By: N.Krishna
krishnaj@vsnl.net
April 11, 2004

Living among Arabs and the rootless Palestinians for two decades made me respect our way of life more than I learned while in India. My first encounter with a Palestinian was in 1981 when a limping Palestine Civil Engineer was introduced to me from one of the Dubai government department. He used to carry a civil engineer’s handbook, but I found out that he never had any formal education. He produced an experience certificate from an Arab construction firm to get the job. Even though he did not know anything about engineering, he compensated it by organising the five time prayer of all Muslims in the department. His limp had come from a terrorist attack in which he participated, and after that he was relocated in a Dubai government department. At any time there were about two dozen Palestinians in my department and I found that they are a rootless lost community.

One interesting Palestinian I came across was one Mohammed Fattah, a self confessed terrorist. He never had any formal degree yet joined the government as an Electrical engineer. Always well dressed in a suit he had a pleasant nature. He openly told me that he was involved in terrorist activities and can no longer live in Palestine as he feared for his life. He was a relative of the Director of the Dubai TV, which at that time was known as Channel 33. Many Gulf nationals had one Palestine wife and thus it was easy for these Palestinians to get a government job in the Gulf due to their relationship with locals. After few years Fattah migrated to US. Another unqualified Palestinian engineer, kept a Tamil Muslim engineer as his assistant to help him in technical matters. Keeping one Indian Muslim engineer as an assistant was the normal pattern for the Palestinians who are in to various technical positions with duplicate certificates.

Palestinians tried to impress the locals by showing them that they are more religious than other Arab and Indian nationals. There was an occasion when one of the new generations of local graduate asked me to keep the mosque door locked to prevent them, going inside and sleep during working hours. A vicious side to these Palestinians is their effort to convert Indian Hindus to score a point among the local Arabs. Many daily workers or technicians recruited on temporary assignment had fallen victim to the conversion effort of these Palestinians. Few such Andhraite converted to Islam were working under me at one time.

Palestinian expatriates are happy in the present state of turmoil and don’t want peace in their native place, as the Arab brothers give them job as long as their land is in turmoil. They are bent upon having many kids to fight the war and bring up the children to become terrorists of the future. A rootless group, with no pride, willing to indulge in all terrorist activities, the Palestinians is a totally untrustworthy dangerous lot and we Indians should keep them at arms length. Their friendship is just an act. It is in our own interest to keep away the Palestinians, and we should follow the Israeli principle even to deal with the Muslim world and Pakistan.

N.Krishna