This initiative persists to this day.
Contributors
Writer: Nadim Bawalsa, Jerusalem Story
Researchers: Nadim Bawalsa and Kate Rouhana, Jerusalem Story
Editor: Kate Rouhana, Jerusalem Story
Translators: Nadim Bawalsa and Yara Nahle, Jerusalem Story
Notes
Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (n.p.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), 284–85.
Khalidi, All That Remains, 284.
Victor Guérin, Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine (Paris: L’Imprimerie National, 1869), 8. Translated from French by Nadim Bawalsa.
Khalidi, All That Remains. This figure excludes the residents of the Deir Amr school.
Walid Khalidi, interview by Kate Rouhana, Cambridge, MA, June 21, 2024. All subsequent quotes from Khalidi are from this interview.
“Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi,” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, accessed January 9, 2025.
For access to the guestbook, see “Abd al-Ghaffar Katbeh Badr,” Palestine Memory, accessed January 9, 2025.
The Syrian Orphanage House was also known as the Schneller Orphanage, named after its architect, Johann Ludwig Schneller, a German Protestant missionary.
Walid Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 251.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 251.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 252. Khalidi explains that the Palestinian pound was equivalent in value to the British pound at the time.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 252.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 252–53.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 253.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 254–55.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 256.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 256.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 257.
Palestine Post, December 21, 1942.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 256.
Palestine Post, November 7, 1947.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 255.
Lamis Katbeh Badr, interview by Kate Rouhana, Amman, Jordan, August 21, 2021. All subsequent quotes from Lamis are from this interview.
Letter from Abd al-Ghaffar Katbeh Badr to Sahar Huneidi, Damascus, September 27, 1991. Translated from Arabic by Nadim Bawalsa. All subsequent quotes from Abd al-Ghaffar are from this letter.
Khalidi, All That Remains, 284.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 256.
Palestine Post, October 4, 1943.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 256–57.
Palestine Post, April 17, 1942.
Khalidi, unpublished memoir, 257.
All Arabic entries from the guestbook were translated to English by Nadim Bawalsa.
For more about the Arab Development Society, see Nadi Abusaada, “Forgotten History: A Vision for Palestinian Refugees’ Agricultural Self-Sufficiency,” Architectural Review, October 30, 2023.
Khalidi, All That Remains, 285.
Sahar Huneidi, interview by Kate Rouhana, Amman, Jordan, August 21, 2021.
“Musa Alami,” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, accessed January 9, 2025.
“Musa Alami.”