From Occupied Palestine

Prisoners of Zion
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 26 August 2004

The letters are kept in a pillow on the living room sofa. With trembling hands, as if it were a religious rite, Najiba Jelamne opens the zipper of the pillow and pulls out the envelope with the handful of letters and photos. Two folded letters, as brief as memos, written by hand on an official Red Cross form - the only sign of life that has arrived from their prisoner son, who is said to be very ill, but whose parents have been unable to find out what happened to him. One letter was sent in February and arrived in June, four months en route from the prison to the Jenin refugee camp, and the second was sent in June and arrived about two weeks ago; that's how long it takes to get from the sender to the addressees.

A nation of prisoners
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 22 August 2004

If for Israelis "the whole nation is an army," for the Palestinians the whole nation is a prisoner: Like the experience of military service for us - the experience of prison in the Palestinian ethos is the formative and unifying experience. Both serving in the military and spending time in prison are perceived as a model of values, a sacrifice for the sake of the homeland. The two experiences are connected to the sanctified violent struggle in the two societies.

Brutish behavior by order of the general
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 15 August 2004

Samar Abdullah stood pale and helpless on the road. He is a cab driver from the village of Safarin, southeast of Tul Karm, and the father of five children. He was formerly a construction worker, but a ruptured disk in his back forced him to find a different job. He had been on the road for only three months.

'Admit to something, something small'
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 6 August 2004

Abed al-Ahmar spent a total of 11 years in jail without trial, making him Israel's longest-serving administration detainee. Recently released, he talks about the underground mobile phones, frozen schnitzel and other wonders of prison life.

Death in a cemetery
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 23 July 2004

How many of us can imagine the night of horror that the Salah family endured? To lie on the floor of the living room for what seemed an eternity, embracing as one being, trembling with fear as the house was blasted with bullets and missiles; to watch the sniper's laser ray doing its dance of death across the apartment, searching out its victims; to see the missiles slamming into the walls of the house, missile after missile, as though an earthquake had struck; to get to their feet in the dark following the order to evacuate the building before it was demolished; to try to open the front door and discover that it had been twisted out of shape by the gunfire and couldn't be opened; to open a window and try to shout to the snipers, in the dark of the night, that the door was jammed; to see the father of the family collapse from a bullet fired into his neck by a sniper; to see the son collapse a few minutes later from a bullet in his cheek fired by a sniper; to watch, helpless, as your son lies on the floor, the life ebbing out of him, next to his dead father, and to cry for help, but to find that the soldiers will not allow anyone to enter; then to undergo an interrogation and humiliation; and to discover that the entire contents of the house had been destroyed.

If it were the reverse
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 18 July 2004

What would happen if a Palestinian terrorist were to detonate a bomb at the entrance to an apartment building in Israel and cause the death of an elderly man in a wheelchair, who would later be found buried under the rubble of the building? The country would be profoundly shocked. Everyone would talk about the sickening cruelty of the act and its perpetrators. The shock would be even greater if it then turned out that the dead man's wife had tried to dissuade the terrorist from blowing up the house, telling him that there were people inside, but to no avail. The tabloids would come out with the usual screaming headline: "Buried alive in his wheelchair." The terrorists would be branded "animals."

Impoverished and unloved
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 10 July 2004

There are two groups in Israel that seem to be quite different from one another but in fact are quite similar. The beginning of the resemblance - even the identity - between them is statistical, as emerges from figures that the Bank of Israel published last week: 47 percent of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are poor; 47.6 of the Arabs ("the non-Jews") are poor. There are no other groups in Israel in which the percentage of poor people is as high as in these two groups - not the inhabitants of the development towns, not the residents of the poor neighborhoods, not the Mizrahis (Jews with origins in the Muslim countries) not the new immigrants, not the single mothers and not the elderly. But the resemblance between the two groups is not confined only to the poverty rate.

Time to tell Sderot's children the truth
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 4 July 2004

What will we tell the children of the kindergarten in Sderot who last week lost their friend Afik Zahavi Ohayon, aged three-and-a-half, who was killed by a Qassam rocket? What can one say to children who lose their classmate this way, next to the kindergarten?

This week in rebuilt Jenin
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 11 June 2004

Is there any other neighborhood in the universe with streets whose width was adapted to the dimensions of a tank? Is there any other urban planner who took the width of the Merkava Mark III tank into account?

Slightly over two years after Israel Defense Forces bulldozers destroyed the center of the Jenin refugee camp, a white city has arisen from the ruins of "ground zero." Of the 530 residential units leveled by the IDF in operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, about 100 new apartments have already been built. Last week the first families moved into their new homes, and by the end of the summer, the Jenin camp will have a new and well-designed center, the width of whose streets has been especially adapted to the dimensions of Israeli tanks.

Tank lanes built between new Jenin homes
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 10 June 2004

The residents of Jenin refugee camp have begun returning to homes destroyed during Operation Defensive Shield. The homes are being rebuilt by UNRWA with a $29 million grant from the United Arab Emirates.

Construction of 100 of the 530 housing units detroyed by the IDF in April 2002 has been completed, and 70 families have returned to their homes, which are better designed than the previous buildings. UNRWA officials say they hope the entire camp will be rebuilt by the end of the summer.