It is a December morning on the streets of Ramallah, “the rose of the West Bank,” and the streets are busy. People rush about their business to complete errands before noon, time for the daily commercial strike.
The sun is unusually warm for this time of the year. Here and there, elderly people sit on the large balconies of their spacious homes, built of the distinctive pink-hued Jerusalem stone.
But as residents take their leisure, the sight of Israel Defense Force patrols is a constant reminder that Israeli control over the West Bank continues.
On a clear day, one can see the Mediterranean from the picturesque hills of Ramallah. But Abdullah Samir, who makes his living selling sesame-covered rolls from a cart on the main street, says there are no longer clear days left.
“One cannot foresee events from one minute to another,” he remarks with the confidence of someone who knows what he is talking about.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, a car bearing yellow Israeli license plates (easily distinguishable from the blue plates of the territories) is ambushed by stone-throwers on the main business street.
The car escapes undamaged and its passengers evade injury. But the message is clear: The days that Israelis can travel in the administered territories free from fear are long gone.
The intifada, as the Palestinians call their uprising, begins its third year on Saturday, and there seems to be no end in sight.
NO MORE EXCURSIONS
After two years, many Israelis have learned to ignore the intifada. They simply circumvent it whenever it faces them, shutting their ears and closing their eyes to the unpleasant reality that would otherwise dominate daily life in Israel.
Opinion polls have shown wide support for the way the security forces handle the intifada, but most Israelis are sending their leaders another message: Cope with the situation without us.
It is easy for Israelis to pretend that the intifada does not exist. But it is there in the form of fear.
Israelis are more fearful for their safety now than before the uprising. They are less concerned about the security of the state than for their own lives and limbs.
The escalating Arab violence reached a peak last summer, with the attack on an Egged passenger bus that was forced off the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, killing 16 passengers and seriously injuring many more.
That attack, and other smaller-scale ones, further diminished the sense of personal safety.
Bethlehem, a West Bank town just south of Jerusalem, used to be crowded on weekends, with Israelis shopping for bargains.
Other Israelis used to have lunch Saturdays at one of East Jerusalem’s colorful Arab restaurants and then stroll through the picturesque Arab bazaar in the Old City.
Israelis in Kfar Sava used to have their teeth cleaned or cars repaired at half-price in the neighboring West Bank town of Kalkilya, once one of the friendliest places in the territories.
No more. Very few Israelis will risk a stone smashing their windshield or a gasoline bomb setting them on fire to undertake such excursions.
Paradoxically, Palestinians feel safer inside Israel than in their own towns. In Tel Aviv, they have no reason to fear violence.
With more than 600 Palestinian casualties, thousands wounded and more than 50,000 detained for various periods since the beginning of the intifada, almost every Palestinian family in the territories has been affected in one way or other.
ARMY’S CONTROL IS NOT TOTAL
Lately, worse than the confrontations with the Israeli authorities has been the sharp increase in terrorist acts by violent gangs of Palestinian youths out to “settle accounts” with Arabs whom they accuse of collaborating with the authorities.
The number of Palestinians Killed by their own people since the intifada began was estimated by the Associated Press to be 153, as of the end of November.
Last week, the security forces killed or captured members of a Nablus casbah gang called the Black Panthers that is believed to be responsible for many of the killings in the area.
Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai, commander of the central region, proudly told reporters that the IDF had proved once again that it had full control over the territories and that even the dark alleys of the Nablus casbah were within its reach.
His statement is true, but not always true.
The army does control trouble spots like the casbah and the refugee camps. But its control is limited in area and time.
Despite the extensive deployment of the security forces and their intelligence sources, densely populated places cannot be totally controlled.
In such places, clandestine local popular committees have a natural advantage. As soon as the soldiers go, they are there, to exercise their control over the local population.
The intifada has massive support among the Palestinians. But relentless pursuit by the IDF is driving it underground.
The mass demonstrations that characterized the early days no longer occur. The uprising expresses itself now by general strikes, ambushes of Israeli vehicles and tax revolts.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL ON SOLDIERS
Significantly, the recent month-long tax strike in Beit Sahur was not repeated elsewhere. But even without strikes, Israel is paying a heavy economic price to suppress the intifada.
But there is also a psychological price being paid by the thousands of Israelis doing army service in the territories.
Dr. Yehuda Hies, director of the government’s autopsy institute in Tel Aviv, said that the growing violence in the territories has had a damaging emotional effect on soldiers.
“A person who lives in an atmosphere of such violence several months a year changes his behavior and acts in a way in which previously he would not have dreamed of acting,” Hies said.
He said he was able to trace the escalation of violent behavior by members of the security forces from observing the condition of the Arab corpses on which he performed post-mortems.
Two years of the intifada have passed and high-school girls still throw stones at Israeli vehicles in downtown Ramallah.
After 24 months, little has changed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
