Outbreak of the Intifada; Siege of Nazareth

Outbreak of the Intifada; Nazareth Siege
October 4, 2000

The good news is that I am safe.

The bad news is that my neighborhood, and my apartment building specifically, became the epicenter for the violence in Nazareth over the last 24 hours, and I spent most of that time close to the floor, peeking through shutters and hoping no stray bullets came through the walls.

It is very important to me that I explain to you not only what I experienced yesterday, but more importantly the events which caused such violence to happen here. Nazareth, which is the largest Arab city in Israel, has been peaceful throughout the 50 year existence of Israel and even the Intifada. Instead, the city is known for its nonviolent demonstrations and as a center for social change and community activism. There are two outspoken political parties, one Communist and the other Muslim, which actually function very close to their ideals and have made significant gains towards equal rights and public monies for Arabs in the city and the region. Many Palestinian organizations establish themselves here because of the incredibly progressive climate. Demonstrations and civil disobedience here are common. Violence is not.

However, the unusual events of the past month have created deep wounds in this city and created dry tinder for this last weekend. Two beloved men of the community, brothers who ran a jewelry store on the main street, were robbed by a Russian immigrant from Nazareth Elite, the Jewish settlement at the top of the hill. One of the brothers was killed and the other badly injured. Despite several witness descriptions of the robber and his getaway, the Israeli police have made pitifully little effort to investigate. In the meantime, the police force, which is organized on a country-wide level and places Jewish officers in Arab towns, began to leak their 'suspicions' of a prominent, Nazareth area Arab Knesset
member's involvement with underground terrorist movements to the media, without having first questioned the Knesset member or opening a formal investigation. There has also been the installation of surveillance cameras 'for tourist security in Mary's well square' which are remote-positionable and are often found directed towards the Communist party headquarters. However, even when these happened, Nazareth citizens responded through non-violent means, with a citywide shutdown after the death of the jeweler, and press conferences and media outcry at the Knesset member accusations and
surveillance.

Then, last Thursday, Ariel Sharon made a visit, complete with a heavy military contingent, to the Dome of the Rock. Sharon, once the Minister of Defense in charge of the Israeli Defense Force (army) is the man who most personally symbolises the death and suffering of the Palestinians, and left the entire Muslim community reeling with offense at his gesture. On Friday, Muslim protesters who gathered at the Dome were surrounded by both police in riot gear and the army. Some of the protestors threw stones down at the Wailing Wall. The army responded with snipers and killed four Muslims, just after noon prayers. On Saturday, the grief and anger of the Muslim community rose through the funerals of those four and Arab areas in the Galilee began to shut down in protest. Nazareth, which was in the middle of its Sacred Music Festival, held two nonviolent protests. I attended the first one in the intersection by Mary's Well Square sponsored by the communist party. We held signs in Arabic, Hebrew and English calling for an end to the police brutality and discrimination. At this time, the police were absent, but their camera was moving, watching carefully as key members moved about. Then several young boys climbed up the pole that held the camera and tied a plastic bag over the lens. The demonstration disbanded at noon for the Muslim prayers. A few hours later, while I was shopping in the souk and having coffee and lunch with friends, the Muslim party held a nonviolent protest at the bus stop in the intersection by the Basilica, with signs and singing. By the time I crossed back to Mary's well in late afternoon, the police camera had been taken down and the festival stage packed up. Violence was erupting elsewhere and the city was shutting down. The soldiers came into Nazareth sometime before dawn on Sunday.

On Sundays, Nazareth is usually similar to Jewish cities on Shabbat--closed. My friend Martina picked me up in her car for dinner at her house, and took me through downtown before I could even ask if it was safe. The soldiers and police were in riot gear, shooting tear gas and bullets at the groups of teenage boys throwing stones. The boys had set up barricades in the street to prevent Jewish-run bus and tourist companies from driving through (Arab citizens in their cars could easily negotiate the paths around the barricades, or take the steeper mountain roads). In addition, the roads between Nazareth and Nazareth Elite was barricaded, with dozens of boys shouting protests and throwing stones at the soldiers and police. (this was the video mostly shown on tv).

Yet despite the fighting in downtown Nazareth, (over a half-hour walk from my apartment) my neighborhood had been completely peaceful throughout the weekend and all day Monday. We live at the city limits on the road to Haifa which was still clear and we knew we could still get out if things did get bad. I even walked out on my balcony around 11pm to admire how calm it was, when I looked over the edge and saw the fires in the street. I screamed without even thinking, which startled the Israeli soldiers that I hadn't seen standing there in the dark. They pointed their guns at me and started yelling in Hebrew, and I dove for the floor and crawled back inside. My housemates started crying and we grabbed our passports and ran downstairs to our landlady Sundus' apartment. Inside the children were screaming and crying and we huddled on the floor while Sundus listened to the Nazareth radio for details. The front of the apartment had a large plate glass window, but the bedrooms had the metal shutter windows from which we could carefully watch the street later. We heard yelling outside and shots being fired, then everything was quiet. Within an hour, the fire was out and the soldiers were gone. We stayed in her apartment that night and slept on the floor.

Tuesday morning, we woke up early to watch the cable news and listen to the radio again. However, nothing was in the street except the burn marks on the road. I even called Jack (my foster father) and told him everything was all right, and agreed with him that we shouldn't worry my mother (sorry mom). However, we couldn't get in touch with the U.S. embassy, and the Australian embassy told my housemate that nothing was going on so far and they wouldn't evacuate her unless the city was under siege. The neighbors were all doing housework, confident that it the violence here had been short lived.

The city was still on strike and we needed groceries badly, so we went up to our apartment to shower and got ready to drive with Sundis to the supermarket in Nazareth Elite, the Jewish settlement. We were only ten minutes from leaving the house when several groups of teenage boys converged on the street in front of the house and started to throw more tires and rubble into the road, blocking traffic. They pulled rocks and tiles from the construction site across the road and started accumulating stones to throw. Next they poured gasoline over the tires and set them on fire. I remembered leaving the balcony door open that morning when I went out to look at the damage. When I ran upstairs to close it, thick black smoke was already pouring into our apartment through the balcony and all the window screens, and the wind was blowing it in circles around our apartment so that it came in from every direction. I shut them all as well as I could, and grabbed my backpack which I had packed that morning 'just in case', and locked the doors and ran downstairs. The smoke had collected in our stairway as well.

Soon the police and soldiers arrived and started shooting both tear gas, which came in with the smoke through spaces in the window frames, and bullets at the boys. By that time there were maybe 150- 200 teenagers and younger boys, some certainly ten or younger, in the street behind the barricade. Most of them scattered when the shooting began, some into the lower neighborhood, some behind our house, some to the school next door, and some behind the cars in front of our house. For the next several hours, we listened to the shots being fired around and above our building, and we watched through the shutters as the police invaded houses in the lower neighborhood. I saw three boys beaten by the police and soldiers, kicking them in the stomach and groin, as two other soldiers held each boy by the arms. The police and soldiers stayed in the road where they could fire both upwards and down into the two sides of the neighborhood during the hours-long standoff. They continued to shoot into the school, where the boys had lowered the Israeli flag and raised the Palestinian one instead. The soldiers finally invaded the school around 5pm, beating the boys and taking them away in the vans. Next a car came and one of the mothers ran to the soldiers, sobbing and falling over herself, asking where her boy was. They made her get back in the car and started ridiculing her. I don't know if they told her where to find her boy or not.

It was very clear throughout the violence, both in front of my house, in downtown Nazareth, and even in the video clips of the rest of Israel and Gaza and the West Bank, that only teenage boys and young men were taking part in the fighting. This was not an organized campaign, a formal plan of civil disobedience. It was raw anger and hurt, a feeling of betrayal once again by the government on both the national and local level. Definitely for the Muslims it was a feeling of religious offense and persecution. The frightening thing in Nazareth is that while teens and adults alike have previously been in solidarity in nonviolent progressive action, this time the younger generation felt the need to resort to the violence of fiery barricades and throwing stones. In Nazareth and throughout the country, young arab men lost patience with nonviolent means of asserting and protecting their civil rights. Unfortunately, when the police and army lose patience, they use machine guns and the teenagers die.


A little while later, several of the police left and we went up into our apartment to start cleaning. It didn't look dirty at first, but as we walked across the floor and touched things, the ashes became quite clear. We scrubbed everything, but the wind is continuing to blow ash around and inside. I have to start all over again tomorrow.

The soldiers finally left around midnight last night, and that was strangely when I first began to feel fear. Before I was very nervous and tense, absorbed in watching the situation in the neighborhood and unsure when it would finally end. When the violence was outside, I only thought about the safety of our group and what the soldiers would do to the protestors. But once it was quiet and I tried to sleep, every sound became a soldier and a riot about to begin again. The garbage truck at 4am almost scared me to death. Before I went to sleep I triple checked every lock to our apartment, knowing that it was impossible for anyone to get in, but it still wasn't enough. I wanted to take a sleeping pill and get some rest, but what if they came back and I needed to be awake? I wanted to use ear plugs, but what if I didn't hear the violence start back up again? After the garbage truck, I decided to use the ear plugs.

My housemates were in a similar state. Before I called Jack, their parents had called and ordered them out of the country after watching the news. They have had a difficult time adjusting to life over here to begin with, and had already talked on Monday afternoon of leaving. Last night they packed their bags. Today they went to Tel Aviv on holiday, and I don't know whether they will decide to stay or go.

Today there was no violence. There are burn marks in the street, but everything else is back to normal. Stores are open again, the funerals are over, the buses are running. But the community is badly shaken. As everyone said, 'Nothing like this _ever_ happens in Nazareth.' One 16 year old was killed, but many others injured by bullets and beatings and tear gas. One car with a woman and her children was riddled with bullets and she is in critical condition. She's the banker that handles our office accounts.

I can assure you all that I am going somewhere else this weekend, at least just to wind down. Tonight I'm going to Martina's for dinner and to relax. The office has been wonderful about stuffing me with sweets again, and emailing freely. If Martina hadn't called first, I would have holidayed in Acre with Aida. I will also be getting a cell phone. I had access to a phone twice in the last five days, and one of those times was ten minutes ago. I'll send around the number as soon as I get it.

I'll definitely be in the office tomorrow and maybe Friday, and let you know how the weekend goes.

Peace (I hope)

Le Anne