Small Villages Also Part of Uprising : Arab Unrest Spreads Beyond the Camps

Public attention has focused mainly on the unrest in Palestinian refugee camps and the larger towns in the occupied territories, but 60% of the 700,000 people on the West Bank live in small, hardscrabble villages like this one.

Nonetheless, the villagers have also taken part in what the Palestinians call “the uprising” that has shaken the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the past six weeks. The 450 people of Beit Ur, in the stony Samaria hills, are an example. Several talked about the situation at the village’s general store, among shelves stocked with flour, oil, bread, eggs, canned goods and cigarettes.

One villager, Jamal Samara, wearing a leather jacket and a black and white kaffiyeh, said: “We feel the uprising here. We want the occupation to end. We can’t take it any more.”

Cemetery March

Last Friday, a score of Beit Ur’s people marched to the cemetery to protest the killing of Palestinians. Young boys placed boulders and burning tires across the Ramallah-Tel Aviv road in order to block traffic through Beit Ur, an undistinguished collection of stone houses. The village’s tallest structure is the mosque.

When the marchers returned from the cemetery to the mosque, the villagers said, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas into the courtyard.

After a soldier was struck with a stone, they said, the army rounded up 20 of the village adults, made them stand in the rain for two hours, then took them to an army camp where they were beaten with batons. They were finally made to walk home--a distance of about two miles.

Like other Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza, most of the men of Beit Ur are protesting the 20 years of Israeli occupation by not going to their jobs in Israel. Much of the Israeli work force consists of Arabs who commute by bus to jobs in Israel proper.

Boycotting Jobs

Samara, 37, works in a seed-processing plant in Tel Aviv but has not gone to work since before Christmas. His brother, Jemil Samara, 40, who works in a tile factory in Ramle, has also stayed away. Neither knows if his job will be waiting when the trouble ends.

“We Arabs were always discriminated against in our work,” Jemil Samara said. “We did all the dirty work the Jews wouldn’t do. When the uprising started, the employers treated us like the enemy, so I don’t know whether I’ll go back there. There might be work, or they might tell me to go back home.”

The villagers say they are not suffering much from the missed work. Many of them have relatives with farmland around the village.

“We help our relatives,” one villager said, “by tending the crops--olives, wheat and grapes--and the farm animals-sheep, cows and chickens. We don’t eat as much, but it is not so bad.”

Settlement Resented

The villagers resent the presence of a new Israeli settlement nearby, built on land the villagers say was unjustly expropriated for reasons of “military security.” It has brand-new buildings, running water and modern conveniences, while the people of Beit Ur make do with well water and no telephones.

Jamal Samara took a reporter to his house to show him a message scrawled on the wall in yellow paint--by Israeli settlers, he said.

“Leave Our Land or We Will Kill You Like Chickens,” it warns.

Jamal Samara said he thinks his house was singled out because it is near the edge of the village and close to the main road. He has left the message there to show what he describes as the hostility of the militant Jewish settlers.

He said that he complained to the military governor in Ramallah and that the governor apologized for the behavior of the settlers, whom he described as members of one of the hard-line, militant religious sects.

Policy of Discrimination

The villagers are offended by what they say is a calculated policy of discrimination by the occupation authorities.

They say the Israeli settlements on the West Bank have many amenities and that new access roads are being built, but that the Palestinian villagers are denied permits for new construction.

Also, they say, they are constantly harassed by Israeli soldiers.

“When they see our blue license plates from the West Bank, the soldiers push us around,” one villager said.

A 19-year-old boy named Khalid, who said he was a student at Birzeit University in Ramallah, said he was frequently subjected to searches at checkpoints between the university and the village.

When the current round of unrest began, the Israelis said it was caused by the agitation of a few provocateurs, but the villagers are scornful of this attitude.

“They seem to be changing their views now,” Jamal Samara said. “All Palestinians are behind the strikes and the demonstrations.”

Shift in Leadership

Villagers say that the leadership on the West Bank is changing from prominent Palestinians to younger men who prefer anonymity. According to some villagers, a new, “secret” leadership has sprung up in West Bank villages since the trouble began, and these men seem to be encouraging the strikers to continue.

Nonetheless, they say, they still support the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose leadership is largely based abroad.

Jamal Samara’s wife, Roqia, 30, who wears traditional flowing Palestinian dress, said she carried a placard bearing the words: “Palestine Is Arab. Down With Zionism” in the recent demonstration.

“We want a change,” she said. “We want back our Palestine.”

Roqia Samara said the villagers get news of current developments over the radio. The nearest newspapers are in Ramallah, 15 miles away.

‘Brew of Sage’

“We are getting by with less,” she said, referring to the strike. “There is a lot of cooperation in the village. People are helping one another. We have given up things like new clothes and appliances. When our coffee and tea run out, we will make a brew of sage.”

Samara’s other brother, Kemal, 30, has a 7-year-old son named Wisam. The boy said he had seen his father and uncle being beaten by soldiers not long ago. Afterward, he said, he threw stones at a passing jeep carrying Israeli soldiers and managed to get away without being caught.

The children of Beit Ur are on vacation from their state school two miles away. The military governor has set back the reopening of schools by a week, until Feb. 1, and as a consequence the children are under foot in the Samara household.

Another son, Thaei, 14, admits to throwing stones occasionally.

“I do what everybody else does,” the eighth-grader said with a shrug.

“We just want to get them out,” he said. “We just want to be free.”