‘No,’ Khalid said, ‘we don’t have an Aram. We are members of the Palestinian delegation to peace talks with your country. We don’t need one to cross.’
The point was lost on the soldier. It appeared that he had not heard of the delegation or the negotiations. He insisted, ‘But you don’t have the Aram.’
‘No,’ Khalid repeated, his face turning a pomegranate red, ‘we don’t. As I said, we are members of the Palestinian delegation. We have special status.’
The soldier turned to Penny. He must have wondered what a blonde woman was doing with the Palestinian delegation. He asked her, ‘Do you have a Palestinian passport?’ He no doubt meant the identity cards issued to Palestinians by the Israeli authorities.
Penny smiled and said, ‘No. Not yet.’
We were escorted to the customs area, where we met an Israeli official in an orange uniform. She wanted to search our briefcases. We refused because they contained our negotiation documents, which included sensitive information. She did not understand why she couldn’t search our bags as she did everyone else’s. It fell on Dr Mamdouh Aker, another member of the delegation, to explain in his quiet and patient manner that we were members of the Wafd, the delegation.
‘It’s Friday,’ the soldier muttered as Mamdouh gently extracted his bag from her hands. What was one more bag to search on that hot, dry day in August? She did not care who the owner of the bag was, whether he was a member of a peace delegation. She just wanted to go home to begin her Sabbath. She probably couldn’t differentiate between the people across the counter from her. All Arabs looked more or less the same to her.
She waited. I turned to look at the people lined up behind us, waiting patiently. We were holding up the queue. What did they think of us – the self-important suit-clad men and women with our ‘James Bond cases’, as the bridge security man had jokingly described our bags? Did they make allowances because of the nature of our mission? I doubted it. From the way it looked, they seemed only to resent us for taking up too much time.
Our bags were taken to be X-rayed. Soon it became apparent that this was our punishment. The other passengers were going through customs, but we were kept waiting. In the hope of getting a reprieve, I went with the kind doctor to look for the bridge commander. We asked a young soldier for his whereabouts. Without saying anything to us, he raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth and called his superior. We stood in silence. Then, to break the silence, I asked, ‘If we can’t work out something as minor as this, how can we make peace together?’
The young man did not respond. It was as though he was enclosed in a thick glass case. I was unable to make an impact, unable even to hurt his feelings. My attempts to communicate or even to insult him left hardly a mark.
The bridge commander finally showed up. He was a short man with a round head and large black eyes. He was accompanied by a customs officer.
‘What are your orders regarding the members of our delegation?’ Mamdouh asked the commander.
‘No orders,’ he answered quickly. ‘We just work things out.’
‘What does “work things out” mean?’ I asked. ‘You must have received specific orders and I have the right to know what they are, to know where we stand.’
The commander had said all he was prepared to say, but the customs officer, looking at me kindly, said, ‘Respect, to treat you with respect.’
I don’t know why this got to me, but I immediately snapped, ‘You should know that we don’t get respect from you.’
I turned to the commander and continued, ‘I want you to know that we don’t ask for privileges. We just want to know where we stand.’
‘It will be all right,’ the commander said to placate me. ‘We just want to look very briefly into your bags to see if there is anything for customs. That’s all.’
Now I understood. The Israelis were not interested in reading or copying our documents. They didn’t take the negotiations in Washington seriously enough. In any case, when they needed to know what we were working towards, they had enough informers to supply them with any intelligence they needed. They did not need our documents. Instead, they just assumed that because we were Arab we would do anything to smuggle goods across the border without having to pay duties.
The search was superficial. No one paid any attention to the documents. It was over very quickly. We were moving to the next station when the customs officer said to me, ‘Now we can be friends.’ He stretched his hand to me.
I shrugged my shoulders and moved away.
‘That’s making peace? That’s the respect you show?’ he asked.
I turned back and stood before him, intending to be cold and unrepentant. But seeing him made me aware that he was a Middle Easterner like me. Judging from his accent, he probably came from Iraq. I could see that he was genuinely hurt by my remoteness. I was sorry – but too proud to admit it.
Later, after the peace accord between Israel and the PLO had been signed, I travelled to Amman to visit my sisters. I had heard how tenacious the Palestinian team had been in negotiating Palestinian sovereignty and claiming the Allenby Bridge as a Palestinian, not an Israeli, border. Palestinians were so proud of this symbolic victory, but my experience at the bridge made me aware how meaningless, how vacuous, it was.
To cross the border, I gave my bag to the Israeli official, who stamped my Israeli permit. Then, passing a Palestinian official in a dark-blue suit standing under a Palestinian flag, I went to the Palestinian Authority booth – ‘The Palestinian Authority Welcomes You,’ read the sign – where I was searched by an Israeli official. I then went to the Israeli booth to get my Israeli identity card, which I had deposited there when leaving for Jordan but had to reclaim when returning to the West Bank. Anyone from Gaza and Jericho then had to proceed to the Palestinian Authority official, who stood in front of a peeling painted glass wall. He took my documents and placed them in a drawer. Through the glass, I could make out the Israeli official who opened the drawer, checked the documents and returned them to the drawer and the Palestinian official in front of the glass. There were Israelis everywhere, but as a Palestinian you were not supposed to notice them. You were supposed to see only your fellow countrymen, the ‘only’ officials in this border entry point to ‘your country’.
It was clear that once again the Israelis had succeeded in practising their Talmudic reasoning on us. We said that we were a nation and wanted our own passports. They gave them to us, but nothing else. Palestinian pilgrims to Mecca could now travel to Saudi Arabia on what was called a passport in Arabic and a passport/travel document in English, but the name did not matter. It still bore the same number as the Israeli-issued identity card, which they used to control our movements and our personal freedom. It was still Israel that approved our entry and exit into the Palestinian Territories.
To all intents and purposes, Israel had annexed the West Bank. Ironically, we had our own time zone – like Israel, we changed to summer time, but not until a week after the Israelis did, which caused endless confusion – but we did not control our land. Through its policy of settling its citizens there, who were subject to Israeli law, Israel was treating the Palestinian Territories as their sovereign territory in every way except by name. The Palestinians spent long hours in negotiations insisting that Israeli forces and government withdraw from the West Bank. Finally the Israelis agreed to redeploy from the five main cities, while retaining the right to re-enter these areas when necessary. As for the Israeli military government, it would withdraw but not be abolished.
On the cover of an issue of El Awdeh magazine there was a photograph of Yasser Arafat and John Major, then the British prime minister. Standing side by side, the two leaders seemed equal in every way. In the background there was a large photograph of the Dome of the Rock, which gave the impression that the two were standing in front of the symbol of Arab Jerusalem. It appeared that Jerusalem was ours as well. But it was all make-believe. All we had won was symbols.
9
Mad
Ramallah, 1993
Just after the Oslo Accord was signed in September 1993, I received the following card from Henry:
Dear Raja,
I thought that today, with the signing, it might be possible to renew our friendship. I do not know what you think of the agreement, a media fraud or a modest step in the right direction? But in the hopes of a full peace I am happy to send you my book on Abraham, the First Father, who I hope will ‘across the generations show us the pathways of peace’.
If you feel you are able I would be honored to hear from you in return,
Henry
I did not send a response. We had not been in touch for over three years and there was much on my mind. I was going through the most difficult period of my life and had to deal with my disappointment at how our ‘war of liberation’ had been aborted. Our victory in the courageous intifada had been turned against us, our triumph becoming our shackles. Rather than ending the occupation, the Oslo Accord had allowed Israel to retain its hold over most of our territory, resume building settlements and relieve itself of the responsibility and expense of administering the civil affairs of the Palestinians by transferring these to the newly established Palestinian Authority. The strikes and civil disobedience continued, but we no longer believed that any good could come of them. At the same time, we did not know how to stop. No one had the courage to say, ‘It’s over. We’ve been defeated.’ If only we could admit defeat we could begin anew. Instead all our defeats were turned into hollow victories. Nothing was learned.
Our towns were now under Palestinian civilian administration. There were victory parades and celebratory gatherings every time Arafat dropped in. The national anthem was played and the president, arriving in his private helicopter, gave a resounding speech even though the enclave was surrounded on all sides by Israeli checkpoints and Jewish settlements. Each town had essentially been made into a Palestinian ghetto within areas controlled and owned by Israeli settlers. Meanwhile, our minister of culture was on Palestinian television boasting of his great achievements and how hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians could now exercise their right of return through identity cards issued to all those who were married and had lived here with their spouse for over four years. He failed to mention the fact that the Palestinian passports issued by the Palestinian Authority bore the same number as the Israeli-issued identity cards. By holding on to the population register, any updates – such as registrations of new births or changes in personal status – had to be approved by Israel, which also controlled the borders.
The only thing worse than defeat is the failure to recognise it as defeat and claim it as a victory. The consequence of our defeat was apparent in how we related to Israel and how Israel had begun treating us. This was how I felt whenever I crossed into Jerusalem. Before the Oslo Accord we refused to allow Israeli soldiers to walk all over us. The struggle was collective. Whenever one person was insulted, we all rallied to their defence. Now we just tucked our heads into our shoulders. How could Israelis be expected to respect us Palestinians when they had defeated us so completely?
I had a meeting in Nablus and rather than drive my car I decided to go by bus. It takes a little over an hour to drive to Nablus, but I much preferred to watch the landscape rising and dipping into attractive wadis than concentrate on my driving. Just as the bus was about to leave, a bearded man came on board. He was wearing a grey djellaba with a single breast pocket in which he had put his green identity card and two pens. He was wearing sandals. With him was a woman, presumably his wife, who was completely covered in black, even to the point of wearing black gloves. With them was a light-haired boy, who made me wonder about this couple’s ancestors.
As the bus moved off, the radio began to broadcast a sermon. From the sound of it, I assumed it was from a mosque. The man went over to the driver and asked him to raise the volume, which the driver did. The sermon was about how women were blemished and they must hide their shame by wearing a hijab. Not any old hijab, as worn by many women nowadays, but one with very particular specifications, which he began to describe. The dress must be flowing, not tight, so that it did not show the contours of her body. It must not be transparent and must cover all her skin. Otherwise the woman was as good as naked.
He then began to attack those calling for the liberation of women. He quoted at length from Aisha, one of the prophet’s wives. He said that when she went to the tomb of Caliph Omar Ibn El Khattab, she could not go in without first covering her head, so ashamed and reverential was she. If Aisha had to cover her head for a man buried in the ground, how then should a woman face a stranger when she goes out? he asked. It sounded, though – from my understanding, at least – that Aisha had gone out without a headdress and only needed to cover up when she arrived at Omar’s tomb.
He proceeded to detail the dress code for women when in the house: long, flowing and not too light. She must only leave the house when she needed something her husband could not get for her, presumably tampons. He pointed out how offensive it was to stop at traffic lights when driving and see in the car next to you a driver with his wife beside him. It was this reference to traffic lights that made me suspect that the source of the sermon was Israel, since we had no traffic lights in the West Bank.
When the bus driver stopped at the petrol station, he turned the radio off. Then, when we continued on our way, someone said, ‘Please turn on the cassette.’ The source of the sermon was not the radio.
The woman in front of me asked the driver for a copy of the cassette. She wanted to know if she could buy it. She was not wearing a hijab, only a colourful scarf. She had a cute light-haired boy with her who was watching everything with fascination. No, the bus driver said, he couldn’t sell her the cassette because it wasn’t his. ‘It belongs to this man,’ he told her, pointing to the man wearing the djellaba.
She asked him if he would sell her the cassette.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it is my only copy and I don’t want to give it away.’
The woman appeared sincere. She might have been a researcher interested in the new phenomenon of proselytising through recordings played on public transport. But she also had the sad, strained face of someone who was going through hard times. In the sermon we had heard who was going to be saved and make it to heaven and who would be excluded. Perhaps she was hoping for salvation.
I began to think of the other passengers on the bus. Before the ‘peace’, it had not been impossible for a person to acquire land to build a decent house, or to buy a car or to live well. In the past, what most people in the bus could afford was what I could afford. But now the gap was growing. Land, and the cost of living, had become expensive. Most of the passengers probably lived at an economic level that denied them so many basic essentials. We had seen economic development, but it had excluded the vast majority of people. This false peace had brought deprivation and economic polarisation in its wake. Many did not have the means to buy what had become newly available at the market or to go to the new restaurants, and it must have hurt. In this context, religion became important. Righteousness would grant you a place in heaven, not those materially better off than you. So went the mantra of the religious fanatic.
We passed the Jalazoun refugee camp. Many of the refugees there had added second and third floors to their houses to meet the demands of the camp’s growing population. There were empty plots of land next to the camp, but they were not allowed to expand their camp on to that land. We passed some Palestinian farms, their fields yellow with wheat. We passed hilltop Jewish settlements that were expanding fast. We drove on old roads and bypass roads built for the settlers. We no longer moved along routes of our own making. We had adapted to a new topography.
The world outside Palestine and Israel was trying its best to make the new ‘peace’ seem real. They didn’t care about justice. They just wanted calm – at any price. Among numerous conferences that were taking place all over the world, UNESCO organised a
conference in Granada, Spain, called ‘Peace – the Day After’.
When I received an invitation, I wanted nothing to do with it. How could there be a day after peace when there was none to begin with? But then a friend who worked for the PLO persuaded me to go. Significant changes were made to the programme and it was to be the occasion when the chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, met the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, for the first time.
The whole event was carefully framed. UNESCO had lost US support and money because of its policies towards the Third World and its refusal to obey the dictates of the United States. UNESCO director Federico Mayor, who was interested in bringing back the Americans, believed that Israel could be the key and so he did his part in promoting the non-peace and normalising relations between Israel and the Arab world.
To have Israel’s presence accepted in the region, it was necessary to gain the consent of several sectors of society. The World Bank had brought around big business; now UNESCO was charged with winning over intellectuals and writers. It drafted an agreement to work with the PLO on joint projects that it could carry out prior to Palestine becoming a member state. The signing of the document would take place under Peres’s watchful eye in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, where Muslim–Jewish cooperation had once flourished. Flanking the two leaders as they signed the agreement would be writers, intellectuals and opinion makers from the entire region – from Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia and, of course, Israel.
The purpose of the meeting was not, however, as initially declared: for Israelis and Palestinians and various figures from the region to think of programmes for the post-peace culture. It was to give legitimacy to what was happening without any questions being asked. It was all meticulously staged. The participants just had to be quiet and docile.
In the first session I asked how it was possible to speak of peace before even the basic components of peace had been put in place. We Palestinians were still under occupation and the occupiers were pursuing a deliberate policy of settling its own population in the occupied areas. After I spoke, a professor from Tel Aviv University expressed his distress at my inability to look forward. He said that he had been disappointed when he heard me speak about 1967. Palestinians were always speaking of the past; Israelis could also speak of the past, could look back at 3,000 years of history. Another scholar took offence at my use of the term ‘occupied areas’ because this assumed that there was an occupation, just as there had been in France by the Germans. This, he said, was a lie.
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