31 Jan. - 6 Feb. 2002
Issue No.571
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 31 Jan. - 6 Feb. 2002 Issue No.571 |
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Can it get any worse?
In the face of Israel's onslaught Palestinians are united -- in rage, pain, fear and grief. Graham Usher reports from Nablus
"Five martyrs today," said Ahmad. "Four killed by the Jews, one by the Authority."
He is walking home from their funeral in Nablus. The day before the Israeli army had entered the city precincts, killing four members of Hamas' military arm, Izzeddin Al-Qassam.
Protests erupted around the Palestinian Authority's main jail in Nablus, with Palestinians smelling treachery and demanding freedom for the Hamas men interned within it. One Palestinian was killed by a bullet in the head, fired by a PA police officer. One Hamas detainee was freed.
Ahmad, 19, is fired up. He has a M16 rifle stuffed in his coat. He wants a lift to the nearest army checkpoint. What for? "What do you think what for?"
He was not alone in his thirst for vengeance. At the funeral three of the five corpses were carried like rugby balls on a swirling mass of humanity, 15,000 strong, flanked by the green flags of Hamas, the white of Fatah and red of the Popular and Democratic Fronts. United in rage; united in purpose.
A man in a black and white kaffieh climbed on the back of a truck. He confirmed that a shooting attack in West Jerusalem on 23 January that left two Israeli women dead was the work of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Brigades.
It was revenge for Israel's assassination of Fatah leader Raed Karmi in Tulkarm on 14 January and "all the other martyrs of Palestine," including the four Hamas men in Nablus.
There will be more, he vowed, unless Israel lifts the siege on Yasser Arafat and ends the assassinations of Palestinian fighters.
A Hamas political leader mounted the dais. The crowd hushed in anticipation. He speaks: "We demand that Izzeddin Al-Qassam brigades carry on with the suicide operations in all the enemy's cities. We want to hear the sounds of mortar shells and Qassam 1 and 2 rockets everywhere."
The crowd roars in unified response, "Revenge, revenge, O Al- Qassam!"
A kilometre or so away on a rocky mountainside of neat, middle class houses, there is another tie that binds: fear.
On 23 January a dozen Israeli armoured personnel carriers entered the neighbourhood searching for Palestinian fugitives and arms stashes. The army said it found them in a five-story apartment block, capturing nine Hamas "terrorists" and unveiling to the press "perhaps the biggest bomb factory in the West Bank." Four others had resisted arrest and were killed in a "gun battle," it said.
Palestinians from the area -- to a man, woman and child -- shake their heads. "There was no bomb factory. If there had been, the whole place would have blown sky high. The Israelis came in all guns blazing," says Alaa Bardarnah.
He had been one of the first Palestinian witnesses to the scene after the army left the apartment. One day later he showed me around. The flat was dark and chill. The living room was filled with strange cage- like structures, twisted like contorted limbs. Black smoke marks reached across the walls. There was a smell of blood.
Three of the mattresses were soaked in it, says Bardarnah. One of the dead men was found in the shower, stripped to his underwear, skull crushed, eyes gouged out. Did Bardarnah think it was an execution?
"I can't say for sure it was an execution. But the blood on the sheets tells me three were killed in their beds. Maybe they were sleeping. All were shot in the head," he says. "Ask the hospital." We did. They were.
What about the arrest of the Hamas men? "They were not Hamas men or Fatah men," answers Wafa Attireh, a woman who lives on the top floor. "There are nine apartments in the block. The army arrested the owners of each apartment. I don't know why," she shrugs. "Maybe to stop them talking."
One of those detained was her husband, Issam, 50 years old, with not a "security offence" to his name. Their daughter Nour was home when the army came.
"We heard two explosions downstairs," she says. "Then the soldiers running up the stairs and banging on our door. Father opened it. They pointed their guns right at our eyes. The soldiers asked who was the owner. My father said he was. They told him to go with them. He was in pyjamas. They let him put on a jacket. Then they went."
She twists and untwists the strap of her watch.
"We're frightened. My father has high blood pressure. He's already had two heart attacks. But he forgot to take his medicine with him. We've asked the Red Cross to get the pills to him. But they don't know where he is -- the army won't tell them. It's 24 hours already since they took him. He will need his medicine."
Many Palestinians believe Ariel Sharon has taken a strategic decision not just to oust Arafat but also to destroy the PA. That would mean the re-conquest of places like Nablus: a city of 100,000 Palestinians, with thousands of guns and hundreds of young men, like Ahmad, ready to fight. Then scores would be killed, not four.
Nour is a pharmacy student at Nablus University. She is 19 and wants a life. Does she fear the worst?
"I don't think I could be more frightened than I was yesterday," she says. "I don't know where my father is. All I know he is sick and in the hands of the Israelis. Fear the worst? How much worse can it get?"
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