By Ami Isseroff
A new slogan was born at this year's Support Israel campaign in the U.S: "I support Israel and Palestine." It could be more than a slogan. It could be the start of a whole new way of looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the same spirit, Father Elias Chakour, a Palestinian priest, made these remarks at commencement exercises at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia:
"You who live in the United States, if you are pro-Israel, on behalf of Palestinian children I call unto you: give further friendship to Israel. They need your friendship.
"But stop interpreting that friendship as an automatic antipathy against me, the Palestinian who is paying the bill for what others have done against my beloved Jewish brothers and sisters in the Holocaust and Auschwitz and elsewhere.
"And if you have been enlightened enough to take the side of the Palestinians -- oh, bless your hearts - take our side, because for once you will be on the right side, right?
"But if taking our side would mean to become one-sided against my Jewish brothers and sisters, back off. We do not need such friendship. We need one more common friend. We do not need one more enemy, for God's sake."
Supporting Israel and Palestine is a win-win program that all decent friends of peace should advocate. It makes it clear to audiences on both sides that the speaker is not a traitor or an enemy, but someone who supports their side.
Supporting Israel and Palestine means supporting a way for both people to live together. At this time, it must mean all of the following together:
- Support for the Mitchell Plan as a whole -- freezing settlements alone or stopping the violence alone will not support both Israel and Palestine. Doing both will help both people. Both together can open the way to further negotiations and the beginning of hope.
- An end to the occupation -- the occupation is not compatible with support for Palestine.
- An end to the violence -- the violence is hurting both Israel and Palestine. There will be no progress toward peace until the violence stops, and both peoples desperately need peace.
- An end to the closure -- collective punishment is hurting innocent Palestinians, and damaging Israel's image. It is bad for Israel and Palestine.
- An end to incitement -- plans for destroying Israel and cries to "kill the Jews wherever you find them" are not support for Israel.
- An end to the blacklists and anti-normalization -- Israel and Palestine can only live together if their people communicate with each other. The people who compile the blacklists are the ones who yell the loudest about "Apartheid." Anti-normalization and blacklists must result in Apartheid.
- Support for democracy in Palestine -- tyranny, corruption and religious fanaticism do not help Palestine.
"Support Israel and Palestine" is a good slogan. "Peace process" was also a good slogan. Each side however, took it to mean different things. Each leadership wanted to use the peace to continue the struggle by other methods. For the majority of Israelis, "peace" meant legitimization of the occupation and its perpetuation. For the majority of Palestinians, "peace" meant destroying Israel through the right of return -- a return to Haifa and Tel Aviv.
There is an equal danger that "Support Israel and Palestine" will be misunderstood and misused. People hear and understand whatever they want to hear and understand.
An anti-Zionist radical wrote to me that "end the occupation" is exactly the same as "Support Israel and Palestine." It is not, just as it is not the same to say that one side should stop fighting (surrender) as it is to say that both sides should stop fighting (peace).
"End the occupation" alone or "Stop the violence" alone are not half of supporting Israel and Palestine, but the opposite, a call on one side or the other to admit defeat.
In the perception of the Palestinian public, rightly or wrongly, the violence is the only way to get Israel to accept fair terms for Palestine.
In the eyes of the Israeli public, the occupation is the only way to prevent the Palestinians from establishing a base for destroying Israel. Israelis point out that "The occupation" according to Hamas, extends to Haifa and Jaffa and Tel-Aviv and Beersheva -- to all of Israel in fact. To most Israelis and many Palestinians, "End the occupation" means end Israel.
The only way to change those perceptions is to get Israelis to speak out against the occupation in large numbers, and, equally, to get Palestinians to speak out against boycotts, Hamas, terror and abuse of the right of return in large numbers.
Support for Israel and Palestine does not mean support either for the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government or for those of Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.
We should not delude ourselves. Behind the words of both leaderships, their goals are not conducive to peace or support for the real needs of their peoples. Both sides are embarked on a course that is ultimately "bad for the Jews" and bad for the Palestinians.
"Support Israel and Palestine" can only be a successful rallying cry if it is adopted by Palestinians and Israelis. The Israeli peace movement cannot hope to gain back any real acceptance in Israel if it continues to offer uncritical and unreciprocated solidarity to Palestinians. Peace has to work both ways. Solidarity and support has to work both ways. Otherwise, calls of the Israeli peace movement to "End the occupation" are viewed at best as unrealistic by most of the Israeli public.
Support for Israel and Palestine means support for nonviolence and for self-determination for both peoples. Anyone who cannot support both principles is not a friend of peace. Anyone who really wants to end the conflict and the suffering will get behind both principles wholeheartedly.
That could be the beginning of hope for a new beginning.
Ami Isseroff is director of MidEast Web and editor of PeaceWatch, a web-based journal.
More Britons support Palestinians, says poll
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian
British voters who say they are more sympathetic towards the Palestinians outnumber by a factor of two to one those who say they support Israel, according to the findings of this month's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.
But only a minority of British voters have a firm view on the issue, with 28% backing the Palestinians and 14% supporting Israel.
For while those who have a committed view of the Middle East conflict tilt towards the Palestinian cause, the ICM survey shows that the overwhelming majority of British voters take a more neutral approach.
Some 14% of those polled said they sympathised equally with the plight of both Israelis and Palestinians, a further 23% said they sympathised with neither side and 20% declined to answer the question, which asked who they sympathised with more, by replying "don't know".
The poll shows that pro-Palestinian sympathies are stronger among Labour voters (32% back the Palestinians to 14% for Israel) and Liberal Democrat voters (40% to 11%) than among Conservative supporters (23% to 16%). Men are also more likely to sympathise with the Palestinian cause than women.
The findings mark a sea change in British attitudes towards the Middle East over the past 20 years and are in line with recent polls in France, Germany and Italy which show that European public opinion is generally more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
It is, however, in sharp contrast to recent American polls which have shown pro-Israeli sentiment in the US strengthening since September 11 to 41% support for Israel and just 13% support for the Palestinians.
However British voters dislike Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as much, if not more, than the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Asked if they had favourable or unfavourable view of Arafat and Sharon, 54% said they didn't like Arafat and 50% said they didn't like Sharon.
A majority of British voters (52%) agreed that the US could do more to bring about a peace settlement. Only 35% said they believed the Americans were doing as much as they could.
But while there is a demand for the Americans to bring more pressure to bear there is not much support for the idea of imposing sanctions, either on the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority. Asked if Britain should impose sanctions, such as cutting off aid or blocking military exports, 39% said such action should be taken against Israel and 33% thought sanctions should be taken against the PA.
ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,000 Britons aged over 18 by telephone between April 20 and 21. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.
Perhaps blood is the only way to peace in Palestine
'Israeli democracy makes it possible to remove failed leaders, and Ariel Sharon looks like one'
Bruce Anderson
Shootings, bombers, slaughter, funerals; endless faces distorted by grief, rage and hate: every news broadcast appears to bring fresh reasons for despair, about the Middle East in particular and human affairs in general. Our natural tendency to recoil in incomprehension from all the savagery, yet most of the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine are rational and educated. They would wish higher goals from life than standing by impotently while children are butchered. Now, they see their wishes turned to mockery. Men of goodwill have never seemed more helpless; the prospect of peace more hopeless.
Yet this may not necessarily be so. Though it might sound like a blend of cynicism, Panglossianism and cold-heartedness, it is possible to argue that the killing was a necessary phase; that the road to peace in Israel/Palestine could only be discovered by wading through blood.
A few months ago, both sides appeared to believe that they could win. The Palestinians thought that if they could kill enough Jews, they would break Israel's will; the Israelis returned the compliment. Beyond all this lay deeper strategic errors. Whatever their leaders' occasional public statements for Western consumption, most Palestinians did not accept Israel's right to exist. Despite the Israeli state's strength, many Palestinians had convinced themselves that it was just another Crusader kingdom which would inevitably suffer the fate of its predecessors, and that if the Palestinians were prepared to endure and resist for long enough, the problem of Israel would go away.
A lot of Israelis made a parallel misjudgement. A few years ago, General Ariel Sharon declared that a Palestinian state already existed; its name was Jordan. He later said that he had changed his mind, without convincing everyone of his sincerity. But whatever Prime Minister Sharon claims to think, many Israelis have persuaded themselves that they could progressively take over the West Bank. Perhaps the Palestinians would leave; perhaps they would content themselves with ever-shrinking cantonments: either way, the problem would be manageable.
Both sides underrated the other, thinking events were on their side. As long as these illusions prevailed, a lasting settlement was not a prospect. And a terrible lesson is to be drawn from the history of such illusions -- the only way to eradicate them is to drown them in blood.
We must now hope that enough blood has been spilt; that enough people on both sides are drawing back in horror, determined to force their respective leaders to break the cycle of retaliation. If that is so, the Americans could have a crucial role to play.
The Bush administration came to power with a justified reluctance to indulge in Middle Eastern grandstanding. It had observed the way in which president Bill Clinton had tried to exploit the region in order to enhance his place in history. By pressuring the two sides and forcing them to a premature conclusion, Mr Clinton had set back peace. The Bush team was determined not to imitate this irresponsibility.
That was well and good, but the new administration over-corrected. It did not seem to realise that without a peace process, an anti-peace process would emerge. There is no scope for a diplomatic vacuum.
That said, the President made the right decision when he recalled his special envoy, Anthony Zinni. A mediator who has nothing to mediate will rapidly lose credibility. But this is the right psychological moment for Mr Zinni to return. Horror must surely lend momentum to his efforts.
So might Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The Abdullah plan -- a proper Palestinian state in exchange for full Arab recognition of Israel -- is the most hopeful development in recent years, especially given its provenance.
Saudi Arabia is riven by contradictions. It is ruled by proud, often arrogant, desert princes who are fearful of their own people and lack confidence in their own legitimacy; who are pro-Western Islamic fundamentalists; who are pleasure-loving upholders of sharia law. The usually results in a reluctance to take a leading role and an overmastering desire to keep in with everyone. In the front office, Saudis will assure the Americans of support; at the back door, they will be bribing Muslim extremists to divert their activities from the Kingdom. So it is surprising that Prince Abdullah found the courage to take an initiative which is bound to be controversial. He now deserves a proper response. The Abdullah plan -- which is similar to the Oslo accords -- is a sound basis for a peace deal, as is widely acknowledged in Washington. Even at the moments of his greatest anti-terrorist solidarity with the Israeli Government, President Bush has always argued that there must be a Palestinian state. The question is whether Mr Zinni can now find enough local support to make progress.
The immediate indications are not favourable. Yasser Arafat is long past his prime, such as that ever was. He was always more gifted in immobilism than in political imagination. Now that he is ageing and failing in health, this is unlikely to change.
His physical survival is important. God help the region were he to fall victim to a stray Israeli missile, let along a deliberate one. Even if he were to die in his bed from impeccably natural of causes, 90 per cent of the Arab world would hold the Israelis responsible. Assuming he lives, it is to be hoped that the Arab states and the Americans will find a way of minimising his obstructive qualities. But this might prove to be the triumph of hope over experience.
Israeli democracy makes it possible to remove failed leaders, and Mr Sharon looks like a one-term prime minister. Nothing in his previous record suggested that he would make a successful premier, and so it has proved. An outstanding tank commander, he is no good at problems which cannot be solved by tank warfare. General Sharon is a Patton, not an Eisenhower.
His likely successor is Benjamin Netanyahu, whose previous premiership ended in failure and discredit. In retrospect, however, his record is not as bad as it seemed at the time. He may have brought no improvement in diplomacy or security, but at least he oversaw no deterioration.
Mr Netanyahu is a man of the Right, which could help him to strike a deal. So will the exhaustion and the blood-letting. In the immediate aftermath of a Palestinian atrocity, many Israelis are ready to give way to emotion and call for further repression. But as the smoke clears, so does judgement. Israelis are growing more aware that they have to reach a modus vivendi with the Palestinians. That must mean major concessions on the settlements.
None of this will be easy. Whenever one considers the obstacles to peace in detail, they always seem insuperable. Yet a tide of blood can sweep away the most formidable of obstacles. But it is a melancholy comment on the inability of human beings to transcend their barbaric origins that the handshake which might eventually seal a peace settlement will have to be clasped across the graves of murdered children.
Inside The Death Camp
Uri Avnery,
There is full agreement between all those who were in the Jenin refugee camp on only one thing. A week after the end of the fighting, foreign journalists and IDF soldiers, UN representatives and hired hacks in the Israeli media, members of the welfare organizations and government propagandists all report that a terrible stench of decomposing bodies lingers everywhere.
Apart from that there is no agreement on anything. The Palestinians speak about a massacre amounting to a second Sabra and Shatila. The IDF speak about hard fighting, in which "the most humane army in the world" did not intentionally hurt even one single civilian. The Palestinians speak about hundreds of dead, the Minister of Defense asserts categorically that exactly 43 were killed.
So what is the truth? The simple answer is: nobody knows. Nobody can possibly know.
The truth lies buried under the debris, and it smells atrociously.
But some facts are uncontestable. They are sufficient for drawing conclusions.
First: During two weeks of fighting, the IDF did not allow any journalist, Israeli or foreign, into the camp. Even after the fighting had died down, no journalist was let in. The pretext was that the life of the journalists would be endangered. But they did not ask the army to save them. They were quite ready to risk their lives, as journalists and photographers do in every war.
Simple common sense would hold that if one forcibly denies access to journalists, one has something to hide.
Second: During the fighting and afterwards, ambulances and rescue teams were not allowed to get close. Those that tried to approach were shot at. The result was that the wounded bled to death in the streets, even if they had relatively light injuries. This is a war crime, a "manifestly illegal order", over which "the black flag of illegality" flies. Under Israeli law, and even more so under international law and conventions to which Israel is a party, soldiers are forbidden to obey such an order.
It makes no difference whether civilians or "armed men", one person or a hundred, died in these circumstances. As a method of warfare it is inhuman.
Some journalists justified this method in advance when they alleged that they had seen "with their own eyes" Palestinian ambulances carrying arms. Even if there was such an incident, it would not justify the use of such methods in any circumstances. (Until now, only one instance has been proven: this week Israeli journalists reported proudly that undercover soldiers used an ambulance in order to approach a house in which a "wanted person" was hiding).
Third: Even after the end of the fighting, and until now, heavy equipment and rescue teams have not been allowed in to remove the debris and corpses, or, perhaps, save people still alive under the ruins.
The pretext was again that the corpses could be mined. So what? If foreign and local teams want to risk their lives for this noble purpose, why should the army prevent them from doing so?
Fourth: During all the days of fighting, no one was allowed to bring in medications, water and food. I myself took part in a mass march of Israeli peace activists who tried, after the fighting was over, to accompany a convoy of trucks carrying such supplies to the camp. The trucks were allowed, so it seemed, to pass the road-block which stopped us -- but it later became apparent that the supplies were unloaded in an army camp and only four could reach their destination.
What does all this indicate? An objective person could only draw the conclusion that the army wanted to prevent the entrance of eye-witnesses into the camp at any price. The army knew that this would give rise to rumors about a terrible massacre, but preferred this to the disclosure of the truth. If one takes such extreme measures to hide something, one cannot complain about the rumors.
What is the height of cynicism? When one blocks free access to a place, and then argues that no one has the right to say what happened there, because he has not seen it with his own eyes.
The most damning evidence about what happened is the fact that immediately after the end of the fighting, top government and army officials started to discuss ways of preventing a shock reaction in Israel and abroad once the facts became known. This was no secret discussion, it was held in public, in the media talk shows. All of us heard.
The decisions made were extremely effective in Israel, and extremely ineffective abroad. I happened to be in England when the news finally broke. They filled the first page of every important British newspaper. The front-page headline in the Times was "Inside the Camp of Death". Underneath was a giant photo and a report by a star war correspondent, who wrote that in all the wars she had covered, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and others, she had never seen such a terrible sight as this. In almost all European countries the reaction was the same.
In Israel, however, the government propaganda machine, in which all the media are now voluntarily integrated, did everything possible to prepare the public in advance. It was said beforehand that the Palestinians were about to spread a horrible lie, that they were ready to heap dead bodies (from where?) in the streets. It got almost to the point of saying that the Palestinians had blown up their houses over their families in order to create a blood libel.
The IDF did "clean" part of the camp, removing the bodies and ordering the ruins somewhat, and that is where compliant journalists and innocent foreign visitors were brought. There they met humane officers who assured them that there had not been any massacre. After all, only a tiny part of the camp had been destroyed, so-and-so many yards by so-and-so many yards, nothing really. It all reminds one of the methods of certain regimes.
The result is that again a huge gap was created between Israelis and the rest of the world. Around the world, many were horrified that Jews, of all people, were capable of doing such things. Jews were again confirmed in their belief that all Goyim are anti-Semites.
I hope that there will be a serious international inquiry, and that the truth -- whatever it may be -- will emerge. But if even a part of the rumored atrocity is confirmed, a question will be asked: What was the intention? Why did the civilian and military leadership decide to deal with the Jenin camp like this?
The only answer I can come up with is: in Jenin the Palestinians decided to stand up and fight. The rape of Jenin was intended to send a message to the Palestinians: This will be the lot of everyone who resists the IDF. Also, it could cause a Deir Yassin-style mass flight,
Only a fool would believe that this will end the resistance to the occupation.
'The soldier shouted, kill them, kill them'
Inside Jenin: As a UN fact-finding mission sets out, a Palestinian tells how he played dead to survive, lying by the body of his son
By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
(The Independent)
Fathi Shalabi watched his son die. The two men were standing side by side with their hands up when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Mr Shalabi's son, Wadh, and another man who was with them died instantly, but the 63-year-old Mr Shalabi survived. He lay on the ground pretending to be dead for more than an hour while his son's blood gathered around him.
Wadh Shalabi was one of the corpses of Jenin refugee camp whose stories are still slowly uncoiling from the evil-smelling ruins, as Palestinians rummage through them for bodies. Yesterday his father described how Israeli soldiers searching the camp had ordered the men to come to them and raise their shirts to prove they were not wearing suicide bomb belts and how suddenly the officer in charge shouted "Kill them, kill them!" and the soldiers had opened fire on them from three yards.
The old man led us to the spot where it happened, and before we could stop him he lay down in the mud and filth to show us where he played dead. The Palestinians now returning to Jenin refugee camp have begun to document the dead. They distinguish between those killed who were militants, but they say Wadh Shalabi and the man who died beside him, Abdel Karim Al-Sadi, were civilians.
The younger Mr Shalabi was studying at university and working as an office boy in a school to pay his way.
"This is a clear case where civilians were killed by the Israeli soldiers," said Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch. "We're coming across more and more such cases in Jenin. This is why there is a need for an impartial investigation into the events in Jenin. It shows that civilians were some of the main victims."
Mr Shalabi believes his son and Mr Al-Sadi were killed because nervous, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers mistook some sticking plaster on Mr Al-Sadi's back for a suicide bomber's belt and panicked. His version of events is largely corroborated by Mr Al-Sadi's sister, who witnessed much of what happened.
Mr Shalabi described what took place. Soldiers ordered his family and Mr Al-Sadi down a narrow alley. "In cover behind the corner were four soldiers. The two young men with me were carrying baby children, and the soldiers did not shoot at them."
Wadh Shalabi was carrying his four-month-old son, Mahmoud. The soldiers ordered the men to hand the children over to their mothers and told the women and children to go into the next-door house. Then they ordered the men to raise their shirts and show they were not wearing suicide belts.
"The soldiers were about three metres away. I heard the names of two of them; they were Gaby and David." He said that the soldier called Gaby appeared to be in command. "They saw Abdul Karim had a plaster on his back. Suddenly Gaby shouted 'Kill them, kill them!'."
He is hard of hearing but says those inside the neighbour's house told him they also heard someone shout "kill them". "Two of the soldiers started shooting and we fell to the ground." Somehow Mr Shalabi was not hit. "The ground slopes slightly. The blood of the other guy ran between my legs. The other two were higher up so the blood soaked into my clothes and the soldiers thought I was dead too. They stayed with us for more than an hour. One of them walked over my back. They shone a torch in my eyes to see if I was dead but I didn't open my eyes until they had gone."
Eventually the soldiers left and Mr Shalabi decided it was safe to move. "I checked my son's pulse and then I knew he was dead." He went back to his own house and took off his clothes which were soaking with blood. Eventually at around 4am Mr Al-Sadi's father came to the house. "He told me 'they have killed my son and yours'. I said 'I know. I was with them when they were killed'." At 6am the men covered the bodies with blankets. They left them in the street for eight days until the soldiers ordered all the camp residents to leave and the men were taken into custody while their identity was checked.
Mr Al-Sadi said Wadh's sister Fathia, who was in the Al-Sadi house throughout, confirmed much of Mr Shalabi's story while her brother's 15-year-old widow sat beside her. She confirmed that the soldiers told the others to come round from Mr Shalabi's house and ordered the women and children inside. She said those inside heard shooting. When the families got back to the refugee camp this week the bodies had been buried. On Friday the families dug them up and gave them a proper funeral.
It is accounts such as these that international human rights and humanitarian groups � not to mention the Palestinians � hope will be heard by a group of UN fact-finders. On Friday the UN Security Council voted 15-0 to send the fact-finders to Jenin, backing a US-drafted resolution after Washington threatened to veto a measure put forward by Arab states that had called for a formal UN "investigation" of "massacres" in the camp. Israel has said that it will co-operate. Its Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, has stated that Israel has nothing to hide, and that the fact-finders will not be prevented from visiting Jenin.
The Israeli army's refusal to allow the Red Cross and others into the camp for six days will be central to the investigations. The aid agencies and UN will be pressing the case that, even there is ultimately no evidence of a massacre, severe atrocities undoubtedly occurred.
Claire Rayner: Jews have no right to Middle East land
By Robert Mendick
Claire Rayner, Britain's best-known agony aunt, has outraged the Jewish establishment by declaring a loathing of Israel and an apparent empathy with Palestinian suicide bombers.
Ms Rayner, 71, who was born Jewish but has long been a self-proclaimed atheist, has said that the Jewish people's claim to a historic homeland was "a load of crap".
The comments from the "mother of all agony aunts" have infuriated the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Only last week it castigated another television personality, the poet and Oxford University don Tom Paulin, for suggesting in an interview that American-born settlers in Israel were like Nazis who should be "shot dead". Mr Paulin, in a letter to today's Independent on Sunday, says his views have been distorted.
Ms Rayner told this newspaper: "I have never had any attachment to Israel. The only time I went there I loathed the country. People were abominably rude. I am appalled by the right wing hawkishness of this government. What upsets me even more is so many of the constituents seem to approve of what Sharon is doing.
"People say the Jews have a historic right to live on the land � how can they? What a load of crap. You could also say Sephardic Jews have a right to Spain."
Ms Rayner, the president of the British Humanist Association declares a firm preference for a world without national boundaries. She added: "If you treat a group of people the way Palestinians have been treated they will use the only weapon they have which is their individual lives. This is why there are suicide bombers."
Fiona Macaulay, public affairs director of Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: "There can never be any justification for terrorism where innocent civilians die for political ends. I am appalled that Claire Rayner could believe otherwise."
In his letter, Mr Paulin writes: "I have been and am a life-long opponent of anti-Semitism and a consistent supporter of a Palestinian state. I do not support attacks on Israeli civilians."
Lives in ruins
As Israeli forces pull out of the West Bank city of Ramallah, the truth about what happened there is beginning to emerge. A distinguished Palestinian poet describes living under siege
Zakaria Mohammed
The Guardian
It was 4am when the Mirkava tank stopped outside our house. It sounded like an earthquake. The time has come, I said to myself; they will storm into the house any minute. Should I get out of bed, put on my clothes and try to save my dears, or wait till they bang on the door? I didn't want to be hunted in my pyjamas and unshaved. But I was afraid that if I got up and put on my clothes I would scare the children, who were sleeping next door with their mother, Salma - since the invasion they have been unable to sleep by themselves.
I decided to wait for the soldiers in my bed. I was not afraid for myself: the time of fear passed away 18 months ago, when I underwent surgery for cancer of the colon. I felt as though I had been granted extra time to accomplish little things in my life.
I now play with this extra time without fear, but I worry about my 15-year-old son. They are arresting males between the ages of 15 and 50. They humiliate and interrogate them and send them to prison. They are hunting a whole generation, not the list of 100 or 200 so-called wanted terrorists. I have tried to keep my son away from politics. Politics is blood and prison for us. But I couldn't stop him from reaching the age of 15. He is therefore threatened, although his face is very childlike, in spite of the black line under his nose. I thought of persuading him to shave to make him look younger, but I didn't because I've always asked him to take care of that young moustache. If I had asked him to shave it would have planted fear in his head.
The Mirkava left at 5.30am. The soldiers did not storm the house, but they might come back any time. I got out of bed at six and our small dog, Kiwi, followed me. Whenever he hears the sounds of tanks and bombs he hides under the sofa or bed and urinates out of fear.
A friend phoned at 8.30 to tell us that the curfew would be lifted for four hours today, starting at 9.30. The previous two times it had been lifted at one in the afternoon. I had had to wake up Salma and the kids, because it is so hard to sleep at night.
We did not want to lose precious minutes. While my wife drove the kids to meet their friends, I set off on foot for the Khalil Alsakakimi cultural centre, 100 metres from my house. On the way I heard someone shouting at me in broken Arabic: "Where are you going?"
"I want to buy some food," I said.
I then saw a soldier emerging from behind Aziz Shasseen girls school.
"Go back," he said.
I went back without arguing, but my eyes caught a group of young men kneeling, blindfolded and handcuffed, in the school playground. The school has become a temporary concentration centre. This explained the tremendous noise of tank and military vehicles around our house.
I took another route to the centre. It has been ravaged: the tanks have destroyed the pavement and dug up the road. When I reached the once beautiful building, I found that the doors had been blown off. Broken glass covered the floor. Paintings hung off the walls or lay on the ground. The office of the poet Mahmoud Darwish was vandalised. Books and manuscripts of his poems were strewn over the floor, with soldiers' boot prints stamped on them.
"Did they take anything?" I asked Manal, who works at the centre. "They stole 5,000 shekels [more than �700] and we are trying to find out if they took anything else."
Alsakakimi was a distinguished Palestinian educator and writer. He was imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities during the first world war and was hanged for protecting a Jewish friend in his house. Eighty-five years later, the Israelis are paying back Alsakakimi's favour.
I continued walking into the city, to Al-Manarah Square, the centre of the tornado. I hardly recognised it. The tanks were present. The four pink stone lions were the only survivors. I stood beside the northern lion and we looked together at the destruction of Alirsan, the street that leads to chairman Arafat's compound.
It was 2pm on my watch, but according to the lion it was half past three. This is probably the only lion in the world that wears a watch - when the artist completed his sketch for the sculpture it was half past three and he drew a watch on the lion's paw indicating the time. Later on they sculpted the lion with the watch - not realising that it was the artist's joke.
All the city's institutions have been stoned and vandalised. All the doors are blown off; computers, hard disks and files stolen. People believe this destruction is a deliberate and systematic attempt to cripple the foundation of our state to come.
I went to the office of a local radio station where I had got to know Ahmad Hisham and the guard, Abu Hussein. When the Israelis arrived on the first day of the invasion it seems Abu Hussein tried to resist them and was killed. Ahmad tried to escape by jumping out of the window, but broke his back. He is now paralysed. Everything in the office was burned. In memory of my friends I collected a burned stapler and hole punch. On the table of an adjoining office I found Hisham's half-burned mug with a Lipton tea label still in it.
Later, I met my wife in the city centre. We walked together, greeting friends. They asked about those who were arrested or killed. We met Vera, my wife's colleague, who hugged Salma and cried with sorrow. She had been taken as a human shield to break in the houses in her neighbourhood. She was pushed around by at least 20 soldiers. Two of them were aiming rifles at her head. They arrested 20 young men and Vera felt responsible. We tried to assure her that it wasn't her fault.
We also met Ali, an eight-year-old with special needs. As we were leaving he said: "Miss Salma, there are no cars on the streets." Ali is obsessed with old Beetles. He spends hours sitting on the fence of his house, waiting for one to pass by. For 18 days, the cars have stopped passing.
We greeted lots of people. "Thank God you're safe," we called. Then we saw people running in panic. We hid behind the door of one of the shops. We were later told that some kids threw stones at the soldiers, who in return threw tear-gas bombs.
From a distance, Walid greeted me. "Haven't they arrested you yet?" I asked. I had not expected to see him - I thought he might have been arrested or killed, or even blown himself up among them. I could never forget the story that that young man had told me more than a year ago. During the first intifada in the late 80s, when he was 10 years old, the Israeli border guards forced his father to kiss the buttocks of a donkey. "Either you die or you kiss the donkey's buttocks," they told him. Walid had to lift the tail and his father kissed under it.
We bought bread and batteries for the radio, then picked up the kids and returned home. We would not be able to leave the house for the next four or five days: Israeli snipers were stationed on rooftops all over the city.
After 16 days of curfew, we needed to hang our laundry on the roof to dry. "I will go up," I told my wife. "No, they might shoot you. They won't shoot women," she said. We checked all the windows from all directions. We could not see any soldiers or tanks. My wife went up, hung the laundry and returned safely. But we could still hear the sounds of explosions continuously.
"Zakaria, come and look," my wife called; she was watching the tanks through the window with the children. Before I got there I heard the sound of bullets. My wife and children were on the floor, terrified. A soldier had seen them and shot towards them: I don't think he meant to kill them, he wanted to scare them away from the windows, because they were marching about 50 blindfolded, handcuffed men in front of a tank, the soldiers poking rifles into their backs. They were being taken to the military camp at the school. The soldiers did not want anyone to see this horrifying scene.
At 8pm I received a phonecall from my friend, Mohamad.
"How are you, where are you?"
"I'm in Chairman Arafat's compound."
"Stop kidding," I said.
"I told you, I'm in the chairman's compound. I was bringing a journalist here when it was attacked, and now I'm under siege with the president," he said. "Listen, the battery is finishing. I just wanted to say it will be very tough and long. Take care of the children." The line went dead. "What's going on? Is Mohamad under siege with the president?" Salma asked me. "We are all under siege with the president," I answered.
Palestinian perspective
'I saw three men shot. They surrendered but were still killed'
Chris McGreal in Jenin refugee camp
The Guardian
Said Masoud pointed to the graffiti on the wall of his ruined home to explain why he believes the Israeli army attacked Jenin refugee camp. "We are here because you are terrorists," it says in Hebrew. Spray painted next to the words is an Israeli flag.
"To them we are either terrorists or terrorist supporters," said Mr Masoud. "The soldiers say that to your face. We are only supporting the fighters who defend us and our homes. The Israelis were looking for a reason to attack us because they want to drive us out of the country. When we defend ourselves, our own homes and our wives and children, then they call us terrorists."
The attack began on April 3. From the accounts of Palestinians such as Mr Masoud, 42, a civil engineer who lives at the northern end of the flattened heart of the camp, a picture emerges of Israeli soldiers arriving in the camp expecting to flush out a core of a few dozen "terrorists". The army had a list of who it wanted.
But the Israelis met stiffer than expected resistance and as the army's casualties grew, so did the strength of the assault on the camp, culminating in the wholesale destruction of hundreds of homes and possibly hundreds of lives.
The Palestinians say that during 10 days of intense fighting, hundreds of men were driven to a redoubt of a few dozen buildings that is the core of what they now call Ground Zero. They were surrounded and the army paused.
"The Israelis gave this order," said Majdi Awad, a doctor. "They said: 'Everyone must come out of the houses with their hands in the air. Anyone we find in the houses after that, we will kill'."
Those that left, children included, were forced to walk out of the camp with their hands up and Israeli guns trained on them. At a checkpoint a few blocks from the fighting, the soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded the Palestinian men, and took them away for interrogation.
Mr Masoud said the slightest defiance or hesitation in obeying the orders of Israeli soldiers was met with severe retaliation.
"They wanted an excuse to kill us. If you did not keep your hands in the air, or did not hear their orders they just shot you. I saw three men shot dead, just like that. They had surrendered but they were still killed."
Large numbers of people fled to the town of Jenin or other areas of safety. Also, thousands of men were detained at army checkpoints as they filed out of the refugee camp to escape the fighting. Many were released after several days, once it was ascertained their names were not on any wanted lists. Most have not been able to return to Jenin because, even though the Israeli military has pulled out of the camp, it has cut off access.
Accounts of the man bulldozed into his house because he did not understand the order to evacuate, or the deaf man who did not hear it, have swiftly taken on cult status among the Palestinians.
But not everyone chose to leave. Besides the fighters still holed up in the encircled buildings, the Palestinians say many men and women remained because they supported the "martyrs" or they did not want to leave their homes.
As the fighting resumed, the Israeli bulldozers and tanks were put to use. The Palestinians say the machines systematically destroyed homes as their enemy launched the final assault on the fighters holed up in the heart of the camp.
"There were only 50 or 60 fighters in there," said Khalid Saba, a resident whose home overlooks the area where the worst fighting occurred. "Why did they have to destroy so many houses? It was to punish us for supporting the fighters, for willing them to win.
"There was a lot of fighting. It was very intense. The Israelis put snipers behind our walls and when they wanted to find out where the Palestinian snipers were, they made my son stand in front of the window thinking they would shoot at him. Fortunately they didn't, so the Israelis arrested him."
After the Israelis overcame the last resistance with tanks and helicopters firing rockets at Ground Zero, the bulldozers were brought in to crush the three- and four-storey blocks from which the Palestinians had fought.
The Palestinians say that several hundred homes were destroyed or severely damaged, and that dozens, possibly hundreds, of women and children were still inside the buildings when they were flattened by Israeli bulldozers.
"I think between 100 and 200 people are buried in the rubble," said Hama Abu Heija, of the Palestinian medical relief committees. Later he helped pull out one of 11 people found alive in the rubble in Jenin.
Before the killing ended, 23 Israeli soldiers had also died, a testament to the strength of the resistance. Thirteen of them were killed in an ambush after they were lured down a side street and confronted by a suicide bomber or a donkey laden with explosives, depending on who is giving the account.
The Palestinians claim that even among those homes that are still standing, hundreds are too dangerous to inhabit or are severely damaged. Electricity and water supplies are cut, and residents say the Israelis are blocking food from being brought into the camp.
Some say they believe the Israelis want to make the camp uninhabitable so as to drive out the residents. "This is Tora Bora," said Snaa Sabagh, 32, a mother of three, who stayed in her badly damaged house throughout the fighting. "Look at what they did. They used bombs and tanks against men who only had small guns and people like us. We are women with children here. How can we fight the Israeli army? It is because they want to destroy our homes so we will leave forever. They want us to go to Jordan. They want all the Palestinians to leave so they can take our land for Israel."
Mr Masoud turned to his own children. Growing up in such a highly politicised atmosphere, perhaps they are fated to become fighters for the Palestinian cause. But now they have reasons of their own to hate.
"The Israeli government is very wrong," he said. "I can't stop what my children feel when they see this. I can't tell my children they must make peace when they see this."
'A massacre'
� It was a massacre in which hundreds of innocent civilians may have died
� Israeli soldiers bulldozed dozens of homes when they knew there were women and children inside
� The Israeli army systematically destroyed many other homes in an effort to drive people out of Jenin refugee camp
� Some bodies have been taken away to secret locations; others remain under the rubble
� The army used civilians to try to draw fire in order to identify the position of Palestinian snipers
� The Israelis shot and killed people who were unable understand their orders
� The Israelis accused all Palestinians in the camp of being "terrorists" and treated civilians as combatants
British MP accuses Sharon of 'barbarism'
All sides condemn West Bank incursions
Nicholas Watt, political correspondent
The Guardian
The veteran Labour MP and prominent Jewish parliamentarian, Gerald Kaufman, yesterday launched a ferocious attack on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal" who was staining the Star of David.
Speaking in a Commons debate on the Middle East crisis, in which MPs from across the house condemned Israel's incursions into the West Bank, Mr Kaufman likened Mr Sharon's tactics to the actions of Zionist terrorists in Palestine in the 1940s.
In an emotional speech, in which he described himself as a lifelong friend of Israel, the former shadow foreign secretary said: "Sharon has ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians ... It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians in the Sabra-Shatila camp and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."
To nods of approval from MPs, Mr Kaufman condemned Palestinian suicide bombers. But he added that it was important to ask why Palestinians resort to such tactics. "We need to ask how we would feel if we had been occupied for 35 years by a foreign power which denied us the most elementary human rights and decent living conditions."
Mr Kaufman then likened the suicide bombers to the Zionist Irgun and Stern gangs, which launched a series of terrorist attacks in Palestine in the run-up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
"We need to ask what the Jews did in comparable circumstances," he said. "In 1946 the Irgun controlled by Menacham Begin blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem, slaughtering 91 innocent people. In 1948 the Palestinians denounced what they described as a massacre in the village of Deir Yassin ... The difference between the Deir Yassin massacre and what happened in Jenin is that Deir Yassin was the work of terrorist groups denounced by mainstream Jewish groups. The horrors in Jenin were carried out by the official Israeli army."
A Blair loyalist, Mr Kaufman warned that Mr Sharon's conduct had made it impossible for Britain and the United States to take action against Iraq. "To do so would unite the whole Muslim world against the US, the coalition against terrorism would disintegrate, western economies could suffer a shock comparable to the oil shock of 1973."
Mr Kaufman's attack on the Israeli government were echoed across the chamber. The former Tory cabinet minister, John Gummer, said that a fundamental distinction should be drawn between the actions of the Israelis and that of the Arabs.
"Israel is a state, with the trappings of a state which claims the legitimacy of a state and the more that it rightly claims that legitimacy, the more it has to be judged by the standards of a state and the standards of democracy," he said.
Amid such a serious Middle East crisis it was irresponsible of Washington to take such a tough stance against Iraq, Mr Gummer warned. He criticised the "kind of approach that says that we judge what is in our self-interest and our self-defence and thereby can do anything we like, irrespective either of international law or the UN or indeed frankly of the evidence before us".
Ann Clwyd, the Labour backbencher who has just returned from a visit to the Jenin refugee camp with the UN, said the EU should consider economic sanctions against Israel. Apologising for her croaky voice, caused by dust from Israeli tanks, she said it was not enough for European countries to "simply bleat condemnation".
Ms Clwyd added: "They need to withdraw European ambassadors from Israel. They need to impose an arms embargo as Germany has already done, and they should consider what economic sanctions can be put in place."