Ray Hanania's Syndicated Columns
DECEMBER 2 - 5, 1990
A WEST BANK STORY:
IN SEARCH OF PALESTINE
BY RAY HANANIA
Introduction
I sent my aunt a letter: How the series started
Israel Keeps Its Borders
Tight
West Bank Scarred by Bullets
Uprising is Rooted in Hatred
Mother cuts in on soldier's pursuit
The Land is all to two peoples
Introduction
Just around Christmas in 1989, I received a single
page letter from my mother's sister who lives in Ramallah, a large,
predominantly Christian Arab city in the Israeli military occupied West
Bank. The letter was hand written and it was very painful to read.
My aunt wrote about how difficult life was under the
Israeli military occupation. As I read, I looked at the envelop and saw
that an Israeli military "censorship" stamp had been placed on the front
bottom corner, indicating that the contents of the letter had been read
by military censors.
My
aunt wrote ...
"....about our news, we are all in good health till
now, in spite of the times that we were beaten many times in our shop
and house and in the street by the Jewish soldiers. Imagine, dear Ray,
that I am, your aunt, had been beaten many times by the Jewish
soldiers in the street while I was trying to save some children and
babies who were terrified from the gun shots and bombs and from the
gas bombs. There is an Arabic saying, `the one who leaves his house is
lost. And the one who returns is newly born.' By these words I
summarize the situation in our Palestine ...."
I read that letter over and over again, and one day
showed it to my editor. He suggested I make copies and show it to other
editors and even some reporters at the newspaper, which I did. In 1990,
tensions had heightened when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Middle East was
the focus of much news and world attention. And in the fall, I had asked
if the Chicago Sun-Times would sponsor a trip by me to the Middle East
to offer a perspective on the preparations for what appeared to be an
American-led invasion of Iraq and apprehensions in Israel and the
occupied est Bank.
Now, I was the only reporter at the newspaper of
Arabic heritage. In fairness to the Sun-Times, I was the only newspaper
reporter of Arabic heritage at any Chicago area newspaper. There were
dozens of reporters who were Jewish, including several editors. Although
sympathetic, the newspaper's editors rejected my request, even when I
countered that they had sponsored trips taken by several Jewish
reporters who, on their return, wrote lengthy articles about life in
Israel. Every year, I added, we did a special insert on Israel's
birthday. And, we had a Jewish, Israeli citizen who offered our only
firsthand weekly coverage of the Middle East. We had no Arab reporter to
counterbalance his reporting, which I felt was partisan.
Eventually, I was given a leave-of-absence and I paid
for the trip myself. When I returned, I submitted five stories. The
editors agreed after much discussion and debate to run four of the
stories and to reject a story I wrote on Israeli censorship of the Arab
press. They argued persuasively that the censorship piece did not fit
the four articles which offered my personal observations on my trip to
Palestine, the homeland of my parents.
On each day that the articles were published and for
several weeks after, the Chicago Sun-Times received criticism from some
readers. It was a very difficult time, but the editors agreed the
stories were balanced and offered a compelling and insightful narrative
of life under Israeli occupation, a perspective that was certainly
unique. It took courage on their part, not unexpected from Sun-Times
management.
The following year, the articles were nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize. And although they did not win, they stand as a
perspective that certainly is unique in this country.
I SENT MY AUNT A
LETTER
The closeness of the Palestinian community is best
described by a hand written letter.
The letters my mom wrote to her sister, Leila, who
lives in a town called Ramallah in the West Bank were different than the
letters she sent to everyone else.
Different in physical appearance.
The paper was soft and thin. The light weight helped
reduce the cost of postage.
It was marked Air Mail in red and the color of the
paper was light blue.
The postage was higher than normal postage for
letters sent to destinations in the United States.
But, the US Post Office took several steps to reduce
costs and keep the letter's weight down.
First, the paper was extra thin. So thin, you could
almost see through it.
And, the letter was like something someone had cut
out in an elementary school art class. It was a single sheet of paper
shaped like a cross.
Mom would write in Arabic on each of the little
panels, inside and out. And, when she was done, she would fold it up.
Pre-glued edges that folded over, let her create an envelope and seal
most of the contents.
My family, like other Palestinian families, always
made a big deal out of the address.
If the letter did not have the country "Israel"
written on the outside, the letter would not be mailed.
Oftentimes, dad would write letters addressed to his
relatives in Jerusalem, "Palestine."
And, the Israelis would simply send it back, stamped,
"No Such Address" in English, or "Return to Sender."
It was an inexpensive protest. But, it did mean that
the letters never made it to their destinations.
Sometimes, dad would affix a Palestinian souvenir
stamp to the letter. And, of course, that came back even quicker.
These returned letters made great souvenirs.
Protest or not, mom and dad still had to get a letter
to their families back home.
So, on every letter, mom would rewrite, Jerusalem
"Via Israel" or Ramallah, "Via Israel."
The "Via Israel" was a quiet form of protest, a
compromise the Israelis would accept.
Many times, letters from back home arrived with a
small red stamp placed on it by the Israelis that read, simply,
"Censored."
The letters were opened by the Israelis, read,
re-sealed and sent on their way, if they didn't mind what was being
written.
There was no promise that a letter going or coming
from Palestine would ever make its destination.
So, I would often listen to my mom on her occasional,
long distance telephone calls to my aunt, spending half the conversation
talking about the letters they sent that didn't make it.
Of course, they also knew that their telephone
conversations were being tapped by the Israeli Shin Bet (secret service)
too.
It was the same when mom and dad would travel back
home.
They couldn't allow the Israelis to stamp their
passport, because the Israeli Immigration Stamp in their passport would
invalidate it for any other Arab country.
After all, my dad would explain, the Arab World was
at war with Israel and it was legitimate to demand that the stamp be
placed on a separate piece of paper that would accompany the US Passport
as it made its way from Israel to other Arab countries.
The problem, however, was that mom and dad never did
visit any other Arab countries the entire time since they had left
Palestine.
They really didn't need the "outside stamp" because
no other Arab Immigration Officer would see their passport anyway.
But, that wasn't the point.
(My dad was very American, and Americans are fond of
noting, "That isn't the point.")
And, it wasn't the point for mom either.
Every time mom or dad would go back home, they would
return with their un-stamped passport, the Israeli Immigration Slip
tossed out at O'Hare Airport after returning from Israel.
Mom didn't have to keep an address book with the
addresses of her relatives, either.
I thought it was a protest, too. But it wasn't.
My Aunt Leila's address was:
Habib Al-Hin
Main Street
Ramallah, Via Israel.
The "Via Israel" was always underlined, to set it
apart from the rest of the address.
I always thought Main Street was some small little
street and that Ramallah must have been a tiny village.
But, when I arrived there in later years, I
discovered what I had already suspected, that Ramallah was this huge
metropolis and that Main Street was several miles long.
"Habib Al-Hin, Main Street, Ramallah?"
How on Earth did the postman get the letter to its
destination.
As it turns out, everyone back home knows everyone.
In fact, years after my Uncle Habib had passed away,
the letters were still addressed to his name, to guarantee that they
would reach my aunt and her three sons.
My parents always cherished the letters they had
received from back home.
It was an event. Not trivial. Something the entire
family participated in.
Everyone would sit around my mother and she would
slowly read each word in the letter, savoring each syllable and sound.
The letter had fewer than 500 words, scribbled and
cramped as closely as possible to fit on the single sheet paper. But it
took forever for the letter to be read.
My dad once compared it to sitting around the family
radio listening to FDR offer a fireside chat from the White House.
Dad loved FDR.
The experience of those moments are gone forever, not
just because the significance of these letters had died with my parents.
But because of the rapid development of technology.
I just don't recall the last time my daughter and I
sat around my IBM ThinkPad Portable Computer, reading the frequent
E-mail messages sent "Via the Internet" from my cousins in Ramallah.
It's hard to make a subtle protest on the Internet.
It just isn't the same.
Israel Keeps Its Border Tight
(Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 2,
1990. Reprinted with permission, Chicago Sun-Times © 1996.)
Allenby Bridge, Occupied West Bank--The Israeli
soldiers smile as they escort me to a special window in a cinder block
building located on the border with Jordan, north of the Dead Sea near
the ancient city of Jericho.
A Jordanian escort has dropped me off at a plank
bridge spanning the Jordan River. The Israeli and Jordanian soldiers do
not exchange greetings.
They are enemies, a point made clear by the imposing
machine gun turrets that impose themselves over the checkpoint. Since
Israel's creation in 1948, their two countries have engaged in war three
times.
The Arabs call the span between the two lands simply
Jisr. The Israelis call it Allenby, dedicated the British general
who directed the Palestine Campaign in World War I.
There are two processing centers on the Israeli side
of the bridge -- one for Arab residents of the West Bank and other Arab
countries, and the other for tourists who, like me, carry U.S. or
non-Arab passports. I have not seen the Arab center, but I was told it
was dirty, crowded and hot. The tourist center is modern, with
efficiency furniture and fans that circulate the hot, dry air.
But the Israelis are very alert, and they see that my
name is different from that of other tourists who have entered Israel
here and were quickly processed toward their destinations.
"Hanania? What kind of name is that?'' a soldier asks
from behind a bullet-proof glass window. He is comparing my passport to
a security data base on his computer.
"It is a Hebrew word,'' I tell him. ``It means God
has been gracious.''
"Ah, you mean Chananiah?'' the soldier says
with a broad smile that quickly disappears. He tries again. "Araby?
What is your father's name?''
I know what he wants me to say. It seems like a game.
"My father's name was George.'' Very
American-sounding I say to myself.
"What is your grandfather's name?'' the soldier asks,
having seen other Palestinian-Americans pass through this center on U.S.
passports.
"Saba," I respond.
"Then you must wait over there.''
The soldier points to a red plastic chair in a small
waiting room where I sit for nearly two hours watching the other
tourists walk through the exit door, seemingly unmolested.
Finally, two other Israeli soldiers walk into the
waiting room. "Follow me, please," one says carrying a clipboard.
They are both young, maybe 20, with light brown hair,
fair skin and blue eyes. Their khaki uniforms are loose fitting and
their walk is casual. Each has a machine gun slung casually over his
shoulder.
The first soldier tells me to step through a silver
metal door.
"Now, please, take off all of your clothes. And empty
all of your pockets. Give me everything that is written.''
He doesn't answer when I politely ask why. It's not
smart to protest too vigorously against a man who carries a machine gun.
I stand there naked before this soldier as he takes a
cylindrical metal detector in his hand, and slowly runs it across every
part of my body. When he nears my thighs, he takes the detector by the
end and lifts it up against me and then looks up at me, expressionless.
"You think I have something under my skin?'' I ask,
still not angry but very embarrassed.
"You never know,'' he says.
I slowly put my clothes back on, black jockey shorts
I bought from Marshall Fields in Chicago, an aqua polo shirt from The
Gap, and Blue Jeans from the Orland Park shopping mall. My Nikes are in
the bag that the soldiers have X-rayed in another room. My wallet, keys,
coins and personal objects are scattered on a small wall shelf.
All that seems to meaningless at this moment. My
future as a traveler in Israel and the West Bank is still uncertain as
the soldiers huddle at the far end of the room, whispering in Hebrew.
Now I am scared.
My interrogator continues to probe, opening every
note in my wallet and scrutinizing every photo, including one of my
daughter. The soldier slowly and methodically flips through the pages of
a travel book, Israel: On Your Own, and he orders me to count my
money as he runs his fingers across the long hair on my head, as if he
is looking for something.
"Where are you going?'' he asks, continuing his
search.
"I'm going to visit relatives in Jerusalem.'' That's
not exactly true. Relatives I know from my mother's side are in Ramallah.
My father's relatives whom I have never met, live in Jerusalem.
He nods and continues reading everything I own.
Outside the waiting room, the soldiers have already
opened my black East Bank Club bag and placed it on a small counter next
to my camera. My belongings are dissected slowly, separated on a shiny
metal counter tat reminds me of an operating room.
A young woman soldier greets me. She is wearing
sandals that show her unpolished toe nails. Her long blond hair is
pulled back in a French braid. I try to guess her heritage. Maybe she is
from the Netherlands or Russia. She's not an Arab.
"Please step up.'' She smiles and she starts to take
the objects out of my bag, slowly. She hands me my camera and says,
"Please, take a picture of the ceiling." every sentence begins with
"please" now.
I understand some of this, I say to myself. Security
is tight when two countries are at war.
But I have passed through security checks in many
other cities, and this is different. In Amsterdam, where I pause to
change planes during my trip, security guards also searched my
belongings, and ``patted'' me down. But they also did that to everyone
who boarded the plane.
Today, I am honored by these soldiers because of my
race. My heritage. Both of my parents are Palestinian. The Israelis did
not stop any of the other passenger who accompanied me on the bus from
Amman, Jordan.
I am still very scared.
There is no one left in the building. I turn the
camera on, and point it at the ceiling as ordered. As I do, all of the
Israelis step back to a far wall and I am left alone at the counter when
I snap the shutter.
The female soldier now takes my hair dryer and plugs
it into a nearby wall. She turns it on, feels the warm air, then turns
it off.
The soldiers carefully feel through every inch of the
clothes I have packed for this trip to the West Bank. As they finish,
another female soldier carefully folds them--better than I had
originally--and then puts them back into my bag.
"Here you are, Mr. Chananiah. I hope you have a nice
trip,'' the woman says.
She hands me the bag, but as I walk to the jitney cab
service that is designated to carry Arab visitors -- seven in a car -- I
realize that I have left my dignity in little the room behind the large
silver door.
West Bank
Scarred by Bullets
(Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times Dec. 3,
1990. Reprinted with permission, Chicago Sun-Times © 1996.)
Ramallah, Occupied West Bank--I sit beneath the
bullet-scarred bay window of a two-flat overlooking Main Street, where
most of the bloodiest confrontations between Israeli soldiers and
Palestinians have taken place on the West Bank.
There are eight bullet holes in the windows of this
apartment where I have been welcomed for a short stay. Next door, they
tell me, the windows of the home have five bullet holes. In the windows
of the building across the street, there are six.
I learn that often when a bullet strikes a window
pane, the glass does not shatter. Instead, the bullet leaves a small
jagged hole before hitting the opposite wall.
"At first, we used to have the windows replaced,''
said Habib, 27, one of the family's three sons. ``But, now we just use
tape to cover them up. We hope there will not be more.''
But there always are.
This is a war zone.
On the deserted predawn street below, strewn with
broken tear gas canisters, bullets broken glass and rocks, a convoy of
heavily armed Israeli soldiers crawls past.
Large spotlights from their truck cut through the
mist and flash against the metal accordion curtains that shopkeepers
pull over their store entrances at night.
The soldiers are searching for signs of the Shabab,
the young Palestinian men who are fighting the Intifada, the
Arabic word for the uprising against Israel's 23-year military
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
I see groups of youths, many in their early teens,
huddling at nearby corners. They have made little piles of stones near
each corner so they are ready for confrontations with the soldiers.
As the soldiers patrol, they scatter the stones with
their feet or pick them up and toss them into a field. They break the
glass bottles that are sometimes used to make Molotov cocktails.
At first, the crackling of gunfire is frightening.
The soldiers fire their weapons into the air. I duck behind the wall
under the windows, fearful that another bullet will sail through the
living room. But my hosts, still seated upright on their chairs, tap me
on the shoulder and smile.
``We don't worry about death here,'' says Marwan, who
is about 26. ``We are all going to die. If you die, you die. Look at the
window. How do you hide?''
The sound outside subsides and the morning stillness
returns. This is the beginning of my three-day stay in the miserable
battlefield called the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, two
portions of land that once were part of a larger area called Palestine,
in the Six-Day war against Syria, Egypt and Jordan. The former British
mandate had been divided by the United Nations in 1947 into Arab and
Jewish states -- really six disjointed sections of Arab and Jewish
populations spread like wine stain over the map of the eastern
Mediterranean. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan. The Jews did
not.
Ramallah is near the geographic center of what would
have been the heart of the Palestinian State. It is a city of about
200,000, one of the largest urban areas in the West Bank, with narrow
streets lined by old brick homes and surrounded by farmland and hills.
Relatives I know from my mother's side live here.
The morning begins with a Spartan meal, mostly
vegetables grown in a three by six foot garden. They must keep the
garden hidden, and they hope that the tomato and cucumber plants do not
grow too large. If the Israelis find it, they explain, they will be
fined 100 hundred Israeli shekels (about $50) because they do not have a
license that's required to grow food for barter or sale.
This family of eight has encircled the garden with
several cars to hide it from view. The cars, eaten through by rust, are
no longer usable because the family cannot pay for a license, which
costs nearly 500 shekels.
I dip thin, homemade Arabic bread in a dish of
dibbis, a sweet mixture of crushed sesame seed sauce (tahini)
and a liquid marmalade made from crushed grapes taken from fields
outside the city. It is sweet and very tasty. For me, it is like eating
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast.
Another dish contains olive oil and the crushed
leaves of a bitter green Palestinian plant called za'atar mixed
with sesame seeds.
"Za'atar is something that we must buy from
the Israelis or grow clandestinely," another brother explains. "If the
Israelis find that we are growing it, they can confiscate it. We must
have a license to grow it, but the license costs several hundred Israeli
shekels."
I sip thin, hot milk from a small glass and peer
through the window nervously. The fighting has moved on, but minutes
later, another squad of Israeli soldiers clutching M-16s, tear gas
launchers and night sticks, beat on the door of the shop across the
street.
Someone has painted a political slogan on the wall,
and the owner of the building is ordered to come out and paint it over.
If he refuses, he can be placed in detention for six months, or fined
350 shekels
The man comes out and, using white wash provided by
the Israelis, drags a paintbrush across the Arabic letters.
From the distance I hear the popping of automatic
weapons. And the soldiers in front of our building stand in readiness,
expecting stone throwers to emerge from the dark passageways between the
buildings.
Trying to ease my fears, I ask the family about their
lives.
Fedwa, 17, hopes to be a teacher someday. She tells
me that eight months ago she was walking down the street just before
curfew (imposed periodically by the military authorities) when fighting
broke out nearly a block from where she stood.
She turns her back toward me, and reaching downward
lifts up the hem of her pant legs to expose her ankle. She points to
where a ``rubber'' bullet struck her in the leg, shattering her ankle.
"Here is a `rubber' bullet," Marwan says.
I hold it in my hand, rolling it. It is cylindrical
and very heavy.
``The Israelis used to use these rubber bullets," my
hosts explain. "They shove them into long pipes they attached to the
front of their rifles, when they are not using live ammunition."
"These are what they use now," he says. They are all
over the street, along the curb gutters, in the yards and sometimes in
the houses.
Look at this," he says. He has pried the plastic
covering off the bullet to expose a half-inch metal ball bearing.
"This is a plastic bullet. If you are hit with this,
you can die."
He gives me the souvenirs to take back to America.
When we leave the house for a walk in the streets of
Ramallah, I learn that Palestinians are required to carry identification
cards. Orange ones are for the West Bank residents. Green ones are for
those that have been arrested in the past. The ID must be displayed on
demand and it is demanded often.
"Sometimes they take our ID's just to give us
trouble," Marwan explains. "If you don't have an ID card, you can be
placed in jail. If they demand the card from me, I have to give it to
them. And they can take it without reason at all."
As we walk down the street, an Israeli patrol
suddenly orders us to stand against a wall.
A friend tells me not to be afraid. It is "normal."
We all put our hands up against a nearby store wall.
My companions hand their identification to a soldier as another pats
each of us down. My ID is a U.S. passport which the soldier inspects
carefully. I can feel the barrel of the rifle in my back.
The soldier doesn't ask questions. My friends tell
them I am related to a family that lives down the street. The soldier
gives the passport back to me and they continue their patrol, entering a
home they have taken over for the day to use as an observation post.
Palestinians are also required to display a different
colored license plate on their cars. A number on a small white
background tells the Israelis which city the driver is from.
Color coding makes it easy to tell the Palestinians
from the Israelis, so the Israeli cars can easily be waved past the many
roadblocks. Arab cars are always stopped and searched. On a one-hour
drive from Ramallah to Jerusalem on this day, we are stopped three times
to be searched by Israeli patrols.
I know that I have to muster a lot of strength to
subdue my fears each time I stand in front of armed soldiers.
Tomorrow, my hosts tell me, they will introduce me to
the young men and women who stand in front of the Israelis and hurl
stones.
Uprising
is Rooted in Hatred
(Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times Dec. 4,
1990. Reprinted with permission, Chicago Sun-Times © 1996.)
Ramallah, West Bank--``We hate the Israelis. And the
Israelis hate us.''
It was a precise summation of how badly relations
have deteriorated between the Arabs and the Israelis in the three years
of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
Issa, the son of a family I am spending several
nights with, sits on the tattered couch, an Oud held tightly in
his lap. The Oud is a stringed Arab instrument usually heard
playing sprightly melodies in cafes and lounges.
But this night, Issa is plucking the notes of
Palestinian revolutionary songs banned by the Israelis. His songs are
emotional and they come from experience.
Last year, Issa, in his late 20s, was arrested by the
Israelis and placed at a detention camp in the Negev Desert called Ansar
3. It is an open air facility, heavily guarded and surrounded by razor
wire and fencing.
No one has escaped from Ansar 3.
"It is called the camp of slow death," Issa says.
"I was accused of leading the Intifada." He
laughs and then continues. "Everyone is leading the Intifada in
this city. Everyone. But they said I was a terrorist, and they put me in
the prison for six months. When I got out they ordered me to sign a
statement in Hebrew, confessing to my crime. There is no proof except
what you sign, so I refused.''
His mother sits at his side, proud of his musical
abilities and also of his prowess as a leader of the Intifada.
He no longer smiles as he continues his story.
"After they released me from Ansar 3, the harassed me
each night at my home," he says. "One day, they came in the middle of
the night and grabbed me."
"They took me into the mountain and the soldiers said
I would die. They beat me with sticks and a rubber hose, across my face
and my body and they ordered me to sign a confession. Finally, they
lifted me up; my hands were tied behind my back. There was an argument
in Hebrew. One soldier wanted the officer to stop. But he pulled out a
gun and put it against my forehead.''
Issa's mother starts to cry as her son demonstrates
with his hand.
"I was afraid. I could do nothing. I would not sign.
The soldier stared into my eyes and he smiled."
"I closed my eyes and I remember hearing the trigger
snap and the gun explode in my face. I jumped with fear. The sound was
like thunder against my ears and I saw the flash.''
He lived because the gun was filled with blanks.
Issa spent four months in bed at home until he
recovered from the shock. But to all gathered this night, he is a hero.
``Every day there are beatings," says Suheil, who has
been assigned to escort me around the city. He often helps reporters,
when they are allowed to enter the occupied zone.
Israeli soldiers often bar reporters from entering
towns in the West Bank and Suheil tells me not to identify myself as a
reporter, because I could be expelled. Jet black hair and eyes, his face
is hardened and shows little emotion.
"We are fighting a war," Suheil says as he leads me
through alleyways and darkened streets of Ramallah.
As we walk, Suheil lifts his arm and makes me stop.
"Look down the street," he says.
I see nothing.
"There they are."
I look harder and see the barrel of a guns sticking
out from behind a building.
"We will see another patrol soon. They send them here
as bait, to get us to throw stones and then to run. They hope that we
will run into their trap. But we see them."
A younger man, about 17, who already has been
stopped, says something to Suheil as he continues to walk away.
"He says there is another patrol hiding among the
buildings that we have seen. We always try to help each other."
I am concerned now, because I wonder if they plan to
throw rocks at the soldiers.
But Suheil says, "We are just watching. Just
watching."
In the distance, a young man climbs a telephone pole
and ties a Palestinian flag to the top. He climbs halfway down, then
jumps and starts running, and the soldiers start their chase. Displaying
the Palestinian flag is outlawed by the Israeli occupation authorities.
Suheil takes me back through the gangways of houses
until we return to the home of my hosts.
Together, we huddle in the front room listening to
the Israeli soldiers firing their weapons, and wonder whether any of the
Palestinians have been shot.
The next morning, the flag is removed and life is
back to normal.
Did the Israelis capture anyone, I ask?
"When they do, they always yell `Bingo." It means
they have found someone," one of the boys says.
"When we hit an Israeli soldier with a stone, we yell
Bingo back!"
No one yelled Bingo last night in Ramallah, I am
told.
My father was born in Jerusalem, and I ask my friends
to take me to the house. It was on Jaffa Road, just outside the new city
of Jerusalem.
But the road has been changed since 1948 when the
Israelis took over, and the homes have been modified. We search for an
hour and fail to find the house.
My mother was born in Bethlehem, which has been in
Israeli hands for only 23 years.
My father, George Hanania, arrived in America in the
1920s, went to school at DePaul University and then joined the U.S.
Army, serving in the Middle East. After war broke out in Palestine and
Israel was established, his family fled Jerusalem and stayed at a
refugee camp in Jordan until my father and another brother helped bring
them to Chicago.
He married my mother in 1952 and brought her to
Chicago's South Side where I was born. I have been told about their
homes and their lives all my life. But this is my first trip to see the
land and the family for myself. I speak just enough Arabic and my
relatives speak just enough English so that we can understand each
other.
But it is clear from the conditions of their lives
that they are not happy.
We find the old stone home of my mother's family
intact on Medbussa Street in the town revered as the birthplace of
Jesus.
The Arab family that now lives in the building
understands, and they allow us to walk into their home so I can see the
small rooms, curved archways and the tiled floor, much of it the same
the day my mother and father were married in 1952.
In a corner is an old tree planted by my grandmother,
Regina. My aunt is reflective as she says, "We have moved many times
since the war, but this old tree will always remain. Our mother told us
that one day in the future we would look at this tree and remember her
and our lives. Today, we look at this tree and we remember why we are
here, refusing to leave."
The worst stories are about families whose homes have
been destroyed. In Ramallah, there have been too many to count, my hosts
contend.
"The Israelis don't even need proof. They only need a
suspicion that someone in the household is involved in throwing rocks or
fighting the soldiers," one of my escorts explains.
They drove me past a home that was destroyed by the
Israelis. A large five-room house now stood like a pile of rocks,
shattered by bulldozers. The family apparently had fled to the home of
relatives in another village.
As we stood there looking at the home, one of the
young Palestinian escorts remarked, "All they have done is given us more
stones to throw."
Mother Cuts
in on
Soldier's Pursuit
(Originally published by the Chicago Sun-Times Dec. 4,
1990. Reprinted with permission, Chicago Sun-Times © 1996.)
Issa's mother is very proud of her sons and the other
young boys who live on her block. She is loved in return. In fact, she
is called "the mother of Main Street."
Her long black hair hangs over one shoulder, tied
back by a small wrap that she made at her home. Her dark brown eyes show
the strain of three years of war.
The boys gathered around her now tell of the day
soldiers chased a dozen of them to her doorway.
"I opened it and rushed the boys into the kitchen,
where we all grabbed chairs and lined them up," she says, a small
triumphant smile forming on her lips.
"When the soldiers came in, they asked why all these
kids were in the kitchen. I had a scissors in my hands," she says. "I
was cutting their hair."
The Land is
All -- to
Two Peoples
(Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times Dec. 5,
1990. Reprinted with permission, Chicago Sun-Times © 1996.)
Sharafat, Occupied West Bank--The rolling hills are
green and covered with olive trees, their twisted branches sagging with
heavy fruit as such trees have for more than 2,000 years.
It is a land, in Palestine, that my mother and father
often spoke about to me: a rambling field of olive trees and small
orange groves on the northern border of Jerusalem, west of the Arab
Village called Dheir Tantour.
To Palestinians, the land is everything, symbolized
in the red, white, green and black of the Palestinian flag.
The ownership documents are filed away in vaults in
the Office of the Ministry of the Interior in Jerusalem, a building my
relatives have visited more than two dozen times since 1970 when
two-thirds of Sharafat was confiscated by Keren Kayemeth,
the agency that owns land that will remain ``forever'' the property of
Israel's Jews.
According to those documents, the land belongs to my
grandmother's nephew who now lives in Colombia with his family. They
fled Palestine after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the land was
maintained by my aunt.
After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in
1967, the government approved several laws that made land owned by
absentee owners subject to special provisions. Those provisions allowed
the government to confiscate the land and use it for Jewish settlements.
Much of Sharafat has been renamed Kibbutz
Gilo. The a cluster of modern homes and apartments built for Jewish
settlers and immigrants to Israel hugs a hillside, glimmering in bright
sunshine. Non-Jews are prohibited from living in the kibbutz, and
sometimes they are banned from working the land.
Israel has confiscated thousands of acres of land
that belonged to Palestinian Arabs both in Israel and in the occupied
West Bank and Gaza Strip, angering the owners and feeding the already
deep animosity both peoples have for each other.
My aunt lives nearby in Ramallah. She explains that
much of the anguish felt by Palestinians comes from the loss of their
land, and that I could not understand the feelings until I saw the land
and felt the dirt in my hands.
"That is what life is all about," she explains.
Friends take me by car to Sharafat and Kibbutz
Gilo, a short journey from Jerusalem. But our car is prohibited
from entering the kibbutz.
Settlers at the gate anxiously inspect my passport,
recognize that I am a Palestinian and promptly turn us away.
"Look at how beautiful the land is," my driver says
as we slowly pull away.
"We used to have a small house there that we rented
to a man who helped harvest the trees. The house has been destroyed.
They also destroyed the two wells that were on the land."
Pictures of the structure are not impressive. The
building was far from accommodating than the ultra-modern kibbutz
apartments that cover one of the hillsides overlooking the former Arab
farmland.
"They called this land Esther now," the driver says
forlornly.
"We still call it Sharafat -- even though what
we have left are the rocks and what they have are the olive trees and
the beautiful gardens and the lovely hills."
My driver is very emotional, and her eyes well up
with tears.
"When I first went to the ministry and said that I
wanted to file a formal complaint against Keren Kayemeth, they
all laughed at me," she says.
"The man said to me, `Old woman--are you strong
enough to fight the government? All alone? By yourself?' I said `Yes, as
long as I am strong enough to live."
The maps kept by the government now designate
Sharafat with red lines and warnings in Hebrew that say "Don't Cross."
"Every year we would rent out the land," my driver
says.
"Every year we would pick the olives from it and sell
them. Every year the land helped keep us alive. Every year I represented
our cousin, who is afraid to come back to Palestine. Frightened by the
Israelis," she says scornful of her cousin whose name is still on the
deed to the land.
She feels that he, too, should come back and fight to
regain the land, although the sturdy kibbutz buildings make that nearly
impossible.
"We want our land back," she pleads.
I can only offer her sympathy as we continue on our
journey.
To Israelis, the land is also important: it is
biblical Promised Land paid for in the blood of the Holocaust.
But that does not concern Palestinians of the West
Bank who now spend their days farming small plots behind their homes.
On one plot of land near my aunt's house, there is no
room to plant an olive tree.
But the small farming oasis boasts a flourishing
garden with tall vegetables held on a stick and broken wood fences.
The rim of a tire serves as a pot for a tomato plant.
"It is not Sharafat, but this small piece of
land will help us to survive," says the garden's owner.
Nearby, another family has converted a broken
refrigerator into a pigeon coop.
"This is how we make money," the owner explains,
pointing to his two dozen pigeons. "I raise them and then sell them.
People like them as pets, and sometimes they eat them."
Five years ago, this 34-year-old man lived in the
United States, working as a laborer in Chicago. He proudly displays his
US residency card, although he says he has no plans to return with his
American wife and three children.
"I could leave here at any time, but I won't because
this is my home. Maybe someday when the war is over, I will go to the
United States when I can be proud of what is being done. But today, I
see all of these people and how they live and I cannot go home."
The man's brother also raises birds. In the evenings,
he painstakingly builds wood and wire cages for the canaries that he and
other family members catch in fields outside the village. He has several
dozen canaries in cages that hang all over the home.
"People (Arab residents of the West Bank) pay a lot
for these canaries," he says proudly. The yellow, red and green birds
chirp happily away, it seems.
"People like the way they sound, the songs they sing.
I think they are signing songs of freedom."
Not everyone buys them. Some people see them as bad
luck and would rather they be freed.
In a lot across the street from their home, other
families have erected small stands where they sell fruits and vegetables
and pigeons and canaries that they, too, have raised in their homes and
backyards.
There are also crates of olives and dates. When money
is scarce, because jobs are few, they will barter for a specific reason.
"We have to do whatever we can do to prevent from
paying taxes," says a villager.
As I end my three-day stay in the West Bank, I am
glad to leave. Hardship is everywhere. The years of trouble in this land
have scarred both sides. Each day brings new reports of killings. The
victims are Arabs and Israelis.
If I wanted to find a glimmer of hope that there will
be a peaceful settlement to the decades-long battle, I did not find it
in the villages of the West Bank or in the Jewish sector of Jerusalem.
But what I did find was a determination on both
sides, including among my relatives, to survive and to maintain their
heritage.
Two peoples laying claim to the same piece of land. I
crushed in my hand a clod of dirt from the garden behind one of the
Palestinian homes. As it fell from my fingers, I tried to understand.
# # #
(Reprinted from "I'm Glad I
Look Like a Terrorist: Growing up Arab in America," Hanania, Ray, USG
Publishing, 1996, Tinley Park)
To find out more about Ray Hanania, and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page
at www.creators.com. (Bonus columns are not posted to the Creators web
site)
(Ray Hanania is a Palestinian-American author. Reach him by e-mail at
rayhanania@aol.com. He is the winner of the Society of
Professional Journalists Lisagor Award for Column Writing. His columns
are archived at www.hanania.com)
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