What in the hell did they achieve? What in the bloody hell? ****************************************
Aug. 6, 2004 0:23 | Updated Aug. 6, 2004 0:33 Aksa leader: Intifada is in its death throes By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Zacharia Zubeidi Photo: Matthew Gutman
This is the first in a series on Palestinian life four years into the intifada.
It's not so much what Zakariya Zubeidi, the fugitive leader of the West Bank Aksa Martyrs Brigades, says, but how he says it. Zubeidi speaks in the vacant tones of a ghost.
And four years after he first picked up a rifle, this peace-activist-turned-local-hero-and-killer eulogized the Palestinian intifada in words similar to those in which he described himself.
"The intifada is in its death throes. These are the final stages – this I can confirm," he said on Wednesday.
He held court in a safe house overlooking the Jenin refugee camp, now a sprawling complex of glimmering pastel-colored townhouses.
If anyone embodies the intifada on the eve of its fourth anniversary, it is Zubeidi. The 28-year-old Aksa chief boasts a pedigree of martyrdom: Zubeidi's mother was shot dead in the battle of Jenin, as was one of his brothers. Two other brothers are in Israeli prisons. His father died of a skin cancer that the family says went untreated while he served a prison term for political activism against Israel during the first intifada.
All this death and poverty – according to the World Bank, 52 percent of Palestinians live below the poverty line – has left the people "as exhausted as they were after the first intifada."
The intifada has vented its suicidal wrath on Israelis, but in recent weeks criticism of the Palestinian Authority has ensconced itself in common parlance. "Not only was the intifada a failure, but we are a total failure. We achieved nothing in 50 years of struggle; we've achieved only our survival."
And as terrorist warfare slows to a gasping halt, Zubeidi sees the violence turning inward. Last week, Zubeidi decided to vent his frustration by torching the offices of his "friend," Kadura Musa, Jenin's governor and its Fatah leader. Zubeidi claimed he sought to highlight the reforms necessary for his society; his critics said he was pining for attention.
One of the Palestinian's few self-critical leaders, Zubeidi explained: "My position is neither legal nor legitimate. But an independent judiciary would be able to stop the corruption and enact the reforms we need to save this society."
For his part, Musa, in his pink-curtained penthouse office, downplayed the torching as something akin to horse play. The Aksa boys, he sputtered, "are like my sons. What am I supposed to do, open fire on them?"
Musa likened the incident to a trend "that we [Fatah] have seen several times before. There was Black September [a failed attempt to overthrow Jordan in 1970], the Black Panthers [a Jenin-based Fatah group that murdered scores of suspected collaborators in the first intifada], and now al-Aksa. The Panthers are now among our leaders, as will be the Aksa Martyrs Brigades."
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades are credited with numerous terrorist attacks that killed scores of Israelis, and Zubeidi still ranks high on Israel's wanted list. PA leaders assembled al-Aksa as Fatah's response to the increasingly popular Hamas terrorist branch, Izzadin Kassam. But they lost control somewhere along the way.
On September 25, 2001, the debt-ridden group sent a handwritten plea, seized by the IDF in April 2002, to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat demanding funding. Apparently, Arafat did not provide enough.
But with Jenin increasingly quiet – even Zubeidi admitted that Israel's security barrier has decreased the number of IDF incursions into the city – Zubeidi and his men are less busy.
Asked if he intends to trade in his M16 for a briefcase, Zubeidi, who sees himself as a Robin Hood, responded that "such a path is not currently ordained for a man likely to be killed." Nevertheless, with his military role curtailed he has focused his attention on governing Jenin's unruly refugee sector. "We give the people money and settle the many disputes arising over the [allocation of the] new houses in the refugee sector."
So quiet is Jenin of late – though the gunmen still complain of sporadic nighttime IDF raids – that potted plants have replaced barricades in the twisting alleyways of the camp and purple bougainvillea tumbles over the terraced hills.
With funds from the United Arab Emirates the flattened parts of the refugee sector were cleared and some 500 commodious homes were constructed in their place. "Zakariya Zubeidi settled these disputes, not the PA," said Zubeidi, speaking of himself in the third person as he frequently did during the interview.
Zubeidi's men function as neighborhood policemen because PA police here are virtually nonexistent.
Still, the infamous Aksa Martyrs Brigades are hardly brigades anymore. With 160 of his men in prison, and another 25 killed in battles with the IDF, Zubeidi's newer recruits are often teenagers, some of whom attend school during the day and take potshots at the nearby settlements of Ganim and Kadim at night.
The youths, who look much older than their age, sit around Zubeidi during the interview, eagerly absorbing each word as they drag on their L&M Red cigarettes – the same brand as his. Their favorite stories, they said, are tales of al-Aksa's exploits in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002.
The dust of suspicion has settled around Zubeidi's own apparently miraculous survival of five assassination attempts since that Jenin battle. In his first near-death experience, a bomb he had rigged detonated prematurely, leaving his face freckled black by sizzling gunpowder. Given Israel's dazzling display of rocketry in assassinating Hamas leaders in Gaza, his countrymen ask, how is it possible that he is still alive?
Just steps from his home, Zubeidi staged a patrol through the refugee sector's alleys for a Fox TV crew. Smoking cigarettes and trying not to look bored, Zubeidi and his deputy, Tha'er, waited behind Fox's newswoman as she finished her report.
Mysteriously, as al-Aksa is increasingly sapped of militants, Zubeidi's media acrobatics are becoming ever more brazen. He has even gone on Israel Radio to explain his position in Hebrew learned in Israeli prisons.
Death and life seem to flash everywhere. Zubeidi's wife bore a son last year and is again pregnant, he said with pride – late-night rendezvous are no easy task.
During the interview, Zubeidi and his deputy sipped tea and coffee beside a bouquet of plastic roses wrapped in plastic to keep the dust away. They seemed relaxed even as they spoke of their possibly imminent deaths. Zubeidi even thanked a translator "for putting the proper passion" into his deadpan delivery.
People like Zubeidi may have taken up local politics, but they have no interest in giving up the fight – at least, he said, not until "the international community imposes a solution on both parties."
"It is a double-edged dagger," said Zubeidi contemplatively. "If we give up, then we live a life of humiliation. But to keep fighting – it only brings destruction."
