Arms in a sea of troubles
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 23 July 2004
In Nablus, for every armed activist fighting the IDF, there are five who use their guns for internal disputes. And now, there are growing calls for reform.
An unusual scene played itself out on Saturday near the temporary premises of the governor in the Rafidiyeh neighborhood in Nablus. A group of Palestinian Authority security personnel, most of them armed, were guarding the place and looked suspiciously at anyone who approached. Israel Defense Forces units enter Nablus every day and do not allow Palestinian security personnel to go around in uniform, never mind with their weapons. Indeed, experience teaches - and an Israeli military source confirms - that soldiers in the West Bank have orders to shoot any Palestinian bearing arms. But on that day, armed Palestinian intelligence and Force 17 personnel stood around openly at the entrance to the governor's headquarters for hours. It was a time of emergency.
The week before, Palestinian intelligence had arrested a person who was suspected of aiding the IDF to locate two commanders of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, of the Popular Front, in western Nablus. Both of them were killed on July 6, during a battle in which two civilians and an IDF soldier were also killed. Now their comrades were trying to abduct the man who was under arrest and kill him. There were exchanges of fire between them and the men guarding him. The intelligence people succeeded in spiriting him away to a hiding place.
Another shooting drama had taken place during that same period. An old quarrel between the head of the Fatah movement in the city and his supporters, and Fatah members in the Ein Beit Ilma refugee camp, erupted in a number of incidents of exchanges of fire, the echoes of which repeatedly rang through the city. There are as many versions as there are people telling the story: money that wasn't handed over as demanded, appointments that were postponed, an insult that wasn't "swallowed," the old tension between the city and the refugee camp. All kinds of movement-affiliated and traditional reconciliation committee members ran back and forth between the two sides. On Saturday, shots were fired from Ein Beit Ilma at a jeep that the shooters thought belonged to Fatah people, which it did not. The people in the vehicle were injured.
"I can speak openly, in a cafe or in a shop or in a taxi, against [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat and his regime, and nothing will happen to me," is how one of the inhabitants summed up the problem. Another man from Nablus told of a new building in the city, where a Fatah member had moved in. The laborers were still working on finishing the other apartments. The tenant got angry at the construction workers who threw building refuse from the roof and dirtied his apartment. He appeared before one of them waving his rifle and demanded that they stop throwing rubbish. A construction worker stood there in front of him, his hands on his hips, and said: 'Go ahead, shoot me.' Facing this toughness, the rifle in the hands of the threatening tenant was lowered.
'Our children'
The gathering of armed groups around one political figure or another - especially one connected to the Fatah - is an old story. In fact, this has characterized Nablus ever since the periods of Ottoman and British rule: Members of the wealthy families have always organized armed militias around themselves. The tradition has been maintained. Perhaps only the names and the titles have changed. But even in interpersonal disputes, not only between groups, people reach for their weapons too easily, and it seems this is more true of Nablus than of any other place in the West Bank. Gaza may have dominated the headlines this week as far as the chaos in Fatah is concerned, but one observer, who is not a Fatah member, says, "Just like the first intifada, which spread from Gaza to Balata in Nablus, so the same tensions in Fatah could quickly explode here as well. And if they do, they will be a lot harder to control."
It is convenient to hide behind the title "Al-Aqsa martyr" or "fighter" to enjoy immunity. But it is estimated in the city that for every armed activist who really fights against the IDF, there are five or more who use their weapons only in internal disputes. The Palestinian police will not dare arrest someone who is considered wanted by the IDF or who represents himself as a fighter, both out of fear of confronting him empty-handed, without weapons, and out of concern that the IDF will take advantage of the situation to capture him - and then the police will be considered collaborators.
The internal quarrels are pursued in the shadow of ongoing IDF actions in the city, especially in the Balata refugee camp and the old city. On that same afternoon of July 17, a young, unarmed man of 20 was killed by IDF gunfire. Two days later a boy of 14 was killed. "This is our painful routine," said a woman who lives in the camp and does all she can to keep her teenage son at home, "and this routine explains why we understand our armed men, with all their faults."
Somewhere in Nablus, the police are holding 13 men who are suspected of, or who have been indicted, for murder. This figure has been given by the police. But no force in the city - the police, the governor's office, the Preventive Security - knew or was prepared to say how many people had been killed in disputes between individuals or groups in recent years. One journalist estimated that about 30 people had been killed in that way - some of them innocent bystanders. But he did not know whether this was the figure for the past year, or for three years. Fear is part of the definition of "a situation of anarchy" that people apply to their city, Nablus, and which they link, on the one hand, to Israeli attacks and the particularly harsh closures, which harm society and the economy, and on the other hand, to the internal personal battles within Fatah.
Now the fear has increased: In Nablus people are saying that the only person who ever succeeded in restraining all kinds of punk kids who brandish their weapons was Naef Abu Sharekh, the commander of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. The IDF uncovered his hideout in the old city on June 26 and killed him and six other wanted men. In the past, say inhabitants of the city, they could get hold of Abu Sharekh and complained to him about one problem or another caused by the armed men, and he would try to solve it.
But some people tell a different story about him: A few days before he was killed some merchants from the old city argued with him and his group. They were sick and tired of the barricades his men put up around the city. The barricades don't prevent the IDF from entering the city, they said. They only impede the traffic of customers, which is in any case meager. Abu Sharekh, revealed one woman who lives in the old city, told the merchants that "whoever doesn't like it can get out of here." However, another merchant said: "These are our children. They protect our honor. Our problems are because of the army, not because of them."
Abu Sharekh belonged to the generation of Fatah leaders, which accepted the Oslo agreements. He was a graduate of prisons, and then a PA functionary (a representative on the security coordination committee), who at the end of the 1990s was disappointed to find that "Oslo did not give us our minimum rights - Israel laughed at us," as his friend R., also a wanted man, told Haaretz.
'We want reform'
The interview with R. took place in an apartment hideout. The landlord served the tea. In the room sat two of R.'s wanted comrades and sometimes they intervened in the conversation. None of them went around armed. There were no weapons to be seen in the room. R., a man in his late 30s, says he has lost about 200 of his comrades who participated in the fighting against the Israeli occupation during the past four years. And this is without counting the neighbors, the friends who aren't armed and the acquaintances who were killed. When he was 12, he says, he dreamed of being a pilot or a sailor. In order to see the world. But at 16 he was arrested and sent to prison, for throwing a Molotov cocktail at an IDF jeep.
What point is there to your fighting, he is asked, and he replies immediately: "Despite Israel's military superiority, our aim is to prevent the Israeli soldiers from feeling that they can do whatever they want in our city. We are prepared to get killed, just so it won't be said that we hide in our houses. In April, 2002, I wanted very badly to fight a soldier face to face, to see a soldier's face. But they were afraid to get out of their armored vehicles. This allowed us to feel stronger than them, the Israeli soldiers."
But now the soldiers are moving around the city every day, with almost no problems. And people are saying that they hear the armed men firing only at funerals and not against the army.
R. "It's clear that we've become weaker. At first the army did not dare enter the old city. Now it moves around there."
How many of you are there?
"The number is not important. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs is an existing situation. Today there are perhaps 20, maybe 40. We used to be 70. But there are a million Fatah members, and every minute someone is joining the brigades."
It appears that all your experts, the more experienced commanders, have been killed or arrested.
"Israel is investing supreme efforts to capture us, with all the technology and the collaborators. They work night and day to kill us. At any given moment, I know we will make a mistake and get killed. They pursued Naef for two years, and in the end he made a mistake and paid for it with his life."
In Israel the assessment is that new members aren't joining you.
"Whoever thinks that is a donkey. In the first intifada our people were small children, and what was etched in their minds was soldiers shooting and attacking at night. They were arrested for a flag, a bit of kerosene and stones. In this intifada, the little ones of then are bearing arms and climbing on tanks without fear. In September 2000, we started with stones, which didn't endanger any soldier, and when the IDF killed masses of us we moved to attacking Israel. There is a new generation of 4- and 5-year-olds, who are living with the explosions and the bombardments from the air. In five years' time they will join the struggle. The Israelis are forgetting each time that they are raising a generation that will be tougher and harder than its predecessor."
In Israel they say Abu Sharekh involved Hezbollah in his organization's activity.
"It is only natural that there be a connection among liberation movements in the world. Hezbollah doesn't command us, they don't intervene in our internal politics and in our political goals. If they gave money to some Palestinians, this is nothing to be ashamed of. Ultimately, it is the Fatah that set up the Hezbollah. Nasrallah was a member of Fatah and it was Arafat who gave the Shi'ite organization Amal its name and he also gave them money."
R. confirms that among other things, Abu Sharekh ordered the carrying out of suicide attacks in Israel: "No one says that this is nice, pleasant battle. This is a cycle of blood that the Israelis started."
But your organization, the Fatah, is opposed to attacks in Israel.
"The Al-Aqsa Martyrs have a problem with the Fatah. We don't accept the Fatah leadership. Marwan Barghouti has not condemned the attacks in Israel. He did not support them, but he understood why this developed. If they break into our homes, 20-year-old soldiers humiliate a man of 70 in front of his children and they kill us in our homes, then we, too, have the right to kill inside Israel. The orders are to cause as many losses as possible to the army and the Jewish settlements in the territories. This is at the first level. And the attacks inside Israel - they are always in response to a slaughter that is carried out by Israel.
"I think there are many soldiers who are asking themselves what they are doing here. After all, they are human beings. We don't simply want people to die. Our aim is that our children will not live like we do. We do not understand the resistance as only the use of weapons. The idea is to pose a challenge for the occupation. The occupation wants to force us to accept it, and in this it will not succeed. We know that the Jews will not leave Palestine, even if 5 of them are blown up every day. But the Israelis must understand that their government is acting incorrectly."
But the Israelis have understood the suicide attacks in a different way. Doesn't this mean that you should change your tactics?
"It is difficult to explain to someone who does not want to understand. Israelis do not understand that the nearest way to security is a Palestinian state. Perhaps they will change and understand. We, as Fatah, support an independent Palestinian state. Yes, beside Israel. And recognition of the right of return, although we do understand that 4 million refugees cannot return. But the Fatah leadership does not represent us. We are not pleased with the central committee, and therefore we are demanding elections in the Fatah so that we can elect other representatives. We belong to a stream that is demanding reform. Arafat's way of controlling is creating a bad atmosphere in the Fatah."
That is, you do not take orders from Yasser Arafat?
"No."
Then from whom?
"From Suha [Arafat]. And this is the first time that I am revealing this."