Hebron strongman Sheik Farid Khader el-Ja’abari is one of the Palestinian Authority's most outspoken opponents • He rejects the idea of a Palestinian state and keeps close contact with the IDF and Jewish settlers.
Nadav Shragai
Sheik Farid Khader el-Ja’abari is not willing to participate in games of war and peace.  |
In the winter of 1974, the newspaper Al-Fajr published a cartoon showing the mayor of Hebron, Sheik Mohammed Ali el-Ja’abari, with a slipper stuffed in his mouth. Ja’abari, the all-powerful mayor of Hebron at the time, a friend of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and of King Hussein of Jordan, was the one who, four years earlier, had allowed the establishment of the Jewish neighborhood in Kiryat Arba. His close relationship with the Israeli administration became a thorn in the sides of Palestinian nationalists.
The editor of Al-Fajr at the time was Yusuf (Joe) Nasser. For the sheik’s loyalists, the cartoon was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Veteran journalist Danny Rubinstein, who covered the Palestinian territories for the newspaper Davar at the time, recalled this week how, at a conference that Ja’abari attended, an elderly man stood up and called out, “Don’t worry, your Excellency – we will bring you the decapitated head of Yusuf Nasser on a tray of food.” Several days later, Yusuf Nasser disappeared from his home on Salah a-Din Street in east Jerusalem and was never seen again. Although the people suspected in the kidnapping, Ja’abari’s men, were arrested and interrogated, they were released due to lack of evidence. Read the rest on:
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