2003

They were able to move freely within the towns, from their houses to
school and to work and back. They all knew that this ‘peace’ was only going to
be temporary; and even in these times the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) would
drive into the villages and towns at night in full armour in order to take people to
their prisons. She said, they were expecting this quiet phase to end with the
beginning of the Iraq war, but for the time being they were simply enjoying it.
We packed a backpack, as we didn’t know what transportation would be like
within Israel and Palestine. It turned out to be a wise decision!
Upon arrival at Tel Aviv airport, like all passengers with Palestinian roots or a
Palestinian destination, we had to undergo several interrogations with security
staff (reason for travel, why to Ramallah, who do we have there, how close
relatives are they, etc.). Just for information, only passengers with non-Arab
passports can pass through Tel Aviv. Everyone else has to travel via land, i.e.
Jordan or Egypt, which is a much worse ordeal than the security procedures at
Tel Aviv airport.
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In the old days, i.e before the Oslo and Madrid peace accords were signed,
Palestinian taxis were permitted to come to the airport to pick up and drop off
Palestinian passengers. Today, no ethnic Palestinian is allowed to enter the
airport at all, unless he has some other country’s citizenship. As there was no
Palestinian taxi to be found, we decided to take an Israeli bus to Jerusalem and
carry on to Ramallah from there. I must admit, we briefly felt rather strange
getting on the bus, as they and the bus terminals are a favorite target for
Palestinian attacks. As we were waiting for the bus, we started chatting with a
young Israeli woman, who works with El Al as she told us. When we told her
where we were heading, she wasn’t surprised at all and told us that her father,
having a construction company, used to employ a lot of Palestinians, that as a
child she used to accompany him on visits to their workers. We felt, she was
quite sorry that such things are impossible now.
On the bus, we were seated next to a young soldier with Arab features. We took
the opportunity to talk to him as well. He was Iraqi (Jewish, of course). Yes, his
grand-parents still spoke Arabic, but not his parents or he. We asked him
whether he didn’t find it weird that half of the passengers on the bus were
soldiers. No, he did not find this strange, as it was Thursday, the day before the
weekend, when everybody goes home to their families. I was wondering
whether he ever thought about what was going wrong in a country if it had to
build up such a massive military defense. His response was that they do have
something to defend themselves against (the Palestinians). He was quite shy and
rather uncomfortable with my inquisitive questions. When I asked him why he
thought they had to protect themselves like that, why the Palestinians might be
so angry with them, he shrugged and said, he did not know and he wasn’t the
government. I told him that as a soldier he was supporting it. He shrugged again,
told us again, that he wasn’t the government, and got off the bus.
While talking to this young boy, the landscape, ancient terraces of olive trees
built by our forefathers, rushed past us outside the window as the bus wound its
way up from the coastal plains to Jerusalem’s altitude of 600m. There, right
through the middle of this beautiful man-made landscape, like a bad gash on
perfect skin, bulldozers had flattened everything in preparation for a new
highway to connect the various “suburbs”, i.e. illegal settlements surrounding
Jerusalem. Our environmentalists in Germany would be overjoyed! Shortly
after, behind a bend, there is another beautiful olive grove, dropping gently to
the broad valley below. On the slope, there are beautiful old houses which look
as if they had been built around Jesus’ birth (or like those in our ancestral
village, Rantis). The village is deserted. Palestinians could have probably told us
its name, when and why it was abandoned, and in which refugee camp in the
West Bank, Syria, Lebanon or Jordan its inhabitants are vegetating, dreaming of
their ancient homeland and of returning one day.
3
In Jerusalem, we were dropped off in front of a bus terminal, received our
bags, made our way through meandering concrete barriers and security checks,
and were finally allowed into the bus terminal itself. We tried to find an exit but
didn’t get very far, as half of the terminal was cordoned off: Someone had left a
plastic bag somewhere which might contain explosives. We squeezed through
the crowds, got out somehow, and realized that we would have to hurry a bit, as
the sun was setting and we had no idea yet how we would get to Ramallah, how
long it would take us to get through the check points in Kalandia and Betunia
which separate the Israeli areas from the Palestinian ones, and until when in the
evening these would remain open. We grabbed the next available taxi to take us
to Damascus Gate by the Old City, from where we would be able to get a bus or
service taxi to Ramallah. The first two taxi drivers tried to cheat us, wanted to
take extra money to cover potential risks if they went into this “dangerous”,
“war-torn” area. Finally, we found one who was willing to take us for not quite
as much. He was friendly but thought we were completely loony for wanting to
go to Ramallah. He told us how he used to go to Bethlehem and Betjala (south
of Jerusalem) for shopping, that he likes and accepts the Palestinians, and that
Sharon’s election victory was a disaster.
At Damascus Gate, we were squeezed into a service taxi which are typically
more or less ancient Mercedes stretch limousines for up to 7 passengers and
which collect and drop off people anywhere along fixed routes and are a great
form of public transport. People were looking at us curiously wondering what
two foreigners might be doing here, as not many Westerners tended to come to
the Palestinian territories any more since the beginning of the Iraq War, where
all the world’s attention was focused now. Only some peace workers or other
supporters of the Palestinian cause would venture there at the time. After a little
chat in Arabic with the lady next to me, who had bought a laundry stand which
was glued to her face like prison bars, the atmosphere in the cab relaxed
tangibly. In fact, we never faced any hostility or suspicion throughout our trip,
although we could probably easily pass for Israelis.
After leaving the Palestinian part of Jerusalem and passing through the belt of
Israeli settlements which are closing in on and increasingly suffocating the
Palestinian parts of Jerusalem like a cancerous growth, we reached Shu’fat, a
Palestinian suburb. The roads here were scarred by huge pot-holes and mounts
of debris lying around everywhere. Shortly later, we passed Betunia and finally
got to the first checkpoint near Qalandia refugee camp. Beyond the checkpoint
live Palestinians without a Jersualem ID card, so that this city is off-limits for
them. Everybody has to get out of the cab. Before picking up passengers coming
through the checkpoint from the other side and returning to Damascus Gate, the
driver asked us whether we would be seeing Arafat and if we did to give his best
regards. He could have gone on to Ramallah with his yellow Jerusalem license
plate but would have been stuck at the check point going and coming back for
hours. It is therefore more economical for all passengers to get off and take
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another taxi with a blue Ramallah license plate on the other side. The checkpoint
itself is a complicated queue-management system, like those at airports, except
that here the barriers are made of concrete, backed by even higher ones of debris
piled up, the whole thing surrounded by barbed wire and observed from watch
towers. The narrow aisles between the meandering barriers were muddy, as the
Israeli tanks had gradually destroyed the asphalt layer.
Going into the West Bank we were not checked. People were carrying their
belongings on their heads, little boys offering their services as porters. There
were a number of old and sick who might have been in Jerusalem to see a
doctor, there were people in business suits who were probably lucky enough to
hold a Jerusalem ID card, so that they were allowed to cross into Jerusalem for
work every day, and there were school children on their way home.
On the other side of all the barriers, we got into a service taxi which was to take
us to our final destination, Ramallah. I was seated next to a teacher from
Jerusalem who was on her way to her family in Ramallah. She told us she was
taking a course in water-color painting in Ramallah – unbelievable that anyone
might be able to do such things given the situation that people are facing there
everyday. When she had gone to Jerusalem the last time there had been a truck
loaded with foam mattresses waiting to pass security. Each of the mattresses was
wrapped in plastic, and it was raining strongly. She told us, the soldiers forced
the driver to take each and every mattress off the truck and put it in the mud.
The poor man was desperate and so were the other people waiting in the security
lines and looking on. Everybody started helping by holding the mattresses over
their heads out of the mud.
By the time we got to Ramallah it was already dark. Yet, we decided to walk the
last mile or so to my uncle’s and aunt’s house, so we could breathe a bit of fresh
air / Ramallah air. All in all, it took us four hours and four different modes of
transport to get from Tel Aviv to Ramallah, a distance which can normally be
driven in 45 minutes. It took less time to get from our home town in Germany to
Tel Aviv. So, here we were walking through town with our rucksacks.
Everything looked quite tidy. The roads were in good shape. The Manara, a
central crossing point of 6 roads which the Arafat government has adorned with
six white marble lions now smeared with graffiti, had been cleared of the traces
of tanks and shootings. There on the corner, we saw my grandfather’s former
fabrics shop, where he cut and sold fabrics for tens of thousands of weddings
and dowries when he was alive. We walked down dark Radio Street, named
after two massive radio antennas which had been put there by the British, passed
the house (Dar Rukab) where I used to live with my grandparents, the little
adjacent school from where school boys used to throw rocks and other things at
passing Israeli military, and finally reached Arafat’s headquarter.
5
This area had been a military base even during the British Mandate. After 1967,
the Israeli military used it as base and prison. Many of my school mates, friends,
and relatives spent days, nights, weeks, months in there being tortured and
interrogated. After the peace agreements in the 90’s it was handed over to the
Palestinian Authority. They have since enlarged it considerably adding more
land and government buildings. The whole thing had always been surrounded
by a high wall, the rear side of which was supposed to be the boundary to my
uncle’s garden, except there was no wall left. We walked right through Arafat’s
headquarter, or rather what was left of it: Mountains of debris, cars flattened by
Israeli tanks piled up like in a junk yard. It was all rather eerie in the dark. There
were no guards, no military. Only two buildings were left. In one of them,
Arafat was hiding. He didn’t dare come out door for fear that the Israelis would
shoot him (As it turned out later, they didn’t need guns to kill him; they simply
poisoned him). We wondered whether all the debris and bombed buildings had
been left there on purpose to show the world how Israel is treating the
democratically elected Palestinian government. We left the headquarter through
the back and stood in front of my uncle Abu Mazen’s house, where we were
expected and received a very warm welcome with a delicious dinner. It was
crowded and cozy, with their eldest son Mazen and his Equadorian wife Maria
and two of their kids there. We didn’t talk politics and it felt as if everyone was
glad about the distraction and being able to act like normal hosts. It was freezing
cold in the old house with its natural stone walls and no insulation. The tiny little
kerosene oven, as I remember them from twenty years ago, could not combat the
winter cold. Mazen and Maria insisted on taking us with them because they live
in a modern apartment with central heating. We were quite impressed when we
saw their place which they had only just bought. We wondered how anyone
could build houses, buy furniture, and move houses in the middle of all this
chaos. The apartment was very comfortable and modern. We sat in the living
room, talking and drinking Chilean wine. Maria told us about her daughters, 14
and 19 years old, who had suffered from depressions after the April invasion.
They were better now as they could at least leave the house, go to school, see
their friends, got to cafés, i.e. do things that young kids should be doing. The
older one, Sylvia, had just arrived from Jenin the previous evening where she
was studying marketing at the American University. They had chosen this
university because it had a closed campus with dormitories, so that they would
not be affected by curfews. The hard part was the weekends: Sylvia had to go up
and down the long way by service taxi through all the checkpoints and
harassment, never knowing whether she would eventually get through or be sent
back. She told us that at one point she understood that she had to get dressed up
a bit in order to be left alone by the soldiers. Whenever she came in ordinary
jeans and a sweater chances were that she would be forced to go back to where
she came from, especially since the Israeli government had just passed a new
regulation forbidding young people between 16 and 35 to leave their hometown
at all. Apparently, this was not yet being implemented 100%, especially for
6
young women. With a sad smile she said she could introduce us personally to all
the soldiers at the checkpoints when we would have to leave again.
Nobody really knew how the parents come up with $ 500 per month for the fees.
Maria who was teaching at an international high school said she received her
salary at irregular intervals, as the parents of her students often couldn’t pay the
fees. The university in Jenin apparently wasn’t too pushy collecting the fees
either. The same applied to mortgage payments for the new apartment. Banking
virtually didn’t exist, as everything had been destroyed by the invasion.
Therefore, the building owners themselves gave loans at reasonable rates.
Should anyone not be able to repay his loan as originally agreed, debtor and
creditor would find a solution. Mazen, a doctor, also did not always get money
for treatment. If he did it was s.th. like € 7 or less per consultation, and from
patients with chronic diseases he wasn’t taking anything. Quite frequently, he
would be paid in kind, with forty eggs or a couple of chickens. They all seemed
to try and help each other through these difficult times.
Their youngest daughter Shireen, had to leave her pretty little room for the
duration of our visit, so that we could use it: bookshelves on the walls with
plenty of English literature, a music stand, a guitar, a small stereo, and of course
a PC which was the girls’ lifeline during the invasion with its endless curfews,
their only connection to their friends, to a resemblance of a normal life. It got
me a bit worried how much time these kids were spending on the internet, but I
suppose in such a situation you cannot apply normal standards.
The following day, a Friday and therefore their weekend, the ladies of the house
were still fast asleep when Mazen, Josef and I took the dog, Juanpi, for an
extended walk. Ancient olive terraces lying beneath us on hills rolling gently
towards the coastal plain. It was the same view I used to have from my room in
my Grandfather’s house more than 20 years ago. It was spring, and nature was
exploding; everything was lush and green – as lush and green as it gets in this
rather arid climate. In the distant mist, we could see Tel Aviv which is so close,
yet so far away. Mazen told us, he hadn’t left Ramallah for almost two years.
Tel Aviv’s beaches are further away for him than the Himalaya is for us. The
Palestinian towns and cities are like huge open-air prisons (or, in a cynical twist
of history: ghettos).
Mazen’s house is located in a part of Ramallah called Al-Tira, which had hardly
existed when I was going to school here 25 years back. It is a Christiandominated area with several church-run schools and social institutions. Mazen
showed us the apartment they had been living in before. It was located about 50
m from a former police station which the Israelis had reduced to rubble with
F16’s and Appaches during their invasion in April 2002. From the surrounding
residential buildings, all windows were torn out including their frames. Maria
described later how horrified she had been at the time, how terrified by the
unbearable noise, how she had just grabbed the kids and run into the street in
7
great panic. The girls ran back into the house because they instinctively felt that
they were safer there. Maria who in her fear had been holding on to a pillar had
not noticed that they had run back. When she started looking for them and could
not see them she screamed their names again and again, finally ran into the
house where she found both girls crying hysterically and holding on to each
other. These experiences have left traces. Shreena was full of anger and told us,
she just wanted to leave the country. Wandering through the quiet and peaceful
Friday morning streets, we could hardly picture all this happening right here.
But upon looking closer we did see that a lot of the buildings still had scars and
many were deserted, because their owners had actually left Palestine.
We went back home for breakfast. Mazen was on a diet, because he had gained
a lot of weight during the Israeli siege when they were stuck at home and all
they could do was eat and drink. Many, including himself, were suffering from
severe depressions, and even now, a year later, he still had many patients
coming to him for anti-depressants, among them young people, too. After
breakfast, Maria wanted to clean the house, so that we, Mazen, Shreena, a
neighbor’s kid, the dog and us, went out again for a walk to enjoy the sun. This
time, from the house we went down into a valley with olive terraces. We found
wild violets, which are called “Qarn al-ghazaal” or “deer’s horn” in Arabic and
plenty more flowers the names of which no one knew. On the following day,
Mazen’s mother cooked the violets’ leaves like grape leaves stuffed with rice
and minced meat. Arabic cuisine is always good for a surprise! The neighbors’
son, 10-year-old Basil, who had gone with us, was uneasy once we reached the
wadi. He wanted to go back home, because we were too far away from the
house for his liking, although we could still see the it. He kept talking about the
Jewish settlement which was located on a hill around the bend, was worried that
the settlers might be watching us through binoculars and shoot at us, as had been
happening increasingly. Finally, there was no way to distract him from his fear,
and we had to turn back.
Our next stop that day was a late lunch at the Roman Orthodox Club with Maria,
Mazen and the kids. Churches in Palestine play a central role in education, as
well as health care, social welfare, and social activities. They often have clubs
which offer leisure and sports activities for the whole family. The Roman
Orthodox Club owns a popular restaurant, where we had a wonderful Arabic
meal with a good glass of Araq and an open fire next to us. Together with
numerous other families, we enjoyed a lazy Friday afternoon.
Squeezed into Mazen’s tiny vehicle, he showed us around Ramallah afterwards,
until the girls started complaining because they felt like sardines in a can. It was
a miracle that this car was functioning at all. With all the havoc wreaked by the
Israeli military, there were no inspection services anymore, as their building had
been destroyed and the staff had run off. Hardly anyone had insurance coverage
anymore at this stage. In other societies, such a situation would have meant total
8
anarchy with lootings, rapes and civil war. It is only thanks to the tightly-knit
Palestinian society and its strong traditions which make everyone take care of
everyone else, and the fact that people are used to improvising, that the country
hasn’t completely fallen apart (yet).
Back at Mazen’s place, we lounged about in Mazen’s kitchen with some more
Araq and received a unique performance: Mazen got out his guitar and sang us
some Spanish ballads, communist revolutionary songs, and cynical
improvisations about the “heroic” Palestinian government that made our eyes
water. He is a multi-talent.
On Saturday morning, Mazen and Maria went to work, while Shreena had one
more day of school before the “Eid al Adha”, one of the most important Muslim
festivities. International schools take partially Christian and partially Muslim
holidays, as their students come from both communities. Sylvia was off already.
After breakfast, we were picked up by an employee of Abu Mazen, as we were
supposed to spend the following night at Abu Mazen’s house. The driver was
from my father’s village, Rantis. He had been working for Abu Mazen many
years and told us that he cannot always make it to work. For in case of any
Palestinian unrest, whether on Israeli or Palestinian territory, the army
immediately shuts off all roads, so that everyone stays wherever they are. If you
are lucky you are at home. If not, you might have to spend days or even weeks
on someone’s sofa, until the roads open again.
When we arrived at Abu Mazen’s house, we heard commands and shouts from
the government buildings next door, grabbed our camera and rushed across. If it
hadn’t been so sad, we would have laughed at the performance taking place
here. A bunch of rather emaciated and ragged looking “soldiers” – no one was
in a uniform, as they would otherwise be living targets for the Israeli military –
were standing in two rows and following the commands of another “soldier”
who did not exactly instill respect or fear, turning their heads left and right more
or less rhythmically and shouting “Arafat, you are the light of our eyes”, in
between clapping their hands enthusiastically. When Josef started taking
pictures of them they smiled rather proudly. We kind of fled the scene, as it was
too depressing to see what Arafat’s power was built on. So, this was the police
force or military which according to Sharon was to stop the suicide/martyr
bombings, which was to maintain control over youngsters vegetating in refugee
camps with no jobs, no education and no perspective and nothing to lose, who
are being tortured in Israeli prisons because they threw stones at soldiers, whose
homes are being bulldozed by the hundreds.
We sat down and had tea with Um Mazen. She described in detail how one night
in April 2002, the Israeli military had flattened Arafat’s headquarter, how
everything had vibrated, the deafening and horrifying noise wanting them to
crawl under their beds for shelter, and how finally her dignity had prevailed and
9
she had decided to die in her bed rather than on the floor like a dog. When she
had opened her curtains the following morning, she was looking into the muzzle
of a tank’s canon. The tanks had not only destroyed Arafat’s headquarters but
also the two-meter wall separating hers and her neighbors’ houses from the
government compound. She counted seven tanks lined up in what used be her
front yard. The tarmac of the sidewalk had been ploughed and was standing
upright against her front door. From that day, they had no water or electricity for
one month. Um Mazen did not care, what the soldiers would do with her.
Despite the curfew, she went out of the house to get water for herself and the
neighbors from her rainwater butts around the house. But suddenly Abu Mazen
got ill. They thought that he might have had a mild heart attack, since he also
was not scared of the soldiers used to go out to scold them and argue with them.
As the telephone lines were dead, she could not call a doctor. She ran out into
the street to her neighbors’ house, the muzzles of the tanks following her, and
called her son, Mazen the doctor, from the neighbor’s functioning mobile phone.
He tried to diagnose over the phone and gave her instructions what to do with
the father. At the same time, he tried to find an ambulance to pick up his father
and take him to hospital. He finally managed after a long and fearful night. The
ambulance took over an hour to cover the short distance to the hospital, as it had
to rumble across and past the heaps of debris and rubble that the Israelis had
piled up in order to sever movement in the city, and because the driver kept
leaving the road and taking detours, as soon as he saw a military vehicle
approaching in the distance. For you never knew whether the soldiers would let
the ambulance pass, whether they would simply shoot at it, or whether they
would stop it and take it apart long enough – allegedly looking for explosives
and weapons – until the patient would have died. When they finally reached the
hospital, the doctors diagnosed an infected gall bladder which had to be
removed. As soon as the curfew was lifted for the first time, Mazen rushed to
hospital and stayed with his father the whole time, to make sure that he was
taken care of well. As there was very little food even for the sick and no water,
except for the patients, Mazen ate practically nothing in all those days and could
not take a shower.
It was a terrible for people here, but also for those of us living in exile, because
we could not get anyone on the phone and never knew whether our relatives
were dead or alive.
Before the tanks finally left her front yard, one of the soldiers climbed on top of
one and, with a big grin his face, urinated into her garden in front of Um
Mazens’s eyes. Are soldiers trained to do this kind of thing?
After we had digested Um Mazen’s saddening, terrible account of these events,
we went downtown and did some shopping: food items which we do not find in
Germany, like Arabic coffee, Nablus cheese, dried sage, sa’atar (wild thyme),
etc. Um Mazen spent her morning where she had probably spent most of her
10
life: in the kitchen, cooking an opulent meal – among other incredibly tasty
things the above-mentioned violet leaves stuffed with rice and minced meat.
Mazen and his family came, too.
In the afternoon, Abu Mazen took us to Khitam. She is another cousin of my
father’s, whom I had never met before because she had been living in Kuwait
most of her life and who was now living in her father’s house. The latter, Sidi
Saki, my grandfather’s elder brother, had always been one of my favorites in the
family. He passed away some years ago and his wife long before him. Legend
has it that half a century earlier, he had fallen in love with his wife, who was not
from the family, had carried her out of her village against her father’s will on a
white horse, and had married her. He had had a great sense of humor, and when
I was living with my grandfather between 1978 and 1981, we spent countless
Friday afternoons at his house. These two honorable Palestinian patriarchs, one
dressed in the traditional Palestinian dress, the other in a suit and tie, would play
domino battles, curse each other, bicker, and swear never to play again. Coming
back to this old house after all these years felt very familiar, although due to the
winter season, it was so cold that we never took off our coats and followed the
little foggy trails of our breath. Khitam is very much like her father: full of
humor and very clever. She had left her husband and kids in Kuwait to take care
of her ailing father, after the mother had passed away.
Her Husband was still working in Kuwait which was surprising, as most
Palestinians had to leave Kuwait, even the whole Gulf region, after the first Gulf
War from 1990-1991. Unfortunately, Arafat had openly shown his support for
Saddam Hussain, when he invaded Kuwait, thereby drawing the whole region’s
anger upon the Palestinians. The region’s governments responded by expelling
all Palestinians who had been the intellectual and professional elite and
replacing them with Egyptians. This did have its up-side, as many Palestinians
had nowhere to go but home. Also, encouraged by the Madrid and Oslo peace
accords, those who could, took their money and invested in Palestine. Factories
and houses were built, jobs were created. There was so much hope then – more
than for a long, long time! Sadly, all this was destroyed by Sharon’s invasion in
2002.
But Khitam was not to be discouraged. She decided to do some development
work in Rantis, our ancestral village. She bought second-hand sewing machines
and brought in a German tailor who taught the women some skills. Her first
question was whether I could get her some sewing machines (had I known, I
could have obtained some and brought them with me). Then she sold me some
handmade embroideries from our village – always a mandatory part of our
shopping list when we got to the “Old Country”. There was also a project,
supported by the Swedish government to restore the ancient houses of Rantis,
which were deserted and falling apart – an idea which Josef had had years
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before when he had seen them for the first time. I didn’t have the courage at the
time to follow it through.
We finally left Khitam and I was glad to have discovered another exciting
relative in our huge family. We returned to Um Mazen and spent another lovely
evening with Mazen, Maria, and the parents and then slept in the freezing cold
guest room.
The following day, a Sunday, Maria came to pick us up and do some shopping.
She took us to one of Ramallah’s hip cafes called “Stones”. It had been
constructed against the outside wall of my school’s basketball court which really
surprised me. Maria told us a lot more about the invasion of the Israeli military
in April 2002. It must have been plain horrible, unimaginable. The soldiers
broke into people’s houses and apartments in the middle of the night, their faces
smeared with camouflage colors, aggressive, hectic, loud, probably scared to
death themselves because they are all brain-washed to believe that behind each
Palestinian door there must be at least one Arafat, one Binladin, one Hamas
fighter. They would scream and shout, tearing the terrified people out of their
beds. Their orders were to get into the houses whichever way, squeeze all
residents into one room, search the whole house, which they did very
thoroughly, and then occupy a part of it. In Maria’s and her family’s case, all the
residents of the building were forced into their apartment. The other apartments
were occupied by the soldiers. For weeks, four families were thus squeezed into
a 3-bedroom apartment! When they ran out of food, one of the wives asked to go
to get some provisions out of her fridge. The soldiers refused. When one of the
boys started crying because he had had to leave his hamster behind and wanted
to feed it, the soldiers pitied the hamster and allowed the boy to go and feed it
and also bring some food for the families. Mazen’s dog had to go out but no one
was allowed to go with it. When the children expressed their fear that it might be
shot at, the soldiers said they would never shoot at a dog! No, they wouldn’t
shoot at a dog, indeed. Only at humans.
After this invasion, which each and every Palestinian town suffered, our western
media were filled with pictures which made even our rather pro-Israeli public
wonder what this might have to do with the “War on Terror”: Soldiers had
wreaked havoc, had hacked people’s furniture to pieces, had destroyed each and
every PC in ministries and offices, had completely paralyzed the public
infrastructure, had defecated into children’s beds, had smeared the walls with
graffiti and excrements, had left mean and insulting messages on paper and on
walls to show the Palestinians their deep contempt, had even stolen jewelry and
savings. Such actions were not slip-ups by individual radical soldiers but
systematic intimidation. And it worked: People were demoralized and scared.
Many left, especially those with foreign citizenship. But those who stayed were
either determined to see it through, always hoping that Sharon wouldn’t be there
forever to rage through their life, or they had no other option because they had
12
no money and no passport to go anywhere else, left behind deeply frustrated and
angry and ready to do anything – also to blow themselves up.
At lunchtime, we all met at Abu Mazen’s house again. Poor Um Mazen never
left the kitchen, forever feeding the crowd. We felt bad about it and kept telling
her to stop, that we would be just as happy to have my favorite version of
Middle Eastern fast-food, shawirma, which is similar to Turkish doner. But in
vain: our inborn hospitality would never allow us to let a visitor eat outside. My
craving for shawirma had to wait, just as my craving for “knafa”, a traditional
sweet from Nablus. When I was living with my grandparents 25 years earlier,
these had been my standard diet and they still are whenever I am in an Arab
country.
Uncle Samih, another one of my father’s many cousins who had also studied and
lived in Germany in the sixties, was supposed to come for lunch, as his wife was
out of town and according to tradition, he would be fed by relatives and
neighbors until she returns. He finally showed up in the evening.
After lunch, Josef and I went to Birzeit, the neighboring town which boasts the
largest, oldest, and most important university in Palestine. We had no particular
reason to go there – maybe intuition? Maria had instructed us to take a taxi
towards Birzeit. I was surprised yet again to see how much Ramallah had
grown. For, along this road, there had once been only the odd house here and
there. One of them had once belonged to my grandfather: a beautiful villa
overlooking the hills and valleys all the way down to the sea. Unfortunately, he
sold it; otherwise we would all still have a family home there – somewhere to
put our roots. When I made a remark about the number of new buildings to the
taxi driver, he told us angrily that Arafat’s corrupt cronies had built themselves
palaces with EU aid money.
Eventually, we reached the inevitable road block: two kilometers of piles of
debris and concrete barriers with a narrow stretch of furrowed asphalt
meandering through the maze. Many students and teachers of Birzeit University,
the largest and most important Palestinian university, live in Ramallah, as
Birzeit itself is still a quiet and rural village. With this road block, the soldiers
can interrupt the lifeline to the university at any time which is the only reason it
is there in the first place, as there is no Israeli settlement beyond Birzeit.
We approached the first barrier, when it sprung to our mind that we had
forgotten our passports. Living in the EU, you don’t usually carry one around,
do you? We had to go back. There was no other way. Meanwhile, it had begun
to rain heavily, dark clouds hanging so low that we were caught in the fog. This
is how I remember Ramallah in the winter. The taxi driver drove us back to my
uncle’s house to collect the passports and back to first barrier of the check point,
where we had to get off and walk in a long queue of people meandering through
the cold fog between the two barriers, loaded with shopping, books, etc. It
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looked unreal and reminded us of pictures of refugees in World War II. It was
rather gloomy and depressing. People looked at us in surprise. We could not see
any soldiers at all. Only towards the end of the blocked stretch, an army jeep
rumbled past us, its windows barricaded, so that no human beings were to be
discerned. We were never checked by anyone, simply got into another taxi
beyond the second barrier. We couldn’t make any sense of it, because it made no
sense. It was simply there to harass the people.
We got off in the middle of Birzeit, watched some kids in front of a butchery in
the creeping cold and drizzle, rubbing a sheep skin with salt. We made our way
to the university through the empty roads: It was getting dark and people
preferred to be indoors by dark, as you never knew who might shoot at you. We
climbed up the road to a little hill on top of which we passed an unfinished villa
which was more like a castle and aroused our curiosity. We walked into the
garden and went all around it. Someone had some money to spend: The whole
structure was built of pink marble, there were classicistic pillars all around,
fountains, pools, and a larger than life marble Madonna amid a portico. When
we got back to the road, it had stopped drizzling and there were some people
whom we asked about the house. We were told that the proprietor owns Birzeit
Crushers. Forever amazing with what confidence people here build houses,
invest loads of money, as if they were living in peaceful and calculable Europe.
Just for the heck of it, I asked a man in the street whether he knew Abbas
Abdulhaq’s house. The man actually knew and sent us off in the right direction.
By the time we found the house it was pitch-dark and foggy. We rang the door
bell on a very surprised Abdulhaq family. The youngest son, the only one left at
home, who opened the door did not know me, of course, but happily welcomed
us to their living room. You would think that in such a volatile situation people
would be overly careful and suspicious, especially of people who don’t exactly
look Arab. But people’s hospitality, openness, and friendliness was a
phenomenon which we encountered throughout our journey.
In the sixties, Abbas had studied with my father in East Germany. His petite
German wife, Uschi, had given him 6 children most of whom study, work, or are
married in Germany now and have children of their own. They have lived in
Palestine for decades. Abbas, a civil engineer, had been in charge of
construction works for Nablus municipality, was at one point taken prisoner by
the Israelis because he allegedly had ties to some “radical organization” (Who
doesn’t ??), was stuck in so-called administrative detention (whereby prisoners
are never officially charged or convicted but can be held almost indefinitely)
from 1973 to 1977. He was kept isolated and he was tortured. I think, they broke
him. Uschi helped him survive, apart from keeping the family going during
those years.
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When we came to Palestine with my parents and my brother for the first time in
1978 and visited them in their old home in Nablus, he had only been out of jail a
few months. He wasn’t himself yet. My brother went on their balcony in Nablus
at the time and Uschi showed him how the soldiers were perched on rooftops
watching every move in rebellious Nablus with binoculars. Mazen gave them
the victory sign and was scolded by Abbas and my father. We could not
understand at the time what was so bad about it. But it took no ten minutes
before there was a lot of noisy and rude knocking and shouting at the door.
Abbas almost froze with fear. It took a lot of convincing and finally the German
passport for the soldiers not to take my brother away!
Abbas is now teaching at Birzeit University. They built a house there 16 years
ago and he now seemed calm and relaxed. I think, they were quite happy to see
us, but we could not stay too long, as we didn’t know how we would get back to
Ramallah, whether the Israelis might close the check-point, and we had been
warned repeatedly not to travel after dark. We did have enough time for tea with
na’na’ and a quick run through the most recent photo albums and the kids’ and
grandchildren’s histories, as well as a short description of the Israeli invasion
from their perspective. Their house had also been taken over and searched for
God-knows-what by soldiers in the middle of the night. Uschi said she was glad
at the time that it was “only” soldiers who had come and not settlers, as the latter
are totally incalculable. Just behind their house is a road which is the only access
to a remote Palestinian village. Unfortunately, this little road is crossed by an
access road to an Israeli settlement, and whenever they feel like it, the settlers
close the Palestinian road. It is these settlers which people fear most. Uschi also
told us that more than 10 Palestinians had been killed on the Ramallah-Birzeit
road block.
She took us to the road-block by car. I didn’t want her to as I was scared to let
her go back alone in the pitch-dark and thick fog, but Uschi has seen so much
and is so fearless, she couldn’t care less. We walked back through the roadblock towards Ramallah. The road was deserted except for a few young guys. A
military jeep crept past us, turned around further up the road, and crept past us
again. We felt quite nervous, as we could not see anything in the dark interior of
the car. The soldiers finally disappeared along a dirt track. Luckliy, at the end of
the road block, there was a taxi waiting. We got in, waited for the group of
young men to join us, and headed towards Ramallah. An ambulance with its
alarm on passed us, making its way through the debris to Birzeit. Hopefully, the
soldiers in the jeep would have other things to do than stop and harass the
ambulance driver. We were a rather sociable crowd in the cab. The others told
us that they had actually been heading to their village beyond Birzeit but the
road was closed by settlers and they were therefore going back to Ramallah and
staying at a friend’s house. They insisted on paying our taxi fare and tried to
convince us to join them for a beer which we would have loved to do. They
would have had a lot to say, I am sure. But we really had to go to Abu Mazen’s
15
house where Maria was waiting to take us to her place for our very last night in
my beloved Ramallah. She thought that the old house was too cold and the old
people too boring for us. After saying our goodbyes with a bit of pain in my
heart, not knowing when I would see these favorite members of my large
extended family again, we went to Mazen and Maria, spent a wonderful and
chatty evening with shawirma and beer and went to sleep.
The following morning, we packed our stuff, had a rich breakfast, were taken to
the Jerusalem road by Maria and Sylvia, and got into a cab. Again, of course, we
had to walk through the road block and check point in Qalandia. The soldiers in
charge of checking each and everyone’s documents were visibly older, very
casual, and even friendly. Josef had noticed this phenomenon on his previous
trip. Apparently, the army was making it a point not to put young and
temperamental radicals on the checkpoints. Too many people got hurt here, and
it wasn’t positive for Israel’s image either. Again, we got into a cab, rode to the
Betunia checkpoint, walked through that as well, and now got onto a bus which
took us to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. We looked around a bit and actually
found a Palestinian taxi for Tel Aviv Airport. There was only one other
passenger, so we waited for a couple more. But not many Palestinians are
allowed into Tel Aviv these days. The only other passengers had a special
permit because his son had had a severe car accident and was being treated in a
special clinic in Tel Aviv. The driver made sure that we all had permission to go
to Tel Aviv. For, as he explained, if he gets caught with “illegal” passengers, his
license would be withdrawn for at least a month and he would be fined 15,000
NIS (about €3000). After half an hour of waiting, we agreed with our fellow
passenger to pay more per head, so that we could go, as we had no idea how
long we would be stuck in security at the airport and were worried to miss our
flight. In the old days, all vehicles and passengers were checked before entering
airport grounds and could then go all the way to the terminal. Not anymore. The
driver dropped us off about a kilometer from the terminal building, and we had
to walk (Yet again, we were glad to have our backpacks!).
Whoever has entered Israel as an ordinary tourist before knows that security
procedures are a pain, to say the least. Many find them humiliating and
aggravating and vow never to come again. What about those who do not come
to throw money around the Israeli economy but to visit the arch enemy –
Palestine? Well, we were used to it and prepared for the worst. But things had
certainly gotten worse since Sharon had taken office and violence was
omnipresent. At first, we were asked straight-forward questions about our stay.
It makes no sense to lie, as these people are well-trained and will find you out.
After that, our bags were scanned by a big massive scanner, which looked as if it
could analyze each individual atom. But that was all quite harmless. It was after
this that the fun started: They unpacked our bags completely, took each and
every item, including our dirty socks, wiped them with an explosives detector,
then took whatever matter they had been able to obtain away for analysis.
16
Simultaneously, we were interrogated again about what we had done in Israel,
whom we had seen, whom we had spoken to, what our relationship was to our
hosts, etc. We were quite easy so far, as we were used to this ridiculous
procedure. We managed to stay calm through most of the procedure but did get
rather irritated when they tore open our Arabic coffee and made no move to tape
up the packages again after examining them and when they forced us, without
explanation, to repack our bags differently, i.e. the dirty socks with the coffee.
When we insisted on an explanation and asked to see a superior, we received the
VIP treatment: We were separated, taken to cabins, and had to undergo physical
body checks. When they announced that, I got a bit white in the face, as I knew
from such body checks along the Jordanian-Israeli border that you have to
undress completely and that they will check each and every opening. It wasn’t as
bad as this. We were simply checked with a metal detector. Across from us
stood a fellow passenger in front of his ransacked bags. He took quite long, too.
When I took a closer look, I knew why. He had some rather suspicious looking
items, like a Palestinian “ghutra” (men’s head cloth) and a brand new
photography book about the invasion, which we had also bought. Later on, we
ran into him again and had a chat: He was an American Quaker who had visited
my former school in Ramallah, which was a Quaker School.
Finally, we were through security and were able to check in. I was in a rather
foul mood by now and took a while to get back to normal. We had even started
discussing with these security people, tried to get them to think for a minute.
Josef started an argument with a duty free sales lady. But these people are so
brain-washed. For them, all Palestinians, probably all Arabs, are inferior and
must be kept under control like dogs – dogs that must learn to obey their orders.
Unfortunately, this is always the very last impression anyone who still comes
here takes home from this country.
I am glad we went, I am glad I saw that my people are coping alright, despite the
horrible circumstances, that many do not give up hope that one day things will
get better, that most of our people are resilient. For those who live in exile the
worst is to feel that we live in wealth and out of harm’s way while people back
home are suffering. Having at least seen their suffering and having listened to
their stories and traumas, having shown them our solidarity and that we haven’t
forgotten them (and never will) makes it easier to bear.