by Mark Thomas
All of this is carefully stitched together with the starter kit of video tricks: screen wipes, starburst fades and page-turn edits. It leads to a climax featuring a child’s plaintive plea for, ‘No more hate, no more fears, no more pain and no more tears’, before rising to a crescendo of unaccompanied chanting and hand-clapping: ‘We see …’ CLAP ‘… a peaceful world …’ CLAP ‘… in harmony …’ CLAP and so on, until drums break in with a classic Phil Collins series of sloppy thuds, and everyone is back to singing the song of peace set over photos of a school trip to some local caves. and trotting about the village again.
The lights come on abruptly, Ala’a is smiling expectantly and Haj Sami is staring majestically into the middle distance, as if he’s posing for a portrait. I feel under enormous pressure to applaud but the juddering silence of the room is broken only by the sound of me pushing my jaw shut. At this point I would not bat an eyelid if Pudsey Bear were to walk into the room shaking a collecting tin.
And as we sit basking in the saccharine after-taste of the film, I realise that I’m going to have to interview Haj Sami on the plight of his village – which appears to be an infestation of singing kids – and that I’m to start my interview now.
Gathering my wits about me, with Ala’a and Haj Sami looking on, the first question that splutters from my lips is: ‘So, Haj Sami … how did you end up in the wheelchair?’
He tells me how it happened. After the Six Day War in June 1967, when Israeli forces moved in and occupied the West Bank, the Israeli military decided to use the area around Al Aqaba to prepare soldiers for future combat and so, one day, the village woke up to find itself in the middle of a military training zone.
The Israeli military, it would seem, have a distinctly literal definition of putting people in the firing line. In this instance, an entire village. The sixteen-year-old Haj Sami was in the fields tending the family sheep, when he was shot three times in the back by stray bullets fired by Israeli soldiers who were practising shooting people. He was left a paraplegic. The Israeli army apologised, paid a little compensation and promised to get better at practising shooting people*. They didn’t, however, stop the training practice around the village.
Most countries have places, usually in remote rural areas, where squaddies can rehearse hostage situations, or run in and out of empty buildings firing live rounds and shouting. The key difference here is that where other countries use deserted villages for this practice, in Al Aqaba, Israel has happily opted to use an undeserted village (although they are working on that last part). Incredibly, the village has had eight inhabitants killed by stray bullets and ordnance, and over fifty people injured. No soldiers have been punished.
It continues to this day. Large concrete blocks placed to resemble a village lie on the hillside opposite Al Aqaba, and Israeli troops train there often. Added to this, it is only very recently that the soldiers ceased the habit known as ‘shooting between the houses’: the practice that saw live ammunition flying through the streets of Al Aqaba.
Haj Sami holds his hands up, ‘All the time training: morning, evening, night.’ He looks at me, incredulous: ‘Why training in between the houses of Al Aqaba? Everyone ask me, “Why Israeli army train in Al Aqaba?” The Israeli army tell me Al Aqaba like southern Lebanon, and therefore good to practise in.’
Perched high on a hill where the green ravines and steep valleys are cursed to resemble Lebanon, Al Aqaba is, in the eyes of the army, the perfect terrain for its troops to practise. However, as Haj Sami goes on to explain, it’s not merely lead and shrapnel the villagers have to fear: Al Aqaba is also under threat from an even blunter instrument – planning laws.
The West Bank is divided into three types of area: Area A is under Palestinian control, Area B is under joint Israeli and Palestinian control and Area C is under full Israeli control for security and ‘planning’.6 Nearly two-thirds of the West Bank is under Area C and, as a result, Palestinians need a permit to build everything from a greenhouse to a hospital. Given that almost all applications are turned down, building anything ‘legally’ is almost impossible.7 There is a reason IKEA doesn’t have a branch in the West Bank and it is not just that their meatballs are shit.
Al Aqaba is not a big village yet still the Israeli authorities have declared thirty-five of the forty-five structures illegal, and have issued demolition orders against the mosque, the kindergarten, the health clinic and a tarmac road called Peace Street.
The orders have turned Al Aqaba upside down. ‘A man in the village,’ says Haj Sami, ‘has to live, with his sheep, in a barn because the army refuse to give him permission to build a house. The school, they have my house.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Because the Israeli army refused permission to build a school, it is in my house.’ Nothing is where it should be. ‘My office,’ says Haj Sami, ‘is under a tree because the army refuses permission to build.’
To verify this, the next morning I go to his office. It is indeed under a big tree, that has a circular concrete bench running round the trunk. Next to it is a large sign with the words: ‘Palestinian National Authority’.
‘When the army came here, they said this bench is not allowed. “You have no permission for this.”’ Haj Sami’s square face smiles broadly, ‘I said to the soldier, “Please therefore serve a demolition order on the bench.”’
Back in the communal hall the hour is late and I am tired, but Haj Sami and Ala’a are still describing the tale of this village and insist on telling the story of the crashed jeep. A few years ago, villagers saw that ‘a soldier had accident in a jeep. It tumbled down the hill. The people from Al Aqaba help him. When we saw the soldier dying we help him, take him from the jeep.’
The villagers saved his life but, according to Haj Sami, ‘the Israeli army did not say thank you. After the army came and the ambulance came they not say thanks, they say go from here.’ So the villagers do just that.
The following day the Israeli army did return to Al Aqaba, but only to serve a demolition order on the village clinic.
‘He gave it to you the day after?’
Haj Sami nods emphatically. ‘We help the soldier and one day after, the Israeli army come and give me the order for the clinic, to destroy the clinic.’
Amazed I repeat the facts, as if to make sure I have heard correctly: ‘To serve the demolition order the day after …’
‘After one day,’ says Haj Sami solemnly.
And I laugh at the outrage. ‘You have to admit,’ I stammer out, ‘the Israelis have a great sense of timing.’
Their silent stares are a mixture of politeness and incomprehension. I am beginning to recognise that this as a Palestinian thing, their way of saying, ‘Anyway …’ With his own sense of timing, Haj Sami lets tumbleweed drift over the gap in the conversation, and then continues his story.
The British Consulate had helped fund the original clinic, ‘So when the demolition order arrived for the clinic I phoned him very quickly and he sent a letter for Jack Straw [Foreign Secretary at the time] and Jack Straw, he called the Israelis and said don’t touch this clinic.’
Haj Sami affords a smile. The clinic is still open but he does not know for how much longer.
Slowly it dawns on me, the incredible game Haj Sami is playing. Al Aqaba is physically cut off, isolated in the mountains, and almost the entire village is under demolition orders threatening its very existence. The population has dwindled from 400 to a mere 100 and the soldiers still train here. So Haj Sami has turned, successfully, to the international community for help. The UN, as well as the British, US, Japanese, Belgian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian governments and also non-government organisations (NGOs) have all invested heavily in the village, by building or donating money for the school, the clinic, roads, water wells and other essential infrastructure. This is not just aid, it is the best insurance policy Haj Sami can find; he is protecting his village with powerful investors.
It is a fiendishly clever game of survival played
by a man in a wheelchair, whose best weapon is a DVD of schoolchildren singing about peace.
Haj Sami kindly lets us stay the night in his guest room. Entirely in keeping with a man who has classrooms in his house and an office under a tree, the guest room is in the garage. Ala’a leads Phil and me out into the courtyard and through the wooden double doors of the garage.
‘Are you sure you have enough pillows?’ he says, pointing at a small pile of them.
‘Yes, that will be fine, thank you.’
‘I can never sleep unless I have exactly the right number of pillows,’ he says.
‘You are an exact man, Ala’a,’ I say, and he is. As Al Aqaba’s clerk, he keeps the files, the documents, the orders, the legal challenges, email lists, DVDs and pamphlets in order. He has to, because in a village where nothing is where it should be, someone needs to know exactly where everything is.
Having said goodnight to Ala’a, I reflect on my earlier words of, ‘If we are lucky, it won’t involve any scrapes with the military.’ I conclude that it really does take a special kind of luck to end the day sleeping on an Israeli military training range. Not a charmed luck exactly, but special, nonetheless. Military training areas are not generally considered suitable rest stops for travellers, being, as they are, places for red flags, warning signs and occasional headlines in West Country local newspapers that combine the words ‘student’, ‘prank’ and ‘tragedy’.
So, on the first night of our walk we are to sleep on the floor of a disused garage. I am thrilled. What would be the point of travelling all this way to spend the night in a Travelodge? This is the West Bank, for God’s sake, this is Palestine, and the last thing I want is to be curling up with a free shortbread and a complimentary copy of the Independent. I have everything I need in the garage, or at least within walking distance if you include the washbasin. The smell of oil and petrol is cheery as it reminds me of workshops and my dad; the combination of the winter chill and the altitude keeps the mosquitoes at bay; and what do I care for a trouser press and a sachet of hot chocolate powder? A cold draught sneaks into the bare room through a broken window, nudging the large wooden double doors into an occasional rattle. Strip lights on the low ceiling bleach the space of colour, with the exception of the nylon blankets, which explode in LSD yellows, reds and browns. Wrapped in this synthetic shroud, the exhaustion and elation and confusion of the day merge into contentment. I take one last look round to make sure all is ready for tomorrow: the green lights of batteries charging, walking boots kicked clean of mud, torch next to pillow. The lights are turned off and moonlight pours into the garage. I hunch further into the blankets, feeling the warm lure of sleep amidst the build-up of static electricity.
______
* I might be making that last bit up.
chapter 3
DIY
If his living room is to be believed, Fadhi, the debonair, corduroy-wearing activist, has a good pedigree. One framed photo has a young Fadhi shaking hands with Yasser Arafat, while another shows a slightly older version guiding Tony Blair round the Jordan Valley. His bookshelf has a line of reports on the area, authored by him. Outside his home, wherever I go, everyone seems to know him, and he is the perfect person to find guides and translators for us. However, the job is proving far more complex than anyone imagined, even for Fadhi’s exceptional skills.
We have had three different Palestinians walking with us in as many days, and it is beginning to feel more like a course in management than rambling. Part of the problem is that rambling is not a popular Palestinian pastime: a stranger approached me in the street to ask, ‘What is that?’
‘It is a walking stick,’ I said, showing him my lightweight, retractable hiking pole. With a mixture of confusion and irritation he replied, ‘Do you not have a car?’ before he turned and walked off.
It seems that in the food chain of transport, walking puts us well beneath ‘Boy on donkey’, and probably ‘Shopmobility scooter’, too. So maybe it is not surprising that my Palestinian guide for the next leg, Matt, simply doesn’t understand what a ramble entails.
As we set out from Al Mutilla, I am equipped with everything needed for a ramble, from boots to bobble hat, for the walk over the hilly farmland. Matt turns up in a sky-blue shirt with thin white stripes, a dark blue, two-button blazer, grey slacks, and slip-on black shoes; I’m dressed to hike, Matt is dressed to open the bar on a Sunday lunchtime at the British Legion.
‘Are those shoes going to be OK?’
‘They are fine. I have walked before, you know,’ he says defensively.
Slightly worried, I ask, ‘Have you got any water?’
‘I don’t need any, I am tough,’ he laughs. ‘As long as I have cigarettes, I am fine.’
If the start with Matt was not promising, walking with him quickly goes from bad to worse, then from worse to really shit. He is completely unprepared for the steep climbs and rocky terraces, and does not want to walk near the Barrier at all. So when a shepherd advises us to be careful, Matt translates it as, ‘He says if we go near the Wall we will be shot.’
I have no way of knowing how dangerous it is. But I have just spent an evening with Haj Sami (who was shot) and we have to rely on the guide, so when Matt says, ‘I know another way, we can walk on the roads,’ Phil and I follow him.
Some time later, and ten kilometres in completely the opposite direction from the Barrier, we arrive at Jalqamus. It is a place with one mosque, half a dozen homes and some greenhouses, so the three of us walking down the road is practically a parade (if someone were to tell me now that Jalqamus is a one-horse town, I’d say it had had the developers in since I was last there). But the folk are friendly and point us on our way.
I have given Matt the nickname of Columbus as he, too, is much in the habit of heading off in the wrong direction. He also smokes like he has just discovered tobacco. As he lights up another cigarette, I say, ‘You have spent half the walk telling me how Israel is trying to destroy Palestine and the other half trying to give yourself a terminal illness. Why is it so many Palestinian men smoke?’
‘Things are changing Mark, honestly, things are changing,’ he replies and in all seriousness. ‘Nowadays, more and more women are smoking, too.’
*
The following morning, I am hugely relieved when Fadhi tells us he is to walk with us himself, as Matt’s fifteen-kilometre detour has put us yet further behind schedule.
The morning is a winter idyll: the sky is blue and the air crisp. Fadhi is a countryman at heart, and while he tramps the hills explaining how the Barrier isolates farmers from land and water, he happily forages.
‘Ah,’ he says, midflow, ‘this you will like.’ Bending into a cactus bush he carefully plucks stems from between the prickly pads. ‘This is hellion; that is what we call it. You call it asparagus. You can eat it raw.’
He passes me a handful and then is off again, explaining the Barrier while I munch away.
‘Once you have a wall,’ he says, ‘you have to have security to protect it. So people are not allowed to walk near the Wall; they must remain 150 metres away from it at all times.’
As we are standing right next to the barbed wire, I think: If that is true, the army is being unduly lax in its patrolling duties. With impeccable timing the military arrives.
We’re called to a yellow gate surrounded by barbed wire, over which we hand our passports and Fadhi’s green Palestinian ID. Two soldiers guard us while their commander checks our documents; one of them smiles.
‘How old are you?’ I ask, in dad-like fashion.
‘Twenty,’ he replies. His helmet is slightly too big and wobbles when he speaks.
‘What are you going to do when you finish in the army?’
‘University.’
‘Do you know what you will study?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘I went to college,’ I volunteer.
‘What you study?’
‘Drama.’ In an instant, before I really know
what I am doing, I proceed to offer him the worst career advice in the world: ‘That’s what you should do, study drama. When you leave, do a Theatre Arts degree.’
The soldier blushes as Fadhi and Phil laugh.
‘But he is a soldier …’ giggles Fadhi.
‘What’s he going to do?’ chimes in Phil. ‘Express the Occupation through mime?’
The soldier blushes again, and so do I.
An hour passes sitting by the wire. Fadhi lies down to sleep and I discover a Hawaiian rockabilly MP3 track on my mobile phone, so I sit back and let the steel guitar glide over the hula sounds. When it finishes, I return to the barbed wire to where the young soldier is.
‘Hey, is it all right to chat?’
‘It is good. It helps my English.’
‘If I am going to help your English, you must teach me some Hebrew.’
‘OK,’ he says, his helmet nodding with him. ‘Er … what Hebrew you know? You know “Shalom”, right?’
‘Yes.’
The radio cackles from the Humvee as he stands with his gun shouldered, thinking for a moment.
‘Slicha.’
‘What?’
‘Say “Slicha”.’ And he coaches me: ‘Slicha.’
‘Slick hair.’
Slowly he repeats it, ‘Slicha.’
‘Slicha?’ I say, getting it right.
‘That is good.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘In Israel the word means, “Excuse me” or “Sorry”.’ And then, with a performer’s timing he says, ‘We don’t use it very often.’