Yet Israelis, too, were unstrung. Israelis lived with the uneasy feeling that they could be attacked at any moment. "I lived knowing I could be stabbed any time on the streets just because I am Jewish," David Shem-Tov, 23, told me.
The intifada made daily life unbearable; continuous riots and demonstrations, strikes, and imprisonment ground the Palestinian economy to a halt. Before the intifada, 120,000 Palestinians were employed in Israel; now about 4,000 work there.
Living in an emotional war zone for the last seven years, Palestinian children have been goaded to carry stones the way other children carry dolls or toy cars. With eyes trained to spot the color-coded signs of Israel--yellow license plates, red buses--children as young as three or four become little warriors, hurling stones in an ironic echo of Biblical tradition.
Even children's games reflect how deeply violence has penetrated both societies. Palestinian children play a game called Arab and Jew: "Jews" get plastic guns, chase "Arabs," blindfold, and beat them. Israeli children play a video game called Intifada: players choose rubber or plastic bullets, live fire, or tear gas, and kill Palestinians.
Almost every adult Palestinian male under 40 has spent time in jail. And they become adults at a very early age: "I gave up playing, I'm old now," said one 13-year-old who has had two brothers killed in clashes, when I asked if he liked playing in the streets now that there were no Israeli soldiers.
Along with the daily violence--almost every family I know has had at least one member shot at, wounded, or imprisoned--this society contains nearly 850,000 Palestinians, about 500,000 of whom are refugees, packed into squalor in Gaza---one of the most crowded strips of land on earth. Preferring to dwell in the dream of returning home, Palestinian refugees make do with shanties lacking any sewage system. This Third World zone festers only a 90-minute drive from First World Jerusalem.
As happens when a social structure frays, Palestinians have often become each other's worst enemy. The intifada deepened the rifts among assorted political factions, and Israel's use of Palestinian collaborators to capture and interrogate other Palestinians fractured Palestinian unity. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians since the uprising began, according to the Israeli army. The people are still politically divided, with almost half belonging to groups that refuse to participate in any way with the new government.
"A major psychological obstacle to peace is that Palestinians are suspicious of other Palestinians," says Ahmed Abu Tawahina, a psychologist at the Gaza Mental Health Center, which treats 6,000 patients, many of them ex-prisoners who experienced some physical or psychological torture in prison.
The crisis is so severe that, according to psychologist Osama Hamdona, "Every person in Gaza is in need of some kind of psychological intervention. But we don't have the resources to do it."
Yet what is extraordinary about this society--and gives many hope for a peaceful and fruitful resolution--is the resilience and pride of the Palestinians. Twenty percent of those in Gaza have a high-school education. Though many Palestinians have worked in Israel as menial laborers, they have continued to pursue higher education. I've walked into shanties where children are running barefoot through sewage, but the parents have masters' and bachelors' degrees gained on scholarships provided by various Arab and European countries.
"Palestinians have lost everything," notes Dr. Nadim Mseis, an Oxford-trained Palestinian political scientist at Bethlehem University. "And they came to the conclusion that their investment has to be in education. That education will help them organize themselves better. They believe now that it's time they lived in peace, that they had a moment of reprieve."
Perhaps because family order has unraveled, Palestinians have attempted to hold themselves together through religion. As the intifada wore on, a desperate Gaza Strip became even more deeply religious. Now all women in Gaza cover their heads in fundamentalist tradition, and those who don't are stoned by boys. The life of the mind and the soul remains intact--a form of resilience and resistance to Israeli occupation.
Cause for hope can also be found in the grass-roots dialogues now beginning between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the fact that the West Bank contains a large Palestinian middle class, many of whom were refugees who have a great deal of money, earned in the Gulf states, Europe, or America, to funnel into building a new infrastructure of peace.
"We set up outings to try to get Arab and Jewish students to meet," explains Eligar Sadeh, a 29-year-old Israeli student at Hebrew University. "With these dialogues we try to understand each other's culture and perspective better."' Palestinian Iyad Qumsieh, a 20-year-old organizer of peace dialogues, comments that "the youth of Israel are human beings. Our struggle is with the government, with the Israeli army who is trying to kill us. But we are human too and we want the same rights they have."
Still, both Israelis and Palestinians feel the residue of bitterness and fear. Shaban Ghaban, a 19-year-old Gaza Palestinian, lost a leg to shots fired by Israeli soldiers and is partially paralyzed. "When Arafat and Rabin shook hands," he said, "in our hearts and minds it was difficult to accept. I am still here in bed and I will not be able to walk in the future."
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