‘Martyrs’ Hailed : Focus of Arab Unrest Shifts to Villagers

Ishak Nimer was “an artist with the slingshot” and “a good soldier,” according to his neighbors. But Jamal Tumazi--well, he was a legend.

If a child in this village of about 10,000 Arab residents is old enough to talk, chances are he can already relate at least one heroic story about Tumazi.

There was the time the youth broke through an Israeli army siege of the neighboring village of Tarqumiya, for example. Or the story about Tumazi escaping, injured, down the drainpipe from the fourth floor of a hospital in Hebron where troops had come searching for Palestinian demonstrators.

The children will even tell of how Tumazi once took first place in an area-wide cross-country race. Then they’ll show a visitor the tomb where he and Nimer are buried.

The two youths were killed April 1, the 120th and 121st Palestinian victims, respectively, of the violent unrest that has rocked the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since early December. (The toll has since risen to 152.) Their memories, like the flowers on their tomb, are still fresh.

But just when a visitor starts wondering how long these graves will continue to be a place of pilgrimage, an older resident recalls with pride that four Idna villagers were killed in the 1936 Arab uprising against the Jews and the British, who ruled the area atthe time.

Here, they’re all known as martyrs to the Palestinian struggle. And Idna is a place that takes its martyrs seriously.

This village and its heroes are symbolic of a major shift during the last several weeks in the new Palestinian uprising, with the focus of unrest moving from the towns and refugee camps to the rural Arab settlements that dot the landscape, particularly of the West Bank.

Contrary to their pastoral image, many of these villages have proven to be political hotbeds. And Israeli security sources say they fear that, while slower to ignite, these largely self-sufficient communities may burn hotter and longer than their more urbanized counterparts.

Even after a lethal outburst of violence in the camps over the weekend, more than 60% of the Palestinian fatalities during the last two months have been in villages like Idna, compared with only 30% in the first two months of the unrest. There have been fatal clashes between troops and residents in at least 46 villages, about one of every 10 in the territories.

There have been less severe casualties in scores more, and it is rare to find any village where there hasn’t been some sort of involvement in what Arabs call their intifada . (The word is usually translated as “uprising,” although some Palestinians say a better word would be “upheaval.”)

Troop Reinforcements

Israeli military sources say one of the reasons the focus of the violence has shifted is that massive troop reinforcements in the towns and near the refugee camps have quelled much of the unrest there. Palestinian organizers, as a result, put more emphasis on the villages, where army forces are much more thinly deployed.

“They’re trying to move the battlefield to places where they think they enjoy a relative advantage,” said one senior officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Indeed, in a village that is not frequented by soldiers all the time, they’re not under the same scrutiny and can easily organize for that kind of activity. And of course when you come in, they’re ready.”

Also, the army has adopted a new policy of initiating preemptive sweeps through “problematic villages,” even when no demonstration is in progress. The arrival of soldiers--or worse yet, armed Jewish settlers--in turn, frequently triggers a rock-throwing protest and another fatal clash.

So why doesn’t the army just stay out of the villages?

“We have two reasons,” explained another senior military source. “First of all, as a principle, as long as Israel is the ‘responsible power’ in the territories under international law, we cannot afford that even one single village will behave like this--not in the West Bank and not in Gaza. And practically, if we let them alone, we know that they will not be satisfied--they will not hesitate to try and advance a little bit.”

Most villages in both the West Bank and Gaza lie close enough to primary or secondary roads that they can and do disrupt free passage for Jewish settlers unless prevented by the army, this source noted. Idna, he added, has had “a bad reputation for Jews,” going back to the times of British rule between the two world wars, and it is situated adjacent to the main road linking Hebron and the Mediterranean coast.

Idna residents, many of whom would give only their first name or no name at all, say there are two less-tangible factors involved in their militancy--an independence of spirit and a community bond that are characteristic of the rural population.

“Villagers are very simple people, but they have a lot of pride,” said Hashem, 25. “The Israelis made a mistake when they caused so many casualties,” he added. “It affected people’s pride.”

“Losing somebody in death is both good and bad,” added Hafez, 19. “It’s bad to lose a relative or a friend. But it’s good because it gives everybody else a push to get involved.”

The signs of Idna’s rebelliousness are everywhere, starting with the charred shell of a bus torched near the main road early on March 3 while it was carrying workers to jobs in Israel. Large rocks and metal debris near the entrance to the village and sooty scorch marks from burning tires mark the spots where residents had built flaming roadblocks. And a replica of the outlawed Palestinian flag is painted on the stone fence around the cemetery.

The exterior walls of two houses at the perimeter of the village are peppered with fresh bullet holes, each big enough to insert a finger. And the metal shutters of buildings on the main street are awash in a combination of Palestine Liberation Organization and Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) graffiti.

In February, residents torched an Israeli army tank transporter as it passed nearby. The military only confirmed that incident nearly a month later, but there was a clash at the time when troops swept through town looking for the perpetrators.

There were more arrests and another clash after the bus burning on March 3, leaving three residents with gunshot wounds. And four days later, seven more inhabitants were wounded in a pre-dawn army raid intended to round up scores of alleged “inciters and leaders of disturbances” whom the military had targeted for detention.

Then, on April 1, Nimer and Tumazi were killed in a clash that broke out after regular Friday services at the local mosque.

Altogether, the residents say, about 100 villagers have been injured in clashes with the army, and 50 are in jail. The fact that only two have been killed, one activist said, reflects the fact that “we know it’s a long uprising, so people here work carefully.” And they boast that most of the people on the army’s arrest list remain free, sleeping in the nearby hills at night to avoid capture.

The villagers have always been less dependent on outsiders for their existence than either the townspeople or the refugees, and they have scaled back their life style even further since the uprising began.

Some men still work at jobs in Israel, but others either refuse to do so on principle or have been fired for frequent absences during the unrest.

“The owner told me: ‘When the stones run out in your village, then you can come back to work,’ ” said Mohammed, who worked in a Tel Aviv suburb as a metalworker’s assistant. “Now, I work on the land.”

Even university graduates are working in the fields these days, said another villager. “Students used to stay home and feel superior when their parents went out to the land,” he said. “Now they’re going out to work the land together.”

“We can go 10 years and we won’t be hungry,” said one woman with a laugh as she helped bake flat bread for a family of 14. Piled in another room were 15 large sacks of wheat, which the family grinds into flour itself.

“I didn’t know how to bake using wood before,” admitted the pregnant wife of the village imam, or priest, as she prepared lunch outdoors. “But I’m learning,” she added, noting that the Israelis have cut the West Bank off from supplies of petroleum products, including kerosene for cooking and heating.

When the men aren’t working, they mostly engage in surprisingly sophisticated political discussions.

“Politics all day!” exclaimed one resident with a smile as a room full of his neighbors quickly forgot about a visiting American journalist and held a lively debate about the possible role of Syria in a future Middle East peace conference. “We eat politics!”

They complained about U.S. support for Israel, but showed a much deeper understanding for it than one might expect.

“It’s in the American interest,” said one man. “For Jews, at least, Israel is a democratic country. And the Arab countries are less stable. The governments of any one of them could be toppled at any time. One way of pressuring America,” the man added, “is by causing a change in the Arab world.”

Won’t Give Up

But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to give up their intifada . Commented Hashem, a merchant: “People are certain that if the intifada will stop, we’ll go back to a much worse situation than we ever had.”

The children of Idna, meanwhile, have made intifada a new game. The army ordered all West Bank schools closed two months ago, so they have plenty of time to play.

The youngsters chant and build little roadblocks. They form sides, with some assigned to play the roles of Israeli soldiers and the others imitating their older siblings. A 9-year-old was injured the other day by a stone “fired” by a playmate in the role of an Israeli.

“His friends started shouting that he was a ‘martyr,’ ” recalled Musalam Khalil, a store owner.

Most boys here walk around with slingshots in their pockets. The wooden ones, carved from a Y-shaped branch, are good for accuracy, they explain. The cloth versions, in which the stone is twirled rapidly before releasing it, are for distance.

Mohammed Abdallah, a boy of about 10, gave a demonstration, using a cloth slingshot, like the one David used against Goliath, to hurl a large stone about 50 yards.

“Who in the village can hurl a stone the farthest?” he was asked.

The boy replied without hesitation.

“Jamal,” he said, referring to the recently slain Tumazi. “Jamal was the best.”