And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

by Engel, Richard

  In 1996 the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. The Taliban were mostly Pashtun tribesmen with their own history and goals. But their religious fanaticism, harsh treatment of women, and hatred of the West were almost identical to those of the Salafi jihadis. So it was only natural that the Taliban would provide a safe haven for bin Laden and his murderous band, which they did, starting in 1996. Al-Qaeda set up bases and training camps in Afghanistan. At last the jihadists’ army of exiles had a home.

  The world would be very different if Saudi Arabia had never struck oil. The wealth allowed the Wahhabis to set a harsh standard for Islam, while staying isolated from it themselves. A growing number of Muslim reformers say—at great physical risk to themselves—that Islam needs to evolve and rediscover more tolerant strains of the faith, schools of thought that were pervasive in Islam when it led the world in science, mathematics, and medicine. Instead, these days Islam is unfortunately mostly known for its anger, which is a tragedy for most believers of one of the world’s longest-surviving and decent religions.

  TWO

  MY LIFE AS A FREELANCER in Cairo was fun and interesting, but also a hassle. The term of art in the business for each of your client publications is “a string,” which makes you, the freelancer trying to report for all these disparate outlets, a “stringer.” If you’re stringing for newspapers, you don’t know if they’ll ever pay you, and if they do, it might be three or four months later. By then you’ve written fifty articles for other people, and you have a devil of a time figuring who’s paid you for what. Every freelancer, at least back then, dreamed of getting a staff job. So it was a no-brainer when Agence France-Presse (AFP) offered me a job in Jerusalem as its Palestinian-affairs correspondent. AFP paid me the princely sum of $24,000 a year, not much more than I was making in Cairo, but with health benefits, a small housing allowance, and the assurance that I’d get a check every two weeks.

  It was snowing in Jerusalem when I arrived over New Year’s weekend in 2000. The city looked beautiful, even peaceful. But that was before the Second Intifada, before the riots and clouds of tear gas, before “rubber” bullets knocked me down and left painful welts on my legs, before protesters and soldiers killed each other in gunfights, before a suicide bomb tore bodies apart in the market across from my house—and before I bribed an official to give me a “human shield” visa so I could get to Iraq before the US invasion.

  I got married a few months before leaving Egypt. My wife had been my girlfriend at Stanford, and we rekindled the relationship when I was in Cairo. We moved to Jerusalem to start a new life in a new land. We settled in a handsome, three-story brownstone off Agripas Street. It was quite charming—you entered through a gate and walked down a narrow path rimmed with morning glories and jasmine—but it badly needed renovation. The roof leaked, and there was no proper heating. We put oversize kerosene lanterns by the bed at night and by our feet if we were sitting and reading. The lanterns heated up a tiny area, but the smell was pretty awful. I loved the location of the house. It was a twenty-minute walk to the Old City, and right across from the Mahane Yehuda, the city’s main market for butchers, bakers, and fruit and vegetable sellers. I spent a lot of time browsing in the market—or at least I did before the suicide bombers came.

  * * *

  WE LIVED IN AN AREA called Nachlaot, a sort of Bohemian enclave. ITS winding lanes had speakeasies with no signs on the doors and a couple of underground music clubs in basements. It had a New York City East Village feel, a beatnik vibe, and was quite cool. Now large parts of it are ultra-Orthodox. Our friends were almost all journalists. The expat community was nothing like the one in Cairo. Most of the Americans in Jerusalem had made aliyah, a Hebrew word meaning “ascent,” which by Jewish custom means going to Israel. They were Americans who had decided to embrace Zionism and their Jewish heritage, and they were deeply involved in their temple groups. I was never able to break into their close-knit communities.

  Part of my job at AFP was doing my own reports—interviewing people, finding features, turning out stories. But my main focus was running a dozen or so Palestinian reporters—in Gaza, in Nablus, in Tulkarm, in Ramallah, and so forth. Every morning at eight thirty I’d start calling them to find out what was going on in their areas that day and what had happened overnight. I kept checking in with them throughout the day. So if a big story broke in Ramallah, say, I would be on the phone a lot with my reporter there and write stories under his byline.

  In Egypt I did a lot of local stories, even some restaurant reviews. Aside from my pieces on the attacks at Tahrir Square and Luxor, almost nobody outside the Cairo community noticed my work. In Jerusalem, with the Camp David Summit only months away, I was writing big international stories. I was part of the game. I had to be fast and couldn’t afford to make mistakes. When I hit “send,” the story went to Nicosia for a quick check by the editors there, then it hit the AFP wire in a minute, sometimes less. A mistake would go around the world in the blink of an eye.

  The AFP bureau was in the Jerusalem Capital Studios (JCS) building, which was a media center mainly serving broadcast outlets (ABC, CNN, and BBC among others) because it had studios and satellite dishes. It was also a good location for wire organizations such as AFP because Israeli officials were always prowling the halls.

  You didn’t need to work too hard to get a comment from an Israeli official. You could work for a regional Danish radio station, and if you needed a comment at four in the morning, you could reach a senior official who might spend an hour being interviewed on your station. In Cairo, you couldn’t find an Egyptian official to talk about anything, even something as innocuous as tourism. If you met an Israeli minister or deputy minister, he’d give you a cell phone number, if not his own, then one for his aide. It was answered twenty-four hours a day, and the official was authorized to give you a comment that, more often than not, was spicy, provocative, thought-out, and in English. I had never seen such a well-oiled PR machine.

  The Palestinians were no slouches at this game either. You could call Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian peace negotiator, at midnight, and he’d pick up the phone himself and stay on the line for as long as it took to answer your questions. There was never a time when a Palestinian leader wasn’t available. They had learned from the Israelis that they needed to be quick in getting out their side of the story. Ordinary Palestinians also seemed to be far more sophisticated than the Egyptians, who were apt to think that the capital of the United States was New York. I was a novelty to Egyptians, and they talked to me mostly out of curiosity. The Palestinians talked to me not because I was a foreigner, but because I was an American journalist, and it was important to them that I understood their history and their cause.

  During my nearly four years in Cairo, I lived in the world of the Arab big men, leaders like Mubarak who saw themselves as the fathers of their nations and who were opposed by a complex web of Islamic groups. Over the next three years based in Jerusalem, I witnessed the death of the peace process. But I didn’t know it was about to die when I arrived. Back then there was so much hope. There was a feeling that a peace deal would finally result in a two-state solution and the creation of an internationally recognized state called Palestine with clear borders, passports, and maybe even a small army.

  One of my first stories was about Palestinians designing their own currency. This was six months before the Camp David talks in July 2000. I was talking to the Palestinian negotiators and advisors every day—Erekat, Hanan Ashrawi, and Yasser Abed Rabbo—and they sounded optimistic even though they knew that a lot of big issues still needed to be resolved.

  At that time, relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians on the West Bank were governed by the Oslo II Accord, an “interim agreement” signed in Taba, Egypt, in September 1995, and reinforced by the Wye River Memorandum, signed three years later in Maryland. These agreements, temporary and highly legalistic, were aimed at establishing a status quo that would allow Israelis and Palestinians to live together u
ntil “final status” negotiations could resolve the more complicated questions as part of a comprehensive peace plan.

  Life under Oslo II was highly regulated and lawyerly. The agreements established three administrative designations for Palestinians living in the West Bank. The three categories were determined by behavior not geography, and the map of the West Bank was a kaleidoscope of colors. Access to each area was restricted by Israeli checkpoints, which numbered six hundred at one stage.

  Area A, which was under full Palestinian control, covered only 3 percent of the land area but included eight cities important to the Palestinians, among them Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho, Nablus, and 80 percent of Hebron. These areas were off bounds to Israelis except in security emergencies. Area B covered roughly one-fourth of the West Bank and included 440 Palestinian villages and no Israeli settlements. It was under Palestinian civil control but responsibility for security was shared by the Israelis and Palestinians.

  Area C, which included all the Israeli settlements and encompassed 70 percent of the West Bank, was under full Israeli control.

  It was a strange system in which Palestinians had different rights depending on where they lived. In Area A, Palestinians theoretically controlled their own destinies, but only within that space. A areas were like tiny islands of Palestinian autonomy. B areas were even stranger because Palestinians were governed by both their own leaders and the Israel government, and it was never clear who ran what. In C areas Palestinians were theoretically under full Israeli control, but didn’t enjoy the same rights as Israeli citizens. The system was a mess, but it was all supposed to go away once a “final status” deal was agreed to.

  The A-B-C zones amounted to a good-behavior system. If an area showed it was stable and secure, it could move up a rung, from C to B or even B to A. In other words, if the Palestinians showed they could run a place peacefully and successfully, the Israelis were supposed to give them more autonomy. But the process was slow, and even a minor infraction, or alleged infraction, could knock a whole village down a rung.

  The “final status” talks at Camp David brought together Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat, and President Clinton. The negotiations were supposed to tackle the hard issues and end up with a two-state solution that would supplant the complicated A-B-C system, which required a law degree to understand. The core issues of the “final status” talks hinged mainly on Palestinian refugees and their right of return, redrawn borders, and the Old City in Jerusalem—in other words, what the Palestinian state would look like, who would live there, what its capital would be, and how the two sides would handle the religious sites in the Old City.

  The talks sometimes seemed like an exercise in hairsplitting, but how the hairs were split could have profound consequences. The negotiators would spend days talking about “control” versus “sovereignty”—that is, who would control the land as opposed to who actually owned it. These distinctions took on outsize importance when applied to what Jews consider their holiest site and call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary or Al-Aqsa compound in the Old City, Islam’s third holiest site.

  After two weeks of talks at Camp David, on July 25 the negotiators started discussing the issue of how to handle the Old City, a tiny 220-acre parcel encompassing four quarters (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian) and on its east side the rectangular-shaped Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa compound. The Palestinians were ready to give up the “right of return” to land captured by the Israelis in return for reparations of roughly $30 billion, to be raised mainly by the United States. The two sides reportedly agreed that Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and Palestine. While the final borders had not been settled, they could be resolved with some land swaps. But agreement on the status of the holy sites in the Old City remained out of reach. These were the last days of the Clinton administration and, as is often the case, the political clock ran out before a historic resolution could be reached.

  Whether an agreement could have withstood events on the ground in Israel is an open question. When Camp David unraveled, the conservative Likud Party smelled political blood and started hammering at Barak and the Labor Party as weak and prepared to give away the store.

  The internecine squabbling turned deadly after September 28, 2000, which marked the beginning of the Second Intifada, Arabic for uprising. The revolt was sparked when Ariel Sharon and a Likud delegation visited the Temple Mount. It’s hard for many Americans, even regular churchgoers, to appreciate the religious passions stirred by the Temple Mount, which is a raised plateau buttressed on its west side by what is known as the Wailing Wall. The Wailing Wall, also called the Western Wall, is believed to be the last vestige of two Jewish temples that once stood on the spot. Three sacred Islamic structures—the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the Dome of the Chain—were built between AD 685 and 705 on the ruins of the temple site. Muslims who pray on top of the Temple Mount can look down and see Jews worshipping at the Wailing Wall. The Jews below can look up and see Muslims worshipping on land where their temples once stood. It is a religious conflict set in stone.

  It is also hard for Americans to appreciate the passions stirred by Sharon. Regarded by some as Israel’s greatest field commander, he’s a tough-guy hero to many Israelis for his assault of the Sinai during the 1967 war and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in 1973, widely viewed as the decisive moment in the Yom Kippur War. To Palestinians, though, he is evil incarnate because of his role in the Lebanon War, in which he failed to stop the massacre in 1982 of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israeli troops encircled Sabra and Shatila and illuminated the sky while pro-Israeli Christian militiamen (the Phalanges) entered the camps and slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinians.

  In September 2000, Sharon went on top of the Temple Mount, with an entourage, walking through the area where Muslim mosques have stood for centuries. Sharon’s stroll was his way of showing “we’re in charge here.” It clearly signaled to the Labor government that the Likud Party was preparing a political challenge. More importantly, it was an unmistakable provocation to the Palestinians. Overnight, the dream of two peoples living peaceably in adjacent states gave way to a nightmare of urban combat between Israeli armed forces and Palestinians.

  Many Israelis then, and equally true now, scarcely saw the Palestinians as human. Despite the interim peace accords, the Israelis did everything possible to make the Palestinians’ lives miserable. The streets in Palestinian areas controlled by Israelis were potholed and the trash often wasn’t picked up. If you were in Palestinian East Jerusalem, you struggled to get a taxi to Jewish West Jerusalem. If you wanted cable television, the YES Network, an Israeli company, wouldn’t come to your home. To pay bills, Palestinians in East Jerusalem had to go to West Jerusalem. West Jerusalem, by contrast, was like a European capital. Shops were on every corner, with clean and safe streets lined with restaurants serving international cuisine with fine wines and espresso afterward.

  Because I was covering the Palestinians, I frequently went through the Qalandia checkpoint en route from my home to the West Bank, where I would go to Ramallah, Nablus, and other Palestinian areas outside Jerusalem. I had West Jerusalem plates on my little car and Israeli press accreditations, so it usually took me between ten minutes and half an hour to get through the checkpoint. It was managed by a half dozen Israeli soldiers—boys and girls, really. A line of hundreds of Palestinians waited to get through, and it would take them hours, often sitting by the side of the road in the hot sun. The Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint spoke only a few words of Arabic, and when they encountered people whose papers weren’t in perfect order, they were curtly dismissive. With their palm down, they flicked their fingers outward, as if to say, “Get away from me.” The Palestinians would have to go to the back of the line and wait another hour or two to talk to another soldier. At first I wondered how so few could control
so many, but I came to understand that the Palestinians knew that reprisals would be swift and severe if they stepped out of line.

  After Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, violent clashes broke out between the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. I watched many of them in Ramallah, about a forty-five-minute drive from my home, depending on how long it took me to get through the Qalandia checkpoint. The clashes began like the confrontations in the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993 and resulted in the deaths of 160 Israelis and 2,200 Palestinians. Typically some Palestinian boys would start throwing rocks at the Israeli soldiers, who would respond by firing rubber bullets at them. (Rubber bullets aren’t as benign as they sound. They’re slugs or marbles encased in a thin layer of hard rubber or plastic. They were designed to cause contusions and hematomas, without being lethal, although shots to the head can be fatal. I was hit several times, mostly by ricochets. They still left enormous welts and sometimes knocked me down.)

  These face-offs took place in areas no longer than a football field and considerably narrower. The scene usually unfolded like this: A road would be blocked by two Israeli jeeps with eight Israeli soldiers in helmets and flak jackets. A hundred yards away, Palestinian boys would throw stones that usually fell short of their target. Occasionally they rushed forward to get within throwing range. The Israelis would try, usually without success, to disperse the crowd with tear gas. Then they would fire rubber bullets, aiming primarily at legs, but not always. A boy would get hit in the head and be dragged away by his friends. An emotional scream would pierce the air. Another boy might sneak around the Israeli flank and toss a Molotov cocktail at a jeep. Or some older Palestinians would take potshots with live ammunition from a nearby building.