Soldiers

“Identifications,” he simply says. French and American passports come out along with one Palestinian identity card. He speaks a mix of Arabic and English to us.

“You are Palestinian? You are with the Red Crescent?” His gun rests easily across his chest, the shoulder strap around his neck, his right hand on the handle.

Fino answers him in English. “Yes.”

“It does not say so on your identity card.” A second soldier stands behind him, and a handful more ten meters back on the porch of an occupied house.

“I am just volunteer.” Fino gestures with his hands, shifts his feet, smiles a short-lived nervous grin more to himself than to the soldiers.

“Ok. What are you doing here?”

It’s Monday afternoon, February 26th, the second day of the Israeli military operation codenamed “Hot Winter”, and it’s bloody cold. We’re in the labyrinth which is the old city of Nablus, delivering supplies to families under the twenty-four hour curfew. The four of us have gone a hundred yards or so up the street from the main group of relief workers to deliver several pounds of bread to the neighborhood. We came around a corner guided by two little children and stumbled into the line of site of a nearby house occupied entirely by Israeli soldiers. They seemed only mildly surprised to see us, which did not prevent a few of them from pointing their guns at us. Can’t really blame them I guess. We raised our hands at our sides to show we are unarmed. Only later did I realize why we raise them only to waist level and not above our heads: that gesture is reserved for surrendering fighters.

“The children. They cannot be out. Tell them to go back to their homes.”

Fino obligingly tells the two boys to go back home. They scamper back down the street and disappear into dark openings—stairways, doorways, alleyways, the children always know where to go.

A long discussion about the permissibility of bringing bread to families ensues.

“Alright. You can take the bread up these stairs to the families there. But only two of you. And not you, only internationals.” He points at Fino who has already moved as if to leave.

A shorter discussion ensues about the need for someone who speaks Arabic to enter the houses. In the end we acquiesce and Lisa and Eric go up to the houses while I stay with Fino and the soldiers. A guarded silence falls among us. For the first time I notice the soldier’s stony face has startling green eyes. In fact so does the other soldier behind him.

A crew of Arab press is working its way towards us.

“Tell the press to go back. Tell them.”

Fino shouts at them. They stop where they are in the arched tunnel underneath an ancient building, halfway to us from the main group of relief workers.

“No. Don’t stop. Tell them not to stop. Tell them to go back. If they come here I will not let you take anything to the houses here again.”

Fino cups his hands to shout again, then drops them with a resigned grimace. “You tell them, please, ok?” Although the old city residents are absent from its streets, and only journalists, soldiers, or relief workers wander about, the houses that crowd every street on the street level and second or third stories are occupied with penned up Palestinians. Shouting messages for the Israeli army in Arabic might give some people the wrong idea about a person’s allegiances, which is also one likely reason why the soldier asked Fino to do it in the first place. All the soldiers know enough broken Arabic to tell Arabs to leave; from a practical standpoint it’s the one thing they all have to know.

He let’s Fino walk down to the journalists and persuade them in private, leaving me to babysit the soldiers for the moment.

“You’re using rubber bullets, mainly… yeah?” I ask the two soldiers.

“What?”

“Rubber.” I point to the stock on their guns.

“Oh. Yes.”

We stand watching and waiting for whatever may happen next.

Fino comes back. The press grudgingly retreat.

A firefighter cautiously jogs up to us.

“There is a fire in al-Yasmeena quarter. I need to get the oxygen. It is in the car here. The captain said I could pass.” The firefighter paramedic also speaks in halting English. Palestinians generally believe that the soldiers are less callous when spoken to in English. It sounds inane but I’ve seen it work several times. Though it doesn’t mean persuasion is easy.

“Where is the car?” the green-eyed soldier asks.

The firefighter points past an Israeli jeep and a humvee several yards up.

“No. I cannot let you pass. Forbidden”

“I spoke with the captain. He said I could pass.”

“Which captain did you speak with?”

“I do not know his name.”

“I cannot let you pass. How do I know you are not lying?”

“There is a fire. I need to bring the oxygen.”

In the meantime Lisa and Eric have come back, lighter several bags of bread.

Lisa approaches the soldier. “The woman up there says that the children who were here are her sons. Is it ok if they come back home?”

“No.”

“But this is their home.”

“We told them to go home, and they went somewhere else. Why would they not go to their own homes? They should not be out anyways.” He is calm, even cold. Not barbaric or even impolite, but inhumanly professional. Nothing seems to faze him.

“Speak with the captain. He gave me permission to get the oxygen.”

“We need to check the other houses in the area to see if they need food.”

“No. Look, these are the rules. I cannot let you pass the humvee or the jeep. Anything before that is ok. You cannot get to your car if it is past that point. If you want to bring bread to anywhere else that is ok.”

This time Fino is allowed to take bread into the houses. I accompany him into a building and up a dark winding stone staircase, the steps worn and irregular, the ceiling low. It opens up into a tiny square with three or four families living around it. We give them however much they need. The second building is similar but no one answers Fino’s calls. He reaches the top of the stairs, looks around, and motions me to go back down. It must be empty. I wonder if Palestinian militants occupy any of the hastily or permanently abandoned homes, waiting for night to fall. It seems unlikely that anyone would be so brazen when a jeep or humvee sits around every second or third junction and any number of homes are occupied by unseen soldiers. Ironically the sheer strength of the Israeli army and the absence of any armed resistance make the old city relatively safe for the relief workers.

By the time Fino and I emerge out of the second building, the firefighter paramedic is coming back accompanied by a soldier between the humvee and jeep, a small yellow tank strapped to his back—in the end someone has decided to let him pass.

He now has to get back to al-Yasmeena where the fire is, another section of the old city. Eric, a French national of Indian ethnicity, and I agree to accompany him and one other to their destination. The first obstacle is a jeep that we have been permitted to pass by thrice already this day. It is positioned on the main road just before Martyrs’ Square, where normally larger-than-life plaques and posters are displayed during the day under the watchful eyes of fighters. The displays are removed every night because even when the Israeli army is not carrying out an extensive or protracted military operation, small nightly incursions are a regular occurrence and the damaged martyr plaques all over the city bear testimony to them. I don’t know if they had been left out when the army came; we never made it that far.

The passenger side soldier in the jeep refuses to let us through.

“The captain gave me permission. Call him.”

The soldier responds in a string of Arabic. I desperately try to follow so I know what’s going on. The square just ahead of us is crawling with a squadron of soldiers. Somewhere someone is trying to break down a door. Elsewhere an old man is clutching his side and doing his best to hurry down the street. A concerned looking young man walks next to him, and a couple of soldiers escort them on either side. We had heard that some older Nablusi citizens who needed regular medicine or medical attention were stuck in the curfew. I could only assume that someone had begged them to let this one old man out under guard; he seemed far too old to be a fighter, and the soldiers, though alert, were far too lenient with him for it to be an arrest.

The soldier in the jeep abruptly cuts us off and slams the door. He picks up the onboard telephone and is talking to someone. He opens the door several minutes later. Eric and I speak before he has a chance.

“Look, there’s a fire. They need to get oxygen to the fire in case someone is suffering from smoke inhalation.”

“Only two of us have to go. Or we can go. We’re internationals. We can bring it to them. Ok?”

“No. You cannot. Come back later.” He is becoming impatient.

“Ok. Ok. How long should we wait?”

“Hours.”

“How long is that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe two. Maybe three.”

“Ok. We will do that then.”

The four of us retreat back to the mouth of an arched alleyway that leads back to the main group. We decide not to wait a few hours and instead go back to see if we can help with something else.