I noticed the pharmacy behind Rukab’s ice cream parlour. It was now being run by the son of the pharmacist. One morning several years ago, while the street was busy with shoppers, a masked gunman came into the pharmacy and shot dead his father. The father had been accused of being a collaborator but this was never confirmed. We never knew the outcome of the investigation – or if there had been an investigation at all. These were but a few of the mysteries, on top of my own personal tragedy involving the murder of my father, that had occurred in our small town and remained unresolved.
After that meeting I began to see Henry more frequently and was again pleased with our friendship, taking walks with him and enjoying his company. We didn’t mention the break now. It was as if it never happened.
Israel continued to be a country of such complexity. Those like Henry and the other Israelis I had met and befriended over the years were exceptional people, cosmopolitan, experienced, mature, complex … friends. I didn’t want to lose their friendship. I felt that my relationships with them had gone through so many phases that they each now rested on solid ground and were in no danger of being trivialised. But this was not how everyone around me felt.
The first and most formidable obstacle that faced anyone trying to think of the new situation was that the Oslo Accords had become political reality. They had entered history and marked a change that could not be willed away. In the past we were not a delusional people. Our strength lay in our ability to dream, to refuse the dismal reality and live as though it would change tomorrow. Otherwise we would have abandoned the struggle long ago. By pretending to be so strong and have so much power and act as though he was a head of state, Arafat played an important role in upholding this dream. But now the Israelis were able to turn it against us through their ‘peace’. Perhaps Arafat had such unfounded confidence in himself that, bad as he knew the deal to be, he believed he could eventually turn the tables through the sheer force of his personality. He had to convince his people that it amounted to a victory. He succeeded with most of them, but underestimated how devious and calculating his enemy was. They made sure to block any attempt by the Palestinians at getting out of what they had put their signature to. Our ability to dream was no longer our strength but our weakness, not our uniqueness but our downright madness.
What puzzled me was how ready Palestinians were to exonerate Arafat. It was true he brought visibility to the Palestinian struggle through his leadership of the PLO and had strong control over the organisation. Yet I wondered whether this could also be related to the way our culture treats the father figure, appealing for rida el lah wa rida el walidayn (for the favour of Allah and the favour of the parents).
I had always marvelled at how even elderly men from the PLO referred to Arafat as el Walid (Father), but had failed to appreciate the significance of this. In traditional society a father is supposed to know best, so that when he makes a mistake he is not held accountable because he is owed respect, not censure. Surely the father’s mistakes were made in good faith, because that was all he is capable of. To many supporters, Arafat was not considered a functionary who could be held to account. His foibles and weaknesses were excused, like a father’s.
I’ve often heard people say of Arafat, ‘Poor Father, he sacrificed his life for his people. He’s old. He did his best.’ I always found this strange. Such an attitude could never be taken by Israelis towards their political leaders. Even the founding father of their state, David Ben-Gurion, was rejected for many years when he erred.
After the deal was signed I took part in a tour of three Scandinavian countries with Haidar Abdel-Shafi, the head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference and the Washington negotiations, and Mustafa Barghouti, to explain the pitfalls of the Oslo Accords. When we arrived in Oslo, the Palestinian workers at the hotel where we were staying wanted to meet Haidar. He and I were having a quick lunch when they approached, bearing a gift of fruit. They sat around the old doctor and asked him for his thoughts on and expectations for the future of their country. They were exiles and hoped one day to return to the Palestine that never left their mind. As he peeled an apple with his long, deft fingers, he explained to them about the importance of self-reliance. I knew he was not saying much and that he had little to tell them and no hope to offer, but what he did say he said in a kindly, fatherly manner, his eyebrows curved, his face long and elegant, his fingers continuing to slowly and deliberately peel the apple, which he turned round and round in his hand. They seemed to hang on his every word and be satisfied. But why, I wondered, when he was saying nothing of substance? It was just because he came across as a father figure and that was what they needed.
Afterwards I thought that if I had had to speak on that occasion I would have agonised over what to say to them that could have given them hope. I would have expected to have a programme, a policy, a vision. Otherwise I would not have been able to utter a single word without feeling I was letting them down.
I knew in the depth of my soul that the dignity which comes simply from age in a person like Haidar is its own justification and no other is needed. He was a man who invited respect and acceptance without having to offer anything in return. This privileged state would never be mine. I would never be able to act in a fatherly way towards anyone, as my father could never act in a fatherly way towards me because I never allowed him to.
And so, with my profound feeling of inadequacy, I am doomed to feeling the need to justify my existence through writing and speaking, while assuming the burden of and responsibility for the failure of all I see around me as if it were my own.
After that desperate attempt by Abdel-Shafi, Barghouti and myself to enlighten the Scandinavian countries on which we had so often relied for political salvation, we returned to a melancholy Palestine, where we found most of the public engrossed in their own private concerns, distracted by the money that Western countries were pouring into their divided community in the hope that they could buy the Palestinians’ acquiescence and acceptance of their lot, and keep the region under control.
10
Crossings during the Second Intifada
Ramallah, 2000
In September 2000, five years after the Oslo Accords, came a second, more violent intifada. Israel immediately imposed more restrictions on movement and forbade us from using many of the roads. Route 443, a four-lane highway built on land belonging to Palestinian villages, was now reserved for connecting Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements, such as Ramot and Givat Ze’ev, to the coast. Before, we had been able to use it to get to Jerusalem from Ramallah in twenty minutes. Now it was off limits. The highway had always been meant to link the far-flung Jewish settlements to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It wasn’t for those of us coming from Ramallah, or for those Palestinian villages whose lands had been confiscated to build it.
Henry lived in West Jerusalem, where the municipal government, which was also responsible for East Jerusalem, provided well for all its Jewish residents while neglecting its Palestinian residents. He lived in an attractive, quiet area with parks and clean, well-ordered streets – amenities that our cities could not enjoy after the large-scale confiscation of Palestinian land. I admitted to myself that when I thought of our different living conditions I felt envy, but I put that aside. I didn’t want to feel all those strong negative emotions once again, or repeat the recriminations and ruptures of the past. Nor did I want to sacrifice my friendship with him for the cause. I wanted to continue to see him and, despite the difficulties, continue our friendship regardless of where our two peoples stood. Still, going to Jerusalem to see Henry after the start of the second intifada became an ordeal and on the nights before I made the crossing I often dreamed of being stoned on the way. What made our meetings easier was that this time Henry and I were politically on the same side. My heart was not with this armed struggle against Israel, which I saw as futile, but I was still trying to understand and make sense of it all and needed Henry’s help.
It was bec
oming impossible to leave through the Israeli checkpoint at Samiramis, just outside Ramallah, as the road was often closed. So one morning, on my way to see Henry, I followed a procession of cars going uphill in the direction of the Jewish settlement of Psagot. I drove through narrow, winding lanes, on occasion almost passing through people’s gardens.
The road through Kufr Akab was closed – by Israel, I thought, as punishment, but I was later told that the Palestinians were having it paved. Eventually, I ended up at the main Israeli checkpoint to Jerusalem. Fortunately the wait wasn’t long. But as I approached Jerusalem I worried that I would not get back to Ramallah on time. Violence usually broke out at Qalandia in the mid-afternoon. If my car wasn’t ready by then (I would have it checked while in Jerusalem), I would inevitably have to pass through the battleground. And lo and behold, when I returned to Ramallah I could see young men gathered outside the nearby refugee camp, twirling their slingshots and hurling their rocks at the soldiers. For a moment I thought I heard a rock hit my car, but I was safe.
Earlier, when we met at the American Colony Hotel, Henry talked incessantly about the various books he had just read – mainly novels and books on psychology and religion. He was a voracious reader. He spoke on all sorts of topics, except what I was burning to discuss – what was taking place around us, how to understand it and what to do about it. Henry seemed tense and he would not give me the chance to ask him how he felt. I left feeling exhausted and cheated. It was true I did not want our meetings to be consumed by political discussion, yet the total avoidance of politics and current affairs and how they were affecting our daily lives felt unnatural and forced. So much was left unsaid.
I was on Henry’s mailing list for letters that he sent to his various friends around the world. He often wrote about Israelis killed by Palestinian suicide bombers and he could never spare any sympathy for the Palestinian victims or the suffering we have had to endure. Nor did he give any context as to why all this was happening. I wanted to ask him what he thought were the reasons, but he didn’t give me the chance.
About a month later I met Henry at his office. It was in an old Arab house with a beautiful tiled floor. He met me at the front porch. The door behind him was adorned with two Israeli flags fluttering in the strong wind. He stood there, short and stocky, his beard seeming longer than ever, framed by the two flags. I had been noticing that more and more religious young men on our side were growing their beards, indicating their support for the Islamic faction Hamas. Why, I wondered, were beards associated with wisdom and religious observance? Was it that so much devotion to God leaves them no time to shave?
Henry had just seen a patient and another was due in a few hours, so he was in a wired and garrulous mood. He was also more evasive than ever. This had caused our rift during the first intifada. Perhaps it was a mistake not to bring up the subject of how he could situate his office in a house that had been taken by force, with no compensation paid to its original owners. Yet somehow we had to conduct our friendship on a plane above and outside politics. How long this would be possible, I didn’t know. I supposed it would depend on whether I could remain calm.
In 2002 the Israeli army reinvaded the West Bank and placed us under curfew for most of April and then intermittently until July. Difficult as these four months were, they confirmed to me the importance of my wonderful friends.
Naomi called from England to ask how Penny and I were managing. Shortly after that, her mother, Rosheen, called from her new home in the Galilee. That brought back memories of the early 1980s, when I worked with Naomi on The Third Way. How different those times had been, when we still had hope of peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the countryside was open to us, a place where we could escape when the tension and stress became too much to bear.
Henry and Iva also called, as did my Israeli publisher, Yehuda Meltzer, and his partner, Lily Eiss. They had all become politically involved against the occupation, distributing aid and participating in demonstrations, even though none of these friends had been active in organised politics before. Under the new circumstances, they couldn’t hold back. Iva kept saying how ashamed she was, and I wondered why she should be. I condemned the appalling actions of the Palestinians who killed innocent civilians, but it did not make me ashamed of all Palestinians.
On another occasion, I had a long conversation with Iva on the telephone. She told me how shocked she was when she first saw the refugee camps in Gaza, their inhabitants waiting to return even as her parents, themselves refugees, had managed to make a new life for themselves in Israel. She also said her children – her eldest son was thinking of joining the army – did not know about the Nakba of 1948. They were surprised to read about it in my book, Strangers in the House. Henry had not told them.
After hearing this from Iva, I imagined what I would say to Henry: Henry, why didn’t you tell them? Why did you think it was not important to let them know about me, about us, those who share the land with you? Why did you want to spare them, keep them in the dark? And how, then, did you expect them to become aware and informed, as moral people. Did I and my family tragedy not count for anything to you?
But I could almost hear Henry’s response: What have you done to help? How often did you visit us when the children were growing up? Why did you not come and get to know my children? They could have learned all this directly from you.
I couldn’t plead innocent to the charges.
Two years after the invasion I went to Jerusalem to do a reading at the American Colony Hotel from my book When the Bulbul Stopped Singing. I left Ramallah with no difficulty via the eastern exit. I drove through Beitin, which now looked like a military zone and was no longer the pretty farming village it once had been, and then the Qalandia checkpoint, which had started to look like Checkpoint Charlie. East Jerusalem was desolate, empty of people and full of rubbish. I wondered how we had got to this. Whose fault was it? I could find no simple answer. It was not just the fault of Sharon or Arafat or the settlement policy. It was not just religious fanaticism. It was not just the events of the last century in Europe. It was a mix of all of them.
On the way back from my reading, I saw the red signs the Israeli authorities had placed by the checkpoints and at the entrance to Ramallah warning Israelis that it was against Israeli law for them to enter cities and towns under the administration of the Palestinian Authority. These served the purpose of keeping the two sides apart and indicated to Israelis that everywhere else was available for settlements. Who of my Israeli friends, I wondered, would now be willing to break the law and come to visit me in Ramallah? I also saw that some low concrete slabs had been placed in the middle of the Jerusalem–Ramallah road close to Qalandia. Could it be that they were building a wall in the middle of the road, dividing the Arab neighbourhoods that had been annexed to Jerusalem from the other Arab neighbourhoods?
Walls seemed to be going up everywhere, between houses, through hills and valleys, around cities and over roads, making crossings ever more difficult. A former classmate’s daughter lived in the area of Al Ram, just north of Jerusalem. A wall now separated her from her mother, who lived in nearby Beit Hanina, which had been annexed to Jerusalem – yet another case of a family divided by a wall since the establishment of the Israeli state.
Even in my worst imaginings I couldn’t begin to grasp the full impact of these walls closing in on us. What would become of us? How would we live with walls surrounding our cities and villages? There would be no access to the sea. Only confinement. The fear I felt after the West Bank and Gaza had been sealed off in 1989 would be realised in concrete. I remembered a clip I had seen of the Berlin Wall being built and how menacing it appeared. I felt the same way now.
A few days later I went to have lunch with Henry. He chose Hillel Café in the German Colony, not far from the house where Naomi used to live. A Palestinian suicide bomber had just killed six Israeli Jews and one Palestinian there. I would have preferred a different venue, but Henry insisted. I said i
t might be dangerous but he said the same place would not be bombed twice. The worst had already happened there.
We ate in the café in silence, but the crime was on both our minds. I thought we would at least mention it, but the moment never came. As we ate, I looked at Henry’s sombre face. I could read in his expression a profound sadness and repressed anger. It was so unlike him not to be talkative, but he did not utter a single word.
I tried to imagine how it might have felt for that young Palestinian man to blow himself up, how he had entered this café and what had been going through his mind before he died. I challenged myself to imagine what sort of despair had led to committing such an act, but I couldn’t. We finished the meal in silence.
Later Henry told me that he knew two of the victims of the bombing that had taken place there – a medical doctor and his twenty-year-old daughter, who was getting married the next day. Henry’s daughter would have been there had it not been for her good fortune. The bomber had tried to go to the pizza restaurant nearby, but it had been well guarded. He arrived at the door here, was stopped, but then set off the explosives. The whole place went up in flames.
I wondered whether Henry had decided to meet me at this café so that I would be forced to confront the horror. But the only issue he commented on was the practical preventive measures that were later taken to protect the café – as though more security was the answer. He said nothing about the larger, more complex factors, the human and political issues that led these young men to brutally kill themselves and others in despair.
When I got back I tried to imagine the young man with explosives wrapped around his waist walking between the café and the pizzeria, intent on blowing himself up and hurting others, and wrote a short story which I called ‘The Man Who Lost His Head’. In the last paragraph I used the exact words of the Israeli proprietor of a café where a similar hideous incident had taken place. This was how I ended it:
Where the Line is Drawn Page 12