|
|
 |
Those Militants Are Simply Irresponsible Guys
// Kommersant correspondent has visited Palestinian territories
As the Israeli troops invaded Lebanon, the military operation in the Palestinian Authority is still underway. Four Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, the death toll exceeding 100 people over the last month. Kommersant correspondent Mikhail Zygar visited the occupied territories and learnt that the locals view the present crisis as the most hopeless dead-lock.
Casualties
Black smoke is belching from a residential house. Nearly the whole neighborhood is now shrouded in smoke.
“This is the work of our artillery. They are destroying depots with Qassam rockets,” Ron, a reservist at the Israel Army’s press service, tells me.
We are standing on a border watch-tower between Israel and the Gaza Strip. I’m watching through the binoculars. Ahead is the Palestinian city of Beit Hanoun that the Israeli artillery is firing on. More than one hundred people died over the month of the operation in the Gaza Strip region. Behind my back is Sderot where Qassam rockets usually rain down.
You can feel that Beit Hanoun is near. When the wind starts to blow from the city you can smell a peculiar a mixture of something burning and something rotten. There has not been any fuel in the blockaded Gaza Strip for more than a week already because local authorities cannot remove garbage, so it is decomposing on the streets.
Other explosions can be heard in the city.
“Ron, I’m sure it’s a residential house burning,” I say, indicating to Beit Hanoun which is shrouded in smoke and handing him the binoculars.
“Well… you know, Qassams are hand-made rockets. They are kind of big petards and they are often made at home. Maybe, there was a workshop in one of those flats?”
“But how about the others?”
“I swear, if any civilians died there, I’ll be the first to say ‘I am sorry’. Anyway, wars always have their casualties.”
It’s really a tall order to get to Gaza. Israeli journalists are simply banned from entering the area after the operation to save Corporal Shalit started. Foreign journalists can enter but only if they have an accreditation of the Israeli government. To get one, you have to wait for a few days.
Now there is no one on the border with the Gaza Strip. The check point consists of two parts. The Israeli part has numerous rooms connected with one door. If you want to get to the Gaza Strip you have to go from one room to another, answering questions of the loud-speaker in each room and wait till a door to another room opens. Things are much simpler in the Palestinian section. This is a very long corridor where a smiling Palestinian with Saddam Hussein’s moustache is sitting. He greets every guest with a “welcome to Gaza, brother!” The destroyed Beit Hanoun stretches right after the check-point.
It is much easier to get to the Western Bank. Any foreigner can go there without any special permits, whereas Israelis are banned from there. You can take a taxi from Ramallah. However, the shortest way is blocked as there is a new check point being constructed there. So we have to bypass it. The road is awful.
“It’s really funny. No one looks after the road,” says Constance von Helen who works in Ramallah for the Konrad Audenauer Foundation, a German NGO. “The UN promised to earmark the money but they don’t because the road leads to the check point and the UN does not recognize these check points. They think that earmarking money is justifying the check points. On the other hand, Israel doesn’t give money because the road runs on the territory which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. As for the Palestinians, they don’t have money.”
Ramallah looks weird. The city has not seen any major military operations for a long time, so there are no destructions. The city seems quite safe and wealthy. The last parliamentary election’s posters on the walls have become frayed, over them are posters with Motorola’s new ultra-thin phone.
“Ramallah is not a typical Palestinian city. It’s the richest one in the Authority. Far more people live in Nablus and Hebron, and they are much poorer. Mainly Palestinians who work abroad build houses here,” Constance explains.
Construction is underway around Mukata, Yasser Arafat’s former residence. The monument to Palestine’s ex-leader is almost ready. “Shahid Yasser Arafat” the plate reads.
“I’m a very happy man. You can’t understnand how lucky I am,” says Saleh, a worker who works in the destroyed part of Mukata. “I don’t have Jerusalem’s papers or permit to enter Israel like others have. It’s almost impossible to find a job here, but I did it.”
Scores of taxis are waiting on Ramallah’s streets but no one needs them. There are more taxi drivers than those willing to use their services.
I go back to Jerusalem at night. I take a taxi to the Atarot check-point where the wall separating the West Bank from Israel’s territory runs. It was built a few years ago so that suicide bombers would not be able to get to Israel from the Palestinian Authority.
You have to walk through the check-point. Those allowed to walk through it are either Eastern Jerusalem’s residents registered in the city without the Israeli citizenship or residents of the West Bank with special permits who need medical treatment.
People crowded at the entrance. You can get there through the turnstile. Those who got in have to wait in a waiting room – there is another turnstile and another crowd.
The line is immobile for half an hour. Later, a voice from the loud-speaker announces in Hebrew that Terminal One (where I am standing) is closing. Terminal Three will be working instead. Those who were standing first will be the last. Everyone is indignant.
Two Israeli military women come up to the gate of Terminal One which does not work. Two young Arabs who are in a hurry to get to Jerusalem run towards them asking to jump the line.
“Come on baby! I’ll buy you a coffee. I really need to get there quickly.”
They are flirting through the railing lasts some ten minutes. Afterwards, the girls leave laughing and giving no reply to the guys.
Finally, the turnstile begins to works. Middle-aged Palestinian women are tired of waiting. They try to squeeze inside in pairs to get there as quickly as possible.
“One by one!” the loud-speaker is shouting.
At this point, a Palestinian man with a five-year-old daughter appears. She takes her father by the hand not wanting to get though the turnstile on her own. She squeezes though the turnstile, and the two of them get in.
“I’ve said: one by one!” the loud-speaker is blaring.
“What’s the matter? Why can’t I get in with my child?” the Palestinian cries.
“You’re always breaking the equipment! One by one!”
“It’s your fault if you can’t organize a proper line!”
“We just can’t teach you people to stand still in the line but not rush in as a herd! Next!”
The five-year-old girl is crying.
“This is the democracy we have in this country: defend yourself and humiliate others,” an old man standing next to me whispers.
Participants
“The causes of this crisis are inside the country. Israel needs the crisis to unite the country. If they don’t have an external threat or if they don’t wage wars, an internal political struggle begins,” Ibrahim Koureishi, Palestine’s deputy foreign minister, tells me. He is the only one from Palestine’s foreign ministry who works in Ramallah. All others, including Minister Mahmoud Zahar, one of Hamas’s leaders, are in Gaza and cannot leave it.
“Ibrahim, you have to admit that these are the Palestinians who provoked the crisis. It started with the kidnapping as Hamas’s activists abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit. What for?”
“You must understand me right. Personally, I’m against this kidnapping. It’s easy to kidnap a man but the way-out is hard to find. When I see his relatives on TV, I can perfectly understand what they are going through. But why does no one want to understand what we feel? A few thousands prisoners are kept in Israeli jails. Some of them got there without any trial. They just prolong their terms each six months. 60 people have been in prison for over 30 years. 120 inmates are under 18 years old. There are also 30 women. This is the problem of all Palestinian people. It is important to everyone and it worries everyone. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president, his key promise was to solve the issue of inmates. But Hamas has privatized the problem as if they cared about it more than others. Hamas kidnapped that soldier only to win Palestinians’ hearts and show that they care about the people while the Fatah don’t.
I try to ask why so many civilians die in Israeli operations. Are the Israeli right when they say that Palestinian militants use civilians and even children as live shields?
“Well, those militants are simply irresponsible people,” Deputy Foreign Minister Ibrahim Koureishi says. “If those irresponsible people come to a kindergarten, will the Israeli fire on it?”
Ibrahim Koureishi works in Hamas’s government and praises it a lot. He is also a member of Fatah’s revolutionary committee and the central committee of the Palestine Liberalization Organization.
Not everyone, however, accounts the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit for the struggle between Hamas and Fatah. Under other reports, the corporal was kidnapped following a split inside Hamas.
“A very important event happened a few hours before the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit,” Thomas Birringer, head of the Konrad Audenaeur Foundation, says. “Leaders of Hamas and Fatah have signed an agreement to shape the government of the national unity and agreed on major points of argument. Hamas actually agreed to recognize Israel, though indirectly. An array of problems was settled. But the armed faction of Hamas, lead by Khaled Mashal who lives in Syria, stepped in. He could not come to terms with the reconciliation of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and President Mahmoud Abbas. It would mean that Mashal would go to the background. And here they kidnapped the Israeli soldier. The ideas government of the national unity was abandoned and the dialogue with Israel became impossible.
As the operation in the Gaza Strip is ongoing, Hamas’s leaders say they will not let Gilad Shalit go until the issue of inmates is solved.
“I can’t understand the Israelis’ reaction. If I was an Israeli, I’d ask: why do we need so many casualties? What for? Isn’t it easier to negotiate?” Ahmed Atyaya, a journalist and former inmate. He was arrested in 1970 when he was 16. A friend of his started firing on the Israelis killing one Israeli and wounding another one. The guy was not caught but Ahmed was put in prison to spend 15 years there. “I can understand the motives of the people who resorted to the kidnapping to set free their brothers, fathers and friends. I spent 15 years in prison before they exchanged me. I had children, a house and a job now, but many of my friends are still behind bars. What else can we do to release them?”
Hannah Signora, head of the Israeli-Palestinian Center for Research and Information, has her own opinion.
“The crisis began not with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. The problem was that Hamas announced a truce last year and stopped all attacks against Israel while Israel still kept on killing Hamas’s activists in pinpoint strikes. Everybody thinks that Israel acts very effectively destroying the infrastructure of terrorism. Quite on the contrary, Israel creates a new al-Qaeda. In this operation Israel will end up with Hamas supporting Hezbollah.
“I can’t believe that Palestinians and Lebanese don’t blame Hamas and Hezbollah on the current crisis,” I ask. “It was Hezbollah’s attack on Israel that triggered the war in Lebanon.”
Everyone shakes their heads.
“Unfortunately, Israel’s bombing only bolsters Hamas and Hezbollah,” Nabilya Fuad, editor-in-chief of Palestine’s youth newspaper and head of an education NGO, says. “All of us – liberal and secular people – were shocked after the election when Hamas won. No one wanted Islamists to hold power. But after the world took arms against them, after the West refused to talk to them and we had the financing cut, a lot of people changed their opinions. Now almost everyone believes that Hamas is a victim.”
“When my son was nine we went to Paris on a vacation,” Deputy Foreign Minister Ibrahim Koureishi recollects. “On our way back my son asked me: ‘Dad, why don’t you stay here and work as the ambassador in the Disneyland. I don’t want to go back home. They always shoot there.’ At this point, I thought about something different: how my son will grow up here. Down here, in Ramallah we don’t have the things that other children in the world are used to. We have no playgrounds, no cinemas, and no discos. Children have nothing to do. We have only TV sets to entertain us. But what do they show there? They only say how many people were killed in Nablus or Gaza. That’s it.”
Mikhail Zygar, Palestine
All the Article in Russian as of July 24, 2006
|
|
|
