8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Pushed together
Osama Bin Laden has said the US-led war is "primarily between Christianity and Islam." But in the occupied territories, there is only the war by Israel against Palestinians -- Muslims and Christians alike. Graham Usher listens to two women talk in Beit Jala
Haifa and Rana are mother and daughter. Haifa, 45, is a professor at Bethlehem University and mother to four daughters. Rana, 15, is the oldest, in 10th grade at school and has ambitions to be a doctor or a writer.
Haifa's family are Palestinian Christians. They live in a nice house, are well off by Palestinian standards and are secular, in an Arab Christian kind of way. In another place -- another time -- they would be the epitome of middle-class aspirations, mores and respectability.
But they live in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank -- one of the most live and contested fronts of the year-old Palestinian Intifada. For 10 days last month they, together with 12,000 mainly Christian Palestinians, were besieged in their home as Israeli tanks, soldiers and snipers invaded Beit Jala in reprisal for the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.
It was not the first invasion of Beit Jala. It probably will not be the last. But it was the worse. Two Palestinians were killed in the raid, both Christians, both civilians. Musa Abu Eid, 18, shot by sniper fire in his home. Rania Khoroufa, 24, and mother of two, cut into pieces by tank shrapnel as she tried to take refuge in a shop.
For Haifa and her daughter, death had never seemed so random or so close, but especially so for Rana. "There were times when she felt wanted to die," confides her mother. "'Why live, why study, why dream or plan when they're going to kill us anyway?' she would say. It's hard to deal with a situation like that."
They are drinking coffee on Haifa's veranda, the afternoon after the tanks have left. In the valley behind them the Palestinian village of Al-Khader huddles in a clutch of red-tiled houses and minarets, bound by the main Jerusalem (and now Israeli-only) road and commanded by Gilo, a vast Jewish settlement built on land confiscated from Beit Jala after the 1967 war.
Up the road is a newly installed Israeli army pillbox, bristling with machine-guns. Several hundred metres back from the house is a Palestinian police checkpoint, in place to secure the cease-fire that got the tanks out, Haifa back to university and Rana back to school.
The siege is over. The occupation is not. Neither is the Intifada. What has it been like to live all three simultaneously?
Palestinian police officers hang a torn Paestinian flag at the destroyed offices of the Palestinian security forces in Qalqilya after Israeli incursion (photo: AP)
Haifa: "A nightmare. It's a bit like being in an American movie that never ends. You know, like one of those horror or police movies, where people are killed in the streets. It feels unreal. But it's real."
Rana: "The worst part is the pressure. You can't go out. You can't study. You can only watch TV. Then I heard Musa Abu Eid had been killed. I knew him. We used to play tennis at the same place. You realise you could be next. I felt, 'If he's dead, we can all die.' I became so scared for myself, my sisters, my parents, friends. I became scared about living."
For five weeks not a shot had been fired from Beit Jala on Gilo. So why did the Israelis invade?
Haifa: "There's a difference between what the Israelis say and what they do. First they said those who had killed Zeevi were hiding in Bethlehem, but nobody was hiding in Bethlehem. Then they said they are defending Gilo from shooting fired from Beit Jala, but there had been no shooting from Beit Jala. I think they want to drive us out. They know a lot of Christians live here and think, 'Okay, let them go to America, Europe or Canada.' Then Beit Jala can be for them, an extension of Gilo."
Rana: "They're trying to make this a Muslim-Christian war. But it's not. We are all of one hand here. We have the same feelings, live the same conditions. They shoot all of us. If anything, the siege made us stronger, made people love one another more. And we're not leaving. There was a lot of shooting here and my uncle's house is deeper in the village. But I refused to go there. My family refused. We will not leave our home."
So the Intifada should continue, for another year, another 10, for however long it takes?
Rana: "I used to want that. But I'm tired. And I'm losing my friends. I'm scared. I do want peace."
Haifa: "So many people are being killed. And the Intifada will have to stop sometime. So maybe it should stop now. But not if it means we give in. Yasser Arafat has to stand for he believes in."
Rana: "He cannot hand over the Palestinian fighters like Israel wants. They are our brothers, our parents. They are from us. There can be no peace if he did this. There would be a Palestinian revolution against him. If the Israelis want peace, they should give back the land they took in 1967. They should stop killing us. They should stop calling us terrorists. Because we are not the terrorists -- they are."
And can there be peace, with Israel, with Israelis?
Haifa: "Not for a while. There are too many hard feelings. It will be very difficult for us to live with each other. It will take years for our children to live with them. Look at my students. They were born in the first Intifada. They are university students for this one. They never had a childhood, never enjoyed their teenage years. They've lived their whole lives in terror."
Rana: "We take Christian lessons at school. They say we mustn't hate. We mustn't do to them what they do to us. But I do hate them. They kill us, shell our houses. We have widows and orphans and homeless people everywhere. How can you have sympathy with them?"
Haifa: "I'm against actions in Israel, the suicide bombings. I feel sorry for the families, for the mothers and children. You have to feel for them if you are human."
Rana: "I don't feel for them. Okay, they lose a child, or two, or three, but we are losing hundreds. Look, the Hamas and Jihad suicide bombers -- I think they're great. They're doing a good job. Whatever way we take we end up dying. At least they take some Israelis with them."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page