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CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
Six Soldiers
by ANNIE C. HIGGINS
The Israeli Army reported that two soldiers were
injured as they attacked Palestinian members of the resistance
in Gaza [BBC 2 January 2003]. The reality could be far more severe
than they admit.
When the Army killed Hamza Abu al-Rubb
in Qabatiya, Jenin district, on 26 December 2002, they said their
wanted man injured three of their soldiers when he fought back.
His wife adds to the account. When the soldiers ordered the family
outside, making them remove their warm clothes on that rainy
day, they apparently expected Hamza to surrender himself. They
were surprised that he came to the door fighting and throwing
grenades. He went back inside and got more grenades to pitch
at them. The Army killed him but they also took losses. His wife
reports that they put at least six dead Israeli soldiers in black
plastic body bags in her front yard.
A black flag outside the house of mourning
is inscribed with the statement witnessing to the faith, "There
is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God." The
women mourners sitting with the widow have no doubt as to why
the Army lightened the news. They know that soldiers who know
what really happened will be afraid to come to Jenin, or to the
Occupied Territories at all, in spite of their superior might.
Palestinians know that the Israeli soldiers
are not all forged in the same furnace. During the Big Invasion
in April, they say that some soldiers stayed inside houses "sleeping,
and do you know why?" I am asked. I surmise that it is for
the same reason some people heard them on the opposite side of
their own home's walls, crying for their mothers and cursing
Sharon. For fear. But my interlocutor doesn't even begin there.
He feels it is because they don't agree with the Occupation and
its violence.
But these men also know the determined
fierceness of the forces here. Sometimes they coerce a family
member to call the wanted man on his mobile phone, whereupon
the Army captain surprises him by taking over the conversation,
"I just want you to come for a cup of coffee." He may
then tell the man that he will decorate the Camp with his picture,
referring to the posters of martyrs on every public wall, and
some private ones. His threat may elicit a comment from the wanted
man that he has God guarding him. The captain may reply that,
while that man stands alone with God, he himself has the entire
strength of the mighty Israeli Army behind him.
Hence it is a shock when soldiers are
actually killed, even with their powerful rearguard. The Army
has to soften the news to keep soldiers coming to enforce the
Occupation, and to guard their comrades.
On the first day of Ramadan, a contingent
of soldiers were inspecting the lonely cluster of houses remaining
in the destroyed area of Jenin Refugee Camp. Several internationals
kept observational guard of the soldiers. One soldier, resting
on a mound of ochre colored dirt, with his rifle trained on the
houses, warned us to keep a distance so we did not get caught
in the crossfire. "What crossfire?" I asked him, and
I mentioned the beating they gave a man they had just taken into
a jeep. He replied that they never use excessive force unless
they need to, and that the situation was more complex than I
presented it. We talked about who belongs where as residents
waited outside their homes, prevented from breaking their fast
at sundown. Still in what looked like a lounging position, the
soldier admitted, "I just want to go home." He sounded
more out of place than the residents displaced by the search
operation.
A high school student remembers a previous
time when her father was imprisoned far from home and says, "I
can't help but think that for everything we suffer, they are
suffering too." I tell her about the times the soldiers
and children talked to each other like humans. The next day she
reads me a story she has written from the point of view of an
Israeli soldier who kills a child and later tells his disagreeing
comrade that he feels he has killed one of his own. This Palestinian
girl certainly knows the story from the other side, having lost
three children in her family.
A group of young men in the Camp agree
to a Boal style theatre game where a director shows the present
situation as he sees it by placing actors in the appropriate
positions like statues. Our director shows the Palestinians handcuffed
and the Israeli soldier pointing a rifle at their backs. His
next task is to show the scene as he would like to see it. He
does so as attention scatters, and I reprimand him for not completing
the scene of the ultimate goal, "You left a soldier in the
Camp!" Finally he shows me that the Israeli soldier has
lowered his gun, and is talking with the Palestinians active
in the resistance. Talking with them. Others agree with this
resolution. Inside I am surprised and abashed that I am the one
who could not comprehend that communication is the desired goal,
even with the soldier still armed.
I think back to the morning visit to
the house of mourning, where a light breeze ruffled the black
flag of Islamic Jihad, and the soft blue sky held fat white clouds
preparing to rain on the evil and the good, as the Bible tells
it.
Six soldiers killed as they eliminated
a fighter resisting the Occupation. Thousands of other Israeli
citizens find ways not to serve in the Occupation Army, deeming
its goals and methods immoral. Some raise the issue of a soldier's
duty to refuse executing an immoral order, an act known as raising
a black flag.
Six soldiers might have raised a black
flag opposing the Occupation. Instead a black Jihad flag marks
the place where they and their opponent fell together. Six soldiers
lost in a news blackout.
Dr. Annie C. Higgins specializes in Arabic and Islamic Studies and
is currently conducting research in Jenin, Occupied Palestine.
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