Leaflets Dictate Pulse of Life in Occupied Territories : Arab Uprising Is Now the Routine

Some diplomats from the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem were having more trouble than usual in pinning down their schedules at a recent weekly planning session.

Finally, said one participant, “We realized that the reason we couldn’t plan our week was because we didn’t have the latest leaflet” issued by the clandestine Unified National Leadership for the Uprising in the Occupied Territories.

The leaflets, of which 21 have been issued since the intifada began last December, list the various forms of protest planned for the roughly two-week period ahead.

Dependence on Leaflets

On days designated for a general strike, when all stores and offices are supposed to be closed and traffic in the territories slows to a trickle, “we can sit around and do office work,” the American diplomat said. “On non-strike days, we can go to Nablus or Bethlehem. Even the (Israeli) police don’t know how to distribute their forces until they get the leaflet.”

As that incident illustrates, the fact that anti-Israeli protests on the West Bank and Gaza Strip have slipped out of the headlines is not so much because they have waned as it is because they have become institutionalized.

“The intifada was transformed into routine,” said Palestinian expert Matti Steinberg of Hebrew University. “It is now a way of life, (although) with ups and downs and peaks.”

The clearest example of how protest has been institutionalized is the shortened, three-hour workday of most businesses in towns throughout the occupied areas. After trying various combinations of threats and force for several weeks to coerce Palestinian merchants into adopting normal hours, the army has admittedly given up the effort as a lost cause.

‘More or Less Permanent’

“The new schedule of commercial activity is more or less permanent, certainly in the main centers of business,” conceded a senior source in the occupation authority. (Although the authority is run almost entirely by army officers, Israeli officials refer to it as the Civil Administration of the occupied territories.)

For months now, working hours throughout the territories have been from 9 a.m. to noon on days not designated for a general strike. Here in Bethlehem last week, merchants started looking nervously at their watches and taking in outdoor displays about 10 minutes before noon.

“People are getting used to it,” said the owner of a sweet shop, shrugging.

Usually, this merchant said, shoppers buy their Arab sweets in the afternoon so they are fresh for dinner. It makes the hours set by the uprising’s underground leadership particularly burdensome for him. Still, he said, “I’d prefer if everyone does the same, even if it hurts my business a little more.”

Work Hours Have Changed

A barber in Beit Hanina, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, had so many schoolboy customers that morning hours didn’t work for him. The boys were in class. So now he gives haircuts in the afternoons in his customers’ homes.

People are buying more Palestinian-manufactured goods and less Israeli or imported items, merchants say. At a music store here, the owner pulled out an unmarked cassette featuring songs, taped from Syrian radio, glorifying the intifada .

“I sell 50 of these nationalist tapes a day,” he boasted. However, he apologized, referring to military penalties for selling such anti-Israeli material, “I can’t play it for you or else it’s six months in prison.”

Some West Bank laborers who used to take off on their Sabbath--Friday for Muslim Arabs, Sunday for Christians--now work on those days to make up for the general strike days when they do not.

The lavish weddings that used to be normal for Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike have virtually disappeared from the West Bank social scene.

“People are getting married, but at home,” said Nabil Bendak, manager of Bethlehem’s Grand Hotel, which a year ago used to host four big wedding parties a week. Now, Bendak added, newlyweds “come here for a couple of days’ honeymoon and that’s it. No parties. No dancing. No nothing. It wouldn’t look good, with somebody killed in a camp today, or a home destroyed, for you to come with a band and 400 to 500 people for a wedding party.”

Limiting the Dowry

A new custom among Muslims is to limit the traditional dowry to no more than the equivalent of $900. In some towns, the practice is so accepted that it has been published as part of a “wedding code” for intifada marriages.

The new routine affects Israeli Jews as well as Arabs. Before the unrest began last winter, for example, Bethlehem was a fast-growing shopping area for Israelis from Jerusalem and surrounding Jewish suburbs, particularly on Saturday, when Jewish shops are closed for the Sabbath. About a year ago, the Jerusalem Post newspaper even carried a special section highlighting Bethlehem stores and restaurants and bursting with Palestinian advertising.

Now the sight of a car with a telltale yellow Israeli license plate is rare in Bethlehem. West Bank Arabs have blue license plates.

No Israelis Visible

“No more since December,” commented Bethlehem’s deputy mayor, Hanna Nasser. “You don’t see any Israeli coming to shop in Bethlehem at all. You don’t see them eating in any restaurant.”

Economic life throughout the occupied territories has ground down to what seems a bare minimum. Only six of 52 rooms in Bendak’s Grand Hotel were occupied one day last week, for example. His former staff of 21 has been trimmed to four.

Partly because of this reduced economic activity and partly because of a tax boycott ordered by the underground Palestinian leadership, tax collections are off by more than 50%, said the senior Civil Administration source.

This source said the administration’s $250-million annual budget is supposed to be funded entirely by taxes collected from local residents. Conversely, he said, every dollar collected is supposed to be spent on providing services to the residents and paying the administration’s nearly 20,000 employees, most of whom are Palestinians.

All Projects Frozen

Because of the drastic drop in tax collections, the Civil Administration already has frozen all West Bank development projects, instituted new rules requiring patients to pay three days in advance for hospital care and is about to lay off as many as 1,500 employees, the source said.

Occupation authorities also have launched an aggressive campaign to catch tax evaders, requiring residents to present a so-called tax clearance certificate before being able to get such routine services as a new driver’s license or a death certificate.

The city of Tulkarm was put under curfew for 25 days while tax collectors went door to door last month. The authorities have confiscated hundreds of private automobiles and other personal goods from Palestinians who have not paid their taxes.

Strategic as Well as Tactical

The tax crackdown is strategic as well as tactical, the Civil Administration source explained.

“This is now the main character of the intifada --the striving to disconnect Palestinian society from the symbols of Israeli occupation. And the clearest such symbol is the Civil Administration,” he said.

It is vital to block this effort, the source added.

“If they succeed, it means anarchy and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) taking control through ‘popular’ and other types of (local) committees. This would be the final victory of the intifada ,” the source said. “And we have to prevent it.”