Palestinians Express Hope, Despair and Cynicism as Baker Arrives

By Brother Patrick White

Palestinians are dying. Some pass away with old age, some prematurely through the stresses resulting from the tense, wearing environment of this long military occupation, and some die violently at the hands of the Israelis. Even the young have lost hope. An intelligent 18-year-old woman quite spontaneously said to me: "I want to die."

Mayor Freij of Bethlehem arose from his chair to greet us. It was a somber occasion. His brother had just died. This was the fourth time within a few days that I had made the customary visit to a bereaved family to extend my sympathy.

The house was large. Room after room appeared to be full of men from the town of Bethlehem. Various notables of the town, in cheerless dark suits, worked their worry beads in sun-weathered hands and sipped the Arabic coffee in delicate ornamented cups.

“It's terrible what's happening.”

We sat down in the row of arm chairs skirting the walls of the long room. Conversation was in Arabic, interspersed with English. "It was sudden," and "a heart attack last night" came to my ears. Heads nodded gravely. We arrived as a large group from the university. Mayor Freij is chairman of the board. It was Tuesday, March 5th, 1991, five days after the cease-fire in the Gulf war. Mayor Freij spoke to us, the British and Americans. His solemn, short figure became suddenly animated. "It's terrible what's happening!" He raised both hands sedately from his knees and then returned them deliberately and heavily as if to emphasize the grim situation.

"They smashed through the gates of the Convent at Hortas last night. Terrified the women. There are only sisters and the orphans!"

He stared across the room, his eyes half squinting to see if we realized the sober implications of it all. "Then, they drove the villagers of Hortas from their homes in the dark and forced them to stay outside in the fields. It was cold and wet! What are they thinking of!"

The policy of harassment and making life unbearable, described by Mayor Freij, was further illustrated by my conversation with one of the cleaning staff in the university the day before. She is a widow and lives in the Palestinian village of Battir, close to the Green Line, which is the boundary between Israel and the occupied territories. The Israelis wish to expand the settlements that they have already established around the village from land they confiscated.

She gave me a bag of fragments of concussion grenades that the soldiers had tossed onto her balcony one evening. Then they smashed down her front door and gave two of her sons a beating in front of her. She insists they were quietly at home. There had been a break in the curfew during the day and she had made sure all the family were in the house once the evening curfew was imposed.

The soldiers, she said, arrived in several jeeps. They knocked on her door, but before she had a chance to open it they had forced their way in. They did not ask for identification cards.

Sheer terror was the purpose of their visit. Her house is located directly on the main street of the village near the well. Apparently these beatings are systematic and have occurred fairly frequently on her street. Several young men, including one of her sons, needed hospital attention after these intrusions. She told me she could not sleep at night for fear they would come again.

A Disastrous Economic Situation

The discussion with Mayor Freij turned to the disastrous economic situation and the effects of 45 days of curfews and closed military areas. The mayor's pale face became flushed. "Now they start the tax raids. Now they deliver telephone, water and electricity bills! How can the people pay them?"

I had seen the shops and businesses in Bethlehem being raided for taxes that morning. I had walked down to the local photographer's shop only to find him inside his car with other shopkeepers anxiously discussing the situation. Earlier, a pharmacy had lost all its stock, which was simply taken away by the soldiers and officials. Most of the shops were closed that morning for fear that they too would be raided. The photographer firmly locked and closed the steel shutters over the front of his business.

The conversation affirmed the wider picture of the state of the Palestinian economy. Mayor Freij reported to one newspaper that the war had cost the Palestinians $1 billion. Losses were continuing, I reflected to myself, as the exchange continued in Arabic.

In the Jerusalem Post, Palestinian economist Samir Halailech reported that, apart from the very rich, Palestinians have used up all their savings. Merchants are refusing credit to their customers because neither Israeli banks nor the Cairo Amman Bank will give credit to the merchants. Palestinian businessmen abroad no longer want to finance new economic projects at home for fear production and marketing will be stopped at any moment by the punitive military controls. Manufacturers and merchants not only are starved of credit, but are denied access to raw materials, labor and the freedom to distribute their finished products. Summarized Halailech, "In almost all sectors almost everything is paralyzed."

Apart from the very rich, Palestinians have used up all their savings.

I thought of villages I had visited in the hill country of the West Bank during the beginning of the Gulf war. A survey in these rural villages found some 10 percent of families in good economic shape, 6 percent at starvation level, and 50 percent with sizable debts which they could not repay, and which prevented them from receiving credit to pay for food purchases.

The same article quoted the military government coordinator for the occupied territories as stating there was "no policy of confinement" and that there was no limit to the number of Palestinian workers allowed into Israel. So far, however, only 20,000 of the 120,000 workers who used to form the cheap labor force on the building sites before the Gulf war were actually managing to reach their work. There seemed to be some discrepancy between the information from the military authorities and reality.

The dialogue with Mayor Freij swung to the political issues. The end of the Gulf war had not ended the misfortunes of the Palestinian population, and there was a glaring need for some political initiatives. Mayor Freij said action should be taken through the United Nations to protect the Palestinians now, before it is too late.

"More people will leave," Freij predicted. "Others will just give up and accept anything imposed upon them!" Certainly, it seemed to me, this was the goal of the policy the Israeli government is pursuing.

As the assembled Palestinian men continued conversing in Arabic, I reflected on the comments of one of my Arab colleagues on the journey through the blustery winds and rain from the university. I had remarked that often individual Palestinians would tell me something in private that was very different from what they said in public. He reminded me that Palestinians do not have an open, democratic forum where freedom of speech reigns. Fear of retribution, either from the Israeli military or from the various underground Palestinian factions, obviously influences their conduct. Furthermore, their culture still allows the leader of the town, village or even the family clan to express his view first. Such is the patriarchal nature of the society and the people.

Clearly, as I watched the conversation before me, there was great respect given to Mayor Freij's views. Only afterwards, when we left the house, one of my colleagues held me by the arm and angrily expressed his real thoughts. "Our leaders are children! Just children! When will they see reality!"

Both Palestinian and Israeli newspapers are full of analyses of the realities in the aftermath of the Gulf war. In Israel, all of the political parties are formulating plans. Cynically, one Palestinian friend remarked to me that they were plans to forestall plans so that there would be no plans. Shimon Peres, for Labor, presented a revamped Jordanian option. Shahal, one of the left-wing politicians, suggested a Palestinian state. Yitzhak Shamir, for the Likud, was busy looking for bilateral agreements with Arab states, particularly with Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Convinced Israel would outwit the US, my Palestinian friend said, "the Israelis are the best connoisseurs of the Arabs! " When I told him that President Bush must be in a powerful political position both at home and abroad, and that he had just addressed both houses of Congress stating that the Palestinian and Israeli issues must be addressed, my Palestinian friend laughed.

"We've heard all that before. And even if Bush and Baker want to do something, Congress will stop them. Most American congressmen are on the payroll of Israel. The Jewish community in the US and the Israelis have Congress in their back pockets. So much for American democracy!"

The Palestinian press reacted in a variety of ways. Professors of political science from Bir Zeit and Bethlehem Universities expressed differing views. Dr. Manuel Hasassian concluded that there was a simple equation. He submitted that Israel needs to sit with its enemies to make peace, that the PLO is the Palestinian leadership, and that Jordan is the only bridge towards peace.

In the Arab newspaper Al-Fajr, Associate Professor Zakaria Al-Qaq declared: "Palestinians always are the victims of wars. " He did not believe US Secretary of State Baker's imminent visit to the Middle East would do anything for the Palestinians. He was, he admitted, not optimistic. I could not help noticing that some of the Palestinian academics were writing as politicians. Perhaps it was an indication that leadership should come from within the occupied territories and not from the PLO without?

Driving rain and cold blustery winds caused us to hurry to the university bus as we left Mayor Freij. He had asked the university staff to approach the vice chancellor. Could the university prepare a memorandum to be presented to Mr. Baker when he came? Mr. Baker was coming to Israel on Monday.

St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter 11, became the focus of our prayers in our community today. I am always moved by the stirring way he reminds us of the faith of God's people. Both Israelis and Palestinians need "to be sure of things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. It was by their faith that people in ancient times won God's approval. " For both Israelis and Palestinians, Abraham, a man of deep faith in ancient times, is their common father.

Brother Patrick White teaches at the Vatican sponsored Bethlehem University in the West Bank.