16 The Golani Brigade (also called the 1st Brigade) was responsible for major combat operations throughout the West Bank and Gaza during the Second Intifada.
17 RDX-10 and C-4 are both explosive compounds used commonly in warfare.
18 Fighting throughout the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada lasted until the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli security forces and settlements between August and September of 2005.
19 This was the period of the Second Intifada. For more information on the Intifadas, see the Glossary, page 304.
20 Karyut is a village of less than 5,000 people located a mile east of Eli.
21 The ’67 borders are the borders demarcated by the Armistice Agreement of 1949, otherwise known as the Green Line.
KAFR MALEK, WEST BANK
EBTIHAJ BE’ERAT
Homemaker, 52
Born in Kafr Malek, West Bank
Interviewed in Kafr Malek, West Bank
We first visit Ebtihaj Be’erat at her house in the hilltop village of Kafr Malek in 2010. Her house is easy to find: a giant banner in honor of her son, Abdal Aziz, hangs against a whitewashed wall above red geraniums. Two years before our visit, just up the road from the house, Abdal Aziz was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Inside the house, there is a room devoted to him, with pictures and plaques on the walls and more pictures piled on the floor.
Ebtihaj is a warm woman with oval frame glasses, a gold heart necklace, and deep dimples that appear when she smiles. Her name, in fact, means “joy.” Yet, the death of her son is clearly still part of her everyday life. As we ask her about her childhood in Kafr Malek, her experiences during the First Intifada, and her family tree, her answers circle back again and again to the loss of her son and the day he was shot. Still, evidence of her five other children also covers the walls, including photos of them dancing in a well-known dance troupe, framed university degrees, and various awards. Throughout our interview, her house is bustling with family members and neighbors coming and going. And although she downplays her skill as a host, she offers us an impressive spread of food, including homemade bread, jam, pickles, as well as local eggs and herbs.
When we come back to the house two years later, the banner honoring Abdal Aziz has been moved further up the street to the place where he died. Ebtihaj is now able to tell the story of his death without being completely overcome with grief, and she’s more willing to talk about the life that continues in his absence. Besides telling us of her son, Ebtihaj shares stories about the changes she remembers in her home village since the Six-Day War in 1967, a conflict that led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Though Ebtihaj and her family had the opportunity to join the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who emigrated from the West Bank following the Six-Day War, she decided to stay in Kafr Malek and raise her children in a Palestinian community.
OUR WEDDING PARTIES ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL
My name is Ebtihaj, and I’m from Kafr Malek, which is a very social village where everyone knows everyone else.1 I was born in the spring of 1962.
All my family is from the village. My grandfather and my great-grandfather were born here. The people of this village have always been known for their hospitality, and anyone who comes to Kafr Malek loves it here. It’s beautiful. We receive visitors with hospitality, male or female. We’re more moderate than some nearby villages. We’re more civilized. We’re not like the other villages where a man can’t enter a woman’s house when she’s alone. Our wedding parties are the most beautiful in the area because all of us wear traditional dresses, even the small girls. Also, many people in our village have lived in the United States or Latin America, so they can speak English or Spanish. I don’t know the exact numbers, but approximately 20 to 40 percent of the people born in this village are living abroad at the moment, mostly in the U.S., but also in Colombia and Brazil. A number of families emigrated during the First Intifada, but they come back for visits.2
I was the sixth of seven children. I have four sisters and two brothers. My father worked for the post office in the village. It was his job to go to Ramallah and pick up the mail, and then to deliver it to everyone in Kafr Malek. He also had a second job as a butcher in the market. When I was a young child, Kafr Malek was surrounded by farms. Many villagers had farms on top of Al-Asur Hill behind the village, and many farmers grew grapes.
Then in 1967, Israeli soldiers invaded the village.3 I remember fleeing with all the other villagers to a grove of almond trees. Some villagers fled to their fields. My family lived under almond trees for two weeks while the war was going on, and I remember we each had just enough food and water rations to last two weeks.
Later that year, the Israeli military moved in and built a base on top of the hill. They cleared a lot of the farms on the hill and demolished the homes of some farmers as well. We got used to seeing soldiers in the village. There weren’t any Jordanian policeman anymore, just Israeli soldiers. We got used to hearing about homes being raided as well. Soldiers would take men and boys in the middle of the night, from young children to the oldest men.
I met my husband when I was very young, when I was fifteen years old and he was twenty. He fell in love with me. He’s my cousin, a relative from my mother’s side.4 We were engaged that same year we met, and we married when I was seventeen. Nowadays, it doesn’t happen like that. Mostly now, women wait until they finish university and then they get married. I was sad because I wanted to finish my studies. But my father told me, “No, you have to get married.” I didn’t even finish high school.
I moved into my in-laws’ home right after our marriage in 1979. Before the war in 1967, my husband’s family had farmed at the top of Al-Asur Hill. After the war, soldiers ordered his family out of their home and blew it up, so they moved to another house in the village. When I married my husband, he was still a farmer and also worked as a stone cutter.
In 1980 we had our first child, my daughter Maysa, when I was eighteen. By then I’d settled into my husband’s home as a housewife. I did the housework along with my mother- and sisters-in-law, I cooked, and if any visitors came, I welcomed them. Over the next few years I had two more daughters and a son—Haifa, Rafa, and Fadi. Every day I would cook lunch for my children and for my husband. I’d buy my own groceries. And I’d tend the garden—we planted wheat and olives. During Eid, I’d make cookies, you know, ma’amoul.5 Everyone would ask for them.
During this time, in the early eighties, many villagers were leaving to live abroad. I had two older brothers and an older sister get visas to work in the United States, and my brothers encouraged our family to fill out the paperwork to do the same. There was more opportunity to work there, and more freedom. In the U.S. we wouldn’t have to worry about soldiers coming to our house. So we filled out the paperwork and applied, and when we didn’t get a visa the first year, we kept reapplying every year. Finally, in 1986, my family was granted visas to live in the United States. But by this time, I had three daughters, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to raise them in America. My sister had brought two daughters to the U.S., and they had ended up marrying foreigners. I wanted my daughters to grow up and marry Palestinians—hopefully, young men from the village. So we reconsidered it and decided to stay. My husband found work as a taxi driver in Ramallah, so he was able to support our family.
THE SOLDIERS FORBADE US TO LIGHT CANDLES
I gave birth to my middle son, Abdal Aziz, on December 5, 1987, in Ramallah, when the First Intifada had just broken out.6 He was born nine pounds, blond, and with green eyes. The nurse who was on shift, she held him and said to everyone, “Come and see the child from Kafr Malek. He is so beautiful.” I named him Abdal Aziz after his grandfather—his father’s father.
When I got out of the hospital, Israeli soldiers were closing the shops because they said that the Intifada was moving from Gaza to the West Bank. I couldn’t even find a pharmacy to buy vitamins or a bottle, the basic things we needed with a new baby in the house.
The soldiers imposed a curfew, and it was forbidden for anyone to be outside, even in our own yards, for over a month. We had to stay inside our houses, and we couldn’t open a window to look outside. The soldiers even forbade us to light candles. If they saw the light of a candle in a house, they would come and break the windows. During this time we ate mostly bread, olive oil, and za’atar.7 When we were able to find other kinds of food, my mother-in-law would have to hide it well in the house, because if soldiers searched our home, they would know we had broken curfew if we had fresh food.
Sometimes they’d arrest someone every month or two, sometimes it seemed like every night. Checkpoints were set up, so we couldn’t travel to the top of the hill anymore, where the base was, and there was only one entrance into and out of the village. Sometimes, depending on what was happening during the Intifada, they would set up a checkpoint at the main entrance of the village, and they wouldn’t allow anyone to enter or leave except to go to neighboring villages. Even when someone was sick, or even if a pregnant woman was having a baby, they’d go to Taybeh, the next village, instead of to the hospital in Ramallah because when the soldiers set up the checkpoint, they wouldn’t allow anyone to leave.8
All the men in the village had left their houses, because if the soldiers came in and saw a man in the house, they would sometimes beat him so badly. So all the men stayed in the fields, and they would go to Ramallah to look for food. During the night, they’d sneak home with food and basic supplies like sugar, and then go back to the fields.
My house is in the center of the city, so the soldiers would come often. Once, when my Abdal Aziz was two months old, I was sitting outside with him because I was cleaning the bread oven. My mother-in-law was at a neighbor’s house and my husband was in the fields. A few soldiers saw me from the street, and they chased me into my house. I ran into the kitchen where the rest of my children were at the time—I was holding Abdal Aziz in my arms. The soldiers had these batons, and one soldier tried to hit me with one. I moved my head just in time to avoid the blow, and he struck the refrigerator instead. But he was aiming for my head. All my kids were screaming and crying, including Abdal Aziz in my arms. I think that made the soldiers back off. My children protected me.
Then the soldiers closed the kitchen door on me and locked me inside with my kids. They left the key on the outside of the door, and we were locked in the kitchen for around two hours until my mother-in-law came back. At that time, there weren’t any mobile phones like today, not even house phones. If my mother-in-law hadn’t been at the neighbor’s house, she would have been with me inside, and who knows how long it would have been before someone unlocked the door. When she returned and let me out of the kitchen, I just collapsed. I was so scared, I fainted. She didn’t know what to do, and there wasn’t any way to call a doctor or nurse. So she got the idea of throwing open all the windows and turning on a lamp in the window. It attracted the attention of the soldiers, and when more came to see what was going on, she begged them to get me a nurse or doctor. That was the only way she had to get me medical attention.
I believe Abdal Aziz always remembered that day. He had an image of it burned in his mind. At two months, he was too young to form memories. But the memory was like an inspiration from God, at least that’s what I think.
WHAT HE FELT THROUGH THE STONE
As a child, Abdal Aziz was unique. There wasn’t anyone like him. He was kind and beautiful. Abdal Aziz had a lot of friends, and he was a leader among them from a young age. Part of it was that he was just so affectionate and generous. I remember he used to come up to me when I was washing dishes or something and give me a big hug. He was the same way with his friends. If one of his friends mentioned that he saw a shirt in the market that he wanted, Abdal Aziz would save his money until he could buy the shirt for his friend. I had another child, Muhammed, in 1990, and Muhammed always looked up to Abdal Aziz.
Abdal Aziz was thirteen at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000. During the Second Intifada, the Israeli military closed the village for a month, and we couldn’t leave our homes. They even cut the electricity and water for a month. When the soldiers came, we’d close everything, all the windows, and we’d stay inside. I can remember two occasions when we forgot to close a window, and teargas got inside the home. We felt like we were suffocating.
Abdal Aziz was born when the First Intifada started, so it was in his blood to be active.9 But Abdal Aziz wasn’t affiliated with any political party. He wore one bracelet that said “Fatah,” another one that said “PFLP,” and another one that said “Hamas,” all together on one hand.10 I used to ask him, “Which one are you?” He’d say, “I’m Palestinian.” That’s another reason why everyone loved him.
Ever since he was a kid, he always talked about how much he wanted to throw stones at the jeeps and tanks when they passed our house, to drive them away. The kids don’t have any weapons to defend their country, they only have stones—a stone versus a tank. I knew my son loved to throw stones at soldiers when they came at night, and I knew that he was in danger. The soldiers arrested so many teenagers and they injured others. My cousin is now spending twenty-five years in jail for throwing stones, and another one was put in jail for fifteen years. One of my neighbors has been in jail for eighteen years now, just for throwing stones at the soldiers.
The soldiers usually come into the village at two or three a.m. That is their normal time. Every time they enter the village, the youth have an agreement to start whistling to let everyone know. It’s a signal for others when they are on the streets to go back home so the soldiers don’t catch them and beat them. I’m always so afraid whenever I start to hear whistling.
