Letters from Palestine (24 page)

Eventually, the Israelis started to
negotiate, through the CIA and the European Union. And we called
Arafat, and he said I’m not going to be involved in this situation
because Israel wants to transfer all the people in the Church of
the Nativity outside of the country. How can we agree to let people
be expelled? As the Palestinian Authority, we negotiate with the
Israeli government to bring people back home, you know, the Right
to Return. This is not good, as chairman, as president. He said,
no, this is your decision. You do whatever you want.

And when we called our families, everyone
was crying: children, mothers, brothers, fathers, all of them. They
were scared, very afraid—no schools, no universities, no food, no
medicine, everyone suffering.

And one time, I remember, we came to see the
fathers to say we feel very bad. And we are very sorry because look
what’s happened to the church, and this is a very important place;
it’s where Jesus was born.

But they answered, don’t worry about the
church. God will protect this place. Now we are worrying about you.
We want you to go back home safely to your families and your
children, and that’s what we are worrying about.

They demolished a lot of houses in
Bethlehem. They killed many people all over, and it was a very,
very dangerous situation. So for that reason, we began to talk. And
people inside, they said, we will accept any decision, and we will
accept anything. It’s not for us: it’s for our family, our
children.

So the first thing the Israeli leaders did
was to ask for a list with names and ID numbers of all the people
inside the church. So we gave them our ID numbers, names, and
signatures. They sent that paper at three in the morning to
America, and they sent it to the Israeli government. And after they
checked it, they decided to expel people. They decided to transfer
thirteen to Europe and twenty-six to Gaza. This is the way they
finished and solved the problem. The rest of the people were
arrested for two or three days, after which they took them to an
Israeli military foreign center, and they started to make
investigations, gather information and all this stuff, made files,
took pictures, and at the end they released them.

And they said you should say thank you to
America because you are going back home because there is an
agreement between the U.S. and the Palestinian Authority that we
will transfer those wanted people and the rest of the people will
go home. But, they said, if we were the ones to decide, we would
transfer all you people outside the country. This is what they
said.

As for me, they took me for three days to
the Israeli military center. And they made a file and put my name
on the blacklist, so I can’t leave Bethlehem now. I can’t move
anywhere. Bethlehem is like a big jail, and that’s it. I have not
moved outside for four years, from that time until now. It is very
hard for me.

And after they took pictures and made files,
they said, you are going to go home now. But in the future, you
have to be careful because if we catch you anywhere, we will arrest
you again. And this was my end.

So now, every time I have to be careful when
I find soldiers or I hear they are somewhere, here or there. I have
to go away. Because I have my family. I have to take care of my
little daughter.

So if I want to travel, it’s impossible. If
I want to work, it’s very hard. If I want to go study at the
university, I have no chance! If I want to do anything, if I’m sick
and want to go to hospital, I cannot. No one can accept, no one can
understand the situation. You have to give Palestinian people their
rights, their respect, their freedom. And believe me, when people
have freedom and are happy with their family and their children and
have a job and good salaries and a good income, they—I’m 100
percent sure—will not think about making problems.

In the old days, we used to go to Israel. We
lived with Israeli people in a very peaceful way. We loved each
other, and we used to work together. And all the time they used to
come here to attend weddings; to come visit the holy places; to buy
their meat, vegetables, fruits, everything. So we lived together.
But the last few years, the problems, Intifada, this is what’s
happened.

We miss the love. And without the love and
the trust, we become far away from ourselves. So I hope one day the
people will find a very good way to bring the love and the trust so
we can have a better life and future for everybody. I hope that
everyone will remind themselves, their friends, the whole world,
that this is the Holy Land and the land of Jesus, and this is a
very special thing. And we have to use it in a special way. We have
to respect everything here in this land.

I am a Christian, but there were both
Muslims and Christians together in the siege. The relationship
became very friendly. We respect ourselves, we respect each other,
and we love each other. And they said, now the Church of the
Nativity is the most important place and very special for us
because this place protected all of us. And for that reason, they
respected all of them here.

_PHOTO

Saed J. Abu-Hijleh is a Palestinian human
geographer, poet, and radio show host who is currently working as a
lecturer of political and environmental geography at Al-Najah
National University in Nablus, Palestine. He is the founder and
director of the Center for Global Consciousness (CGC), an
independent media and cultural exchange institute dedicated to
building bridges between Palestine and the world.

Mr. Abu-Hijleh holds a BS in international
development studies from the University of Iowa and an MA in
political geography from the University of Northern Iowa. In the
past ten years, Mr. Abu-Hijleh has worked with key Palestinian
public and private organizations in the fields of international
development, public relations, and protocol and small and medium
enterprises development projects.

Mr. Abu-Hijleh is the former director of the
public relations department of Al-Najah University (2005–2007).
Since 2004, Mr. Abu-Hijleh has prepared and hosted a talk show on
the Al-Najah University’s FM station called
Global
Perspectives
in which he interviewed many international
personalities who visited Palestine on key contemporary political,
economic, and cultural issues.

Mr. Abu-Hijleh has conducted academic
research on the political geography of Palestinian statehood and
the multidimensional obstacles facing its realization. His current
research interests focus on the geography of religions and belief
systems, the human geography of Palestinian identity and diaspora,
citizenship and liberation theology, and the geography of the
Palestinian environmental movement. Mr. Abu-Hijleh is presently
preparing to publish a poetry collection titled
Words of a
Palestinian Dinosaur
.

Like many other Palestinians who grew up
under the Israeli military occupation, Mr. Abu-Hijleh started his
political activism at an early stage in his life. He was only ten
years old when he joined student demonstrations against the
occupation authorities. In April 1982, at the age of fifteen, he
was seriously wounded by Israeli soldiers when they opened fire on
a student demonstration in the city of Nablus. This did not stop
him from continuing his activism for the realization of peace and
justice in Palestine and around the world.

On October 11, 2002, Israeli soldiers
assassinated his mother, Shaden Abu-Hijleh, a renowned Palestinian
peace activist and philanthropist, and injured him and his father,
Dr. Jamal Abu-Hijleh (www.remembershaden.org).

* * *

On Friday, October 11, 2002, at around 5:45
p.m., a little before the sun set in the Mediterranean, Israeli
soldiers killed my mother, Shaden Abdel Qader Al Saleh Abu-Hijleh,
and injured my father, Dr. Jamal Abdel Al Kareem Abu-Hijleh. I was
also injured and miraculously survived.

We were on the porch of our home in the
Rafeedia neighborhood of the city of Nablus. My mom was sitting on
a chair, working on a piece of embroidery to give to my future wife
as a gift when I get married, and my dad was sitting next to her on
the steps of the porch, plucking green thyme. I was standing close
to my parents behind the glass door of the veranda and just about
to join them, when two Israeli military vehicles stopped in front
of our house, about forty meters away from where we were.

My mom told me to wait a little until the
military vehicles drove away. The street was empty because the
Israelis had imposed a curfew on the city. We did not move from our
places, and I wondered why they stopped in front of our house. I
told myself that maybe they are waiting for the other two vehicles,
because most of the time four military vehicles patrol the street
together.

Suddenly, without any justification or
warning, Israeli soldiers, or I should say, death squads, opened
fire on us. I was injured in the left side of my neck and fell down
on the floor inside the glassed veranda and started screaming to my
dad, “I am hit! I am hit!”

My dad, who is an ear, nose, and throat
surgeon, opened the glass door and entered the veranda and started
to examine my neck, which was bleeding heavily. At that moment, I
thought the bullets had penetrated my neck, and I felt that I was
going to die after a few seconds.

But then I looked at my mother and saw that
she had fallen from the chair on the steps of the porch. So I ran
towards her, and I saw her eyes wide open. I tried to talk to her,
“Mama, Mama . . .,” but she did not respond. I put my hand behind
her head and tried to sit her down, but my hand was filled with
blood, so I thought she was hit in the head and screamed to my dad,
“I think she is hit in the head . . .” I prayed to have the
strength to save her before I died.

I tried to carry her, but I could not. I
told my dad, I think she is dead. She is martyred. My dad stood
there, completely shocked, squeezing his hands and saying, “
Hadi
sa’it al ghafleh
!” (This is the hour when fate comes suddenly,
when we are least attentive.)

_PHOTO

Shaden

I started to scream for help, and some
neighbors rushed to aid us. First came Majdi, who lived across the
street, then Fadi, Abed, and Sameer, who lived a little further
away, and they carried my mom in Sameer’s car to Nablus Specialty
Hospital, which is nearby to the southeast of our house. Then our
neighbor Mansour brought his car, and I rode with him west in the
direction of Rafeedia Hospital. We drove a few meters but then we
were blocked by the two military vehicles that had shot at us few
minutes before. I got out of Mansour’s car and stood in the middle
of the street and shouted in English, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!
You killed my mom! Why, why, why?”

The soldier who was sitting next to the
driver came down from the vehicle and aimed his rifle at me and
threatened to shoot me, but I continued shouting, “You killed my
mom! Why, why, why did you shoot at us?”

Our neighbors who were watching from the
windows started shouting and screaming. Then the soldier fired
several shots in the air and got into the vehicle and drove
away.

I got back inside Mansour’s car, and we sped
in the direction of Rafeedia Hospital. I entered the emergency room
and got treated for my wounds. I realized then that my wounds were
not severe and that they were caused by the flying glass debris
from the fired shots. The bullets had missed my neck and head by
just a few centimeters!

I went back with Mansour to my house. Many
of our neighbors were standing there. My dad had already locked the
house and walked with another neighbor to Nablus Specialty
Hospital, where my Mom was taken. I wanted to run to that hospital,
but my neighbors pleaded with me not to do so, fearing that the
Israeli soldiers might kill me on the way. So they called for an
ambulance that took me to the Specialty Hospital.

I entered the emergency room and saw my dad
being treated for a wound he sustained from a ricochet bullet that
had grazed his skull. I kissed his hands. He was severely shaken by
what had happened, and they had to put him in the intensive care
unit because of his condition, taking into consideration that he
had had heart surgery a few years earlier.

The doctors who examined my mom told me that
they were sorry. My mom was pronounced dead on arrival to the
hospital. They told me that she was hit with an explosive bullet
that entered the left side of the chest, penetrated the left lung,
and then burst into multiple fragments in the right side of her
chest, producing severe damage and massive internal bleeding,
resulting in her death. So the blood on my hands was not from her
head but from the blood that seeped from her chest injury as she
fell on the steps.

I told them I wanted to see her. They
brought her, and I kissed her and told her how much I loved her and
how much my sister, Lana, and my brothers Raed and Rami loved
her.

That is how they killed my mother, Shaden;
Shaden, the peace activist and philanthropist who was admired and
respected by thousands of people in Nablus and in Palestine. People
called her “The Mother of the Poor” because she dedicated her life
to helping the disadvantaged in our community. She was a founding
member of many Palestinian organizations that worked for social
justice and equality and for the development of our society.

Shaden was an institution by herself: a
phenomenal person and role model for humanity. That is why I always
say that my mother did not die and that the Israeli soldier who
shot her is the one who died. He died the moment he aimed at her
and pulled the trigger. He died like a coward because he committed
a cold-blooded murder against a defenseless woman doing embroidery,
knitting with love the future of her family and people. She did not
die because she was pure love, and love, true love, does not die.
These very words attest to this fact.