Damascus Bids Farewell to Quwatli’s ‘Secret- Keeper’, Witness to All of Syria’s Revolts

Abdullah al-Khani witnesses the transition of power from President Hashem al-Atassi (R) and Shukri al-Quwatli in 1955. (Khani archive)
Abdullah al-Khani witnesses the transition of power from President Hashem al-Atassi (R) and Shukri al-Quwatli in 1955. (Khani archive)
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Damascus Bids Farewell to Quwatli’s ‘Secret- Keeper’, Witness to All of Syria’s Revolts

Abdullah al-Khani witnesses the transition of power from President Hashem al-Atassi (R) and Shukri al-Quwatli in 1955. (Khani archive)
Abdullah al-Khani witnesses the transition of power from President Hashem al-Atassi (R) and Shukri al-Quwatli in 1955. (Khani archive)

Abdullah al-Khani, one of Syria’s top diplomats and witness to decades of revolts in the country, was laid to rest in a quiet ceremony in Damascus’ Bab el Saghir Cemetery. Khani lived through various upheaval at the presidential palace, from the time of Shukri al-Quwatli to Hafez al-Assad to his son, Bashar.

Khani passed away at 98 and was known as Quwatli’s “secret-keeper” and oversaw the transfer of power to him from Hashem al-Atassi in the mid-1950s.

Khani was born in 1922 and was a classmate to famed late poet Nizar Qabbani. He pursued his studies at the American University of Beirut before completing his education at Damascus University, where he earned a degree in law. He was later employed at Naim al-Antaki’s firm. Antaki would become one of the symbols of the national movement in Syria.

On April 17, 1946, Khani witnessed the evacuation of the last remaining French troops from Syria, marking the end of its mandate over the country. He attended a military ceremony for Syrian cavalry on the banks of Barada River and leaders of the “revolt”, who held aloft a large poster of late Defense Minister Yusuf al-Azma.

The next year, Khani started working for Quwatli at the recommendation of Damascus University President Sami al-Midani. Quwatli requested that Khani monitor the United Nations Security Council discussions on the division of Palestine due his proficiency in English, which he learned during his years at AUB.

In eulogizing Khani, historian Sami Moubayed wrote: “Quwatli liked him and wanted to keep him by his side. He could not find a vacancy for him at the presidential palace, so he asked him to wait a little. It was during this time that he forged a strong relationship with Quwatli, who came to heavily rely on Khani in managing the palace affairs, especially the press office.”

Khani would show up to work dressed in his white suit, to either climb up the steps of the Grand Serail or enter the Tishreen Palace to greet his mentor and friend, President Quwatli.

After Quwatli’s ouster in 1949, the presidential palace was ordered shut by leader of the revolt, Husni al-Za'im. Khani would come to work for President Adib al-Shishakli, who sent him to France to learn about the republican system under Charles de Gaulle. He also traveled to Britain to learn about its monarchy.

Khani rose up the ranks and became chief of protocols and then acting general secretary under President Hashem al-Atassi, who “trusted him very much due to his dedication to his work.”

Quwatli was reelected president in 1955 and Khani was in charge of managing the transition from Atassi. Khani took part in meetings between Quwatli and world leaders, including Jordan’s King Hussein, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and form UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. He also took part in negotiations on Syrian-Egyptian unity in 1958 and was there for the declaration of the United Arab Republic.

At the Foreign Ministry, Khani served in various diplomatic posts in Brussels, London and Paris, where he worked at UNESCO and met with several world leaders. Among them were India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, De Gaulle and Yugoslavia’s President Josip Tito.

He joined the permanent Syrian delegation to the UN during the 1967 war and was appointed general secretary of the Foreign Ministry in 1969, according to his Wikipedia page. Khani became aide to the foreign minister when Hafez Assad came to power in 1971. He took part in meetings between Assad and US President Richard Nixon in Damascus in 1974 and Jimmy Carter in Geneva in 1977.

Assad would later order Khani to set up the Ministry of Tourism and he would later be named its first minister in the government of Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Ayyubi in 1972. He would remain in the post until 1976. His tenure would witness the eruption of the October War in 1973 and the opening of some of the most important western hotels in Damascus.

In 1980, Khani was elected a member of the International Court of Justice before joining the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris in 1990. He was elected an independent member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He was a judge at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. In 1993, he was named a member of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was also member of the team tasked with drafting a constitution for Sarajevo.

Historian Moubayed wrote that during the past ten years, Khani would look up to the Damascus sky with deep sorrow and pain as the columns of dark smoke billowed around it, recalling that the Syrian war had “caused his mind and heart profound anguish.”



Palestinian Families Flee West Bank Homes in Droves as Israel Confronts Militants

Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
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Palestinian Families Flee West Bank Homes in Droves as Israel Confronts Militants

Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP
Israel expanded its West Bank operation, which began last month, to Nur Shams in recent days © Zain JAAFAR / AFP

By car and on foot, through muddy olive groves and snipers’ sight lines, tens of thousands of Palestinians in recent weeks have fled Israeli military operations across the northern West Bank — the largest displacement in the occupied territory since the 1967 Mideast war.

After announcing a widespread crackdown against West Bank militants on Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on the restive city of Jenin, as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

But unlike past operations, Israeli forces then pushed deeper and more forcefully into several other nearby towns, including Tulkarem, Far’a and Nur Shams, scattering families and stirring bitter memories of the 1948 war over Israel’s creation, The AP reported.

During that war, 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel. That Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as Palestinians call it, gave rise to the crowded West Bank towns now under assault and still known as refugee camps.

“This is our nakba,” said Abed Sabagh, 53, who bundled his seven children into the car on Feb. 9 as sound bombs blared in Nur Shams camp, where he was born to parents who fled the 1948 war.

Tactics from Gaza Humanitarian officials say they haven’t seen such displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel captured the territory west of the Jordan River, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, displacing another 300,000 Palestinians.

“This is unprecedented. When you add to this the destruction of infrastructure, we’re reaching a point where the camps are becoming uninhabitable," said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the UN Palestinian refugee agency. More than 40,100 Palestinians have fled their homes in the ongoing military operation, according to the agency.

Experts say that Israel's tactics in the West Bank are becoming almost indistinguishable from those deployed in Gaza. Already, President Donald Trump's plan for the mass transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza has emboldened Israel's far-right to renew calls for annexation of the West Bank.

"The idea of ‘cleansing’ the land of Palestinians is more popular today than ever before," said Yagil Levy, head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at Britain’s Open University.

The Israeli army denies issuing evacuation orders in the West Bank. It said troops secure passages for those wanting to leave on their own accord.

Seven minutes to leave home. Over a dozen displaced Palestinians interviewed in the last week said they did not flee their homes out of fear, but on the orders of Israeli security forces. Associated Press journalists in the Nur Shams camp also heard Israeli soldiers shouting through mosque megaphones, ordering people to leave.

Some displaced families said soldiers were polite, knocking on doors and assuring them they could return when the army left. Others said they were ruthless, ransacking rooms, waving rifles and hustling residents out of their homes despite pleas for more time.

“I was sobbing, asking them, ‘Why do you want me to leave my house?’ My baby is upstairs, just let me get my baby please,’” Ayat Abdullah, 30, recalled from a shelter for displaced people in the village of Kafr al-Labd. “They gave us seven minutes. I brought my children, thank God. Nothing else."

Told to make their own way, Abdullah trudged 10 kilometers (six miles) on a path lighted only by the glow from her phone as rain turned the ground to mud. She said she clutched her children tight, braving possible snipers that had killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman just hours earlier on Feb. 9.

Her 5-year-old son, Nidal, interrupted her story, pursing his lips together to make a loud buzzing sound.

“You’re right, my love," she replied. “That’s the sound the drones made when we left home.”

Hospitality, for now In the nearby town of Anabta, volunteers moved in and out of mosques and government buildings that have become makeshift shelters — delivering donated blankets, serving bitter coffee, distributing boiled eggs for breakfast and whipping up vats of rice and chicken for dinner.

Residents have opened their homes to families fleeing Nur Shams and Tulkarem.

“This is our duty in the current security situation,” said Thabet A’mar, the mayor of Anabta.

But he stressed that the town’s welcoming hand should not be mistaken for anything more.

“We insist that their displacement is temporary,” he said.

Staying put When the invasion started on Feb. 2, Israeli bulldozers ruptured underground pipes. Taps ran dry. Sewage gushed. Internet service was shut off. Schools closed. Food supplies dwindled. Explosions echoed.

Ahmad Sobuh could understand how his neighbors chose to flee the Far’a refugee camp during Israel's 10-day incursion. But he scavenged rainwater to drink and hunkered down in his home, swearing to himself, his family and the Israeli soldiers knocking at his door that he would stay.

The soldiers advised against that, informing Sobuh's family on Feb. 11 that, because a room had raised suspicion for containing security cameras and an object resembling a weapon, they would blow up the second floor.

The surveillance cameras, which Israeli soldiers argued could be exploited by Palestinian militants, were not unusual in the volatile neighborhood, Sobuh said, as families can observe street battles and Israeli army operations from inside.

But the second claim sent him clambering upstairs, where he found his nephew’s water pipe, shaped like a rifle.

Hours later, the explosion left his nephew's room naked to the wind and shattered most others. It was too dangerous to stay.

“They are doing everything they can to push us out,” he said of Israel's military, which, according to the UN agency for refugees, has demolished hundreds of homes across the four camps this year.

The Israeli army has described its ongoing campaign as a crucial counterterrorism effort to prevent attacks like Oct. 7, and said steps were taken to mitigate the impact on civilians.

A chilling return The first thing Doha Abu Dgheish noticed about her family's five-story home 10 days after Israeli troops forced them to leave, she said, was the smell.

Venturing inside as Israeli troops withdrew from Far'a camp, she found rotten food and toilets piled with excrement. Pet parakeets had vanished from their cages. Pages of the Quran had been defaced with graphic drawings. Israeli forces had apparently used explosives to blow every door off its hinges, even though none had been locked.

Rama, her 11-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, screamed upon finding her doll’s skirt torn and its face covered with more graphic drawings.

AP journalists visited the Abu Dgheish home on Feb. 12, hours after their return.

Nearly two dozen Palestinians interviewed across the four West Bank refugee camps this month described army units taking over civilian homes to use as a dormitories, storerooms or lookout points. The Abu Dgheish family accused Israeli soldiers of vandalizing their home, as did multiple families in Far’a.

The Israeli army blamed militants for embedding themselves in civilian infrastructure. Soldiers may be “required to operate from civilian homes for varying periods," it said, adding that the destruction of civilian property was a violation of the military's rules and does not conform to its values.

It said “any exceptional incidents that raise concerns regarding a deviation from these orders” are “thoroughly addressed,” without elaborating.

For Abu Dgheish, the mess was emblematic of the emotional whiplash of return. No one knows when they’ll have to flee again.

“It’s like they want us to feel that we’re never safe,” she said. ”That we have no control.”