A Season in Bethlehem by Joshua Hammer

Author:Joshua Hammer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE PALESTINIAN Authority never arrested anybody for Avi Boaz’s murder. Ala Hosni told me that the lack of forensic evidence, the power of the Tanzim, and resistance from the General Intelligence Apparatus made it impossible to pursue the case. Besides, a new crisis soon overwhelmed the governor and his allies. In the week leading up to Saint Valentine’s Day 2002, Madani made a personal plea to the owners of Bethlehem’s party halls and restaurants, asking them to open their doors for the occasion to the city’s young couples. The city might be awash in violence, Madani argued, but it was important to demonstrate to the Tanzim that they could not disrupt normal civil life in Bethlehem. It was a well-meant but futile gesture. On Saint Valentine’s Day Ibrahim Abayat and his Tanzim cruised around the city in jeeps, firing their guns in the air and threatening to attack any hall that remained open that evening; celebrations were inappropriate, they said, while the Israeli army was killing Palestinians every day. The terrified owners canceled all of the parties they had scheduled at the governor’s urging. Enraged, the governor took to the airwaves as he often did in his running battle with the Tanzim, condemning Ibrahim Abayat and his men as cowards who were “trying to destroy our civil society.”

Shortly after the governor’s TV appearance, Ibrahim Abayat and forty gunmen paid a visit to the governor in his temporary office in the Peace Center. Pushing past a delegation of Italian peace activists, the Tanzim accosted Madani at his desk. Abayat brandished his M-16. “We are not cowards,” he said. “We are fighters.”

“Then you should be preparing for battle in a different way,” Madani said calmly. “This is leading us nowhere.”

“That is for us to decide,” Ibrahim Abayat replied. “Not you.” Abayat walked out of the room, followed by his entourage. Later that day, as the governor left the Peace Center for an appointment in Bethlehem’s Old City, a soldier from the National Security Force approached him and suggested he escort Madani. The governor refused to depart from his long-standing policy of not being followed by bodyguards. “No thanks,” the governor said. “I prefer to walk alone.”

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