Between River and Sea by Dervla Murphy

Author:Dervla Murphy [Dervla Murphy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780600963
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2015-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

On Day Five I wondered – ‘Is it evident to my visitors that I’ve joined the Great Unwashed?’ Normally I sweated the dirt off on Sunday mornings, when the As-Shifa hammam opened for women. Said to be the oldest functioning public baths in Palestine, it has changed little (apart from electric lighting and invisible solar panels) since the Tuqan family built it in 1634. Its fort-like walls were only superficially damaged in 2002 when an Apache helicopter aimed three rockets at this cherished feature of Nablusi life. Yakob, the seventy-year-old in charge, had befriended me on my first visit. We had much in common, including an aversion to television with which As-Shifa’s soothing hush was now being threatened because of a discontented clientele. In an oddly named ‘summer room’ – a high, wide space with a stained glass dome – divans line the walls for post-bath cooling off and an ornate desk stands in one corner. Pointing to it, Yakob invited me to ‘write in peace’ any day of the week until men arrive. This I occasionally did, when my squat was extra-chilly. On the Sunday of my immobility it greatly cheered me when Yakob anxiously telephoned – ‘Why no washing? Are you OK?’

Among my most regular visitors was eighty-four-year-old Hana, who spoke unusually fluent English and often lamented the second Intifada’s emotional consequences for her great-grandchildren’s generation. They had witnessed many IDF atrocities while Balata was burnishing its reputation as an heroic centre of resistance. Hana’s anguished comparison of the two Intifadas made my heart ache. The first was community based and largely non-violent, a movement of ordinary people who had shown that Palestinians could effectively unite. Everyone participated: men, women and children, Muslims, Christians and agnostics, young and old, athletes and cripples. The traditional friction points – between clans, classes, sects, generations, political factions – were rarely allowed to stifle local initiatives. After a spontaneous beginning, creative committees and councils took charge in villages, towns, urban districts. Hana referred me to Walid Salem, of Jerusalem’s Panorama Centre, who has written about the crucially important role of bayans. ‘Those leaflets, distributed almost daily, called upon the people to join the movement of civic resistance activities, and did not call them to use arms because armed resistance would provoke devastating retribution by the Israelis.’

This movement aimed not only to boycott the occupying power’s institutions but to lay the foundations for Palestinian counterparts; thus it engendered new professional organisations concerned with health, education, economic research and human rights law. It also hoped to demonstrate that without Palestinian cooperation the fourth strongest army in the world could not indefinitely dominate the OPT – or could do so only through Stalinist repressions not feasible under the global spotlight. Support came from small groups of brave Israelis whose participation modified IDF brutality. This initiative, sustained for some five years despite the extreme hardships involved, aroused considerable A Minor Injury international sympathy – much of it lost when the second Intifada sent suicide bombers into Israel.

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