Thursday, December 10, 2009

Alan Johnston returns to land of his kidnap and hears, amid the Palestinian ghosts, the sound of laughter

Alan Johnston
The Observer

Kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who was freed in July 2007 after nearly four months in captivity, reports from Nablus on the brittle peace in the city and the threat of renewed violence if no progress is made towards a Palestinian state It was a scene you might come across on any corner, in any Palestinian refugee camp. Inevitably perhaps, back in that setting, memories stirred of my kidnap in Gaza. It was the noises of the street that did it – the kids and the traders and the calls to prayer from the mosques. They were the same sounds of the outside world that used to drift into the room where I was held captive.

But, of course, life moves on and even the worst experiences gradually slide into the past. And just as in my reporting days in Gaza, there were things going on in the alleyways that seemed important and worth thinking and writing about.

In the depths of Balata, two young men were pictured on a living-room wall. Both had been militants, and both had been killed. Beneath them, on a couch, sat their brother – a slim man in his 20s who was using the name Abu Ahmed. He too had been immersed in the violence. "When a close friend of mine would die I would think that I should do something," he said. "If I came to London to kill you – if I came to your house – what would you do?"

His family lost their home in a village in what is now Israel in 1948 and he grew up under Israeli occupation in Nablus. He said he became a militant with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade after seeing civilians killed in the camp. Israel came to regard al-Aqsa as one of its gravest threats. At the height of the uprising its suicide bombers were striking in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Back then, sweets would be distributed in celebration in Balata when news came through of another bombing.

Over the years I had often interviewed men like Abu Ahmed. But what was different this time was the way he spoke when we talked of the future. He explained why he had put down his gun. He said it had been a political decision, but he gave every impression of having been ground down by the conflict.

Abu Ahmed described what it had meant to live on the Israeli army's wanted list. "There was fear 24 hours a day. You might be only moments from death or jail. You would fear for yourself and for those around you."

He described how militants would try to escape an army operation – scrambling from house to house in a frantic search for a place to hide. "Sometimes when a wanted man was cornered he would say his prayers, knowing he would die."

Abu Ahmed had been wounded more than once, and he wanted a way out. "My mother has no other children but me. My brothers are dead and I have got married." He would live for his family now, he said.

Like many militants in Nablus over the past two years, Abu Ahmed has taken advantage of an amnesty programme. In line with agreements worked out between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, former militants are often allowed to join the regular Palestinian security forces.

You no longer see gunmen on the streets and al-Aqsa is not launching attacks. To the Israeli Defence Forces, this looks like victory. "Nablus was a city that exported terror," Lieutenant-Colonel Avi Shalev said. "We faced a very difficult situation whereby nearly every second day there was an attack in an Israeli city. And a lot this wave of terrorism came from Nablus."

Over the years, he said, the army's raids and arrests had eradicated the threat. "This was a very successful campaign." I asked if he regarded Nablus as posing any danger to Israel now. He replied that the army was "satisfied", but that the situation was reversible. He said the IDF had created conditions that had allowed the Palestinian Authority security forces to take control.

I remembered them as having been broken by Israeli attacks, under-equipped and demoralised. No match for the militants, even if they had been inclined to confront them. But an elite corps has been trained by Jordanian officers in an American-funded project that continues. And the very visible presence of these forces on the streets of Nablus is credited with having done much to restore calm.

The Israeli army still often sends patrols into the city at night. But it has stepped back and loosened the tight blockade it maintained for years. I found the city breathing much easier and its economy starting to recover.

A lot of the old Nablus that I remember remains. Not least the black humour I came across on that first visit six years ago. I remember a young guy telling me that he had spent half his childhood throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. But by the time he was 18 he still had not hit one – and even he began to wonder if the Jews might be the "chosen people".

Grim humour is one of the less well-known ways that Palestinians cope. And just as in those much darker days back in 2003, it remains hard to underestimate the extent to which the Israeli presence continues to be felt and resented in Nablus. The occupation works its way into every conversation on any major issue. Businessmen tell you there is a limit to how much the city's economy can improve as long as it has no easy access to the outside world.

An officer with the newly revamped security forces expressed his concern as we chatted on his parade ground. He said quietly that people often asked his men why they were disarming the militants while Israeli settlements continued to spread. He was clearly worried that he might eventually be seen as somehow playing the role of "Israel's policeman" – keeping the place quiet and so facilitating the occupation.

The settlements – all of them illegally built in the eyes of international law – are the most visible reminder of the Israeli presence on the West Bank. Look up almost anywhere in Nablus and you see them on the hilltops. Nowhere in the city was there any real optimism that the calm would last.

Palestinians experienced some security and prosperity in the mid-1990s. But old tensions mounted and then exploded in the second uprising. Back in Balata I asked Abu Ahmed what would happen if there was no progress towards a Palestinian state. "There'll be a return to the intifada," he said. But he insisted he would play no part. "It was a time that I am done with," he said of his days as a militant. "Enough. It would be impossible for me to go back."

As he spoke, I could believe he had indeed wearied of the violence – with all its dangers and futile losses. But the camps are always swelling with the next angry generation. The younger lads laughing and kicking their ball about in the gathering gloom have not known the fears that Abu Ahmed had felt.

And as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is allowed to drift on unresolved, it is possible to imagine another intifada playing itself out in the alleyways of Balata.

Alan Johnston reports for Radio 4's Crossing Continents at 11am on Thursday; the programme also airs on the BBC World Service on the same day

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