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�The Patriotic Thing to Do�
Isabel Kershner
 'MARTYRS SQUARE': The City Inn junction on the edge of Ramallah, the scene of daily shooting and stone-throwing demonstrations |
The Stone-Throwers
It�s nearly 10 in the morning at the �City Inn� junction on the edge of Ramallah, and the shebab, a dozen teenagers armed with slingshots from the Al-Amari refugee camp, are warming up for the day�s battle. Tires are being rolled along the charred road to a makeshift roadblock a short distance from the Israeli army jeep stationed outside the City Inn hotel. Over the crossroads, a few hundred meters along the road, lies the Jewish settlement of Beit El.
Two girls in school uniform enter a mechanic�s workshop and come out with a small jerrycan of fuel. They giggle skittishly as they pass the boys, who try to look cool. The girls head for the tires and minutes later three columns of black smoke rise up. The boys move forward to start the daily routine of stone-throwing and bullet-dodging. It can�t be for the cameras, because it�s 10 weeks into the uprising known as the �Al-Aqsa Intifada� and there are no cameras here. Graffiti on a nearby wall reads �Martyrs Square.� Two days ago, Ramzi Adel Bayatuneh, 15, was killed here � one of over 300 victims of the uprising, mostly Palestinian. He was a year below the age limit the Palestinian Authority has set for participation in demonstrations.
Ra�fat is 16, and his family thinks he�s downtown. He comes here every day �for Al-Aqsa,� and because �the Jews are scared of stones.� The purpose, he says, is to liberate the 1967 territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. He�s been shot in the leg, twice, he claims. His sidekick, who calls himself �Abd al-Majid,� is 18 and boasts that he�s �bullet-proof.� He�s been here for 60 days and has never been hit. He says he�s fighting for all the land of 1948 and the shebab enter into a brief debate. They agree that when school�s out after noon, there�ll be 60 or 70 demonstrators here. And they agree that if the Lebanese girls they saw on TV were here, more boys would come to throw stones.
A few minutes later, at the other side of the smoking tires, the stones start hitting the tarmac, the army jeep and road signs with a steady �plink.� Every so often a young Israeli soldier takes up a position behind the open door of the jeep, aims his rifle and fires off a single rubber-coated metal bullet at the approaching youths. Later, Palestinian shooting may start, and the soldiers will then switch to live ammunition. Snipers from both sides have taken over buildings on the slopes around the crossroads. Windows are draped with heavy blankets that twitch on the rare occasion that a car passes. Earlier in the morning, the Israeli army sealed the roads approaching the junction from Ramallah and El-Bireh with concrete blocks. Other than the plinks of stones and occasional cracks of gunfire, it�s quiet as the grave.
The Entrepreneur
Outside the old police station in downtown Ramallah, the burned-out hulk of the car of two Israeli reservists who were lynched here on October 12 stands like a grisly monument to murderous rage. The upper floor of the building was turned to rubble by an Israeli helicopter gunship hours after the lynching. A local man is wandering around looking for the policemen, but they�ve moved on to new headquarters a few minutes� car-drive away.
The semblance of normality inside the city is punctuated by morbid reminders of �the situation.� A couple of women window-shop at a jewelry store while a street vendor hawks gas masks, useful for warding off tear gas. The thoroughfares are relatively unclogged, since Israeli security closures of the towns and villages of the West Bank are preventing a lot of the usual traffic from entering the administrative capital of the West Bank. The Best Eastern Hotel seems deserted except for a lone receptionist holding the fort. The December issue of �This Week in Palestine,� a free listings and tourist information brochure, is on offer at the front desk. The pamphlet�s cover carries a message of seasonal greetings for Christmas and Ramadan against a background of bullets and casings tinged red, blue and green for a festive touch.
Turbo Design, the hip graphics company that designed the cover, is situated just off the main square. Up until a few weeks ago, Turbo epitomized what Ramallah had become � a buzzing center of entrepreneurship with a taste for the good life.
Sani Meo, the director of Turbo, now travels in from his East Jerusalem home by dirt roads that bypass the Israeli checkpoints. The bullets cover, he says, was �the patriotic thing to do. It portrays the reality of who we are, what we are now.� The image stirred controversy � hotel managers and friends argued that it hardly promotes tourism. �There�s no tourism now in Palestine anyway,� counters Meo.
The brochure contains glossy ads for top West Bank hotels that are no longer functioning, and for East Jerusalem restaurants that are booming as a result of the Palestinian boycott of Israeli venues in the west of the city. Some of Meo�s contracts have been cancelled, but he�s not complaining. He says he�s never seen the Palestinians more adamant.
�I�m from a social set where when we went out, we�d go to West Jerusalem,� says Meo. �The thought of going to an Israeli restaurant or mall repulses me now. There�s too much violence and counter-violence. Too much Israeli counter-violence, to the point where I can justify the Palestinian violence as freedom fighting. The occupation is the evil root � it justifies almost everything. Shooting children who throw stones is unacceptable, unbearable. The Israelis will leave all right. But they haven�t left any room to exit with dignity.�
Meo is particularly disturbed by what he sees as the absence of any Israeli soul-searching. �Generations of Israelis have grown up not realizing that they have caused harm. They honestly don�t know. That�s the only way I can explain their attitude that �Barak was about to give the Palestinians so much.� It isn�t Israel�s to give! And if Israelis ever do give anything up, it�s to avoid being stoned or shot at � not for the sake of justice. Israelis don�t know they harmed another people. But they should know, so they�re still guilty.�
The Peace Messenger
Bassam Abu Sharif hasn�t been able to hear too well since he opened the parcel bomb sent to him in Beirut in 1972 � by the Mossad, he says � so he tends to launch into monologues. �Israel and the Palestinians have no other choice but to live side by side, preferably in peace,� he states from the sofa in his Ramallah apartment. �There will be negotiations and a solution. For now we are caught in a childish game of chicken and egg. But talk of a political solution is increasing, and will continue until the noise of guns is overwhelmed by the voice of politics.�
Abu Sharif, a member of the Palestine National Council, bears the title of �special advisor to Yasser Arafat,� though it�s unclear how close the two are at any given time. Among Palestinians, Abu Sharif is afforded the respect of a �living martyr.� As a member of the PFLP, he helped plan terror attacks and hijackings in the early 1970s, and is credited with having trained Carlos the Jackal. He lost several fingers and an eye when he received the bomb, hidden inside a book on Che Guevara. In the 1980s, he went to work with Arafat and became a voice of moderation.
In the summer of 1988, as a senior Arafat aide, he wrote a landmark op-ed piece for the Washington Post in which he called for a two-state solution, mutual recognition and direct talks between Israel and the PLO. So radical and unexpected a sea change was this for a PLO official that the Post, presumably suspicious of its authoritativeness, didn�t print it. Abu Sharif�s trial balloon was published in the London-based Middle East Mirror instead.
Months later, in November, the PNC held its historic meeting in Algiers and affirmed Abu Sharif�s paper. The PLO officially adopted the two-state solution and accepted U.N. Resolution 242 as a cornerstone for an international peace conference.
Today, from Ramallah, Abu Sharif is again broadcasting a program for peace, though the message is hardly worded to soothe. Israeli attacks on the Palestinians will get only one response, he says: Palestinian steadfastness and resolve: �I told some Israeli retired big shots a few days ago that the Palestinians have lived for 25 years under occupation, and they�ll live under it for another 25 if they don�t get their rights.�
Asked about Palestinian violence, including the killing of civilians and the shooting at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Giloh from Beit Jala � contrary to Arafat�s apparent orders � Abu Sharif says that�s the �chicken and egg� syndrome. He lists recent Israeli shootings of unarmed Palestinians, such as 12-year-old Muhammad al-Arjah killed outside his Gaza home, and an electrician who was working in a building near the City Inn.
�The point is that Israel is a state with an army,� he says, �but they act like undisciplined gangs. If they are acting on orders, then those orders must have been given by butchers. This is cold-blooded killing.�
Abu Sharif calls on Barak to stand up to the settlers whom he says are �running the country.� And most emphatically, he calls on the prime minister to stop the security closures and the economic blockade of the territories that are �gradually destroying the faith and confidence of people who believe in the possibility of achieving peace.�
The Palestinians are made to feel they can be �locked in or out by a soldier who, in civilian life, I wouldn�t hire as a porter,� he says. �This is the arrogance of power.�
Abu Sharif suggests that Israel should start by announcing its readiness to comply with U.N. Resolution 242, applying it to all the land occupied in 1967, on which the Palestinians will have their state. �Then,� he says, �we can properly define every problem. The borders with Jordan and Egypt will be under Palestinian control, but here there�s a problem. Israel does not trust the Palestinians not to bring trucks of arms into the state. OK, so I suggest a solution. Multinational or U.S. security personnel side by side with the Palestinians to ensure that the border protocol is implemented.�
Similarly, Abu Sharif suggests that Israel can have early-warning stations in what it calls strategic locations in the West Bank, �manned by your good friends the Americans.� As for settlements, he says, �we definitely consider them illegal, but certain facts we will have to deal with open-mindedly. The settlements around Hebron and Ramallah, in our laps � this is not acceptable. But in the Jerusalem area, this can be discussed. With goodwill, I believe this obstacle can be surmounted also.� Jerusalem can be a united, eternal capital for the two states, Israel and Palestine.
The day we meet, Abu Sharif is supposed to have gone to Jerusalem for �important talks� with Israelis. He chose not to go, outraged by the fact that he�d received a permit from the Israeli military liaison office to be in Jerusalem only from 5 a.m. till 7 p.m. �What am I, a sheep?� he rails. �My grandfather�s house is in the Old City!�
It�s 2.45 p.m. Back at the City Inn junction, the shebab start wandering home. An ambulance idles outside the mechanic�s shop, its red lights revolving in silent warning. It�ll be dusk soon. The youths will be back to defy the army bullets tomorrow.
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Palestinian Affairs
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