December 3rd, 2023 - 8th Report: Fuad
December 3rd, 2023
Dear family
and friends,
Report
number eight: Fuad
It’s time
to admit that the task of writing these reports is helping me deal with these
dark days. It forces me to take note, to observe with a clear focus, to think
about what’s happening. To think. I hope you’re still following.
Being a
historian means one sometimes wonders what it would have been like to be there,
to live it, to participate with all the immediacy and none of the hindsight. To
fear or hope for things that eventually didn’t happen. In a way, that’s been my
life since arriving in Israel in 1967: living through the turbulent 1st
century of Israel’s rebirth, a century our distant descendants will look back
at with wonder. 2023, however, has been different. It has been dramatic and
urgent and intense. The weeks since October 7th have been even more
intense; they’ve pushed aside all previous agendas and have taken over our
communal and individual consciousness with a totality I can’t remember since
October 1973, only far more so. Writing these reports is my way of making sense
as history happens. They’re also a recording of my thoughts as the events were
happening, before hindsight takes over and re-writes my memories.
Case in
point. The ceasefire-for-hostages agreement between Israel and Hamas was for
four days and 50 freed hostages, with an optional added six days at the rate of
10 hostages per day. For eight evenings we set aside most of our attention and
watched to see who would return, and how many hours of sadism would they need
to endure on the way. Late at night, usually after midnight, they’d reach
Israel – and we’d start waiting for the next batch. Until, rather abruptly, on
the eighth morning the war was back, and the women left behind were blocked.
The Bibas family – Shiri and her two red-headed children: why didn’t they
return? Did we save 105 hostages and none more, or is this merely a pause?
Someday we’ll know the answer, but as I write there’s only uncertainty and
fear.
* *
*
Today I’m
here to tell about Fuad. That’s his real given name. He was born in East
Jerusalem in 1971, and we’ve been friends since 2009. During the years of my
high security clearance, we corresponded occasionally but didn’t meet, although
the security-types said they wouldn’t object so long as we met openly and in
West Jerusalem. I was very busy in those days, so that was a good excuse. A
couple of weeks ago I suggested we get together. I wanted to know what was
happening in his world. In what may have been a sign of the times, he initially
suggested we meet in his East-Jerusalem office. I’ve been there before, but
this time I demurred, and we met at the eastern end of Mamila, literally a
stone’s throw from Jaffa gate – as neutral a place as possible. We were cordial
and friendly, and agreed to meet again in a few weeks, but it wasn’t an easy
meeting. Actually, it was the hardest talk I’ve ever had with him. You need to
know a bit about him in order to appreciate how so.
Not long
after Fuad and I met and began talking about his Jerusalem and mine, I received
an email from the mayor of a mid-size settlement on the West Bank. I’d been his
history teacher in high-school, and hadn’t seen him since. It turned out he was
participating in a program at the Hebrew University, and Fuad, friend and
fellow student, had mentioned me to him. So my new Palestinian friend had reconnected
me with his friend, a top settler.
For 30
years Fuad has been integrating the Palestinians of East Jerusalem into
Israel’s national health system. He’s a businessman and an innovator. He once
told me his written Hebrew is better than his native Arabic, because his
academic studies were all at Hebrew U, where he teaches a course. He often
represents his community in their dealings with the municipality. If you
carefully read reports and punditry about East Jerusalem, you’re likely to come
across his name. I once asked him why he’d never made the effort to acquire
Israeli citizenship. I’m not interested, he said. I’m proud to be a Palestinian.
He looks forward to living with us in true peace, equality and harmony, but as
a Palestinian.
Our meeting
began with 15 pleasant minutes of family updates and non-political matters, in
so far as anything around here happens independently of politics. He was very
interested in some of the things I’m doing these days, but I mostly deflected
him. I assured him I’ll do the talking next time, but this time I wanted to
listen. What follows is my recollection of what he told.
The double
process of Israel recognizing our needs and rights, and the Israelization of
the Palestinians of Jerusalem, has been gaining pace, he began. Increasingly so
in the past four years or so. Things are really changing, Yaacov. The Israeli
Police has built local stations in all our neighborhoods, with Jewish and
Palestinian officers. Some of us think it’s just a ploy to strengthen Israeli
domination, but me, I’m glad there’s a police station when I need it. The same
goes of the ambulance stations Magen David has brought in, and the fire stations.
Who cares what the political agenda is, if when we need them, they respond
within minutes, not an hour? Look at our roads. The municipality used to put
down a single layer of asphalt, and the first rains would wash it away. Now
we’ve got real roads, with multiple layers of gravel under the asphalt and
sidewalks with curbs. There’s a gully in the middle of my neighborhood and
recently they built a real bridge over it. Look at the numbers of (East
Jerusalem) Palestinian students at Hebrew U. There are thousands of them, and
while their proportion among the student body shrinks the higher you climb the
academic ladder, it’s growing at all levels. These are real developments and
they’re making a real difference.
I
interjected to ask if this hadn’t stopped under the current government, in
which Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich repeatedly declared he was cutting
the funds for East Jerusalem because of his political agenda. Fuad grinned,
perhaps sardonically.
Smotrich?
Yes. He declared. And then nothing changed. You see, Yaacov, by this stage
there are entire parts of the government and municipal administrations which
are committed to building up East Jerusalem. These are officials whose job it
is, when they come to work in the morning, to promote and oversee the
implementation of these strategic policies. The minister can’t make them all go
away or stop coming to work. So the policies continue even when the minister
doesn’t want them to.
How does he
explain the silence of his fellow citizens in face of the extreme violence in
Gaza. How is it there are no demonstrations, no riots?
It’s a good
question, Yaacov, and I don’t know the answer myself. On October 7th
– and 8th, and 9th – everyone I know, literally everyone,
was horrified by Hamas’ mass crimes. That’s not what Islam is about, and it was
inhumane and evil. But since then, in the face of Israel’s harsh response, I
think an important explanation for our subdued response is that we’re afraid.
There are police everywhere in East Jerusalem, and they’re stopping people for
the slightest infractions. I beg of my sons to come home before dark, but so
far, each of them has been stopped by police and fined for tiny or invented
delinquencies. Look around you – he gestured – here in Mamila you normally see
hundreds of Palestinians, along with the Jews and the tourists. Look: it’s
almost empty, and there are none of us. It’s the same everywhere. In the first
days, Palestinians didn’t even go to work in West Jerusalem. Now they’re
returning, but hesitantly and warily. It's not only the reinforced police here
in Jerusalem. It’s the heightened IDF violence on the West Bank. But above all,
it’s what you’re doing in Gaza. We’re afraid.
You know,
we all have connections with people in Gaza. I have a friend in Ramallah, most
of whose broader family lived in Gaza. First he told me about one branch of the
family, 17 people, who had all been killed. But by now, there’s no-one left.
His 60 family members have all been killed. All of them. No, we don’t believe
you’re being careful. You’re not. The IDF is on a killing spree. You’re bombing
recklessly and without distinguishing between Hamas and the rest of the
populace. I watch all three main Israeli TV channels – 11, 12 and 13. They
aren’t reporting on what’s happing in Gaza; they’re not showing you what you’re
doing there. Their reporting is dishonest. And you’re destroying whatever hope
there was for the future.
I tried to
salvage something. Here’s my optimistic prognosis, Fuad, and I’d like to hear
your opinion. After the war we’re going to topple this government, there will
be elections, and a centrist government with a broad electoral base will come
to power. In 2025, once our new government is firmly in place and after the
American elections, it will be possible to return to negotiations for peace,
with a government that will be able to deliver.
How I wish
you’ll proved right Yaacov, but I doubt it. It’s too late. All the destruction
and killing have destroyed any trust that could have been built.
* * *
These are
dark times. The levels of hatred are sky-high. After the first evening of
releasing hostages, Hamas figured out how to choreograph the releases. First,
they delayed them by hours, leaving us hanging on our cliff. Then they called
the International Red Cross, but waited hours to hand over the hostages. Then,
before the jeeps crossed out of Gaza, they broadcasted excruciating films of
each hostage or two – women and children, mind you – walking a gauntlet of
jeering and spitting men and boys until they climbed into the ICRC jeeps. The
mob then climbed onto the jeeps and rocked them back and forth, while blocking
them from moving forward. It was terrifying merely to watch. Living through it
was must have been horrifying, after nearly two months of degrading, painful
and anguished captivity.
Had Hamas
wished to ensure Israeli hatred of the population of Gaza, they couldn’t have
invented a fiendishly better method. The most diabolical part of these films
was that the armed Hamas men were clearly in charge, and it was only their
presence that prevented the lynch mobs from tearing the Jewish women and
children limb from limb. The faces and body-language of the TV anchors and
pundits accompanying these devilish spectacles were what you’d expect: a call
to destroy. To wreak vengeance. As Fuad had put it: It’s too late. There’s no
trust left to salvage.
* * *
On Friday
morning, just as the fighting in Gaza was re-igniting, we went to the Israel
Museum. A month ago we had been scheduled to start a lecture series in art
history, but it was delayed for fear of rocket attacks. Before she walked up to
the lectern, the instructor stood right in front of us. I want to thank all for
coming, she said. In these bleak times I don’t take it for granted. And now,
let’s shut out the surrounding reality and dedicate 90 minutes to escapism.
Let’s talk about art.
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