Salon.com > Flore de Prineuf

“My son was killed because of the occupation”

Fri, 05 Apr 2002 20:04:00 +0000

It's cold and muddy. Israeli soldiers have just fired tear gas and percussion grenades at a large crowd of peace activists gathered at the entrance of Ramallah to protest Israel's military operations in the West Bank. Aviva Weisgal, an Israeli mother of two, is doubled over, crouching between parked cars and trees, trying to escape the noxious cloud without giving in to panic.

"Now that's real bravery," she says between coughs, referring sarcastically to the soldiers' show of force against unarmed demonstrators. Nearby, an old Palestinian woman, overcome with stinging fumes, falls hard to the ground. People scream for a doctor, men and women share water and onions to recover their breath. A little boy watches and visibly shakes with fear.

Days earlier, in her home on a kibbutz just west of the city, pacifist Malka Tezmach takes a quiet, but equally provocative stand against the violence. Her son, Tal, was killed in his sleep by a Palestinian commando on March 19 while serving in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley. Malka, her voice infused with terrible grief, refuses to call for revenge. Instead, she makes statements that infuriate those who demand retaliation.

Israel’s pivotal role

Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:14:00 +0000

When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat donated blood this week to help the victims of terrorism in the United States, Israelis mocked the televised event as a propaganda ploy.

It seemed too little, too late: Thousands of Palestinians had already taken to the streets and spontaneously exulted in the United States' misery despite official orders not to manifest joy. And his blood donation seemed particularly hollow on behalf of a man who practically founded modern terrorism as head of the PLO and, according to Israelis, continues to promote shooting attacks and suicide bombings in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip almost daily.

But it was a sign of Arafat's determination to be counted as one of the "good guys" at a time when the United States is scanning the globe for friends and foes.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for his part, jumped on the opportunity provided by Tuesday's catastrophic events to equate Arafat with America's prime suspect and arch-enemy Osama bin Laden and recommend that critics back off when Israel does what it can to crush local terrorists.

Living with terrorism

Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:28:00 +0000

Suddenly Israel, the scene of religious intolerance and repeated bloody explosions, has become a model country, a showcase for what perhaps awaits Americans as they learn to live in the shadow of terrorism.

Not that there's much here to envy. In Israel, car trunks and handbags are systematically searched by security guards at the mall. People carrying large objects, wearing loose, baggy clothes or an Arab complexion are viewed suspiciously. And "single young woman, traveling alone" is an airport security profile not a personal ad.

Most of all, living in a country plagued by terrorism means sacrificing a degree of personal liberty for a greater sense of security and constantly calculating the risks involved in carrying out ordinary activities such as driving, shopping and eating out.

After a series of bombs blew up buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 1996, boarding a bus in Israel has seemed foolhardy. For the past year, since peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians disintegrated, the "Russian roulette" metaphor has extended to driving cars with Israeli license plates on roads in the West Bank (dozens have been ambushed) and strolling down the shopping areas of Israeli towns.

Where’s Arafat?

Thu, 08 Mar 2001 16:47:00 +0000

The first time I saw Yasser Arafat, I tracked his checkered head cloth as it moved down a double row of goose-stepping guards of honor to the stately oom-pah-pah tune played by a military band.

Arafat's trademark black-and-white keffiyeh moved slowly and steadily, no more than 5 feet 4 inches above a red carpet stretching from a lavish VIP lounge to a freshly landed aircraft. It framed Arafat's beaming, stubbly face as he personally greeted the first plane to touch down in Gaza. It was November 1998, the day of the inauguration of the Gaza International Airport, a perfect day for brass and pomp under the throbbing Middle Eastern sun.

The airport, the fruit of years of diplomacy, was a consecration of sorts for Arafat, the guerrilla commander turned jet-set dignitary, and a first step toward sovereignty for his embryonic Palestinian state. "Today the airport in Gaza, tomorrow the capital Jerusalem" promised a banner hung at the airport. Not far from the pageantry however, anarchy ruled.

Middle East meets Wild West

Mon, 27 Nov 2000 22:05:00 +0000

Twice a week since the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising, Shifra Hoffman, a grandmother in her 60s, has practiced firing her pistol at Combat, a shooting range in Jerusalem.

Wearing dangling Star of David earrings under a traditional Jewish headscarf, Hoffman seems frustrated on the range today. "I have a quarrel with my own government. It was put in power to protect and safeguard the people," Hoffman says. Instead, "the politicians have stripped the army and tied its hands. What kind of government allows its citizens to be blown up in buses, stabbed and stoned, while continuing to talk about peace?"

So Hoffman, an admirer of the late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane -- known for his aggressive anti-Arab stances -- has decided to take the protection of fellow Jews into her own hands. The founder of an organization called Victims of Arab Terror, Hoffman now regularly leads small groups to Combat to train in marksmanship.

Business at Combat has doubled since Palestinian violence erupted in the occupied territories two months ago, as Israeli settlers and concerned citizens have come to purchase high-caliber weapons and refresh their shooting skills. Likewise, the Interior Ministry's Weapon Licensing Department has reported a 50 percent increase in the number of applications during the recent weeks of violence.

Israel’s apartheid

Fri, 03 Nov 2000 19:02:00 +0000

Adel Kaadan wants out. The main street in Kaadan's hometown 20 miles north of Tel Aviv is lined with neatly manicured flower beds and decorative palm trees. Off main street, however, the sidewalk ends, and the cracked asphalt and littered streets reveal the darker face of Arab life in Israel -- one of poverty, discrimination, neglect and violent distress.

For six years now, Kaadan has tried to move his family out of the run-down, overcrowded Arab town of Baqa to the greener pastures of Katzir, a small Jewish village built on state-owned land, where open spaces, whitewashed houses and impeccably paved streets form a picture of suburban bliss. But the Katzir municipal council has barred Kaadan from building a home there for a simple reason: He's an Arab.

Comprising roughly 18 percent of the country's population, Israeli Arabs like Kaadan pay taxes, vote in Israeli elections and speak Hebrew. Tired of being treated as a second-class citizen, Kaadan sued the state in 1995. On paper, he won. But in practice, Kaadan and many other Arabs are still waiting for Israel to uphold their basic human rights.

Living under siege

Wed, 25 Oct 2000 18:04:00 +0000

A crane lifts reinforced concrete slabs, each the size of a door, and stacks them upright, side by side, until they form a long wall along the southwestern edge of Gilo, a middle-class Jerusalem neighborhood. A few Jewish residents from Gilo mill around the men at work to catch one last glimpse of the hills and Palestinian villages across the valley before the wall obstructs their view.

"It's more psychological than anything," said Galina Shifrin, out with her husband to inspect the new wall. "The bullets can fly over this easily."

During the past three weeks, the apartment blocks of Gilo, a neighborhood built on Israeli-occupied land, have come under Palestinian gunfire at least a dozen times. Though the shots fired from Beit Jala, a mostly Christian village just across the valley and only minutes from biblical Bethlehem, haven't killed anyone so far, they did leave one policeman severely wounded 10 days ago, and they continue to terrorize Gilo's inhabitants.

"It's a very bad situation," said Shifrin, a 50-year-old Jewish woman who immigrated from Moscow 20 years ago. "It's very dangerous because they are our neighbors, they're very close. There are Arabs on our left and on our right."

Peace? Please hold

Mon, 23 Oct 2000 17:48:00 +0000

Three weeks into a cycle of violence that has already left 135 people dead -- the lion's share of the victims Palestinians -- Israel and its Arab neighbors continue to show no signs of conciliation.

Arab leaders meeting in Cairo, Egypt, this weekend for an emergency summit slammed Israel as "barbaric," and accused the Jewish state of massacring Palestinian civilians. In view of the Arab summit's relatively hostile outcome, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced Sunday an open-ended "timeout" from peacemaking with the Palestinians.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat then captured headlines with his defiant statement that anyone standing in the path of a Palestinian independent state with Jerusalem as its capital should simply "go to hell." The message was apparently intended for Barak.

Playground rhetoric? Perhaps. But with a mounting death toll and the Israelis firing missiles for the first time into Beit Jala, a Palestinian village close to biblical Bethlehem, in retaliation for Palestinian gunfire directed at a Jerusalem neighborhood, and the sickening spectacle of daily funerals, the Holy Land seems to be slouching closer toward Hades than Eden.

The children’s war

Tue, 17 Oct 2000 19:30:00 +0000

Najah il-Khatib, in a traditional Palestinian dress covered with golden embroidery, stands by the hospital bed of her wounded son, Zahran, 15. Her face, framed by the white lace of an Islamic veil, exudes calm and pride. Zahran, who winces with pain as his mother speaks, did the right thing, according to Khatib, when he ran out of the house at lunchtime, threw stones at Israeli soldiers and got shot in the chest.

"I am honored that my son got shot in a demonstration," says Khatib, caressing Zahran's curly brown hair.

Doctors say Zahran's life was spared only because the high-velocity bullet fired by an Israeli soldier hit a rock before penetrating his chest and abdomen. Zahran's aunt, a stern figure sitting on the other side of the bed, seems to regret this stroke of luck, having hoped that the boy might become a martyr.

"Three days before the demonstration, Zahran was asking to die for [Palestinian] liberation," she points out. "We can't live like this any longer. Either we set ourselves free or we die trying."

“The Bulldozer”

Tue, 17 Oct 2000 18:31:00 +0000

As negotiators in the Middle East work furiously to broker a cease-fire agreement to end the violence that has cost nearly 100 lives, the man many Palestinians blame for inciting the riots looms ominously in the background.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has threatened to bring Ariel Sharon, Israel's famed and feared old warrior, into a national unity government if the U.S.-brokered summit in Egypt fails or the violence continues. The move would be a response to the scare tactics drummed up by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose own inflammatory actions during the past two weeks included releasing dozens of terrorists belonging to the Hamas organization from Palestinian jails.

If Sharon enters Barak's government, "our deterrence will be better," believes Efraim Inbar, director of the Besa Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. "In this region there's an advantage to being feared."

Is Syria’s next president a geek?

Tue, 13 Jun 2000 19:08:00 +0000

Hafez al-Assad, Syria's longtime president, died Saturday of heart failure while on the phone with Lebanon's president Emile Lahoud. The autocratic 69-year-old Syrian leader had been sick for years, and rumors of his imminent death had often leaked from Damascus. But this was no false alarm -- the news was real, announced in a quaking voice on Syrian national television and followed by mournful reading from the Koran.

The death of Assad, a leader who styled himself as the standard-bearer of Arab nationalism and anti-Zionist sentiment since the day he took power in 1970, ushers in a new era for Syria, its vassal Lebanon, its enemy Israel and the entire Middle East.

The news, which came less than three weeks after Israel's military pullout of southern Lebanon -- ending two decades of protracted war and occupation -- left analysts guessing at the possible consequences of the new Mideast configuration of power: Does Assad's death, combined with Israel's unilateral withdrawal, spell peace for the region?