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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
An unequal confrontation
Young Arafat backers challenge tanks with rocks in weekly rite
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
George Kochaniec
Jr. © News
RAMALLA, West Bank -- Covering an entire wall of a high-rise apartment building, the giant advertisement for Viceroy cigarettes urges Palestinians to enjoy "The Big Taste of America."
Beneath it, stone-throwing Palestinian youths are getting a taste of Israel's American-supplied arms in the form of tear gas and rubber bullets.
The sky-blue sign provides a surreal backdrop to weekly clashes between supporters of Yasser Arafat and Israeli tanks parked outside his headquarters here. It is a bitter irony to Palestinians who believe Israel would never be able to maintain its occupation or keep their leader penned up in Ramallah without help from the United States.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo, one of the chief negotiators in the now moribund peace process, says it's "absurd" of the Bush administration to join Israel in isolating Arafat on grounds that he heads a "terror-supporting entity."
"All you Americans have done is make Arafat the most popular man in Palestine," he said. "Now no one can criticize Arafat. I want to criticize Arafat and I cannot any more."
So, every Friday after Muslim prayers, the unequal confrontation begins.
It starts slowly, almost lazily, in the hot afternoon sun. A few small boys, no more than 8 or 9 years old, appear with slingshots and begin hurling stones at two Israeli tanks and an armored personnel carrier parked several hundred yards away.
Most of the stones can't even reach the vehicles. The Israelis respond with a few desultory tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. One boy is hit, not badly, and carted off by a waiting ambulance. But there is almost a carnival atmosphere.
A peddler with a pushcart arrives to sell loaves of freshly baked bread. A man walks by with his two small daughters, one on each hand, unconcerned by the tear gas grenades exploding behind him.
Is this the place for a Friday afternoon stroll? And do the stone-throwers' parents know they're there? Apparently not all of them.
"Mahmoud, Mahmoud," a small boy yells at another. "I'm going to tell your mother." An angry father drives up, drags his protesting son into the car and flings his slingshot out the window.
But a group of older boys arrives singing "Jerusalem, Jerusalem." They're 14 and 15, more daring in approaching the Israeli tanks, and the confrontation heats up.
Instead of one ambulance there are now eight. Their sirens wail regularly. Rubber bullets zing down the street, bouncing off the metal walls of a soft-drink kiosk and a bus stop with loud clangs. Tear gas sends the crowd of spectators running whenever the wind blows the acrid smoke their way.
Still older boys, 18 and 19, march up shouting "Allahu akbar," meaning "God is great." They carry the green flags of Hamas and the black flags of Islamic Jihad, Muslim fundamentalist groups that once defied Arafat's Palestinian Authority but now defend it.
Wearing the flags as capes, they race as close as they can to the tanks, sling a rock, then dive for cover behind the burned-out wreck of a car destroyed in previous shelling. Their rocks hit the tanks, and the Israelis respond by firing live rounds over their heads and rubber bullets at them.
More and more stone-throwers are hit. So many ambulances are on the scene they nearly crash into one another collecting the injured. In the confusion, one youth is unceremoniously dumped out of his stretcher by an overeager ambulance crew.
While Rocky Mountain News photographer George Kochaniec is taking pictures of the melee, I'm talking to Michael Tarazi, a Palestinian-American who grew up in Denver. He gave up a lucrative career as an international lawyer to advise PLO negotiators at a time when statehood seemed just around the corner.
Instead he finds himself embroiled in an intifada.
I tell him I feel sorry for the Israeli soldiers. After all, they're just conscripts, most no older than the Palestinians throwing stones at them, and they probably don't want to be here anyway.
"I don't feel sorry for them," says Tarazi. "They're here because they're occupying another people's land. If they don't like being an occupation army they should refuse to serve."
A rubber bullet hits me in the leg. It is a round ball, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, with only a thin covering of rubber over a heavy metal core. As a ricochet it doesn't hurt much, but a direct hit would have sent me to hospital.
About 25 Palestinian youths did wind up in hospital that day, and one died from injuries sustained in a previous clash.
But they'll be back next Friday.
February 4, 2002
Send your questions to international
editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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