Encounter on the West Bank
Corea, Gena
THE LAST WORD Gena Corea Encounter on the West Bank I hadn't been in the Palestinian camp for more than twenty minutes when a nearby group of children began throwing stones at a patrol of Israeli...
...But if they are victims, it is not necessary to make us the victims of the victims...
...On a day off, I had taken a taxi to Dheisheh, a camp on the West Bank...
...Ahmed, I later learned, was beaten badly by soldiers who repeatedly asked him whether I was a journalist and whether he had slept with me...
...I said I was a journalist, but I wasn't there to write about the Palestinian situation...
...The soldiers replied with gunfire...
...The news had been broadcast by Jordanian television...
...Anyone leaving his house will be shot...
...Imad, twenty-two, was known as a quiet man, not a stone-thrower...
...Now, running down the unfamiliar street, I passed a young Arab woman standing on a veranda...
...Nabil was forbidden to leave the camp from 1985 to 1987, and since then he has spent six months in administrative detention—no charges, no trial...
...Some Jewish people tell us they are victims of Nazism," Ahmed said...
...I wanted to see for myself what the intifada was about...
...Many Americans think that when you see an Arab, there must be a camel beside him...
...When next I saw Ahmed, he was blindfolded and three soldiers were roughly binding his hands behind his back...
...Then we went to the main road so I could catch a taxi back to Jerusalem...
...Gena Corea is an editor of Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, a feminist journal Once again I dodged bullets shortly after entering the camp, and during this stay I experienced a tear-gas attack...
...Amal, Ahmed, and I joined a stream of people going to the home of the dead man, defying the curfew to comfort his family...
...I learned, as we played with the baby, as they fed me and gave me shelter, as they helped me escape, as I tried to console the parents of the dead children, that they are thinking, feeling, caring people...
...I can't verify everything I was told...
...I returned to the camp once more and, with Amal and Nabil, visited the families of the murdered children...
...After about two hours, Nadim and I were released separately...
...This I ran from with my own two feet...
...He had been shot while standing on his veranda...
...Then, crossing the mountain in back of the camp, we found a driver who took us to Bethlehem...
...Minutes after I left, soldiers arrested Ahmed...
...Then another jeep, sirens screaming, sped us to the army base, where soldiers separated Ahmed from Nadim and me...
...In the morning, Ahmed took me and Nadim, an Arab friend of his from Nazareth, on a walk over the dusty, rock-strewn paths of Dheisheh...
...We always have one 'ambassador' from the family in prison," said Ahmed, who had been arrested sixteen times since 1978...
...When gas began seeping into the house through windows that had been smashed, the family said, by soldiers during previous raids, all of us—including Amal's baby—crowded into a single enclosed room...
...They live with daily repression and violence—this I saw and felt...
...The brothers spoke about Western stereotypes of Arabs, some of which they have learned about by watching Dynasty on television...
...the soldiers had arrived...
...As we waited, an army jeep pulled up...
...He demanded to see papers, questioned me, searched my bag...
...I was in Israel to attend a scientific conference and conduct interviews for a research project...
...Another brother, Jamal, twenty-one, is in prison now...
...When we got there, mourners sat in the courtyard and stood on the veranda, many women weeping...
...A soldier—the one who had given me permission to enter the camp—found it suspicious that I had spent so much time there...
...The next day, they killed a sixteen-year-old boy who was taking part in a demonstration...
...But I saw with my own eyes that Palestinians can be arrested without cause...
...With Amal's help, I escaped back to her house, jumping a wall and scrambling through the camp as gun shots rang out around us...
...We saw the one-room house where the nine members of his family lived for ten years, sleeping side by side...
...Her brother-in-law, Ahmed, a twenty-five-year old graduate student, met me at the door...
...Repeatedly, loudpeakers placed throughout the camp broadcast an announcement in Arabic: "By order of the military command, this camp is under curfew until further notice...
...Come in," he said...
...A massive fence, fortified by barbed wire, surrounded the camp...
...Once more I made my way to the family's home in Dheisheh, and this time I encountered a curfew...
...For the next several hours, sitting on covered foam pallets on the floor, I listened to Ahmed and his twenty-nine-year-old brother, Nabil, Amal's husband...
...At their invitation, I returned the next day to spend a day and night with the family...
...Before the intifada, the world saw us as terrorists only," Nabil said...
...The family has been resisting the Israeli occupation since 1967...
...THE LAST WORD Gena Corea Encounter on the West Bank I hadn't been in the Palestinian camp for more than twenty minutes when a nearby group of children began throwing stones at a patrol of Israeli soldiers in the street...
...At the gate, an Israeli soldier said I could enter but warned me to be careful...
...Three hours later, soldiers killed a twelve-year-old girl in Dheisheh...
...I'll call her Amal (the names of all the people in her family have been changed...
...He left a nineteen-year-old widow and a five-month-old daughter...
...Suddenly there were shouts from the street, shots, tear gas...
...If you know suffering and harassment, you should be especially sensitive and not make other people suffer...
...We'll talk...
...I heard with my own ears, as we talked for hours, that Arabs are not "uncivilized...
...I said I would take my chances...
...They think," Ahmed chimed in, "that we live in prehistory, that we are primitive people, uncivilized...
...She invited me in because she feared for my safety...
...In all, I spent four days and four nights in Dheisheh...
...He was released at about midnight...
...At one point, Nabil came downstairs, where I was speaking with his mother, to tell us that a neighbor, Imad Karaka, had been killed by Israeli soldiers...
...The children ran, and when they shouted to me, I ran, too...
Vol. 53 • September 1989 • No. 9
