The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (21 page)

In January of 2003, Rotarian friends had invited Nader and I to join a new committee being formed by Rotary district 5340, the district to which both of our clubs belonged. It was called Pathways to Peace and its mission was to highlight Rotary’s peace-building efforts. I thought this new committee presented some good opportunities for us, and indeed it did. Rotary is an organization made up of people who take on impossible tasks and make them happen, and those were just the kind of people with whom we needed to be in touch.

By this point, I’d been participating in dialogue groups for a couple of years, and Nader and I had been speaking together for some time. After each talk people would come up to us, often with tears in their eyes: “What you do is so wonderful, how can I help?” Or, “Please keep up this wonderful partnership, you give me hope.” And, “Let me know if there is anything I can do.” We gave a talk at a Rotary seminar at the Salk Institute near UCSD, and as soon as we were done people came over to us and said, “Where is the pitch? Why are you not asking for money or something that will help you get something started?”

These comments, in addition to the fact that I was beginning to feel restless in my limited peace-promoting roles, made me think it was time to act, to do something
beyond participating in dialogue and talk. But what? Nader and I were having lunch at Aladdin’s restaurant in San Diego one day when I brought up the subject.

“I feel the same way,” Nader agreed. “We need to do more than talk.”

Our Rotary district was wrapping up a project to send wheelchairs to the Republic of Malawi, and I said to Nader, “Why not wheelchairs?” I had done some research and learned that there was a desperate need for wheelchairs among Israelis and Palestinians. Gaza alone needed over 20,000 wheelchairs at the time. “Maybe we can do ‘Wheelchairs to the Holy Land’?” We agreed to raise money for 1,000 chairs, 500 hundred for Israelis and 500 hundred for Palestinians.

We went with this idea to the Pathways to Peace Committee, and everyone liked it. Mike Bardin, one of the co-chairs of the committee, said, “It’s a great idea, but be careful, the devil is in the details,” and he was right.

We decided that the majority of the funding would come from individual Rotarians who would contribute directly to the project, which we did end up calling “Wheelchairs to the Holy Land.” We spoke at Rotary club meetings for more than a year raising the money. Some people were moved to tears seeing the two of us standing side by side, addressing the issues respectfully as friends and partners. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Some of the presentations were tricky, and we had to navigate through some difficult questions: Why should we help those Palestinian terrorists, when they can’t even help themselves? Why do Israelis get half when clearly Palestinians are in much greater need? It helped that we gave the presentations together. We knew we were walking a fine line and wanted to stay away from politics as much as possible and focus on the human aspect.

On March 22, 2004, I’d just landed at the San Diego airport returning from a trip, when Nader called, sounding very upset. “Go home and listen to the news,” he said.

An Israeli Apache helicopter shot three missiles and killed the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as he was wheeled out after morning prayer at a Gaza mosque. Yassin, an aged quadriplegic, was the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. According to reports, seven bystanders were killed, including his two bodyguards. An additional 12 bystanders were injured, among them Yassin’s two sons. “How can we keep talking while this is going on?” Nader pleaded. “I want you to cancel tomorrow’s presentation, I can’t do this anymore.” We had a presentation the following day that had been scheduled months in advance.

“Tell them how hard it is, tell them how you feel about the assassination of Sheikh Yassin,” I suggested. “We don’t have to pretend that all is well. If all was well we wouldn’t have to do this work.” I convinced Nader to do the presentation as planned, and he later agreed that it was the right thing to do. Still, it was not easy for him.

When we spoke at the Coronado Rotary club, my club, a huge crowd gathered to hear us. The club meets at the Hotel Del Coronado and has around 200 members. In an average meeting about 100 members show up, and if the program is a good one
then more will come. This time, extra chairs and tables were brought into the hall to accommodate the seemingly endless influx of members and guests. Nader showed up sick, running a high fever. “I will be fine, don’t worry, I will never let you down.”

The presentation went well. The slideshow worked smoothly, I was feeling relaxed, and the mood in the club was generous and supportive. Then as the Q&A session was wrapping up, a question came straight out of left field: “What do you say about Yasser Arafat?” We had wanted to stay away from political issues as much as possible, and no topic was more politically divisive than Yasser Arafat. Half the world—and, I suspected, most of the people present at our presentation—saw him as a villain. The other half, including me, did not. I stepped back to collect my thoughts; there seemed to be no way to respond without pissing someone off.

Then Nader stepped up to the microphone. “Yasser Arafat,” he said, “he is just a man. Sitting in a small room with a cell phone. All he can do is order pizza.” He brought the house down. It was our most successful presentation in terms of raising funds.

One local youth ministry approached us wanting to support our project. They were so sincere and enthusiastic that at first it seemed too good to be true. But it wasn’t. They put together a “Walk for Wheelchairs” fundraiser for us and raised a total of $8,000, much of which they gave us in bags of change from people of very little means who believed in our cause.

We also applied for a matching grant from Rotary International and were approved for $25,000, which brought us to a total of $84,000. This translated to 1,280 wheelchairs, or four shipping containers. We were very, very happy. We were told that previous Rotary projects like ours had purchased the chairs from the Wheelchair Foundation (TWF), a company that matched donations and arranged for the chairs to be built and shipped.

After we sent the money to TWF, I received a receipt for $84,000 and a note saying, “Thank you for raising money to send wheelchairs to help children in Israel.” I called immediately to correct them: “We specifically stated that half the wheelchairs were going to Israel and half to the Palestinian Authority.”

It took several e-mail messages and phone calls to realize that this problem was not going away. Someone had decided to thwart the Palestinian half of the project. Regardless of how many times I explained that the whole premise of the project was full equality between Israelis and Palestinians—one dollar for Palestinians, one for Israelis—I could not get through to anyone.

I finally spoke to the company’s president, and he promised he would look into it. We were on the phone several times. I was insistent: “We are not going to compromise on this issue. I have an interview tomorrow with the
San Diego Union-Tribune
, and I have no problem telling them your organization jeopardized the project. Hundreds of people gave us their money because we promised equality and fairness.”

Nader Elbanna and one of the beneficiaries of our wheelchair outreach
.

He got back to me that day saying they would go ahead with our project, but his company would only be responsible for delivering the chairs to the nearest Israeli port. It would be up to us to get the wheelchairs into the West Bank. With the help of an American chapter of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher, a humanitarian nongovernmental organization (NGO), we secured a home for the Palestinian chairs at the Arab Rehabilitation Hospital in Beit Jala near Bethlehem, as well as someone to pick up and deliver the chairs.

What I told the people at the Wheelchair Foundation was true. In May of 2006, John Wilkens, a senior reporter with
The San Diego Union-Tribune
²
had contacted me saying he wanted to do a story about our project. It just so happened that we met on Nader’s birthday.

I knew that John Wilkens pieces were always major stories but I was still unprepared for what I saw when I opened the Sunday paper: a huge photo of Nader and me posing together and a feature-length story including smaller photos from previous visits to the Middle East that I had given John. I received calls from many Jewish and non-Jewish friends who saw the story and congratulated us for it. One particular moving phone call came from Dr. Stephen Drossman, the doctor who had delivered our children.

But then, in the summer of 2006, Israel launched a large military operation into South Lebanon. This led to rocket retaliation by Hezbollah
³
, and the temporary
closure of Israel’s northern port in Haifa. The people at the Wheelchair Foundation wanted to call the whole thing off again. Once more, I insisted we couldn’t. Israel had two ports in the south, Ashkelon and Ashdod, either of which would serve our purposes just as well.

In the end, the chairs arrived in Ashdod in December 2006, one month ahead of schedule. The two containers addressed to the Israeli NGO Yad Sarah and the Rotary club of Nazareth had no problem clearing customs and reaching their destinations.

The two containers intended for the Palestinian Authority did not fare as well. The Israeli authorities stated security considerations, and they held the containers for two months. It took the American consulate’s intervention and a great deal of persistence, mostly by our good friend Chuck Radloff, who happened to be in Israel at the time and saw to it that the job got done. At last, thanks to Muna Katan, who was instrumental in getting the chairs to their destination and volunteered to pay the $7,000 in holding fees that the Israeli authorities charged us, the two containers reached the Rehabilitation Hospital in Beit Jala. Our mission was truly accomplished.

1
Ongoing clashes between Jordanian forces and Palestinian
fedayeen
led to a full civil war in September of 1970, the result of which was the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan. Palestinians who served in the Jordanian army refused to fight against their Palestinian brothers and were discharged from the army.

2
The San Diego Union-Tribune
is now the
U-T San Diego
.

3
Hezbollah is a Shi’a Islamic group based in Lebanon. Its militia is credited in part with forcing the Israeli military to end its occupation of southern Lebanon.

In 2003, Nader was granted a U.S. passport and was finally eligible to return to his homeland, as a tourist, for the first time after more than fifty years in exile. Gila and I were in Israel at the time, so we decided to drive up to Nazareth to visit him and meet his extended family.

If anyone had asked me then whether I was afraid of Arabs, or of visiting an Arab city or country, I would have said, “No, of course not. Why should I be?” I was an open-minded person, wasn’t I? And my father was Matti Peled, for God’s sake—I knew as well as anyone else that not all Palestinians were terrorists. So it came as a real shock when, that summer, I realized just how deeply embedded my fear was.

Driving from Jerusalem toward the Galilee in the north, the scenery was beautiful. The roads were wide, and the Palestinian towns we saw along the way were pretty in their way: minarets rising prominently in the sky; older homes snuggling close together and the more affluent ones featuring the reddish tint of “Jerusalem stone.”

However, as soon as we entered the city of Nazareth, a sense of alienation descended upon me like a dark cloud. The street signs and billboards screamed at me in Arabic. I realized I was surrounded by Arabs, and suddenly everything spelled danger. I was sure that we stood out as clueless foreigners. Still, I couldn’t have put my finger on it, what it was exactly that I feared. Would they
(they!)
attack us? Was there a mob somewhere waiting to assault Jews? I realize now that, despite my politics, I was indeed afraid, and that this fear existed deep in the recesses of my mind, where I can only guess it was nurtured for years. Moreover, I had to exercise enormous control to prevent it from consuming me.

We looked for the home of Abu Najib, Nader’s oldest uncle, and I soon realized I had no idea how to find it in this city that, at the time, was completely foreign to me.

“We have to stop and ask for directions,” I admitted to Gila reluctantly.

My wife looked at me. “But who should we ask? Is it safe for us to get out of the car?”

The thought of admitting we were lost and vulnerable in this seemingly hostile environment seemed tantamount to inviting an assault. In that moment, we
became the defenseless Jews that we were brought up to be, just like our forefathers in the ghettos of Eastern Europe.

But what choice did we have? “We have to trust somebody or face the absurd prospect of giving up and returning to Jerusalem,” I said.

Logic reminded me that I had been active in dialogue groups for a couple of years in California, and there was certainly no reason to fear talking with Palestinians in my own country. But
was
this my own country? Nazareth looked nothing like the country I knew. The buildings were older, the roads were narrower and more crowded, signs pointed to ancient Christian sites, and the conversations that floated above the streets were all in Arabic. It was a dense and chaotic place, mostly because it had had nowhere to expand—the reality in many Palestinian towns because Israel took so much of their land. Regardless, it was not the Israel I was familiar with. Not even the Israeli Police could be found in Nazareth.

I took a deep breath, stopped the car, and asked a young man for directions. He didn’t know where the house was, so he started asking people around him.

Great, I thought, now everyone knows that we are Jews and we are lost.

The young man eventually found someone who could direct us to the house. He spoke to us in Hebrew, which in hindsight shouldn’t have surprised me because we were in Israel after all. He helped us as much as he could, leaving his shop to come out and point us in the right direction.

We had to stop and ask for directions several more times, and each time it became easier. People were either indifferent to our presence or eager to help us out and make us feel welcome. I couldn’t help thinking,
these people are nice
. Which more than anything, showed how different I felt from “these people.” It wasn’t until much later that I realized the significance of this moment—not so much in terms of overcoming my fears, but in terms of realizing and accepting that I
had
fears in spite of who I thought I was.

We finally made our way to the home of Abu Najib. It was a large house, several stories high, and the entire family was gathered in the dining room. Two older cousins of Nader, seated by the doorway, were performing what Nader told me later were ancient songs to welcome a son back from exile. The celebrations were not for us but for Nader, who had not seen his family in decades. A table was laid with food and children were everywhere.

We were welcomed immediately and made to feel at home, and I could not help notice the absence of the more Western restraints that my culture had adopted and that typically made visitors less comfortable when visiting people for the first time. When the meal was over and the excitement subsided, Nader took us to see members of the Nazareth Rotary Club, one of the oldest and most active Rotary clubs in the Middle East. The club had programs to build health clinics, sponsor Boy Scout troops, and deliver aid to people in the West Bank, among many other projects.

When Nader introduced me, he said, “Do you know who Miko’s father is? Matti Peled.”

Their faces lit up.

“Abu Salaam!” they said. Father of Peace. “Of course we know Abu Salaam.”

Nader looked at me and beamed.

This was the first time I heard my father called by that name. I was aware, of course, that he’d worked closely with Palestinians in Israel and was well known in the Palestinian-Israeli community. But it didn’t hit me until then how much of an impact his involvement had really made. Everywhere I traveled, both inside Israel and in the West Bank, I would hear my father referred to as
Abu Salaam
, as people shook my hand with great emotion. I heard stories for the first time about how he vehemently opposed the massive land confiscations Palestinians had to endure, helped those who had legal issues, and spoke out against injustices when people were detained or deported. The truth is that at the time I didn’t know the full extent of what my father did for peace and what it meant to so many people.

Gila and I spent the entire day in Nazareth, seeing what the city had to offer. We went to Nazareth Village, a re-creation of what Nazareth was like in the time that Jesus lived. We visited some of the lovely churches and hostels, like Saint Gabriel, that make up the Nazareth landscape. We returned to Jerusalem late at night, and I felt as though a heavy load had been lifted off my chest. It was a relief from the strain of fear.

The next day Nader and his family came to visit Jerusalem and met us at my mother’s home in Motza. I showed Nader my father’s study, which my mother keeps neat and tidy, where the photos of Dr. Issam Sartawi and David Ben-Gurion still hang side by side.

Once you have developed trust, it allows you to cultivate more trust. You’ve got to really get out of your comfort zone and meet it halfway. This was true in every case I experienced, from that first trip to Majeed Khoury’s house in San Diego, through the visit to Nazareth, and into the next phase of my journey—the occupied West Bank.

Now that I’d become aware of the fear in my life, I wanted to get rid of it once and for all. If there was ever to be peace, there had to be complete trust, and that can only come through individuals reaching across, if not breaking down, the wall of fear. But Israeli security regulations made it impossible to reach out to the other side without breaking the law. Under Israeli law, it is illegal for Israelis to visit any place within Area A, a designation for presumably hostile territories that includes all the main cities in the West Bank (supposedly under complete Palestinian control). It infuriated me that I wasn’t allowed to visit people because they lived on the other side of a border neither one of us had any part in creating.
In fact I was beginning to believe that the security reasons cited by the Israeli officials for the wall and the checkpoints, which were keeping us from visiting and getting to know people on the “other side,” were merely scare tactics designed to prolong the conflict.

This sign is placed at every point of entry into Palestinian controlled areas: “Entry for Israelis into Area A is Forbidden, Dangerous, and Constitutes a Felony!!”

So when Rami and Nurit said they were making a rare trip to see friends in a Palestinian town called Beit Ummar, near Hebron, I jumped at the chance to join them. They were taking their son Yigal, Smadar’s younger brother, who was 11 years old at the time. I asked my eldest son Eitan, who was nine, if he wanted to join us, and he said sure.

It would be my first visit to the West Bank since my military service, and I took the trip against the express concerns of many people who were dear to me. My sister Ossi was furious. “Never mind you taking stupid risks, but taking a child to a hostile place? Have you lost your mind?” Gila and my mother were at a loss: talking about peace and justice was well and good but venturing into “enemy territory,” which is how most Israelis view the West Bank, was reckless. In the end I prevailed, and we left for what was to be the first of many visits to Beit Ummar.

We were going to see Khaled and Ali Abu Awwad, two brothers whom Rami and Nurit knew from the Bereaved Families Forum. Because Israel built modern highways leading into the West Bank for the use of Israeli settlers, the drive there was very smooth. Travel on most of these roads is prohibited for Palestinians, however, and it is not until you are quite close to Beit Ummar that you begin to
notice the green Palestinian license plates, easily distinguishable from the yellow Israel plates.

When we arrived, Ali was waiting for us on the porch, which was emblazoned with a sticker in Hebrew that read: “It will not end until we talk to one another.” Eitan and Yigal played with the other kids who were there, and we just sat and chatted. Beit Ummar is an agricultural town noted for its many grapevines and its specialties of stuffed grape leaves and a grape syrup called
dibs
. It also has hundreds of cherry, plum, apple, and olive trees.

The real process of getting to know one another would take place over the course of several years, and the bonds that tie my family with the Abu Awwad family become ever deeper with each year. Khaled has the quality of being the natural leader of any space he occupies. He has jet-black hair and an olive complexion, and his face is serious and agonized like the hero of a Greek tragedy, but not harsh. The depth of his Hebrew is enviable, and hearing him speak you might think he spent years in the university studying it, but he didn’t.

Ali is tall and skinny with curly black hair, an energetic organizer who fiercely believes in principled non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Both brothers spent time in Israeli prisons for their role in the first
Intifada
, the first Palestinian Uprising. Their mother, Fatima Abu Awwad was an admired leader of the
Fatah
cell in Beit Ummar and she spent a great deal of time in and out of prison.

In the fall of 2000, at the beginning of the second
Intifada
, Israeli settlers shot Ali in the leg. While he was in Saudi Arabia getting treatment, and Khaled was visiting him, they got word that their older brother Yusef, 31 years old, married, and the father of two children, had been shot. They were told he was injured, but when they got home they heard that a soldier with whom Yusef had apparently argued shot him point blank and killed him. This took place at the checkpoint at the entrance to Beit Ummar.

A few months later, in February 2001, Israel settlers shot and killed another brother, Saed, 14 years old. Neither crime was investigated, nor was anyone ever brought to justice. Beit Ummar has many similar stories.

We spent all afternoon together in Beit Ummar. Nurit wanted to make sure we got there after lunch but before dinner, so they wouldn’t feel they had to feed us. When we arrived, she insisted we were only going to have tea.