The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (27 page)

At first I would only go to Ramallah by taxi and with a driver I knew personally, but before long I began taking a Palestinian bus from Arab East Jerusalem. Thanks to Jamal I became comfortable traveling alone in the West Bank, wandering the streets of Ramallah or Bethlehem or even the Deheishe Refugee Camp. Like this, I saw yet another aspect of Palestinian life that most Israelis don’t imagine: the relative normalcy. Because the day-to-day details of our lives are the same: children returning home from school, licking ice cream and laughing; young girls busy texting on their cell phones; people going about their life as people do everywhere. This was how I became convinced, beyond any words or ideology, that we are similar and that we can prosper together once we overcome the bitter, brutal regime of Zionism. That Israeli and Palestinian people can create a new political reality within the framework of one state, one democracy in which they live as equals. It was a clear departure from what my father believed the solution would be, indeed from what most people think the solution will be, but it took into consideration aspects of Palestinian life of which my father was not aware.

Thanks to Jamal, I have also learned a good deal about the lives of Palestinians in prison—a topic largely ignored by Israelis and the outside world. He has described to me in detail the prisoners’ system for mentoring new inmates and maintaining order.

“The older prisoners would be responsible for the new, younger prisoners. They would give them books to study and teach them about the routine in the prison. The
Fatah
prisoners, who were the majority of the prisoners, had a routine in place and that routine dictated how we conducted our lives and gave us structure.”

Swearing and fighting were not allowed. When someone broke the rules, the prisoners themselves administered trials and penalties.

“Once there was a prisoner that was very hotheaded,” Jamal recalled. “I came and talked to him. I told him to stay calm, that fighting was not permitted, and he needed to learn to work things out and get along with the other inmates. But he didn’t listen.” This prisoner got in a fight and pulled out a knife on a fellow prisoner. Jamal told me that the penalty was to break the two or three fingers this prisoner used to hold the knife. “It was very hard to do, and no one wanted to carry out the sentence. But the prison authorities did not care for us, and we had to keep the order or we would have complete chaos.”

The prisoners had daily study sessions mandated by the prisoners themselves. Time was allocated for exercise, lectures, and political meetings. “We held elections on a regular basis to elect our representatives and people who carried out different roles in the prison. We also had elections where we decided on issues that pertain to our lives and to the general Palestinian political life outside the prison.”

Dr. Maya Rosenfeld, a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute at the Hebrew University and an expert on the social and political history of the Palestinians in Palestine and the diaspora, has written:

None of the organizations and movements that gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s…was able to implant and sustain equally comprehensive programs and institutions as those that were upheld by the prisoners’ organization.

Also according to Dr. Rosenfeld:

The flagship of the prisoners’ movement…was in the sphere of education. Education programs…(history, languages, sciences) and studies of political theory and ideology were introduced through the fostering and indeed through the enforcement of daily schedules that allocated special time slots for individual studies, instructed reading, and group discussions…political meetings for the discussion of current (external and internal) affairs and so forth.
³

The prisoners studied Hebrew, Israeli history, the development of Zionism, and other national movements. Prisoners that I met, Jamal included, all spoke excellent Hebrew and English and were better acquainted with the writings of major Israeli and Jewish figures than most Israelis I know.

Another former prisoner told me, “The books were brought in from outside by other prisoners. From time to time the prison authorities would search our rooms and confiscate our books. When that happened, those of us who had already read the books would teach them orally to the other prisoners.”

After he was released, Jamal worked as a translator for the PLO headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House. His boss was Faisal Husseini, one of the most admired Palestinian leaders and a member of the Jerusalem nobility, as it were. He was the son of Abdel Kader Husseini, the Palestinian leader who was killed in the battle of The Kastel in 1948. The Orient House was later closed by Israel because its activities were deemed illegal. Jamal honed his Hebrew there and developed excellent skills as a translator.

Unfortunately, Jamal is not permitted to enter Israel under any circumstances. So, for years now we have had the same routine. I call him from Jerusalem as soon as I get to my mother’s house. We set a time to meet and then I take the bus from East Jerusalem to Ramallah, where Jamal waits for me. We meet with hugs and kisses on the cheeks. Since we are great friends, it is always at least four kisses. Then Jamal takes me to see people, places or events he thinks would be interesting.

The stories about the life of prisoners continued to fascinate me. They reminded me of stories relayed by Nelson Mandela in his memoir,
Long Walk to Freedom
, and I wanted to know more. I knew that Bassam Aramin too was arrested and a leader of the
Fatah
prisoners while he sat in prison. I met Bassam several times with Jamal and over time I got to know him well. He and my nephew Elik were involved together in Combatants for Peace and over the years our families became close.

I will never forget the first time I saw Bassam. It was in A-Ram, a town between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and there must have been close to 100 people present, most of them former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian resistance fighters. They were in the process of forming an organization dedicated to reconciliation called Combatants for Peace. I noticed one Palestinian gentleman, around 35 years old with a heavy limp, walking around looking quite serious. I thought, what is it about this man that makes him stand out? Was it his limp, his severe countenance, or the fact that he was impeccably dressed in a suit and tie in the midst of a crowd of mostly jeans and t-shirts? When everyone was seated, he walked up to the head of the table and sat down.

When he rose to speak, he made his remarks in Arabic and another Palestinian member of the group simultaneously translated into Hebrew. At one point Bassam stopped talking, gave the translator a stern look, and said something to him in Arabic. It turned out the translator misrepresented what Bassam was saying. The translator apologized and Bassam made the correction, restating his point in perfect Hebrew. Bassam spoke about the need for an ongoing, relentless struggle against the Israeli occupation, and about the criminal treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, and he made it amply clear that he believed the struggle should be executed through non-violent means.

It turned out the limp was a result of childhood polio. “When I was a child growing up there were four other boys in my class in school who had polio and they ended up with a limp or some other form of physical disability. I used to look at them and think to myself, how sad it must be for them to have that terrible limp. I never thought that I had a limp, too.”

When I had the chance, I asked him why he was arrested, and about his life in prison. “We called ourselves freedom fighters,” Bassam told me, “but the outside world said we were terrorists. We began by throwing stones and empty bottles at the army. Then, one day we came across some old, discarded hand grenades and we decided to throw them at the Israeli army jeeps. Two grenades exploded but no one was injured. The soldiers came after us and we tried to run, but I could not run
very fast with my limp, and they caught me. So in 1985, at the age of seventeen, I received a seven-year prison sentence.

“In prison we were treated like heroes by other prisoners, but our jailers taught us how to continue hating and resisting. On October 1, 1987, I was among 120 prisoners, all of us teenage boys waiting to go into the dining room, when the alarms suddenly went off. About a hundred armed soldiers appeared and ordered us to strip naked. They beat us until we could hardly stand. I was held the longest and beaten the hardest. What hurt me more than anything was that the soldiers were smiling the entire time.”

Bassam spent years as an underground leader within the prison, and prison authorities suspected he was engaged in illegal political activities. So he was moved from prison to prison to see if this would disturb his leadership. “They kept asking if I was the leader and I said no. I am just a little guy with a bad limp, what kind of leader can I be? I showed no emotion when they moved me around from one prison to another, and I said nothing. Finally the prison authorities gave up and returned me to my original cell.”

“Believe it or not…” He paused as I was listening to his every word after dinner one night at my house. “That day, when I returned to my cell, I was even happier than the day I was released from prison.” Bassam had concealed all of his correspondence with other prisoners and prison leaders under the floor of that original cell.

Both Jamal and Bassam have an abundance of calm and patience that never ceases to amaze me. In encounters with Israeli soldiers, they keep their cool and often engage them in the sorts of intelligent conversations that these young soldiers
probably never imagined they would have with Palestinians. Their caring and empathy are far stronger than any anger they might be carrying. Both display a desire to reach out and help the “other side” see through the veil of fear, a fear they know the young soldiers feel as they sit in their posts watching out for the next suicide bomber.

Bassam’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir
.

Bassam’s most painful moment would come two years after I met him. On January 16, 2007, as Bassam’s two daughters, 10-year-old Abir and 12-year-old Arin, were walking home from school, an Israeli soldier took aim and shot Abir in the head. Arin would later describe how Abir suddenly flew out of her hand and lay bleeding on the ground.

I don’t recall how I heard the news, but I was under the impression that Abir was seriously wounded, and that there was hope. I immediately called Bassam at the hospital to ask how Abir was doing.

“She just died,” he said quietly.

I was so overwhelmed by emotion I did not know what to do or say. Once again I found myself separated by oceans from people I love when I needed to be beside them.

1
Ansar was the name given by Palestinian prisoners to Ktsiot Prison in the Negev Desert.

2
“Barghouti” is a very common Palestinian surname; none of these men are closely related.