Behind the Headlines the Other Face of Israel

The West Bank is a time bomb waiting to explode. The West Bank is a foundry where suspicion, hatred and hostility is being forged. The West Bank is a series of political Rorschach ink blots waiting to be interpreted.

The West Bank is a fragile and uneasy mix of Jews and Arabs. The West Bank is a maze of super highways and superannuated roads, the first leading to Jewish settlements, the latter to Arab towns and villages. The West Bank is fear. The West Bank is none of these in isolation but all of these inextricably interwoven.

On the 60-kilometer drive from Jerusalem, along hairpin turns through mountains and valleys, desolate, craggy, moon-like landscapes are the pervasive designs. Occasionally, there is a stretch of green denoting some plant life and a few meager crops, a stretch of olive trees basking in the warm spring sun, some furrowed fields waiting for the first signs of crops to emerge, and lifeless terraced mountains once fruitful but now barren.

Israeli soldiers, in their teens or barely out of them, stand forlornly, two each, in front of refugee camps while inside the camps youngsters and adults roam through mud streets and live in conditions of squalor and penury. These camps are seething with resentment and anger and spawn tomorrow’s fighters against the “Zionist entity.”

On the roads, a lonely merchant in an occasional tourist shop or cafe lackadaisically waits for a customer and when one comes along, laconically and perfunctorily goes through the motions of human relations.

SILENCE AND VIOLENCE

On most days the area is smothered in eerie silence, giving the impression of a dream-like apparition. There are no signs of people, other than in the main market squares or in and around schools, nor signs of Israeli soldiers nor border police. Unless there is trouble, they are inside the military compounds which are usually just on the outskirts of the larger cities.

But there are days when the area is punctuated with the sounds of violence, and the roads and streets are pock-marked with strewn rocks and Molotov cocktails and burning rubber tires filling the air with acrid smoke. Then, Israeli patrols are everywhere.

Nablus itself is reminiscent of an old tired movie set in which even Charles Boyer would rather be caught dead than alive. The city is on two levels: the lower is filled with shops, decrepit dwellings, and the casbah; the upper level is peppered with sundrenched and bleached homes of the local middle class. The casbah, with labyrinthine alleyways and innumerable stalls, with hawking merchants and gawking customers and passerbys, is a sniper’s paradise.

The main entrances and exits in the casbah were sealed off by the Israeli military government personnel to prevent terrorists from losing themselves in there and eluding the police and soldiers. One or two of the gateways were recently reopened after the local Arab officials promised to apprehend terrorists in the area. “We also did it as a sign of good will and trust,” the local Israeli military government commander said.

Israeli soldiers and police are seldom to be seen in the casbah. It was a strange sight, therefore, for the denizens to see a convoy of armed Israeli soldiers marching through the casbah flanking an army spokesman, this reporter and Gil Sedan, the Israeli TV West Bank correspondent and correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, as they walked through the city streets and the casbah at the invitation of the local Israeli commander.

“This is an unusual scene,” he said, “but we can’t allow non-Arab persons to walk through the casbah by themselves. You could get killed and I’m sure you would rather make the headlines than be in the headlines.” The commander was in his late twenties or early thirties, clean shaven with close cropped hair who looked more like a kibbutznik than a soldier.

He took the scene in his stride and engaged in light banter with this reporter and Sedan. Told that we appreciated the protection to either side of us, he smiled. Asked what we should do if someone armed approached us from up in front, he smiled again and said, “Duck.” But on that day, we didn’t have to.

VOLCANO OF TERRORIST PREPARATION

Nablus is one of the cities on the West Bank where there have been anti-Israeli demonstrations. One reason for this, it was pointed out, is that the local university of Al Najah is a breeding place for PLO sympathizers and student agitators, similar to the situation at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah. “When classes are in session the campuses are volcanoes of terrorist preparation and its lava flow spills onto the streets and highways,” said one military government official. “When school lets out, things are quiet.”

He minimized the perception which is prevalent outside the West Bank and Israel, that the West Bank is seething with organized armed mass resistance. “There is no such thing,” he said, “because the people can’t get together. There is too much competition between the PLO and other groups, especially the Moslem Brotherhood which lurks behind the scenes. Certainly most of the Arabs here hate Israel, but many also depend on Israel for jobs and many, especially the older Arabs and merchants, want to be left alone to ply their trade.”

The official pointed out that what is frequently stressed in the press are the rock-throwing, tire-burning incidents and anti-Israeli pro-PLO demonstrations and attacks on Jewish settlers by teen-agers and their older mentors. “But what is overlooked is that while these incidents occur in a few large towns, most of the towns are quiet and without disturbances, such as Jericho and Jenin and other places. This, too, is part of the West Bank reality.”

PERVASIVENESS OF PLO PROPAGANDA

Another reality is the pervasiveness of PLO propaganda among Arab students and professors. But a great deal of this tends to be an unthinking, uncritical acceptance of emotion-laden and volatile anti-Zionist shibboleths and slogans. There is almost no effort to develop a coherent ideology and there is a penchant for gross distortion of history even in the face of contrary evidence. Dr. Morad Asi, an assistant professor of journalism at Najah University in Nablus, is one of these people.

During an interview at his home in Nablus, on a hill overlooking the university, he defined himself as a “moderate.” But during the almost one-hour interview it became apparent that his moderateness was was confined to his willingness to “talk to Jews and Zionists” but a total unwillingness — or incapacity — to reconsider his thinking.

A Zionist, he said, “is a person who thinks Palestine should be exclusively a Jewish state and that the land belongs to the Jews wherever it is. A Zionist is a person — he doesn’t have to be a Jew — who believes that Palestine, the Holy Land or Israel, whatever you like to call it, belongs to the Jews and any other group doesn’t belong there.”

Would it be correct, given this approach, to define adherents and supporters of what he called the Palestine liberation movement as those who believe that Jews have no right to any part of Israel and should be driven out, he was asked.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “This is a big misrepresentation by Zionist groups. Even if this was the view in the 1950’s or 1960’s, it was the view of immature people. No responsible person would say such a thing.”

Did he recognize that there were different tendencies within the Zionist movement ranging from right to left, from secular to religious, who had different views about the Palestinian people? Asi offered a half-hearted yes.

Did he accept the fact that there were organizations like the Brit Shalom and Ichud in the 1930’s and similar organizations today in Israel — the Labor Party, Mapam, Peace Now — which advocated peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian people and which did not seek territorial conquests? Again, a half-hearted yes.

“But,” he added, “these are just ideas, ideas that have not been put into practice and those who try to put them into practice, like Emil Grunzweig (a Peace Now activist), get themselves killed by other Zionists.”

WHERE ARE THE PALESTINIAN VOICES OF REASON?

Who, he was asked, are the Grunzweigs among the Palestinians and which are the organizations equivalent to those in Israel seeking coexistence with the Jewish State and recognizing its right to exist? He took time to sip some tea and then said, “the PLO.”

But the PLO was responsible for the bloody massacres against unarmed civilians at Maalot, Avivim, Munich, along the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway, Paris, Amsterdam, Athens and along the Israel-Lebanon border. Was this how the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist? Asi cited attacks against Arab villages by “Zionists.”

These acts, he was told, were condemned by the official Zionist leaders and by the Israeli government as acts of extremists. Where were similar condemnations of the PLO atrocities by Palestinians and who were they? Asi went into an explanation that defied the imagination. “Arabs react, they don’t act,” he said. “They react to attacks, they don’t initiate them.”

In Munich, he said, “the guerrillas didn’t kill the Israeli athletes. The German police did and they tricked the guerrillas into participating. In Maalot, who started the shooting? On the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway, they wanted to go somewhere and negotiate with the Israelis, but Israeli troops attacked them.” Pressed for proof and told that this view was totally without foundation, he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to leave for the university.

Asi is a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man, even gentle and sociable. He had worked in the United States, he said, for various news agencies. There was not a trace of hostility, of animosity in his voice during the interview. It was all the more frightening — and sad — to hear him espouse such “moderate” views. If this was “moderate,” what are the extremists saying?

‘THIS WILL ALL BELONG TO THEM’

During the drive back to Jerusalem, the homes of the Jewish settlers in Elon Moreh could be seen on a verdant hill not far from Nablus. This reporter, Sedan and the army spokesman drove along a super highway into the settlement.

The streets were immaculately clean and the homes along the treelined streets and gardens evoked a totally different world, one of peace and serenity. The stucco homes had the appearance of stately mansions. They were all constructed by Arab labor with what was apparently loving care.

But why all that love and care, this reporter asked the army spokesman. “Because,” he answered, “the Arabs feel that in a few years all this will belong to them.”

(Next: A reporter’s notebook)