We stood, silent and unbelieving, and watched the planes streak by, leaving vapor trails like nasty snags in the satin-blue sky—and as they left our line of sight, they were replaced by a sound I’d never heard before: the deep, horrifying percussion of a bombardment more than thirty-five miles away.
It was December 27, 2008, and The Gaza War had begun.
CHAPTER 24
The Sky is Falling
Teacher bought a big top for me
Solid (cast) lead, the finest known.
In whose honor, for whose glory?
For Hanukkah alone.
-HN BAILIK
It was as if life simply stopped for everyone during those first few hours of the war, which we were then learning already had a name: Operation Cast Lead, so named by the Israeli government in honor of the seventh day of Hanukkah, the day the war began, and taken from a poem by H.N. Bailik that refers to a cast lead dreidel, the spinning top traditionally played with during the holiday.
Fearing that the war would also extend to the West Bank, I hurried to the store to stock up on essential supplies before they could run out; propane, water, oil, flour, boxed milk and cans of tuna; you could live on these for a long time if you had to…but when I got to the grocery store, there wasn’t a run on anything. Instead, everyone was frozen, looking grimly up at the store’s ceiling-mounted television, which was streaming in images from Gaza so grisly I had to turn away. Still, as I loaded up my basket, I could hear them talking about the “new bombs” that I saw flashing across the screen, bombs that burst out like white fireworks raining down tiny smoke particles onto people running in the street. They even used the English words, as if the name were too new to be in Arabic: White Phosphorous.
It seemed too horrible to be true, especially for a weapon that was actually pretty. Designed to be used as a smoke shield, or in limited field applications, it wasn’t supposed to be used on populated civilian areas. But there it was, on constant replay on Al-Jazeera, CNN, and even Fox News. Conventional bombs and bullets were responsible for far more deaths than during those first few days than from injuries sustained by White Phosphorous. However, it was the nature of the weapon—its ability to stick to the skin and burn flesh until it was deprived of oxygen or dug out of the wound, that seemed to add a psychological effect that was impossible to deny.
By evening, normal life had virtually stopped across the West Bank, and everyone stayed huddled around their televisions. Gaza remained under direct bombardment, followed by riots across the West Bank protesting the disproportionate amount of civilian deaths and the inhumane nature of some of the weapons being used. If we thought the White Phosphorus was freaky, rumors abounded of another, even more obscure “phantom weapon,” one so new that few people in the world knew it existed, let alone what it was made of, or what it could do. All that we knew for sure was that if the latest reports from hospitals in Gaza were true, something had been let loose on Gaza that might be straight out of a science fiction movie.
If the hospitals and health care were considered abominable in the West Bank, all reports said that they were much worse in Gaza. Months of sanctions against the Hamas-led government had made essential supplies and medicines hard to come by before the war, but once the bombardment started what few resources they had become woefully inadequate. Still, there was a handful of primarily Norwegian doctors in Gaza at the time of the conflict, but they were as stymied by the lack of supplies, power interruptions and all of the other complications inherent in war. What they could do, however, was report on a new type of injury that they were seeing among the casualties, something experts on CNN and other news networks were just starting to associate with a weapon called DIME.
This was a new kind of device developed in the United States that was (according to its developers), “designed to minimize collateral damage.” This might have been true back in the laboratory, but its damage to the psyche couldn’t be overestimated. The international medical community was reporting that victims were arriving at the hospital with horrific cauterized amputations. According to the famous Goldstone Report on the war:
The amputations mostly occurred at waist height in children, generally lower in adults, and were combined with skin-deep, third-degree burns, four to six fingers upward from the amputation. Where the amputation took place, the flesh was cauterized as a result of the heat. The patients with these amputations had no shrapnel wounds, but red flashes on the abdomen and chest. The excision of large pieces of flesh was not infrequent in these patients.
Reports like this started flowing out of Gaza with sickening frequency, and Mads Gilbert, one of the Norwegian doctors who first blew the whistle about them, told reporters that he had a “very strong suspicion” that Gaza was being used as a test laboratory for new weapons, and that he’d seen similar injuries during his work at Gaza’s Shifa hospital. He reported seeing “a number of very brutal amputations…without shrapnel injuries which we strongly suspect must have been caused by the DIME weapons.”
In just the span of a single day, it seemed as if the world—and her principles—had suddenly changed, and the Holy Land was now a frightening place for very different reasons than before.
As the days passed, Israeli forces swarmed the West Bank’s cities, roads and villages in unusually high numbers as a show of force. This was to deter the rest of Palestine from joining in the fight. Still, large riots popped up in virtually every Arab city and town, from the North of Israel to the southernmost edge of the West Bank, especially in Hebron.
Hebron was always a volatile town, both because of its infamous settlement problem populated with five hundred of “the most hardened, racist, assholes you’d ever be so lucky to meet” (and that was according to other Israelis) and because of the Palestinian locals’ infamous “Hebronian hard-headedness.” After the war started, it only got worse. Still, I continued to teach my English classes in the newer part of town, where it was almost completely removed from the continuous demonstrations since the first day of the war.
But the truth was, I’d always wanted to go to a real demonstration; the kind you see on CNN—burning tires, bullets, tear gas, rock throwing, banners—the works. After all, it seemed so worldly! So, one day before class, I made up my mind to check out the demonstration going on downtown.
Now, here I was on the edge of Old Hebron a couple of hours before class, speed-walking in my sober-looking work jilbab and Sketchers (just in case I had to run), headed toward the alleys that made up the marketplace next to the city’s outdoor market. I’d parked my car as soon as I’d reached the city center, its shops and storefronts shuttered and locked, the garbage-strewn streets all the more depressing for their lack of usual crowds, shunning the prospect of an accidental stoning.
Still, I was there. I’d come to see, and I was going to see it all, damn it. However, my enthusiasm started to flag as soon as I hit the first wave of tear gas on the edge of the crowd (which I only then noticed was exclusively male). I wasn’t accustomed to the sensation, which can sneak up on you well before you see the tell-tale cloud. Still, I wanted to get as close to the front line as I could, so I imitated the males ahead of me, hugging the edge of the closed storefronts to avoid getting hit by the rifle-fired gas grenades.
There was no question about it. The tear gas hurt—just like it was supposed to. But I realized that if I stayed out of the clouds of concentrated smoke as much as possible, I could still tolerate it—just barely. What I didn’t appropriately estimate, though, was the sheer noise of the crowd, the terrifying, bone-jarring volume of the stun grenades, and the Crack! Ping! of the bullets. Worse, when I did make it to the front of the crowd, I couldn’t really see the soldiers at all because they were crouched far beyond a concrete barrier, which made it hard to gage the direction of the greatest danger. Since I couldn’t tell the exact angles from where the shots and gas rockets were coming from, I decided to muster up some belated common sense and crouch snugly in a side alley. From here, I could watc
h the mayhem unfold, until a roving group of Palestinian teenagers and boys discovered me. They assumed I was lost and offered to lead me out of the area.
I’d hoped to stay inconspicuous and especially didn’t want to advertise my American roots, as I’d just seen two foreign journalists chased out of the area for taking pictures of the demonstrators, but thankfully, it was one of the days that my nationality didn’t matter, and the kids welcomed me enthusiastically after I told them that I was an American Muslim. Still, it wasn’t long before I realized that my presence seemed to encourage the boys to show off with increasingly risky antics: running into the line of fire to hurl stones, flip the bird (inverted, Arabic-style), or shaking their asses in the direction of the assembled troops, typical behavior, except that some of the boys were so young they exposed their superhero underpants when they crouched down to break cinderblocks into “ammunition.” A vision of one of them getting their heads blown open trying to impress me flashed through my mind, and I knew it was time to get out of there.
I turned and tried to head back the way I came, still staying as close to the buildings as I could, but by then the tear gas was as thick and low in the street as a lingering river fog, and there was just no getting through it. Desperate, I tried using one of the raw onions the boys around me were holding up to their noses in a futile effort to counteract the gas. However, the moisture from my tears, even the sweat on my forehead, seemed to concentrate the agent on my skin as if I’d rubbed a jalapeño all over my eye-sockets, cheekbones, and lips. It was only when a gas rocket streaked past my foot, missing me by fewer than five inches, that I decided it was time to beat it back to work, even if I had to crawl blindly back to my car. I’d had enough excitement for the day.
Later, after getting home, I went straight to the shower to wash off any remaining gas residue and hurried to prepare the Kosher hot dogs I always kept in the freezer for unexpectedly long days. As I watched the children huddled around the Soba with their nutritious hot dogs and cups of soda, I started to feel guilty for putting myself at unnecessary risk. The thought had the very unpleasant effect of making me doubt the whole enterprise of being here, as if I somehow lacked the good judgment to stay. After all, the truth of the situation was that I’d found the demonstration scary, but also, strangely fun.
That night, as if in divine retribution for my folly, my hands started to hurt in a way I could only describe as the kind of nerve pain you get when you hit your funny bone. I only felt it in both of my wrists, hands and fingers, and it seemed to occur when I lay down or let my hands hang at my sides (in other words, all the time). In fact, the only relief I could get was when I slept, or if I sat up with my hands on top of my head. It was horrible. In fact, I had to take prescription pain killers just to get to sleep, and it felt (as best as I could describe it to the doctor), was as if the bones in my hands were melting.
Worse than the pain, though, was the thought that it started the night of the demonstration, where I’d allowed myself to remain in the teargas for at least an hour. I hadn’t been injured, shot, or hit with anything, and that fact only increased my fear. What on earth was in that gas? After all, if they were using new, freaky weapons over the hills in Gaza, wouldn’t they spike the gas with something? I didn’t know if I was being paranoid or realistic. Maybe it was just an allergic reaction.
Thankfully, after a few days the pain finally stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving no trace behind…aside from a permanently numb finger and the important lesson that its best to try and stay out of trouble!
CHAPTER 25
Tamar
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
-SIGMUND FREUD
Tamar was my Israeli neighbor back in Seattle, and though it confused our respective spouses, we’d become fast friends after she invited me to her home one day for tea. While it’s true we disagreed on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict—and who was at fault—or at least who should back off now—we still managed to bond over our shared outsider statuses; she, the stereotypical blunt Israeli, and me, the scary Muslim. It was actually a nice relationship; she taught me to make proper schnitzel in her bright kitchen, and I gave her spices and taught her how to make Palestinian sage-infused tea. My kids swam with hers in her pool—and we even babysat for each other.
By the time I was back in Palestine, Tamar had returned to her home in northern Israel and I decided that since we were in the same country again, we could arrange to meet in Jerusalem. So I sent her an email and we arranged to meet a week later.
Like many secular Israelis, Tamar was a bit spooked by Jerusalem and its network of confusing neighborhoods, so we arranged to meet at the Jerusalem Promenade, a large pedestrian park overlooking a beautiful vista of the Old City. We thought maybe we’d head over to the mall in West Jerusalem, where we could have coffee and catch up on all that we’d missed in each other’s lives during the months we’d spent apart.
As usual, going to Jerusalem meant passing through the Tunnels checkpoint south of the city, but because I didn’t have the kids with me, I expected to pass through relatively quickly after the usual paperwork and trunk checks.
Unfortunately, that day it didn’t quite work that way.
In the canon of The Universal Law of West Bank Checkpoints, there is a maxim: approach bored soldiers at your peril, or ignore these words and face your doom.
It seemed to be a problem more common to the large “permanent” checkpoints around the countryside, or at the tiny fabricated shacks typically manned by older, reserve-duty men. At these, and specifically the Jerusalem tunnel checkpoint, you could almost guarantee such soldierly gaggles would find a juicy new target in the next car rolling up. And as I cruised up to the inspection lane where such a group had gathered (inspecting photos on each other’s cell phones), I knew it wasn’t going to go well.
As was the protocol, I pulled up and handed over my passport to a young soldier, who took it, leaned on my car door, and pushed his sunglasses down his nose.
“You are American?” he asked in a heavy accent, looking disbelievingly at the my passport photo (where I looked like a typical American blonde), grinning at the “me” in my passport photo and back again at “me” in my scarf, as if to say, Whoa! What the hell happened to you!
Then, he passed the passport over to his friends and they enjoyed a snicker. Typical asshole stuff. Nothing to see here folks.
But it was then that it got really bad. In fact, it was the beginning of what was to be my official entry into the pissing game that we in the “Arab lane” played, by the name of Shittiest Checkpoint Experience Ever. Of course, seasoned travelers back and forth these checkpoints with far worse experiences, but for an amateur player like me, what happened next was bad enough.
Turning to his three companions, the soldier seemed to joke about me in Hebrew as he lifted my CD case out of the passenger seat. Thumbing through it, he again leaned on the open window, “What are these? Do you have Britney Speels? I love Britney Speels,” he said, all the while holding up a clipboard with a crudely drawn, but boldly rendered phallus on the back, so that I might see it to its maximum advantage.
Ignoring the artwork, I got out of the car as the soldier instructed, and opened the trunk for inspection; usually the final step before they clear you for passage, but after he inspected it, he still didn’t give me back my passport, this time clipping it onto his clipboard, which he still held at an angle, determined that I acknowledge the ridiculous penis. I would not, come hell or high water, or pimple-faced pervert soldier, acknowledge what he was doing.
And that was our stalemate, it seemed. Still, I never got to see how it would have naturally ended because we’d taken up so much time playing his game that a long line of impatient people had formed behind me, prompting the driver next in line to beep his ho
rn and yell from his open window to either turn me back or let me go. And that’s when my Shittiest Checkpoint Story gained admissibility.
“You see him?” the soldier asked, pointing his thumb in the direction of my good Samaritan and smiling. “I’m going to make him pay…you go,” he said, tossing my passport onto my lap and signaling for the man behind me to come forward and presumably learn his lesson for the day in properly submissive behavior.
I drove away, watching the checkpoint shrink in my rear-view mirror. Frustrated, impotent, and feeling slightly dirty, I cried all the way to Jerusalem.
Once in the city, I pulled into a large gas station to fix the eye makeup I’d so carefully applied in the morning, in case Tamar was already at the Promenade. By the time I got there, though, by now more than an hour late, she was nowhere to be found. Tired of being in the car, I decided to sit on a bench and admire the view of the Old City from across the Kidron Valley. Then, I noticed a group of young Palestinian guys (exponentially bolder than their West Bank brothers) sidling up to me, and I decided to wait in my car.
When I finally saw Tamar driving into the parking lot in a shiny new SUV, I was excited and relieved to finally see her but was surprised and a bit disappointed to see that she’d brought her husband along. When he sat in the car after greeting me through the open window, just watching us, as we walked down the main trail, I also got a little suspicious that something was up.
All Roads Lead to Jerusalem Page 14