‘It was necessary to uproot them’ 
Charles Glass
- A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples by Ilan Pappe
- The Gun and the Olive Branch by David Hirst
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris
Albert Aghazarian is a Palestinian, neither Arab nor Israeli, who lives in the eastern portion of Jerusalem annexed by Israel in 1967. His house stands within two sets of walls, those of the ancient Armenian convent of St James and, beyond them, the Turkish walls of Jerusalem’s old city. The convent is a haven, in the same sense Israel calls itself a haven, in which descendants of Armenians who escaped Turkey’s First World War massacres still live. When he was director of the public relations office at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, Aghazarian was often called on to mediate between the university and the Israeli military authorities. His Hebrew is fluent, as are his Arabic, Armenian and English. At the ulpan, or Hebrew language school, his favourite expression was Ze lo col khakh pashut: ‘It’s not as simple as that.’
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Charles Glass has recently published two books on the Middle East, The Northern Front and The Tribes Triumphant, and is writing a book set in France during the German occupation.
Other articles by this contributor:
Cyber-Jihad · What Osama Said
Learning from Its Mistakes · Hizbullah
The New Piracy · Terror on the High Seas
Is Syria next? · Charles Glass reports from Damascus
print layout
tell a friend