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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
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FEATURES |
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(part 2 of 3) by George Arida Thursday, January 15, 2004
We finally got to the front of our line and were waved forward in our van. In the guard tower just ahead of the checkpoint crossing, a soldier was up in his perch with a machine gun poking through a slotted opening. As our van approached the soldier on the ground, the sniper trained his gun on our windshield. I could see his helmet shifting as he viewed us through his scope. He kept his gun trained on us the whole time we were sitting there. Again I was asked, "Why are you here? What do you want?" After several minutes' discussion, the soldier would not allow Intar (my Palestinian driver) and his vehicle to pass but said I could enter because I was a journalist. Having the Wisconsin press card helped. Intar parked and waited while I went through the pedestrian line and entered Qilqilya. I met some very friendly young men there who showed me around and explained what had happened at certain sites of significance. I met some Palestinian security officers on the way back out. Their only identifying feature was an orange day-glo vest they each wore over their clothes. These men weren't allowed to have weapons or radios or any other equipment, but manned their post on the main road and had friendly conversations with the few individuals who passed by. There were very few people out and about today. I talked with them for a short while. Then they flagged down a cab to take me back to the checkpoint. On the way out, a checkpoint soldier asked me the "Why are you here?" question. When I answered that I wanted to see the West Bank, he asked, "What are your impressions?" very seriously. “It's beautiful here, I told him with a smile. Back where I am from, there is snow on the ground and it's cold, and the warm weather here is great.” He broke his cold, serious demeanor and cracked a smile. Then I said "But I wish it was easier for the people here. It's very hard." His smile disappeared immediately. He glared at me for a moment in silence, paged through my passport for a minute or two, and then handed it back to me and resumed glaring without a word. I looked back at him silently and got the sense he was done with me, so I started to walk forward. In stark contrast to the Israeli roads and walkways, the walking path and most of the driving road were filthy, mucky, and uneven, with holes and rocks. Some of these roads had been paved and well-maintained before the construction of all the checkpoints and Israelis-only bypass roads for the settlers. Under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian roads throughout the area were either destroyed, blockaded, or allowed to fall into a state of disrepair. Despite the miserable conditions, the endless waiting, and the uncertainty about reaching their destination, each person I saw along the way in and around the checkpoint was friendly and seemed to be either glad or just a little curious as to why I was there among them. Intar was waiting for me back on the other side, and we started the return trip to Jerusalem. At the first highway checkpoint, we were of course waved over to the right for another search and interrogation. The soldier, maybe 18 or 19 years old, took my passport. "America, eh? What's up, man?" he laughed.
"Why are you here?" “To look around, to see what's going on,” I replied. Seeing my press card, he asked, "To report to everybody how bad I am?" “To report whatever I see,” I said. "You report what you see that will make me look bad, and [you] make me act worse and worse." He had an edge to his voice. “Why do you say that? You don't know me or what I will write.” "Wait here." He took our documents and talked with another soldier and an older military police officer in a blue uniform. They spoke in Hebrew as they handed our documents around. The young soldier came back, ordered Intar out of the van, opened the sliding side door, entered the van, and searched inside. Next, the soldier went around back and had Intar pop the rear door and open his bags and boxes so he could inspect the contents. Then he went back and spoke to the other two again, still carrying our ID and passport. He came back and handed us our documents. "You can go," he said. A few more checkpoints and interrogations later, we were back in Jerusalem. The staff at the Jerusalem Hotel had become friends over the course of the time we had spent there. We initially had booked reservations only for the first and last nights of our stay, in Palestine, intending to stop there on the way into Gaza and again on the way back out. Instead, we ended up staying there the whole week (with the exception of Jennifer, who finally got into Gaza and was able to spend two and a half days there). Our friends at the hotel had become familiar with our ongoing, uphill battle to try to get permission from the Israelis to travel into Gaza. They helped us with all our arrangements for transportation around the West Bank. On the way down to breakfast early Tuesday morning, the receptionist had told of the breaking news that construction on the section of the Wall cutting through AbuDis had unexpectedly started overnight, under floodlights and heavy guard. AbuDis is a Jerusalem suburb sitting just on the east border of the municipality. When we learned the news of the Wall construction, we hastily arranged a trip out to AbuDis. We arrived at a concrete barricade in the middle of a residential neighborhood. We walked past the vehicle barricade to a section of temporary wall that completely blocked off the main thoroughfare through the area. As we stood there, the permanent Wall was being constructed about two blocks away and would extend through here, replacing this roughly 15-foot high temporary barricade. Peace graffiti and anti-wall slogans were written in English all over the blockade. Palestinian schoolgirls and boys, families, and workers were climbing over a narrow pile of rubble that formed the side of the blockade. They were carrying grocery bags, school books and backpacks. I climbed up atop the narrow passage and looked over the other side of the barrier. There was quite a drop off the side of this ledge of sorts, but it was the only way for people to pass, and people were passing in both directions. We ventured over to the area where the permanent Wall was being built. Huge 26-foot-tall slabs of concrete were being craned into place while a couple dozen soldiers and police paced the area with their M-16s and flak jackets, and their armored vehicles parked nearby. We had somehow managed to slip in before they barricaded the whole area. It was just us and a Palestinian film crew walking and taking pictures at the site. A group of Israeli soldiers stood nearby pointing at us and talking in Hebrew. The area had now been sealed off, and they seemed to be trying to figure out what to do about our presence. We stayed for about 45 minutes, watching the Wall materialize in front of us and taking pictures as it happened. We could see clearly how the Wall will cut the town in half and separate it from Jerusalem, dividing neighbors and families and making it impossible for students and workers to get to schools and jobs. We saw other areas where the Wall has been or is being built and flat-graded areas where land has been cleared of ancient olive groves in preparation for the Wall. We got pictures of this, too. We went through several settlements, including the infamous Gilo. We saw the residence of the Palestinian man who owns all the land on which Gilo is built. What remains for him now is a dilapidated old bus on a small plot of land near the middle of Gilo. He has refused to leave and is essentially squatting on his own land. The Israelis built a high-voltage electrical substation about 15 feet from his door and put a tall, chain-link fence around his little overgrown plot. As we were taking pictures of this lone Palestinian residence in Gilo, a settler in a late-model, high-end VW sedan drove up and stopped, with his grille a few feet from my knees. The driver and what appeared to be his daughter in the passenger seat glared belligerently at us. He waited. He was apparently trying to intimidate us into stopping what we were doing and leaving. He inched up closer to my leg, then pulled out his cell phone and started to make a call. We finished our pictures, and after a few minutes we left. We had seen police patrolling around, and Intar and Abu Hassan, our driver and guide, suggested that we might not want to attract police attention here. We got pictures of settlements, as well as of the Palestinian towns that were in many cases partially destroyed or bisected to accomodate the settlements and the Wall. Quite a contrast. Friday, January 16, 2004 Today, Cisco and I went to Ramallah to have lunch with my friend Raja; his wife, Penny; and their friend Vera. Raja is an attorney and an author who has written a number of books. The most recent was a chronicle of his experience when Ramallah was under siege in the spring of 2002. Cisco and I took the bus from Jerusalem to the Qalandia checkpoint, walked down the road to get in line at the checkpoint, and eventually got through. On the other side there are vendors selling various goods at makeshift stands. There was a little boy who couldn't have been more than 6 years old selling gum from a box he was carrying. Cisco and I each bought a pack of strawberry. We walked on and found a group taxi to Ramallah. We got to downtown Ramallah and walked to Al-Bardouni, the restaurant where we were to meet Raja for lunch. It was a nice place with a very pleasant atmosphere and, as we were about to find out, excellent food. Raja, Penny, and Vera joined us, and we had a wonderful meal and conversation to match. Vera is an art history teacher at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. Penny is also at Bir Zeit, researching in women's studies and other topics. Penny is originally from Quincy, Ill., just a couple of hours west of my hometown of Joliet. It's a small world. It was very good to see Raja again. I first met him at the ADC conference in June 2002. I had seen him at a table during a lunch session there and recognized him from the picture on the jacket of his book, "Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine,” which I had just read. I asked if he would mind if I joined him at his lunch table; the seat next to him was vacant. We talked over lunch and afterward for a while, and then again the next day. This Saturday in Ramallah was the first time I had seen him since then. We had corresponded by e-mail since our first meeting, and I also felt like I had gotten to know him through reading his books. Funny how you can feel like you know someone better when you've read his or her writings, particularly when those writings are autobiographical. It occured to me that Raja hadn't had the same experience and probably didn't feel he knew me as well as I felt I knew him. Nevertheless, he was like an old friend. Raja is a thoughtful and intense man, someone who, despite knowing him personally for only a relatively short time, I feel I can trust completely. A man of the utmost integrity. After lunch we started back to Jerusalem. At the checkpoint, the soldier was not the usual 18- to 22-year-old with a Eastern European or Ethiopian accent. This guy was in his mid- to late 40s, with a graying beard and an American accent —East Coast, to be exact. Cisco and I approached together and handed him our passports. "Where are you from in the States?" he asked in a matter-of fact, even slightly friendly manner. “Madison, Wisconsin. Where are you from in the States?” I asked him back. "New York." he answered. "What did you come to Ramallah for?" “To visit friends.” “What are their names?" Without thinking, I said “Raja Shehadeh.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than I felt a terrible feeling that I had somehow betrayed my friend. Unlike any of the dozens of checkpoint experience before, we had actually been having something of a conversation, and I didn't really think about guarding my words carefully until after the question was asked and answered. "Where does he live?" the soldier asked, now business-like and more aggressive. "I have no idea. We met at a restaurant." He examined our passports more closely. "Oh, so you were born here?" he asked me. Obviously, my Arabic middle name once again drew attention, and the soldier made an assumption, despite the fact that U.S. passports list a person's place of birth right on the same page as the name and picture. 'No, I was born in Joliet, Ill., as it says on my passport right there.” "Oh, I see. Where are you staying?" “In Jerusalem.” “Where in Jerusalem?” “The Jerusalem Hotel” “Where is that located?” “On Nablus Road in East Jerusalem.” He looked over the passports a little more, then handed them back. "You can go." We got back to the hotel in Jerusalem. On Friday nights they have a lute player in the restaurant, which we took advantage of while we enjoyed our dinner. On Saturday Antar drove us to Nablus. We waited in line at the Hawarra checkpoint for almost an hour and watched as the man in front of us had his entire car and its contents searched by several soldiers, who pointed their M-16s at him on numerous occasions. When our turn came, the soldiers would not let Intar and his van pass. So Cisco and I went through the checkpoint on foot, and Antar was kind enough to wait for us. When we got inside Nablus, there were no soldiers around. I asked the taxi driver to take us to the Old City, where most of the fresh home demolitions had just occurred. I wanted to see them myself. He became our tour guide, taking us to several demolished homes and buildings in the Old City of Nablus and the areas outside. We saw homes and a school that dated back hundreds to over a thousand years. Some were from Roman times; some were more recent, from Ottoman times. I thought about the world outcry when the Taliban destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan a few years back. The collective outrage was totally justified, of course — no sane person would ever defend such a despicable act. Yet here the media attention and public condemnation was absent. Most Americans didn't even know about Israel's destruction of these buildings of antiquity: The news media simply ignored it. It was in the Jerusalem Times, a Palestinian weekly paper, and other Arabic news media, of course, but it was either not covered by the U.S. media or had been relegated to an obscure footnote somewhere. More powerful to witness than the archaeological travesty in Nablus was the human tragedy there. In the rubble of one demolished ancient home, I saw and photographed a child's shoe, a blanket, a teddy bear, and a doll's severed arm. A prayer rug, a mangled sofa, remnants of matching chair, and pieces of a VCR were in the rubble. Then I saw three fingerpaintings lying on the ground, a little crumpled and folded, but the colors were still bright. I immediately thought of my young daughter, Emily, who loves to paint and draw, and whose special pictures we hang in the house. These were probably a child's special pictures once. Now they were the fallen remains of a family's life, along with all their other shattered possessions that we were walking on and around. One of the men walking on the site handed me what was left of an exploded tank shell. It was split in two: I could see the two mangled halves of what was a torpedo-shaped projectile, still attached at the base. The camouflage paint was still visible in some areas where it wasn't charred. I cut my finger on a jagged edge and had difficulty stopping the bleeding. Everyone in Nablus should be so lucky as to sustain only such a minor injury from Israeli tank shells. (Next week: Part 3)
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