In ‘67, Saeb Erekat
was a 12-year-old boy from Jericho, who encountered a tank for the first time
in his life. He tells Walla.co.il that, until the war, he didn’t even know he
was a Palestinian.
“I was 12 years old when the war broke out", remembers Saeb
Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and one of the most prominent politicians
in the history of the Palestinian Authority.
“My father was in the United States on a business trip, and I was with
my mother and five of my brothers and sisters at our home in Jericho. I remember my mother was following events
closely on Egyptian radio, and she looked sad", recalls Erekat. “At that time I didn't know much about
politics, but I remember mostly that people were afraid; the sense of fear was
particularly strong".
"On the Monday of the war, we were already seeing in Jericho
people who were fleeing from the West Bank to Jordan, and who had stopped in
the city on their way. I remember riding on my bicycle to go and watch the
buses and cars that gathered in Jericho”.
Erekat recalls with an effort: “I remember trying to look into the faces
of the people; there were so many faces I had never seen before”.
Erekat also remembers meeting with soldiers from both sides during
the war. "On the same day, I was
on my way towards Terra Sancta School, which stands adjacent to the road
junction as you leave Jericho. I saw a column of tanks approaching, and I
watched them, mesmerized. One of the tanks stopped beside me, and out of it
climbed an Arabic-speaking soldier. They were fraternal soldiers from Iraq, and
the soldier asked me the way to Jerusalem. I don’t remember now exactly what I
told him – this all happened when I was 12 - but what I remember very well is
the painful scene on the road from Jericho towards the Dead Sea several hours
later". Erekat hesitates for a moment as he digs into his memory and
continues: "I remember this very clearly. The column of Iraqi tanks I had
encountered previously in the city, was now destroyed, and blown up, and sending
up a pillar of smoke”.
"Three days later I saw the first Israeli soldiers of my
life", remembers Erekat. "First there was a flight of planes over
Jericho, dropping pamphlets telling us to stay in our houses, and to raise over
our roofs white flags of surrender. I remember this is what we did", says
Erekat. "I remember mother looking
for white sheets and hanging them outside the windows.”
Several hours later,
the 12-year-old Erekat looked out of the window, and saw military vehicles.
"I knew straightaway this was the Israeli army ", recalls Erekat,
"and it felt very strange. The soldiers passed from house to house,
ascertaining which houses still contained families and which had already been
abandoned. I remember seeing soldiers coming out of a house: they were weighed
down with objects, which they loaded onto a truck and drove away. The soldiers also took our neighbors’
car".
The young Erekat
himself went later to the houses abandoned by those who, until the week before,
had been his neighbors. "I have one particularly strong memory”, says
Erekat, "of when I went to the house of neighbors who had already fled,
and saw their chickens fighting in the yard, panic-stricken. I chased them and caught one and took it home to my mother, along with a donkey I also found in the yard.” But Erekat’s gift was not well-received. "I thought that
mother would be pleased, but she was furious with me. She told me I had shamed
the whole family, by taking something that didn’t belong to me. I remember this
so clearly", confesses Erekat.
“She beat me, and made me return the animals to the empty
yard".
Erekat says there is a dividing line in his life between childhood
and adulthood. “10 June 1967 marks the end of my childhood,” remembers Erekat.
"Three months later the strikes had already begun. We had started to talk
about occupation, and to write graffiti in Jericho against the occupation,
whereas previously I wouldn’t have known what occupation or even graffiti
was." According to Erekat,
"even my own self-identity as a Palestinian didn’t exist before the
war. Before the war, I thought that
Palestinians were people who lived in refugee camps. I thought then that the people in the camps were Palestinians,
whereas I was from Jericho".
"One of my first memories of the post-war period”, says
Erekat, closing out the childhood period of his life, “is of when the Israeli
army caught me writing graffiti on one of the walls. I don’t remember what exactly I wrote, maybe ‘End the Occupation’
or something like that, but I remember the soldiers took me in for questioning,
and I got off with a caution. Later, when I went back to school, I immediately
became a hero. All the children gathered round me and asked what it was like
with the soldiers, and I had a certain status among them. This experience", concludes Erekat,
"together with the experience of the war, told me that my childhood had
ended, and I had entered a new stage in my life".
Translation, and all
errors therein, by Lawrence
of Cyberia.
Read the original
article at Walla!
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