Worlds collide
October 16th, 2007The second entry in this week’s correspondent’s diary from The Economist’s website.
From economic stagnation to flamenco in one day
AFTER three years here, I still don’t understand the West Bank security regime. Israelis are forbidden from visiting the main Palestinian cities, and at some, like Nablus, checkpoints block them.
But in others, you can drive all the way in and out without being stopped, and since there are rarely any signposts, it’s easy to end up there by mistake. The first time I went to Hebron, I stopped a taxi driver to ask the way. “You’re in the middle of it,” he grinned.
We visit a stationery factory in Hebron. The usual stories. The checkpoints make moving goods between cities in the West Bank, let alone to Gaza, costly and slow. It’s hard to compete with Israeli goods, which suffer fewer hold-ups.
More surprising is that Hebron’s paper-pounders, shoe-smiths, clothes makers and others are really worried about competition from China. Even here in Palestine, they feel the same global threat as everyone else. Except that here it’s much harder to make your business leaner and meaner, since so much depends on Israel, on things beyond your control.
We drop in on a senior Hamas man, a member of parliament, portly and bearded as per usual. But unusually, he is one of the few not in an Israeli jail. I cheerfully ask why. He bristles. I realise that my question could imply he was an Israeli collaborator. Pointedly, he explains that he spent two years in prison, and (this with some pride) was even elected to parliament from there.
Then he runs down the usual list of PA repressions against Hamas. But he says his Islamist charity, which distributes clothes and meals for Ramadan to poor families, is still raking it in, thanks to the Islamic tradition of giving 2.5% of one’s earnings as zakat, or charity, while what he calls “pro-Fatah” organisations like the Red Crescent are finding it hard to raise funds.
I’ve been asking every Islamist I meet how Hamas is dealing with the attempts to close it down, and I realise that this is the answer. They may go underground politically, but they can still do what they know best: collecting zakat to pay for social projects like soup kitchens and schools. That was what made them popular in the first place. The PA is closing down lots of Islamist charities, but it can’t close them all. Hamas can play this game for years.
He sends us on to three young men who have stories of being arrested and tortured by the PA. All were active during the intifada, when Hamas and Fatah militants fought for a common cause. Now they’re enemies. We sit around a plastic table in the concrete-walled courtyard of their family’s house and they tell me of being hooded, tied up and suspended by the wrists. Again, they say, it is much worse than what the Israelis used to do.
At iftar in my fixer’s home in Ramallah that evening, the conversation turns to the 87 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to have been released this morning as a goodwill gesture—all part of “boosting” Mahmoud Abbas. At the last minute Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, decided to withhold some of the pardons. (Why, I asked an Israeli journalist friend. “He’s got nothing else to do,” she sneered.)
At any rate, Israel is holding some 9,000 Palestinians. If anything, agree the iftar diners, Mr Abbas will look to his people like a fool for accepting such a measly token.
From Ramallah I drive down to the Dead Sea for a concert by Paco de Lucia, Spain’s most famous flamenco guitarist. The setting is a desert gorge walled by massive cliffs. The warm, heavy air of 400m below sea level fills with breathtaking music. The audience is a relaxed, joyful crowd of Israelis of all ages.
I find my concentration wandering. To be able to flit between the Israeli and Palestinian worlds is a rare privilege; most of their inhabitants cannot. But not for the first time, I’m finding the contrasts hard to digest.