Bleak images of life in the Middle East by Ian James Independent Online - South Africa 12:31am 2nd Oct, 2003   October 01 2003 ( Published by The Star)    Hardly anyone buys bananas anymore from the cart that Bassem Abu Kauwaik pushes through the dusty streets. He has seven children to feed, a son who needs stomach surgery, and no idea how it all will turn out.    "It's like a test from God," the 37-year-old says, brow sweaty from another unproductive trip around the Al Amari refugee camp in the West Bank. "I went to relatives and friends begging them for money. I don't want to tell the children I'm in debt."    The Palestinian uprising, or intifada, marked its third anniversary last week with no end in sight to the nightmare.    More than 2 400 Palestinians and 850 Israelis have been killed, the US-backed "roadmap" to peace has hit a dead end and the economies on both sides are battered.    'We are living in constant fear'Just 40km away from Al Amari, in Tel Aviv, Israelis live in dread of suicide bombings. Some avoid buses or crowded places; others strive for normalcy in a situation that is anything but normal.    Dozens of nightclubs are surprisingly, defiantly packed with revellers each night. At one, 25-year-old student Meytal Segev has to lean forward to be heard above the music.    "We are living in constant fear," she says.    The violence erupted on September 28 2000, at a time when Israel and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation seemed close to a deal.    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a state in the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank, but both sides discovered how far apart they still were on borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.    'One land, both societies - this is the way to peace'Suicide bombings have since made infernos of Israeli streets, markets and cafés. Palestinian towns have been devastated by Israeli air strikes and invasions.    As they deal with the conflict's intrusions into daily life, many people on both sides say they have given up on peace.    The daily misery of Palestinian life, the sheer difficulty of moving from one town to the next, is vividly illustrated at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank, where hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children line up to present IDs to soldiers. Dust swirls in the warm wind as they wait beside concrete barriers and barbed wire set up to thwart attackers.    Many have cut down on travel, deciding it's not worth the risk and trouble.    Routine things become impossible. A new bride has been unable to move her double bed and a fridge 40km from her parents' home in Nablus to her new one in Jericho. She doesn't have the 500 shekels (about R760) - five times the pre-intifada rate - that truck drivers charge for driving on dirt roads to circumvent checkpoints.    Sick people have died in ambulances held up at checkpoints, with the army saying militant groups use medical vehicles to smuggle weapons.    Soldiers fear the people - young women and middle-aged men have been known to suddenly blow up. The people fear the soldiers - 18-year-olds given the power to utterly disrupt lives.    "Every day I tell them lies just to pass," says Tariq Udetallah, a lawyer on the way to his office. He has learned that saying he's sick or he works as a schoolteacher can be enough to sway a soldier. "The people are the victims, really," he says. "Our people - not the Israeli people."    Israel, compared to the Palestinian areas, is wealthy. But salaries have fallen by 10 percent during the fighting, more than a tenth of the workforce is jobless, tens of thousands of businesses have shut down, tourism has all but collapsed.    And danger lurks anywhere. In recent weeks suicide bombings have killed 38 people.    "We've trained our minds to go on with our lives," says Chen Weinberg, a 28-year-old TV and film production worker. She avoids crowds and prefers side streets. But on this day she's sitting with a friend at a Tel Aviv café just next door to one that was bombed last year.    Shani Sulimani, 19, a corporal doing her mandatory military service, is having a butterfly tattooed on her back.    "I don't know what will happen to me tomorrow - I'm in the army. So I would like to know that I did things at the time that made me happy."    The tattoo and body-piercing studio in Tel Aviv is doing a brisk business. On Fridays, when the streets are most crowded, the manager, Ahuva Gal, hires a former soldier to watch for potential attackers. It's one of the few growth sectors in Israel today - but the guard knows that if he tackles the bomber, he'll probably die.    "I used to go to the movies; not anymore," says Gal.    In an effort to stem the bombings, Israel has closed itself off to Palestinians, and that, too, has cost jobs.    Saed Ziaden, 46, once drove a truck in Israel delivering construction materials. Now he sells produce in the West Bank, earning a fraction of his old salary. He says the sides should aim for a single-state solution that would allow him back into Israel: "One land, both societies - this is the way to peace."    But that, to many Israelis, means their Jewish state would eventually be submerged in an Arab majority.    Citing a need for tighter security, the government is building a barrier of fences, trenches and walls cutting deeply into the West Bank to encompass Jewish settlements.    On the other side of the divide, in Al Amari refugee camp on the edge of Ramallah, worn posters on storefronts picture "martyrs" - those killed by Israel, but also suicide attackers. Graffiti calls for revenge and praises the militant group Hamas.    This poor neighbourhood is a site of past violence and also was home to the first Palestinian female suicide bomber, a 27-year-old who last year killed an 81-year-old Israeli.    Em Youssef Abu Humaid, 56, is paying the price of her sons' involvement in the conflict: one was killed years ago in an army raid and four others are in prison.    The Israeli army "demolished three of our houses. They have said they'll blow up this one, too," she says, sitting in a living room pre-emptively cleared of most furniture.    "We tried peace, peace didn't work. So we must fight."    Israelis say they also tried. Beyond what Barak offered, "We can't offer them more," says Avi Daba, a cosmetics vendor in Tel Aviv. He says Israel should expel Arafat in hopes that a future leader will prove more amenable.    Many Palestinians say Israel never intended to yield much land, pointing to a settler population that was doubling even as the sides negotiated peace.    Three years ago, Arafat controlled two-thirds of Gaza, almost half the West Bank, and all the cities. Now Israel has reoccupied many areas, and entire neighbourhoods have been devastated.    But many Palestinians seem determined to fight, believing they will either wear down the Jews or outnumber them.    Israelis think Palestinians will tire of fighting a stronger enemy, and become more amenable to compromise. - Sapa-AP Visit the related web page
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