Jenin by night

Gideon Levi, Haaretz, 4/08/07. "The people here are confused," Zbeidi's uncle, Jamal, says. "To go with [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Abu Mazen is to go with America, and to go with Hamas is to go with religion. Both are bad." [...]

It is close to 11 o'clock. A small and mysterious ball of fire suddenly shoots across the sky, from west to east. "We are their training field," the sheikh says wearily. When a momentary silence falls, our hosts identify the strange whirring noise we hear. Good evening, remotely piloted vehicle (RPV). From now until first light, the whirring will accompany us nonstop, whispering, distant - and very threatening. If a pistol appears in Act I, there will be a murder in the final act. If the RPV appears early on, everyone here knows, there will be an IDF operation later [...]

The first telephone report comes at 12:40 A.M. A convoy is advancing from the Nazareth road. Out of the north shall come evil this night. We go on eating under the RPV skies, watching jeeps with glittering headlights approach. To be on the safe side, the lights on the roof are turned off. Jamal calls his son, who is still in the street, and tells him to come home.

The IDF is in town.

A chorus of chickens squawking suddenly jolts me out of my imaginary calm, like a soundtrack for the approaching drama. Maybe they know something I don't? Watermelon is served. The jeeps are getting closer. I urge my hosts to go downstairs.

At 1:30 A.M. we decided to go to sleep; I fall asleep instantly. I hoped to wake up in the morning. Fifty-five minutes later the "white night" of the Jenin camp has ended. Jamal wakes us with whispers. The IDF is outside. The suggestion made by Miki, the photographer, to sleep in our clothes, was smart: We leap out of bed fully dressed. There is a huge noise outside. The Hummers and the bulldozer that traditionally precedes the jeeps, checking for booby-traps, are next to the window.

Often gunshot and explosive devices greet the uninvited guests, but tonight things are quiet. Jenin camp welcomes the forces. The chugging of the bulldozer fills me with dread.

We get out of bed and whisper, so the soldiers outside won't hear, and move toward the staircase, the only protected space in the building. But the convoy is right outside. What will happen now? How many residents have been killed when they made a wrong move next to soldiers with light trigger fingers? The whole family is by now sitting hunched over on the stairs, stunned with sleeplessness, used to the Hummer drill.

My thoughts wander outside. What do the soldiers in these steel contraptions know about the fear they are sowing nightly, among thousands of people, including children and infants? Young and brainwashed, do they ever think about this? And what do most Israelis know about the terror raids and those living in their shadows? Why does the army have to come here and create all this disturbance? To remind people who the lord of the land is?

The whole camp awakens like this, every night. But no one dares peek out the window or turn on a light. No one talks, no one moves. They sit bent over on the stairs, eyes red from lack of sleep. I almost faint from fright. The ringing of a phone suddenly cuts through the stillness: Zakariya Zbeidi is calling from the Muqata to ask how we are. A bit later Jamal whispers that the convoy has moved away and we can go back to sleep. I try to relax. Finally I drift off. Soon it will be 3:30 A.M. Forty minutes of restless sleep and they are back. This time I play dead and don't move from the bed. The Hummers and the bulldozer drive back and forth, for some reason. What are they looking for here?

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