Nakba #60 - Mohamed Mahmoud Gadallah

In 1946 I was working at the King David Hotel in al-Quds when the Irgun carried out a bombing against the southern wing. The British military had its headquarters there. I was in the hotel dining room, far from the explosion, and was unharmed.

After the attack, all the guests disappeared and those of us who worked at the hotel were dismissed. I then joined Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni’s resistance movement, Jaysh al-Inqadh al-‘Arabi. They sent me to a training camp in Syria.

I was given a uniform and weapons. I took part in the fighting around the Palestinian village of al-Qastal and was standing beside our leader when he was killed. We took his body to al-Quds, where he was buried next to his father in the mausoleum of the Khatuniyya Madrasa.