by Jared Cohen
He reached out to shake my hand and asked me if I was the American hanging out with some Hezbollah guys and others our age. When I told him I was, he insisted that I must talk to his people. I wasn’t sure who he was talking about, so I asked.
“The Palestinian people,” he said, with tremendous pride. Almost immediately, he turned stern, and admonished me not to neglect the Palestinian people in my research and travels. I was already self-conscious about how I reacted when students told me they were Palestinian. I had made no effort to hide my religion and background at the universities and was actually rather forthcoming in offering the information. I saw opportunity in straightforwardness. Most of the Palestinian students in Beirut had never met a Jew; I felt a simple, genuine interaction could go a long way toward correcting popular misconceptions that Jews and Palestinians don’t mix.
“You cannot write about the Middle East without talking to the Palestinians,” he said. “The Palestinian people are integrated in all aspects of the Middle East and we have the greatest challenges of all. How can I get you to come and talk to my people?”
“I’ve had trouble getting permission to enter the Palestinian camps,” I replied. Entrance permits to Palestinian refugee camps for inquisitive American students weren’t exactly growing on trees in Lebanon. Though I had not yet actually looked into this in any depth, I wanted to convey my eagerness, as well as advertise my need for someone to facilitate my travel into the camps. “But if I can find a way to go, I’d be eager to speak with youth in the camps. Is it safe?”
Bypassing that specific question, Achmad nonetheless jumped at the opportunity to assist me. Like the youth of Hezbollah, like the Sunni, Shi’a, and Allawi youth that I had met throughout Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, he wanted to open his world to me. I was moved by this. Youth are so frequently neglected by the media, their governments, and the West. I had once again found that even a mere demonstration of curiosity seemed to result in a young person’s going above and beyond to help.
As we were talking, it dawned on me that there would be some real moral dilemmas I could face in this journey. I knew some of what I would hear would enrage me and that this would be as much an exercise in self-restraint as it would be a quest for knowledge. Would I lie about being Jewish if it meant ensuring my safety? I remembered what had happened to Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist beheaded in Pakistan, and really questioned my sanity. Daniel had very nobally chosen not to lie about being Jewish. The camps were bastions for propaganda and extremism. What if someone asked my opinions on Israel? I believe in a two-state solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, but I didn’t exactly think that sharing these views would resonate positively with Fatah, Asbat al-Ansar, and other Palestinian militants. Questions like these plagued me every night in the days before I left for Ayn al-Hilwah. Where was the balance between safety and morality?
Achmad assured me that he would take care of everything for me. He explained that he would spend the weekend arranging the details of my trip to Ayn al-Hilwah. I was placing a lot of faith in one kid I had just met, but for some reason his intentions seemed genuine. In the same way that I hoped people would trust me, I could see him reaching out in a similar fashion. He assured me that I would meet everyone that I needed to as well as his family. Achmad then asked me, “Did you know that we are the family of martyrs?”
I, of course, had no way of knowing that, but I recognized the opportunity at hand. When I asked if I would be able to talk to his family, he responded with jubilance:
“Will you be able to? You will stay with my family. You’ll talk to my mother and we’ll show you pictures of my brother who is a martyr. You will come and see where we live and the conditions we are raised in. When you see the young people in my town and in the camp, I think you’ll be surprised at how different they are from what you see on television. I hope you’ll come with me and when you return home you’ll tell people the truth about the Palestinian people.”
He explained that we would go to his hometown of Saida in southern Lebanon, the closest city to the Ayn al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp. Even before I met Achmad, Ayn al-Hilwah had appealed to me for several reasons. As the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, it was home to some of the most extremist youth in the country, young men who boasted membership in militant Palestinian groups as well as international terrorist organizations linked to Al-Qaeda, but more than anything, I wanted to learn the perspectives of other segments of the 350,000 disenfranchised Palestinians living in camps throughout the country. I eventually visited several Palestinian camps in Lebanon, but Ayn al-Hilwah was the most significant, serving as a base of operations for several notable Palestinian leaders in Lebanon.
Achmad’s home was the top apartment in an eleven-story building. He was proud to show me all the different rooms, the television, and all of their latest electronics. Outside one of the bedrooms, there was a string of drying laundry draped over a long wire. From the apartment window, there was a spectacular view of Ayn al-Hilwah. In the evening the sun set through the clouds, casting beams of light that formed a cage around the vast refugee camp. The walls were freshly painted, with photos of the family hanging crooked. In the corner of the living room, I found Achmad’s mother sitting in a chair, her head fully wrapped in a head scarf and the TV blasting.
Traveling into Ayn al-Hilwah, even by invitation, was a risk. It harbored members of just about every single militant Palestinian group present in Lebanon. In particular, it housed the leader of the Palestinians in Lebanon and head of Fatah, Brigadier General Mounir Maqdah. Unfortunately, I had quickly learned that for every dangerous, extremist group in a country like Lebanon, there’s often a group that’s far scarier. General Maqdah and his followers were certainly dangerous, but they were not my primary concern. What I found far more threatening was the presence in Ayn al-Hilwah camp of Asbat al-Ansar, a primarily Sunni terrorist group with known links to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The group, which has more than three hundred fighters, claimed responsibility for a slew of bombings throughout the 1990s. In 2003, they were behind a series of high-profile bombings of fast-food restaurants in various parts of Lebanon. And Ayn al-Hilwah was their base of operations. It did not calm my nerves when friends of mine in Beirut would joke that I might come back in a body bag. Even some of the youth I knew from Hezbollah told me to be careful, an admonition that left a truly bad taste in my mouth. When extremists are warning you about other extremists, you know you’re taking a risk.
I believed that if I could find members of Asbat al-Ansar and talk to youth in Fatah—and manage not to get killed in the process—I would obtain two very useful perspectives from within the Palestinian community. I hoped that my apparent willingness to take the risky trip in the first place would win me respect and, more importantly, restraint vis-à-vis the militants. Talking to Palestinians was not difficult in Lebanon, but meeting and speaking with the extremists in Ayn al-Hilwah proved to be so, and was only made possible by the help of Achmad, who organized dozens of meetings and gatherings for me.
I wasn’t exactly sure why I had to run, but at the moment, stopping wasn’t really an option. In dangerous situations, terrified confusion can prove nearly as valuable as adrenaline. As my bodyguard yelled at me in broken English to keep running, I was propelled forward by little more than a sense that even the slightest hesitation would land me in a Lebanese prison—or worse.
Behind us, two soldiers from the Lebanese army, the de facto police force in Lebanon, chased closely, screaming in Arabic. I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but the message was pretty clear. If it weren’t so chillingly real, the setting would have been perfect for a chase scene in a movie: We were weaving through the labyrinth of alleys that make up the border between the Ayn al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp and the Lebanese city of Saida. The alleyways were extremely narrow and the ground was of a rough dirt surface; enormous piles of garbage seemed like they had been strategically placed to impede my progress. I
couldn’t help but thinking that I’d stumbled upon a terrible third-world, life-or-death obstacle course.
Strings of electric cables formed a ceiling above the alleys. In this neighborhood, as in many other poor neighborhoods across the Middle East, the entire community shares electricity, Internet access, and cable television. The consequent splicing and resplicing of the wires—the means by which this community received and shared information with the rest of the world—formed the canopy above us.
With the Lebanese forces in hot pursuit, my bodyguard continued to yell. I had placed all my confidence in a man whose name I didn’t even know, not the most reassuring situation in which to find oneself when fleeing from two screaming members of the Lebanese military. In fact, the one thing I did know about my bodyguard/guide/protector was that he had a handgun tucked into his blue jeans. But he had been appointed to me on the spot by Achmad as if he were the only available tour guide at some ancient ruins. As was often the case with casual displays of weaponry in this part of the world, his pistol was largely symbolic. If the moment came, it would be impossible for him to draw the weapon from his jeans and still fire with a clear shot in time to protect me. I knew it was naïve to assume his pistol offered any sort of real protection, but I was willing to take reassurance where I could get it. With the sound of the pounding boots of the Lebanese army in my ears, I had no choice but to follow my bodyguard.
After about six or seven alleys, the Lebanese soldiers stopped chasing, and I’d safely made my way into one of the most dangerous, lawless places in the world.
I was never clear on whether the Lebanese soldiers were trying to catch me or merely chase me into the camp. Though there was nothing to mark the spot, my unnamed bodyguard and I had clearly reached the point where the Lebanese soldiers drew the line between enforcement and containment. The Lebanese government, though claiming responsibility for all security-related matters in Lebanon, does not actually exercise jurisdiction over entrance into the Palestinian refugee camps. The militias—Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Asbat al-Ansar—control the camps, providing services and either maintaining or, as is often the case, disrupting order. The Lebanese military only contains the camps, keeping disturbances from spreading outside of the small but densely populated slums.
In Lebanon, there are twelve Palestinian refugee camps. The vast majority of these sprang up when Christian and Muslim Palestinians fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. As Israel gained its independence, between 250,000 and 500,000 Palestinians fled their homes to set up what they thought would be temporary residence in Lebanon. When the Arab states suffered a devastating defeat during the Six Day War of 1967, it became clear that the Israeli state was only growing stronger and that the temporary residence that many Palestinians had envisioned in Lebanon had in fact become their permanent home. Between 1968 and 1969, the Palestinians demanded the authority to police their own camps. The guerrilla tactics of the Palestinian militants rendered the already weak Lebanese army ineffective, resulting in an agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Lebanese government. Under the terms of what became known as the Cairo Agreement, Palestinian camps would be moved away from civilian centers and the Palestinians would be responsible for their own security.
The terms of the Cairo Agreement remain in effect. Each of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon polices itself, has its own government in the camp, and acts as a virtually autonomous entity. Out of necessity, I’d been willing to put my life in the hands of a bodyguard. This made me uneasy, especially considering the fact that he had offered his services as a favor to my Palestinian friend and was not receiving any money. I knew my guard was there to provide a false sense of security, but in the case of real danger, who would protect me in Ayn al-Hilwah? Neither of the two major groups that exercised influence in the camp—Fatah and Asbat al-Ansar—has shown much interest in distancing itself from terrorism. I wouldn’t classify either of these groups as an ideal guardian angel for an American Jew.
It didn’t help matters that there was no record of my entry into the camp; nobody knew I had been there. I was denied a permit to visit the camp and just days before I ventured to Ayn al-Hilwah, terrorists inside the camp were identified by the Lebanese government as the extremists who had carried out a high-profile car-bombing attack on the outgoing Lebanese defense minister, Elias Murr. The camp—never quite a picture of calm—was especially on edge at the time of my visit, with tensions between rival Palestinian groups escalating to dangerous levels. Days earlier, there had been reports of heavy gunfire in parts of the camp, the rumblings of a serious confrontation between rival militant groups.
The chase that brought me into Ayn al-Hilwah was exhausting. I stood next to my bodyguard on the side of one of the main streets of the camp. The dirt road was uneven and filled with ditches and holes. Cars drove by, but slowly and carefully; the streets were packed with refugees and the road was only a few inches wider than the vehicles driving on them. There were two-and three-story buildings along both sides of the street. In the camp, as in the alleyways outside, dangling electric wires formed a ceiling over the street. On every wall and every building, I saw pictures of either Yasir Arafat or Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late Hamas spiritual leader killed by Israeli Defense Forces in March 2004. As an American Jew, I was not very comfortable with this iconography; suffice it to say that there aren’t many posters of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the Connecticut suburb I grew up in. The portraits of exalted extremists heightened my sense of anxiety and feelings of fear.
I tried making small talk with my bodyguard. Since we had just snuck into a Palestinian refugee camp together and I was counting on him to protect me in a highly volatile environment, I figured simple introductions seemed appropriate.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“I am called Ayman,” he answered, turning away. Apparently, Ayman was not one for small talk.
We stood in silence. Ayman would eventually become a friend, inviting me to his home, introducing me to his children, and showing off his collection of rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, Kalashnikov rifles, and pistols. He even placed his children on proud display with these weapons and made his daughter sing a song to me about Yasir Arafat. What I saw represented a tenuous bridge between Western youth and Middle Eastern youth. But at the same time, the scene was sickening, as the youngest boy, no older than three or four, began hysterically crying. The more he cried, the more guns were placed at his side, as if they were some kind of medicine or pacifier.
But as we stood there anxiously waiting on the side of the street, there was a vanishing gap between us. A black Mercedes pulled in front of us. The Mercedes had dark tinted windows and fancy rims on the wheels; it looked like it could have rolled out of a rap video. The window in front rolled down. It was my friend Achmad. He smiled at me. “I told you I had a way to get you in the camp,” he said. It was only several hours earlier that I had expressed my frustration to Achmad that the local authorities had denied my request for an entry permit. He had assured me that I need not worry and that he had a plan. Riding around in a poor refugee camp in a black Mercedes hardly seemed like a “plan,” but he then gestured for me to get in the car and said, “Let’s go; we have many people to talk to today.” The car took two quick turns and drove about two hundred feet before stopping. As it turned out, the black Mercedes with the tinted windows—like many other things I’d see that day in Ayn al-Hilwah—was more symbol than fact.
Achmad, Ayman, and I got out of the car and were greeted by a tall, powerful-looking man. He wore a white T-shirt with Arabic slogans and baggy army cargo pants. His face was youthful and though he could not have been more than twenty-five years old, his full beard and mustache gave the appearance that he was older. “Are you Mr. Cohen?”
I was less nervous at this moment than I had been in a previous visit to the smaller adjacent camp of Mia Mia. There, I was aggressively surrounded by a group of about fifteen to twenty young Pales
tinians. They were Hamas supporters, wearing T-shirts with a picture of the late Sheikh Yassin, and there were images of him on all the local buildings. They were in total control, some even holding chains. I knew they had no intention of hurting me, but their curiosity led them to inch closer to me. The conversation degenerated immediately into a group tirade about the United States and Israel. In the middle of this rant I asked the group what they would do if a Jewish person were to enter their camp and identify himself as such. A voice spoke up from the back of the group.
“We would cut his head off.” They laughed; I cringed.
We kept our silence for a moment, all standing on the rough dirt road that weaved throughout Mia Mia. This part of the camp looked like an impoverished village, with metal-sheeted shacks lining both sides. The city of Saida is the only thing that separates the Ayn al-Hilwah and Mia Mia Palestinian camps from one another. From where I stood, I caught a glimpse of the low-budget housing that filled the city. Random cement walls, roadblocks, and garbage blocked the roadway from clear passage.
But my fear subsided as the conversation progressed. It became abundantly clear that not only did these young Palestinians differentiate between Jews and governments, but their earlier remark had been motivated by little more than a somewhat questionable desire to frighten me. Once I realized this, I took the risk of telling them the truth. I was with my Palestinian friend, and while he was just one person, I assumed he could intervene if things really got out of hand. I addressed my growing audience of Palestinian teenagers. I asked them if it would surprise them if I told them I was Jewish. There was a silence and then I heard a couple of the kids mutter something in Arabic. Though I hadn’t explicitly revealed myself as a Jew, they could certainly draw that conclusion from what I had said.