A Tour of the Turmoil : Rebellious Gaza Like a War Zone

A red smear punctuated the hand-written, white-chalk inscription on the cement wall bordering Bassam Khader Mussallam’s home here. “Blood of the Martyr,” it read in Arabic.

As his parents, his brother, and his widow grieved inside, hundreds of mostly young Palestinian men, their eyes wide in frenzied excitement, turned Mussallam’s funeral march into a loud, banner-waving political demonstration.

“We want to build our government with our own hands,” a curly-haired Palestinian man shouted over the din to four Western journalists who happened on the scene. “We can prove to all we are the best!” the man yelled. “We are the greatest!”

What is under way, the Palestinian said, is “an uprising. . . . Every day someone dies--in Gaza, in Rafah, in Deir el Balah, in Khan Yunis.”

Squalid Towns, Refugee Camps

His was a litany of residents of squalid towns and refugee camps here in the Gaza Strip, where as strong as the word uprising may sound, it is no exaggeration.

Mussallam was the 27th fatal victim of army gunfire in more than a month of rioting and demonstrations in the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The army confirmed two more victims Sunday: No. 28 was Tukan Musbeh, 30, slain during a clash in the Sajaiya section of Gaza City, and No. 29 was Khalil abu Loli, 65, who died in an Israeli hospital of wounds from a disturbance in Rafah on Dec. 16. Twenty of the dead, including six in the last week, were from the Gaza Strip.

This is where the trouble started, with a fatal clash between the army and rock-wielding demonstrators last Dec. 9. And this is where the unrest became so bad over the weekend that Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, after an emergency meeting with his top military commanders, ordered his troops reinforced for the third time.

Increased Restrictions

Coverage of events in Gaza during the extraordinary weekend was severely limited by increased army restrictions on the press. At times, journalists were told by field commanders that the entire Gaza Strip was a closed military zone, as the authorities tried to reduce the publicity that they see as fanning the unrest here and badly damaging Israel’s standing abroad.

But the experiences of four Western reporters, who managed with the help of an unusually skilled and resourceful Arab taxi driver to travel from one end of the 28-mile-long Gaza Strip to the other during some of the worst of the weekend violence, illustrated why this is being compared to a war zone and why it is the focus of the government’s concern.

Underground Railroad

Gaza over the weekend was a place where water cannons had given way to armored personnel carriers and helicopter tear-gas drops to quell entire refugee camps housing thousands of Palestinians; where neighborhood leaders organized an underground railroad of supplies for people who are either under army curfew or who have been on strike from their jobs in Israel for so long that the money and food are running out, and where any movement was a nerve-jangling matter of passing through a series of alternating Palestinian and Israeli army roadblocks that one journalist with extensive experience there compared to Beirut.

The stage was set after Friday’s Muslim Sabbath services in Gaza’s mosques, when pamphlets signed Jihad Islami (Islamic Holy War), were distributed calling for a total strike on Saturday and advising: “God, oh blessed, has removed the fear from your hearts. . . . At the same time, God has frightened the enemy. They have run away from children and been repelled by women. Their bullets have failed to repulse your stones.

“Do not allow this historic moment to be lost!” the pamphlets continued. “Every additional day of your uprising is a day less of the occupation and our miseries.”

Cars, Stores Warned

The text warned that any car traveling Gaza Strip roads or any open store “will be burned or destroyed, if not today, then in the future.”

By mid-morning Saturday, a black pall from burning tires, visible for miles, hung over Gaza City. The journalists were allowed through the army’s Erez checkpoint at the northern border between the Gaza Strip and pre-1967 Israel. But about a mile further on, the road was blocked by stones, scrap metal, a burning tire and a score of Palestinian youths with rocks in their hands.

The Arab taxi driver, who called himself Abu Ibrahim, stopped out of range, allowing an Arab interpreter accompanying the journalists to approach on foot and negotiate safe passage.

The arrival of a 12-man Israeli army foot patrol sent the youths scurrying but introduced a new problem. “I want to ask you nicely, politely, to go back to the checkpoint,” a young officer told the journalists. “The entire Gaza Strip is a closed military zone.”

As he spoke, some of his men knelt at roadside, their automatic rifles aimed toward the orange trees on either side.

Takes a Detour

Abu Ibrahim turned his cab around, but since the officer had been unable to produce the required written notice of closure and army spokesmen in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were denying that the entire area was restricted, he took a side road to Beit Hanoun, where scores of boys and young men stood by aimlessly as more tires burned.

When the journalists arrived, however, a demonstration began. It was exactly what the army was trying to avoid by keeping reporters at bay, and after a few questions journalists quickly left.

“How old are you?” a reporter asked one small boy through the interpreter.

“Twelve,” the boy replied.

“No--really. How old?”

The boy thrust his hands deep in his pockets, bowed his head, toed the dirt with one red tennis shoe, and answered: “Seven.”

Why was he there? “I don’t know.”

What did he think of the army? “I don’t like them.”

Hitchhiker Picked Up

After being passed through a second army checkpoint, Abu Ibrahim stopped to pick up a hitchhiker--more for the added protection of having a local resident in the car when passing potential stone throwers than from any sense of altruism. The middle-aged man was headed for Shifa Hospital on the other side of Gaza City to visit his brother.

“Just tell them that we are sick of Israelis,” the man said when he found out his fellow passengers were foreign journalists. “We are sick of our lives.”

The city’s streets were empty of traffic but littered with overturned garbage bins, broken glass, scrap metal and more burning tires. A soldier ordering youthful Palestinian passers-by to clear away one roadblock had “Born to Kill” scrawled in English on his helmet.

At Shifa Hospital, doctors treated Madiya and Selma Shemali, middle-aged sisters who had been injured by stray rubber bullets fired that morning at stone-throwing demonstrators in the troublesome Sajaiya section of town. Madiya required eight stitches in the back of her head, while Selma suffered painful bruises in her back and one leg.

Upstairs, Hisham Khalil Kilo, also from Sajaiya, lay semiconscious with his left hand in a cast and a bandage on his head. He had abrasions on his face, and his eyes, lips, and one leg were badly bruised and swollen from what companions said was a beating with nightsticks and soldiers’ boots.

Over 200 Wounded

The authorities say that in addition to the dead, more than 200 Palestinians have suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds during the month of unrest. But other injuries, such as those on display in numerous wards at Shifa, are usually lost in reports about the violence.

Also lost are the dozens of cases of Israeli soldiers who have been injured by stones and other objects hurled by the demonstrators.

Heading out of town along Al Thalathin Street, a squad of Israeli soldiers took shelter under the corrugated tin eaves of a corner building as youths tried from two sides to pelt them with stones. When the Palestinians got close enough so that their rocks struck the soldiers or clanged against the roof, two or three of the troops would run out menacingly until the youths retreated. One threw a rock back at the demonstrators, but the troops took no other hostile action during the brief time that the journalists observed.

Main Road Blocked

The main road heading south from Gaza toward what are known as the “middle camps”--refugee villages in the center of the Gaza Strip--was blocked about every 50 yards by makeshift barricades. At one point, the steel skeletons of what had once been two automobiles stood on the highway.

Two armored personnel carriers stood guard outside Bureij, the first of the middle camps, and a 12-foot-high mound of dirt completely sealed the main entrance. The camp has been under curfew since a resident was shot to death in a clash with the army Friday, and residents said telephone connections were cut from all the middle camps.

A little farther on, Abu Ibrahim slowed behind a convoy of nine army vehicles, including five armored personnel carriers, which turned into Deir el Balah. The army confirmed that three Palestinians had been wounded by gunfire in the camp earlier that day, but another demonstration was under way.

Small Girl With Onion

Soldiers blocked the main entrance, but a resident guided Abu Ibrahim and his charges through back streets, alleys and a muddy lane through an orange grove to a side entrance. A 3-year-old girl with huge brown eyes stared at the visitors and clutched a small piece of onion in one hand.

The reason was quickly clear as an army helicopter passed overhead and soldiers on board threw canisters of tear gas out the open door into the camp below. Residents thrust onions into the hands of the journalists and gave them rags which they soaked with cheap cologne, holding the objects up to their own noses to demonstrate how to cut the effects of the gas.

“This is our F-16,” quipped one resident, Nayem, in an ironic reference to a model of fighter aircraft that the United States supplies to Israel.

Tear-Gas Symptoms

The nearest tear gas had been dropped about 200 yards away, but the wind-blown effect was still powerful enough to cause headache, slight nausea and burning deep in the throat.

There were three tear-gas drops during less than an hour that the journalists spent in Deir el Balah. In addition, troops fired rifle-launched tear-gas canisters into a group of several hundred women marching toward the camp entrance. The crack of regular gunfire could also be heard, although it was impossible to tell whether the lethal or rubber ammunition was being fired.

“Come and save your women!” shouted a frenzied voice broadcast over the loudspeaker of the local mosque. “Your women’s honor is being defiled! Poor Palestine! God is Great!”

Residents angrily dismissed the claims of some Israeli government ministers that the unrest is fomented by the Palestine Liberation Organization and a relative handful of its agitators in the territories.

“Those they considered provocateurs they arrested last week,” said Ismail, 34, a teacher. “So who is responsible for these demonstrations?” he asked rhetorically.

Old Woman’s Curse

A resident showed the journalists a spent tear-gas canister made in the United States, and as they walked back to Abu Ibrahim’s taxi, an old woman flailed her arms angrily and shouted at the Americans, “Goddamn your country!”

Near Khan Yunis, a turbaned and gray-bearded Sheik Akram Akad supervised a roadblock with a difference.

“We’re collecting bread and other things for the besieged camps,” he explained as he fingered white prayer beads. “We’ve been collecting food supplies for the last two days. They’ve asked us from the hospital, too, to send food.”

Residents in the camps are suffering economically both from the curfews routinely imposed by the army after serious clashes and from strikes. About 60,000 Gazans usually travel through the Erez checkpoint every day to regular or temporary jobs in Israel, but during the unrest, many have chosen--or have been forced by their more militant peers--to stay home.

Loaded With Food

Five vehicles carrying food for Khan Yunis camp passed through Sheik Akad’s makeshift roadblock in the 10 minutes that the journalists were present. The back seat of a Peugeot sedan was full to the roof with freshly picked cauliflower, and there was more in the trunk. Other cars carried tea, bags of wheat and something that looked like parsley. The food, said the sheik, was “from the people.”

The driver of a jeep loaded with potatoes, onions and eggplant offered to guide the journalists into the besieged camp, where earlier Mussallam had been killed during a demonstration.

As the convoy passed a small, family citrus plot, a boy passed a box of oranges over a stone wall for the relief effort. In the Mashrua neighborhood, built by the Israelis to provide alternate housing for Palestinian refugees but clogged with smoldering debris this weekend, a shopkeeper threw a large bag of flat bread into the jeep.

At the camp, youngsters carrying plastic bags ran after the supply vehicle. One stopped and picked up an orange that had dropped out, smiling broadly at his good fortune.

On the way out of town from the Mussallam home, the journalists talked to doctors at the local Nasser Hospital who said that 14 people had been wounded during Saturday’s clashes at Khan Yunis, one of whom they described as “a hopeless case” with a bad head wound.

A military spokesman said that only one person was wounded here.

As night fell, the main part of Khan Yunis was under curfew with most main roads virtually unpassable due to debris. Burning tires cast eerie orange reflections off shuttered storefronts.

At the town square, an Israeli army unit stood behind a barricade facing what appeared to be about 200 Palestinians at a flaming roadblock in the distance. Two blocks behind them, more demonstrators manned their own barricade, and Abu Ibrahim finally asked one of his passengers to negotiate safe passage with an obviously irritated army officer.

Soldiers in Control

The soldiers appeared in full control of the main highway heading back north after dark, but that ended in the tough Zeiton (Olive) neighborhood at the southern approach to Gaza City, where youths began hurling stones at Abu Ibrahim’s taxi, and others surrounded the car, rocking it violently.

Someone had shouted that the journalists were really Israeli agents, and Abu Ibrahim, a burly 6-footer, clearly felt fortunate to get out with no more than a dented chrome strip and a cracked, plastic air deflector on one back window.

The situation on Sunday was better during the morning, an army spokesman said. But there were strikes causing a complete commercial shutdown in the Gaza Strip and almost no traffic on the roads. By the evening, all eight refugee camps in the area were under full or partial curfew. And according to army and U.N. sources, there were two more dead and more than 30 additional wounded.