by Jared Cohen
They didn’t respond with anger. They didn’t threaten me. And they didn’t cut off my head. But they were embarrassed. They knew I was a foreigner and they had just wanted to say something outrageous. While none of them said so directly, I know they valued the experience of having someone like me come in to listen, and I think they deeply regretted having used such harsh language. They talked to me about the needs in the camp and the lack of opportunities. I learned that in their classrooms there are not enough books to go around and sometimes the teachers don’t even show up. They shared stories of their boredom and expressed a desire for more recreation. As I left, I received several hugs and shook hands with my Palestinian peers. As I walked out the entrance of my first Palestinian refugee camp, Mia Mia, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not they would be more careful with their words the next time someone from the outside came to visit. It reminded me in so many ways of my experience with the youth in Beirut. We are all young, but we are at the mercy of politics and longstanding hatreds.
The experience in Mia Mia was fresh on my mind when I was on my way to meet the genuine article: the military head of Fatah for Lebanon and the man in charge of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. General Mounir Maqdah is the chief military authority over the 350,000 Palestinians residing in Lebanon. It was hardcore and frightening, but my recent experiences gave me courage.
With alleged links to Osama bin Laden, General Maqdah is notorious for atrocities committed against the Lebanese army and was given a death sentence in absentia by the Lebanese government. The Israeli government attempted a number of assassination attempts on him, most notably a 1996 missile attack on his compound, an event that he would later describe for me in detail. The death sentences did not stop with Lebanon or Israel. On March 28, 2000, Jordan’s Security Court indicted General Maqdah on charges that he had provided military training to a group of Osama bin Laden’s followers for future attacks against the Kingdom of Jordan. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia.
There is no shortage of individuals, organizations, and governments interested in killing General Mounir Maqdah, and I had to be taken through a complex route to get to his compound. I was initially led by the serious bearded man, who wore a large automatic pistol strapped over his right shoulder. As with the chase into the camp, the whole thing felt strangely cinematic: going through secret passageways, passing through people’s homes, turning sharp corners, and climbing through all of these different back routes. As we got closer to the compound, additional men joined us, each one brandishing a weapon (or two or three). By the time we arrived, there was a full-fledged battery. Once I realized they were in fact taking me to meet the general, I actually felt energized by the big fuss over my visit. It was just by chance that I had gotten the interview. Achmad came from a very prominent family in Ayn al-Hilwah and he knew the general personally. Several days prior to my visit, he had approached the general with the proposed interview.
The compound was not as large as I had anticipated, although it is possible there were parts of it I did not see. I didn’t actually know where the compound was because they spent forty-five minutes taking me through a maze, spinning me around, putting me in cars, and doing all sorts of things so that I wouldn’t know the general’s location. But it was somewhere in the heart of Ayn al-Hilwah and not actually very far from where I’d started, as evidenced by a couple points of reference I had made note of when I first snuck into the camp. I was first taken to the general’s private home. The house was extremely well protected and I saw armed men standing at every corner. Some wore yellow bands around their heads, emblazoned with the words Allahu Akbar, the Arabic script for “God is great.” Others had the recognizable black-and-white checkered headbands, a common symbol of the late Yasir Arafat’s Fatah Party. After walking by a half-dozen guards, I arrived at the general’s porch. On the porch, there were two rocket-propelled grenade launchers that had been converted into flower vases, an ironic, if strangely fitting, metaphor for a group that claimed its use of violence was all in the name of a brighter, more peaceful future.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought the general was a decent man. He was friendly, willing to speak, and ceremoniously offered to give me tea. I had to remind myself that this man was allegedly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. This was a man who vocally and actively believed in, and subsidized, what Christopher Hitchens rightly calls “suicide-murderers.”
We introduced ourselves and began the interview right away. I asked him for his opinion on the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict and he declared that a two-state solution was impossible. Throughout our interview, he also expressed respect and admiration for Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I remained cool but struggled to hide my true emotions. Showing my emotions at this point would be stupid at best. I wanted to kick him in the face, but I remained calm, nodded politely, and kept myself out of trouble. With regard to Al-Qaeda, the general remarked that “they have their own swords and their own strategies, but I hope their destination is to free Palestine. My destination is Palestine and anyone that is willing to help me, even Al-Qaeda, I will accept and work with them.” I asked him if he thought Zarqawi was giving Muslims a bad name by decapitating innocent civilians. He did not denounce Zarqawi but instead cited a proverb that “everyone who is from their country has the right to decide and therefore, every Arab or Muslim has the right to defend their country if it is occupied.”
I pressed him. “But don’t you think this is excessive brutality?”
“Let me ask you this,” he responded, “what is the difference between cutting by knife and cutting by bomb? Yesterday there was a bombarding by Israeli aircrafts in Gaza and the people who were killed were torn apart; their legs and heads and hands were all blown to bits. How is that any different than cutting off someone’s head?” It was chilling to hear someone justify Zarqawi’s actions. Even the Hezbollah fighters I spoke to condemned such action, stating that it was beyond extremism and gave Islam a bad name.
His answers, though shocking at times, were unremarkable. They were uniformly illogical, intolerant, brutal, and stupid. What I found more interesting was what the young men around him said to me after the general had left. I sympathized with these youth in some respects. Did they even know what they were doing, or was this the result of having grown up without an alternative?
After an hour into the interview, I asked him if some of the young militants, indolently strolling around the compound, could join in the conversation. He was amused by the request, but gestured for them to come over.
We all sat around a round plastic table on the general’s porch. The group of boys looked like typical militants, with all the expected attire of headbands and weaponry. But they showed a childish excitement about being part of the interview, as if they thought this opportunity was uncharacteristic for them. The porch was more of a cement patio than anything, and it was a mere segment of the general’s backyard. The only decorations I noticed, besides the plastic furniture, were a couple of vases, only some of which actually had plants growing out of them. Closer to the entrance to his home, but still on the porch, was some kind of a bazooka that had been transformed into a potted plant. The youth around the table had begun their military training at ten years old. At this young age, they began attending two types of schools, one for military service and the other to study the geography and history of their homeland. After six to ten months, they began their “military” training period: There, they learned combat techniques, as well as moral codes, obedience, and mutual respect for their fellow soldiers. They practiced with live bullets and used real weapons. I was shocked to hear that they trained on the same field that other kids played soccer on. Sometimes, they brought children as young as seven years old to the training, to help them become acquainted with—and used to—the weapons inside the camp.
One of the guys who spoke up in front of the general said, “We are st
reet fighters; this is our army. Our training is designed to teach us army tactics, and street fighting tactics, but also it must be stuck in our minds and hearts that all Palestine is for us.” When I asked them why they fight, the answer I got from each of them was a rambling, probably rehearsed tirade that focused on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.
When the interview finished, the general asked his young fighters to escort me out of the compound. Away from the general and free to expand on the largely empty rhetoric they had felt compelled to give in his presence, they revealed that most of them do not feel any direct political connection with the Arab-Israeli conflict. They become active in it because that is what they are supposed to do; it is what they are indoctrinated to believe. Ultimately, however, their grievances revolve around topics far simpler than the Arab-Israeli conflict. They are unhappy with their lives, and they blame their economic and social hardship on Israel and America because the Palestinian leadership tells them that these are the sources of their grievances.
Immediately after the meeting, the young militants insisted on showing me a weapons arsenal. Weapons caches were not at the top of my sightseeing list, but I figured it was better that they show me the weapons than use them on me. They walked me into a cement room; when I walked in, what I saw resembled the background of the Iraqi hostage videos the world has become so uncomfortably accustomed to seeing on the news. The walls were a faint white, and the paint was peeling off. There was an old and filthy bed with a torn mattress that did not have sheets. Four large guns hung from the wall above the bed. Each of them was distinct from the others; one had a scope, others had large barrels. In one corner of the room, there was an old wooden cabinet. One of the youth reached into the cabinet and pulled out a vest and insisted that I wear it. Again, I rationalized that if I had to choose between terrorists using weapons on me and terrorists dressing me in weapons, I would certainly pick the latter. The next thing I knew, they had filled each of the pockets of the vest with handguns, axes, and grenades. They then removed several of the guns from the wall, placing one over my shoulder and having me hold the other two in my hands. As I became a human trophy case for their weaponry, I could not help but wonder how this would appear to someone back in the United States. Of course, this fear was slightly trumped by the fact that all of these weapons were loaded and there was a live grenade in my pocket. It was an odd moment. I was frightened, but realized that in a way, these were not so much gun-toting masked militants. Instead, they were broken souls with lethal toys that they had been forced to play with since a very young age.
It was as if me dressing in their weapons led them to believe that I had entered their world. I seized the moment and asked them bluntly why they had joined the movement.
Of the three boys I was with, the one standing closest to me answered. He had wavy hair and stubble on his face. His eyebrows were unusually large and he wore a light blue shirt. There was actually nothing about him that made him look like either a militant or a terrorist. His answer to my question did not reflect the call to nationalism that the general had explained or that they had described in his presence. Instead, he exclaimed, “What choice do we have? They try to create special programs for us to experience life outside of the camps, but we still face so many problems. We have no entertainment. We can study and some of us even study outside of the camp, but for what? We can’t work, we can’t find jobs; we get nothing for our hard work. We feel depressed because we cannot have the opportunity for success even if we try.” This was very different from the bumper-sticker banter that they had spouted off around the general.
Another one of the boys spoke and looked at me with a sullen face and said, “Don’t you think that we, too, would like to drive the nice cars in Beirut and be able to go out at night? But we can’t because our lives are these camps. Inside here we are somebody, but out there we are refugees. We don’t have rights.”
The conditions in the camps are difficult and the lifestyle is humiliating. In seeking remedies for this humiliation they look to their elders, who tell them that the bad economy, the lack of opportunity, the inability to be part of the outside world, their lack of dignity, and the political oppression are all a direct result of aggressive Israeli and American policies. As the adult generations fight for a return to their homeland, it seems that many of the youth are fighting simply for a better life. And they look to the West as a model for that better life.
Even as we stood in a room filled with guns, knives, grenades, and other implements for killing, none of the boys expressed a love for violence. They instead revealed how difficult it is to grow up in an environment that precipitates humiliation and a loss of dignity. Despite their gaudy displays of weaponry and the ominous threat of physical violence that bubbled just beneath the surface, I could see that these youth were weak, and broken inside. They were not brave soldiers but fragile young souls with lethal toys. Lebanon is one of the most westernized countries in the Middle East, yet Palestinians feel like second-class citizens and are made to feel as if they are a burden on the society. The same boy who spoke of wanting to enjoy the nightlife of Beirut confessed, “We want to contribute to society, but we cannot do anything from the camp. At least if we fight, we feel as though we belong to something that is trying to bring about change.”
I wondered if they were aware of how people in the West view them and as I had done with the Hezbollah youth, I asked, “How do you feel when people describe you as terrorists?” They did not seem upset by the question and actually seemed to think that it was fair to ask.
There was one boy who had not spoken until this moment. He had short black hair and broad shoulders. He had the face of a child, but like the other boys, the stubble on his face showed that he was much older. He explained, “We get used to the West, they cover one eye and see by the other. What they see is the violence, but they do not see the context. They don’t see that we want to study and get jobs. They don’t see that we use computers, and we enjoy movies. I don’t think I have ever seen on CNN or BBC images of Palestinians playing the same sports as young people in the United States. Do you agree?”
He was right. The images we see on television frequently depict the small percentage of Palestinians who take up arms and fight. However, the struggle of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have peacefully tried to adapt to dire conditions inside the camp are rarely seen and their voices almost never heard. The media embraces the image of a Hamas soldier wrapped in a head scarf, brandishing an AK-47. The audience craves reinforcement of its image that Palestinian youth hold rocket propelled grenades instead of books. These images do exist and they are real, but they are the extreme minority. I nodded and said, “I think there is some truth to that.” Upon returning to the United States three months later, I wasn’t surprised to see numerous titles on the shelves of bookstores addressing this very issue of the media’s misleading portrayal of the Islamic world.
“There is a lot of truth to that. You know we watch satellite television; we get that here in the camp. We fight because we have to, but people don’t understand that. I think the United States government does not want to show these images of Muslims. They only want people to see images of fighting. If they want to call us terrorists, it does not matter to us anymore; we are used to it. If terrorism is going to school, playing football, and wanting to bring about change, then fine, we are terrorists. But I don’t think that this is what they see when they call us terrorists.”
With so few opportunities, Palestinian youth have all the free time in the world. However, times have changed significantly since their parents experienced the same dilemma of an overabundance of time. While the allure of the mosque and the extremist Islamist madrassahs remains, Palestinian kids today are also tempted by new alternatives. The Internet cafés, satellite televisions, and mobile phones have become their information mosques. While terrorists use these information highways to spread their messages, the inclination t
o use technology primarily for social and recreational purposes actually marginalizes the hostile messages. The youth have autonomy in what they choose to look at over these communications networks, and with every day of use comes increased exposure to new perspectives and ideas. The Google Age has allowed them to run wild with their curiosities as they delve into the realms of modern digital, audio, and visual communications networks.
The same day I met General Maqdah, I was also received by Fathi Abou El Ardaat, the leader of the Ain al-Hilwah youth union. He was not dressed formally, but instead wore black pants with a white-and-black button-down shirt that was ornate with a checkered pattern. His gray beard was thinly trimmed and his forehead was unusually high. In the corner of his office, he had erected the Palestinian flag. In the top corner of his office, I noticed photos of PLO president Mahmoud Abbas and the late Yasir Arafat that hung in adjacent positions. This was a different kind of meeting from the one I’d had with the general. There was no concealing the location, frisking, or Rambo-like display of terrorist weaponry.
Fathi was a particularly impassioned speaker who didn’t waste any time. After introductions and his detailed summary of the Palestinian Youth Union’s mission, he jumped to the topic of Palestinian suffering. In an almost scientific manner he informed me that there are four stages of suffering for the Palestinian student. I assumed he would focus on suffering at the hands of America and Israel.
Accompanying his words with careful gesticulations reminiscent of an orchestra conductor, he explained that the first problem is that the Palestinian has a difficult time continuing his studies and he is jammed in a class with too many students and no supplies. Making matters worse, he explained, it is difficult for most Palestinian students to pay school fees and receive the necessary attention in the classroom.
