November 23, 2004
Schwartz - Return to Ramallah, Au Revoir Arafat
November 23rd, 2004 Almost two weeks ago I returned to the West Bank to attend the funeral of Yassir "Abu Amar" Arafat in the Muqata, the former British, then Jordanian, then Israeli prison which became the capitol building of the Palestinian Authority. I delayed publishing this entry because my friend Wisam ibn Khaled el-Hajji had borrowed my digital camera, and I wanted to wait for his photographs--which, thankfully, were well worth the wait. He returned the camera to me yesterday, and I've uploaded the best onto this blog entry. All photographs not marked "AP" in the lower right-hand corner were taken by Wisam.
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November 16th, 2004 How I got into the West Bank was somewhat humorous. A Palestinian from Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam tried to drive me to the checkpoint near Modi`in, but the soldiers had already blockaded it. Then he drove me up Highway 6, the main thoroughfare of Israel which runs along the Green Line. We pulled up to another checkpoint. Nervous inside but the epitome of journalistic calm on the outside, I approached one of the soldiers. A monstrous Caterpillar bulldozer was moving around the concrete blocks that served as the checkpoint.
"Hey," I said, "I'm a journalist. Can I go through?" "Where you wanna go?" he asked. "To Beit Sira, near Maccabim, with the huge mosque." He shrugged. "Okay." And that was that.
My contact in Beit Sira came and picked me up. We spent time in his house before driving through the mountains of the West Bank, weaving in between caravans taxis and automobiles decorated with flowing black banners and posters of Yassir Arafat. After about an hour we slipped between two huge concrete boulders and passed into Ramallah by a southward side road. Then we unloaded from the jeep and walked to the Muqata. This was around 10:30 in the morning.
Almost four hours later I stood in the heart of the Muqata. The day had been gruelling and boring. The parade of mourners contained few spectacles. At one point a band of communists passed through, tossing leaflets from the Popular Liberation Front of Palestine into the air. Sometime later, two men strode through the crowd atop horses, the rider in the lead bearing the French flag. The horses began to panic; thankfully the two men left before anyone could get hurt. And here and there passed the Shuhada al-Aqsa, known in English as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
This militia--called guerillas or freedom-fighters by some, terrorists by others--is controversial, and not just among Israelis and Westerners. While many Palestinians cheered them on, many simply ignored them, and some even sneered at them or sighed with exasperation. The Shuhada al-Aqsa specialize in suicide bombings against military and settler targets. Rarely do they attack civilians within Israel proper. According to the laws of guerilla fighting as laid out by such theorists and legendary practitioners as Franz Fanon and Ernesto "Che" Guevera, the Shuhada al-Aqsa can be labeled with some accuracy as guerillas and not terrorists. Yet, this partially depends on whether or not you consider Israeli settlers civilians or not. Also, they do not restrict all their operations to just the West Bank: the recent suicide-bombing in the French Hill district of West Jerusalem, while targeting a bus station frequented by settlers and soldiers, was outside the boundaries demarcated by their symbolic (and some say actual) leader, Yassir Arafat, as the borders of the future sovereign Palestinian state. Among the Palestinians, the Shuhada al-Aqsa are controversial more because of their role in the Intifada: the Palestinian masses have suffered greatly from attacks from the IDF inflicted upon West Bank towns and cities ostensibly in retaliation for Shuhada al-Aqsa attacks.
I myself consider them to be terrorists, because whether or not they are restricting their assaults on settlers and soldiers, they are trying to utilize fear for political ends, even if those ends are essentially just (emancipation of the Palestinian people). They are not simply guerilla fighters: if they were, they would not attempt such spectacular propagandist attacks as suicide-bombings. True guerilla fighters, in my opinion, let their actions speak for them; they do not need spectacle and terror to achieve their aims. Take for example Che Guevera and Fidel Castro in the Cuba Revolution: for two years they sat in the hills of Cuba fighting soldiers and police, sabotaging only those services (such as freight rail-lines) which benefited the Batista dictatorship. In their day-to-day dealings with normal Cubans, they were benevolent, friendly, conversant, willing to debate or just chit chat. The result? Eventually hundreds and then thousands of peasants, then city-dwellers, flocked to their cause, not so much because they exactly agreed with Castro's political philosophy, but because Castro and Che were heroes in that most general sense: they cared about the well-being of the nation and were tyring, somehow in someway, to truly better the situation.
Compare this to the Shuhada al-Aqsa, who stalked the streets of Ramallah and the courtyard of the Muqata, masked and armed with kitanas, silvery handguns and kalashnikov rifles. The intimidation and dread was thick and oppressive; I even sensed it in those who praised them as they passed. Looking back, I snicker, because they aren't just inflicting fear into the Israeli public for some mad agenda of eye-for-an-eye nationalism, but in their own homeland they strive to instill that pagan awe of the almighty: when they flash their guns and stare at you from behind their masks, they are really saying to you, 'I was once completely weak but now I am all-powerful. I hold your life in my hands. Worship me.'
But alot of Palestinians are sick of them.
The news agencies reported that it was chaos in the Muqata: throngs of the desperate and yearning flooded the helipads and assaulted Arafat's coffin. I don't quite remember it that way. The event was chaotic because of the security services, who kept breaking us into lines, having us sit (the last thing you want to do in a giant crowd) and then having us stand, moving us around. When the helicopters arrived, there was a rush toward the helipad. My friend Wisam and I came within a few meters of one of the giant desert-colored mechanical beasts--and then the Shuhada al-Aqsa fellows began to fire their guns, and then the security services. At that point, most of the crowd, who had come to pay their respects, indeed to cry, seeking some final communion with their leader and some carthasis, simply turned around and walked away from the helipad. My sense was that as a whole, we were all disgusted by this display of medieval barbarity with modern guns. This was not the militias' moment--indeed, nor was it even my moment, for I was there somewhat voyeuristically, to witness history, to grab a scoop; and I was also there to support the Palestinians, to feel their sorrow as much as I could; and I was there to try and figure out this controversial man, this murderer, liberator and statesman, Yassir Arafat--no, this was the Palestinians' moment, in a way a collectivized yet deeply private moment.
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November 23rd, 2004 I spent the rest of the weekend in Beit Sira. It was good to be back. It was my first Eid al-Fitr in a Muslim land--I've celebrated three previous ones, two in America and one in Britain--and my first since I stopped practicing the Islamic rituals for good. There was no party, but the mourning was quiet, subdued, beneath the skin. I had lots of interesting conversations.
After I left, Wisam went to pay his own respects to Arafat. Along the way, and over the week-long holiday, he snagged these photographs. Enjoy! [Warning: these photographs are actually linked from one of my Geocities account, which is sometimes fickle. If the photographs are not appearing, try waiting a few minutes then reloading.]
Lion's Square, Ramallah, demonstration in honor of Arafat
Ramallah, demonstration in honor of Arafat
Beit Sira, Eid al-Fitr, me playing billiards--that's Wisam in the red, wondering what the hell I'm doing
Just as Israeli society suffers from intense militarization (try to count how much bulletin board and magazine space and television air-time goes to advertisements with military themes and you'll run out of fingers and toes before the hour's up; and everyone, even the damned newscasters, do their best to act tough and cynical), Palestinian society suffers from intense guerillization. At the funeral a man proudly displayed his toddler boy dressed up as a Shuhada al-Aqsa fighter, done up in mask and army jacket, armed with a plastic kalashinikov. This little Beit Siran boy is yet another example of this ongoing quiet tragedy of mass-mindedness and societally-approved violence.
Beit Siran children. A very heartwarming photograph.
Arafat's grave, Muqata, Ramallah.
Arafat's grave. There is something profoundly painful about that security guard's face.
No, your eyes are not lying to you: those are indeed Hasidic jews holding Arafat's poster at a Palestinian rally. I couldn't get clear information about them from Wisam. Apparently, though they are part of a peace group, they are nevertheless controversial because they live in Beit Nuba, a town about which Beit Sirans and other Palestinians have talked to me with much agitation and disappointment in their voices. I intend to do more research into it. That said, though, these are powerful photographs, testimony to the universal yearning and search for justice and peace by all peoples. Whether or not certain ideologies or leaders can deliver the goods for that yearning is another issue; what's important, these photographs remind me, is that there are thinking and active people who, no matter what the conflict, no matter what the hypocrisy within themselves and others, remain steadfast in their determination to find resolution, perhaps even reconciliation, in our troubled modern age.
Once again, special thanks to Wisam for his artist's eye.
