Aug. 27, 2004 0:31Tarnished symbols of the intifadaBy MATTHEW...

Aug. 27, 2004 0:31
Tarnished symbols of the intifada
By MATTHEW GUTMAN

This is the fourth in a series on Palestinian life four years into the intifada.

After threatening Jamal al-Dura, the two Tanzim toughs dialed their leaders for armed back-up, reporting excitedly: "there are Jews in the El-Bureij cemetery."

Using their mobile phones, the pair snapped pictures of Dura's guests – this reporter and a translator – who had accompanied Dura to the grave of his "martyred" child, Muhammad. The boy's "live-on-TV" death, it is said, launched 1,000 terrorists. "This is just to make sure you don't escape," the Tanzim member with the tobacco stained teeth sputtered, as Dura hustled the journalists into his car for the short drive back to his home.

Presidents, sheikhs, and kings have courted Dura, whose son was killed when the two were trapped in cross fire between IDF troops and Palestinian militants on September 30, 2000 – three days after the start of the intifada. Dura himself was badly wounded. Footage of the shooting was beamed around the world making "martyred" son and wounded father instantly famous.

But gaining a little respect seems more elusive in the sooty El-Bureij refugee camp where, four years into the intifada, even crowning symbols of the resistance – like the Duras – have lost their luster as Palestinians grapple with the war's crushing failure.

In the aftermath of the cemetery encounter, the kerfuffle at El-Bureij refugee camp lasted an hour. It drew in a dozen men, some of whom had smuggled their AK-47 assault rifles into Dura's home in squash-racket bags. Bitter arguments over the reporters' presence in the cemetery – the female translator had "impiously" worn short-sleeves – yielded fury. But several cups of coffee later, the Tanzim bosses apologized for Dura's "graveside humiliation" at the hands of what they called "the novice militants," and the spat fizzled out.

Half-heartedly inviting his guests to stay for lunch following the incident, the gaunt Dura noted privately that "when you gain a measure of respect in a community, there are always people who want to bring you down."

There was a time when the spindly Dura's bullet-ridden body, his now palsied hand, and above all the loss of his son, qualified him as a genuine Palestinian hero.

But leading Palestinian psychologist, Dr. Eyad Sarraj, observed this week that Palestinian national identity – which coalesced around images like the young Dura dying in his father's arms – is fast losing ground to tribal or gang identity, even on "sacred turf" such as Muhammad Dura's grave.

Sarraj, founder and chairman of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, said the bulk of Palestinians, especially Gazans, are at the low ebb of a cycle, at a point which he calls the "hopelessness and helplessness stage." His center's most recent study found that 49 percent of Palestinian children living in the Gaza Strip suffer from acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Their faith in traditional Palestinian father figures and political figures, like Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, has evaporated. The young militants in the cemetery, explained Sarraj, were making a name for themselves at the expense of the old symbols of power.

Like other Palestinian emblems of nationhood, Dura is a tarnished one. His treatment for a drug addiction before and after his son's agonizing death, is one of the quiet secrets of the Gaza Strip. His neighbors assail his affinity for things petit bourgeois: for example Dura smokes Marlboro Reds, while most Palestinians can only afford the discount brand. And most confusing is the factor that remains unspoken in El-Bureij: ballistic tests indicate that it might not have been Israeli bullets that killed Muhammad Dura after all.

Still, being the father of the Palestinian's most famous martyr – perhaps with exception of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – indeed has its perks. Dura has just returned from five months in Iran, where he has journeyed three times in the past four years. In other peregrinations he hobnobbed with King Abdullah of Jordan – who even donated his own blood for one of Dura's many surgeries. He has dined with Iran's leaders Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, and others.

A glance at his kempt, clean children, and the new sedan parked in the shade of a carob tree outside, highlights the difference between the Dura family and their neighbors. Dura receives stipends from Palestinian social security and other groups, or nations, but on that subject, he would rather not elaborate.

A Koranic verse on Muhammad Dura's grave reads: "Do not consider those killed in my name as dead. They are alive and will be with god." Maybe so, but Dura's frank gaze is far less prevalent on the walls of Palestinian refugee camps four years later. The faces of hundreds of other martyrs, many posing for their death portraits clutching machine guns, supplanted Dura.

Menacing posters aside, El-Bureij these days boasts only the trappings of resistance. IDF intelligence sources agree that most Palestinian terrorist groups are whittled down to unskilled, third-string terrorists. According to IDF sources, Israel has eliminated some 600 leading Hamas members, chief among them its spiritual leader, Yassin, and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, both of whose portraits preside over the Dura's bare living room.

Over the past four years, explained Sarraj, most Palestinians have primarily experienced this war as recipients of IDF retaliation for a Kassam rocket or suicide attack. Gaza is cut off. And as opposed to the first intifada, where the IDF bases once peppered Palestinian refugee camps, "the enemy [Israeli army] is now nowhere to be found," he said – except for in Palestinian memory.
An archway over the road into El-Bureij depicts an M-16 and a message written carefully in Hebrew: "You shall not pass in peace." According to Dura, as he picked his way through the cemetery, leading the reporter to his son's grave, the archway's message is one which 250 intifada "shaheeds" (martyrs) died to enforce. Some of the graves are embossed with black figurines of fighters aiming M-16s. Others are just stone nubs in the ground.

The portraits of the two Hamas leaders comprise the only art adorning the whitewashed walls of Dura's living room, furnished only with plastic chairs and a sagging divan. It is an odd gesture in a house where the family's eldest son, 18-year-old Eyad, is strictly forbidden from involving himself in political activity.

During the last incursion into the refugee camp, a frantic Dura stuffed his infant son Muhammad II (born two years after his brother's death) into a kitchen cupboard for protection. Oddly enough, Sarraj theorizes, Palestinian children "dropped the father figure after Dura's death because they saw a father unable to protect his son. So they asked for arms and threw their allegiance to militant groups, particularly Hamas."

In an interview two years ago, Dura was quoted triumphantly saying that "Muhammad died for Al Aksa [the mosque]." Yet with the intifada now in its death throes and with most of the Palestinian leadership acknowledging its failure, Dura struggles with the legacy of an event that is at once his tragedy and his triumph.

Six times he was asked whether the intifada succeeded in improving Palestinian life or attaining its national goals. Six times, he sidestepped the question.

Finally he answered the "wooden speak" prevalent among some Palestinian spokesmen: "We are under attack in our homes daily. Those that can defend themselves, should. But I, I am handicapped."