Weary of War, Hesitant to Have Hope

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- In this battered and despondent biblical town, and in the oft-bloodied streets of downtown Jerusalem, Palestinians and Israelis on Monday were greeting the latest steps aimed at ending their long conflict with hefty skepticism and only tentative hope.

With the Israeli troop withdrawal from the northern Gaza Strip nearly complete, attention focused on Bethlehem, scheduled Wednesday to become the next area handed back to Palestinian control. But there was no celebration Monday, no eager anticipation of the Israeli forces’ departure.

“I’ll give it 50-50,” said Naji Abu Aita, a businessman and owner of the Paradise Hotel on Bethlehem’s Manger Street. “We’ve been through this before. They leave, something happens and they come back. I hope it’s different this time, but anything can happen, and we are back to square one.”

In their first reoccupation of Bethlehem in the fall of 2001, Israeli tanks bludgeoned their way down Manger Street and soldiers took over Abu Aita’s hotel. He still has not been able to repair the damage. Last year alone, Israeli forces invaded, then withdrew from, Bethlehem three times, in response to Palestinian shootings or other violence.

“People are tired and have given up and are willing to settle for a lot less,” said Yacoub Hayek, tending his grocery in the Dahaisha refugee camp, where neither the departure of the Israelis nor the return of the Palestinian Authority is great cause for joy.

“All we can hope for now is to be where we were three years ago. The intifada has only sent us backward.”

On Jerusalem’s main Jaffa Street, where scores of Israelis have been killed in shootings and suicide bombings on buses and at cafes, life went on Monday largely unaffected by the news of a cease-fire announced Sunday. No one said they felt a new sense of safety.

“I do not feel anything has changed, and I don’t know if it can ever happen,” said Yaniv Hillali, a young security guard at the door of the popular Cafe Hillel coffee bar. Guards like Hillali, who check the purses and backpacks of arriving customers, have become fixtures at Israeli restaurants and bars.

“When there are no more security guards like me, when we can stop searching bags, only then can we begin to think differently,” said Hillali, who took the job when he got out of the army six months ago. As he spoke, he carefully rifled the handbag of a white-haired woman and waved a metal-detecting wand over the paunch of a male customer. Only a long-robed priest from a nearby church was exempted scrutiny. “He’s a regular,” Hillali explained.

“Maybe if we can see a year or half a year with no explosions, with no terrorist attacks, with no shootings,” he added, “maybe then the country can begin to relax.”

Lack of Confidence

Noa Schender, a retired bread factory manager who strolled into the cafe, sounded what passes here for an optimistic note.

“I very, very, very much hope this is going to work,” said Schender, 49. Hope, she said, not “believe.”

“I wish I could be confident, but I’m not confident in either side. Not in our side and not in their side.”

The one element that may make a difference this time, she said, is that the radical Islamic organization Hamas agreed to a three-month cease-fire. If it happens, she said, then maybe Israelis will experience a period of calm. Calm -- no one actually says “peace.”

But Schender’s friend Miriam Azipov, an accountant, doesn’t believe Hamas or other armed Palestinian factions are serious about suspending their attacks against Israelis. They’ll merely use the time to regroup and rebuild, she said.

“They will just regain strength, and then it will be worse,” said Azipov, 51, who came to Jerusalem from the former Soviet Union in 1990. “Everyone knows that terrorism should be erased from the world. Until this happens, there will be no peace here.”

From Schender’s point of view, pursuing the U.S.-led diplomatic effort known as the “road map” -- however flawed -- is the way to go, if solely because it’s the only initiative on the table.

“They can kill us and kill us, and we can kill them and kill them, and they will never manage to kill all of us and we will never manage to kill all of them,” she said.

Back in Bethlehem, barely a couple of miles south of Jerusalem, the Israeli army checkpoint leading into town remained in force Monday afternoon. About a dozen cars and trucks waited more than an hour to inch through. Even after the withdrawal, the army is expected to continue guarding Rachel’s Tomb, a Jewish shrine on the edge of the West Bank town.

Dependent on Tourism

Abu Aita, the hotelier, said Palestinians’ utter desperation may be the magic ingredient that eases the conflict this time. In some ways, Bethlehem is in worse shape than other Palestinian cities because its livelihood was so dependent on the tourist trade that vanished after the intifada erupted 33 months ago.

“The Palestinian government apparently realizes that the people are in a disastrous situation and can’t live like this anymore,” said the 45-year-old father of three, standing in the electrical hardware store that his family runs now instead of the shuttered hotel, which once employed 120 people.

“I don’t think this road map is the answer to our problems, but it may be a way to get us out of this situation.” And so, he said, Palestinian security authorities may act more aggressively to keep militiamen and armed factions in check.

Bethlehem’s Manger Square, in front of the Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, was a sad sight Monday. Bereft of tourist income and worshipers on pilgrimage, the square has reverted to a parking lot for ramshackle taxis.

During most of the intifada, the square bristled with swaggering gunmen affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Monday, a few kids and old men sat in patches of shade.

Joseph Giacaman, whose family is a leading producer of Bethlehem’s renowned olive-wood ornaments, stood in the doorway of his shop on the square, the lone open business. The family has only now finished repairing the damage to its wood factory after Israeli forces took up positions inside it during last year’s 39-day standoff at the church, where Palestinian militants sought refuge.

It will take more than a few weeks or months free of violence before tourists return, he said. That could take a year, he noted, and in the meantime the poverty that fuels the conflict will deepen. “When the Palestinian authorities return, the Israeli soldiers will be just a few meters away. They could come back any time,” Giacaman said. “It’s all too fragile.”

In Israel, Monday’s newspapers reflected an air of hope. The two largest framed their front pages in blue, a graphic touch usually reserved for festive occasions, and printed prominent photos of jubilant soldiers leaving the Gaza Strip.

“Whoever dares to be optimistic is inevitably considered the village idiot,” commentator Hemi Shalev wrote on the front page of Maariv. “But still, things are changing.”

The political fallout for Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Palestinian Authority counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, has already started. Abbas must go before the Palestinian parliament today to explain his recent diplomatic maneuvers.

And Sharon got an earful Monday during a meeting of lawmakers from his right-wing Likud Party, all of whom took him to task for the agreements he has made with the Palestinians. Outside his official residence in Jerusalem, about 200 Jewish settlers who live in the Gaza Strip demonstrated angrily, accusing Sharon of abandoning them.