Gazans Unite Behind Islam, Nationalism

A sign at Abdul Fteihah’s wake in this squalid refugee camp Saturday served also as a symbolic epitaph for a tactic the Israeli government has long used to control the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.

It was not so much the words of the sign--they were from the Muslim holy book, the Koran. Rather, it was the hand-drawn Palestinian flags that bracketed the scripture.

The result was a subtle but telling example of how two frequently hostile social forces here--Islamic fundamentalism and secular Palestinian nationalism--have joined to present their hated Israeli rulers with an unusually united front during the worst Gaza unrest in recent years.

13th Killed by Gunfire

Fteihah, shot to death by Israeli troops in a clash after regular Sabbath mosque services here Friday, was at least the 13th Gazan killed by gunfire since the latest flare-up began Dec. 9. At least four Palestinians from the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River have also died in the unrest.

The bearded, 26-year-old Fteihah was a devout Muslim, but it was an angry secular mourner here Saturday who volunteered: “There’s no difference this time between the religious and the Palestine Liberation Organization; between George Habash (leader of the Marxist-line Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and Abu Amar (PLO leader Yasser Arafat). All the Palestinian people are together against the Jewish.”

New Sense of Unity

This new-found sense of unity among Gazans has been one of the most striking changes to foreign observers and non-Gaza Palestinians alike, who have seen numerous examples of it during unrest which continued, although at a much-reduced level, for the 11th day Saturday.

It’s a phenomenon that extends as well to previous divisions between young and old, and between those here who work in Israel and those who don’t. During clashes in Gaza City last week, foreign journalists watched old women breaking up rocks into fist-sized pieces for youthful demonstrators, who threw them at soldiers. And the age bracket of Gaza’s casualties during the clashes has risen steadily from those of schoolboys to those of young men who, in the past, have been away working as waiters or gardeners in Tel Aviv when trouble started.

But the unity between devout Gaza Muslims, motivated by religion to oppose Israeli rule, and secular Palestinians, driven by nationalist dreams, is most striking, if only because of past Israeli efforts to play on their differences.

The mixture of Islam and nationalism yields more extreme views than are found on the West Bank, for example. In Gaza, no talk is heard about coexistence between Israel and some future Palestinian state. Here, Israel is Palestine, and Israelis are usurpers.

Israel began subtly encouraging Muslim fundamentalists shortly after it captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli and Palestinian sources familiar with the policy agree. Israeli leaders saw Islam as a useful counterweight against the militant nationalists of the PLO. Gazans divided against themselves would have less time to make trouble for the army, according to this strategy.

At the peak of the strategy’s success, Muslim fundamentalists a few years ago burned down the offices of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which is headed by Dr. Haider Abdul Shafi, a Communist. The Red Crescent is the Arabic equivalent of the Red Cross. According to Palestinian sources, Israeli security forces stood by during the attack.

Now, however, the two streams appear to be merging into a more formidable anti-Israeli force. Symbolically, Abdul Shafi acted as a spokesman for wounded fundamentalists and nationalists alike at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital last week on the worst day of the unrest, when five Gazans died from Israeli bullets.

“There is no difference between the West Bank Palestinians, the Gazans, the Arabs of Israel--they are believing Muslims,” said Sheik Mohammed Awwad, president of El Azhar religious college in Gaza City. “And they know their religious and national duty.

“Their religious duty is to worship God,” the sheik said, “and their national duty is to have freedom. It doesn’t have to be defined.”

‘Differences Dissolve’

“There are differences, of course,” one secular Gaza City man said Saturday, speaking of the religious and nationalist tendencies. “But when things like this happen, the differences dissolve.”

At the Saladin Mosque in Gaza City’s tense Zeiton (Olive) section, an outlawed Palestinian flag flew from the minaret, while below, thick, black smoke from burning tires reduced visibility to a few feet and roadblocks turned the main street into an obstacle course.

Nearby, someone had scrawled on a cement wall: “Palestine is our homeland; God is Great!”

Graffiti in Khan Yunis, near the Egyptian border, proclaimed: “The end of Israel is prophesied in the Koran!” and “Islamic Jihad (Holy War) is the way to Palestine!”

A leaflet apparently being circulated throughout the Gaza Strip urges in words of classic communism: “Workers of Palestine Unite!” It is signed: “Jihad Islami.”

“Real religion is based on rejection and revolution,” the pamphlet reads, and it admonishes the estimated 60,000 Gazans who work each day in Israel to go on strike, at least for a week.

Each Gazan that goes to Israel, it says, frees one more Israeli to come as a soldier to Gaza--as a soldier “who shoots bullets into the chests and hearts of our mothers, our children, our elderly and our brothers. They are the soldiers who are treating us every day to a life of misery.”

Today and Monday are seen here as an important test of whether Gazans will heed the pamphlet’s urging. Saturday, when most Israeli businesses are closed for the Jewish Sabbath, is normally a day off for most of those 60,000 Gaza laborers as well.

The majority have reportedly stayed home during the recent unrest, but the Gaza Strip is so dependent on the Israeli economy for its minimal livelihood that even many Gazans question whether they can stay away from jobs much longer.

“Do you know why we work in Israel?” asked one mourner at Fteihah’s wake Saturday. “Because otherwise we won’t have anything to eat. We can’t stop working in Israel. We don’t work for our houses--we work to eat.”

Only a Lull

Even if the Gazans do not heed the strike and things quiet down here, as Israeli security officials predict, the emotions on display at the wake suggest that without some dramatic and unexpected change, it will be only a lull before the next outburst.

About 150 angry men sat in straight-backed chairs in a dirt courtyard between two block houses when four Western journalists arrived. Overhead, a blue plastic tarpaulin draped over a wooden frame protected them from the sun.

The women mourners, as is the Muslim custom, sat separately, inside the two-room home the slain man shared with his wife and son, his mother and his nine brothers and sisters.

The men poured out their anger to the journalists.

“‘The Israelis call us terrorists. But they are using economic, political and ideological terror against our people,” a cousin of the dead man said.

Asked if he will demonstrate against the Israelis like his brother did, 16-year-old Suleiman Fteihah responded: “Yes, to reflect the Palestinians’ feelings.”

“We want more people to be martyred,” shouted another man from the crowd.

“I’ll be killed and my brother and my sister and my whole family,” added a third. “We will not stop demonstrating. We don’t depend on the other Arab countries. We hate all the countries that don’t let us have our freedom. We won’t live with any Israeli people.”

Pregnant Wife

The dead man’s wife, Dalal, was reluctant to talk to journalists. They had been married four years, she said, and she is two months pregnant. She hopes her year-old son will grow up like his father, she added, but she’s not anxious for him to fight the Israelis. “I had enough of fighting and killing,” the young widow said. “I want to live in peace.”

But Fteihah’s mother, Zahiya, 47, only seems more bitter. She was 8 years old when her family came as refugees to the Gaza Strip from their previous home in what was then the Arab village of Hanama, north of Ashkelon. She gave birth to Abdul here, and she taught him that the Israelis had taken their land.

Yes, she said, she wasn’t surprised that Abdul’s brother Suleiman said he remains ready to challenge the soldiers. “Even if I, as a woman, get killed, I would like to go demonstrate,” Zahiya Fteihah said. “As long as I’m alive I’m going to teach the young people to fight until we have a solution. We want to live in peace, and we want the Jews out of our land.”

How can they fight?

“I don’t care how,” the woman said, “as long as we get our land, our liberty.”