THROWING STONES AT ISRAELIS

Con Coughlin meets the men

in the camps behind the Palestinian agitation

Gaza FORTY years ago the high banks of sand where thousands of Palestinian refugees now reside were a popular picnicking spot for the more urbane Gazans. A short walk from the shores of the Mediterranean, Jabaliya, a derivation from the Arabic word for hills, offered a cooling breeze.

Today, after nearly eight weeks of unin- terrupted riots, shootings, killings, beat- ings, arrests, deportations, curfews and food shortages, the air inside the three- square-mile contours of Gaza's most troublesome refugee camp is dank and putrid. Among the 50,000 refugees them- selves there is a mood of weary resigna- tion.

On a practical level the intifada (upris- ing), as they like to call it, has, if anything, made their lot considerably worse. At best, refugees have been able to work on only a few occasions since the unrest broke out at the start of December. In a good week, a Gazan refugee will earn 175 shekels (£65), which, even in ordinary circumstances, is barely sufficient to feed the average family of seven children.

The beatings, assaults and arrests have taken their toll and are likely to continue when the feared Israeli Shin Bet agents move into the camps to seek their revenge for failing to predict the most extensive wave of violence to hit the territories in 20 years of occupation.

Given these several hardships, it is hardly surprising that many older Palesti- nians have little enthusiasm for sustaining a violent protest against the Israeli occupa- tion. That the disturbances have lasted so long is a tribute to the commitment and resourcefulness of a new generation of locally-based Palestinian organisers who have routed all previously-held notions that the refugees in the territories are puppets who dance at the end of the PLO's strings.

The Israelis, at least, have seriously misjudged this new phenomenon from its inception. Mr Rabin confidently fell back at the outset on the formula that it was all the work of the PLO and that the trouble would be contained within a week.

After this forecast failed miserably, in a belated attempt to win over a Western audience increasingly critical of Israel's tactics, the foreign ministry unbelievably raised the rather hackneyed spectre of Islamic fundamentalism. Where once the woebegone features of Yasser Arafat adorned the walls of Palestine Square in Gaza, we were informed, there arose the image Ayatollah Khomeini. If Islamic fun- damentalism were tackled at its root, the whole future stability of Western interests in the eastern Mediterranean would be in jeopardy, etc.

There is, it is true, a group called Islamic Jihad that earlier last year was involved in several spectacular shoot-outs with Israeli secret agents. But it is a small group whose fame has much to do with its opportunism in adopting the same name as its far more notorious and dangerous counterpart in Beirut's southern suburbs. In any event, the rhetoric of the Shia Muslims of Iran has little appeal for Gaza's more secular Sun- nis.

One of the more alarming aspects of the disturbances has been the age of the participants. The headlines have been full of ten-year-old boys and girls being shot dead or severely injured by Israeli gunfire. Often to get into the camps requires a process of delicate negotiation with chil- dren. You ignore them at your peril. Not fully understanding the status quo, I unwit- tingly drove through one such checkpoint and promptly lost two car windows.

For these young Palestinians, it is mainly a question of testing their virility. Here we have a generation of young men and boys who know nothing but life under occupa- tion, facing a way of life without any tangible hope for improvement. But the youths who have formed the vanguard of the unrest are neither operating indepen- dently nor spontaneously. Behind them, often prompting them unseen from door- ways and alleyways, is a complex and sophisticated network of more experienced activists.

More often than not these are the people you meet after a riot, not during it. As the troops withdraw, they emerge from the shadows and set to work with quiet but efficient professionalism. A quick assess- ment is made of the damage and wounded. Hospitalisation is arranged for the more serious cases.

There was an almost priest-like quality about one such activist who showed me around Jabaliya after one particularly ugly clash. He attracted genuine respect from people of all ages inside the camp. Young children ran up to him, excitedly recount- ing their tales of daring. He would listen with a worldly authority before moving on to visit the injured. He held an old woman's hand as she cursed the Israeli soldiers who had entered her house and left an ugly bruise on her arm.

You would never see a man like Moham- med (a pseudonym to protect his identity) involved in open acts of defiance such as stone-throwing. But undoubtedly these are people working quietly behind the scenes, instilling the young with the courage to carry out further acts of defiance. Similarly a sophisticated structure of self-help has been established to help the less politicised camp inhabitants through the unavoidable sacrifices of surviving eight weeks of almost total seige.

The background of people like Moham- med, who are generally in their late twen- ties or early thirties, is mainly Israeli jails. Mohammed had been jailed three times, and the lengthy periods in jails, which are inevitably a breeding ground for Palesti- nian resistance groups, helped to fashion his ideas on how to tackle the Israelis.

'When I was young I used to throw stones because I hated the Israelis so much. I still hate the Israelis but I don't throw stones. Instead I organise all the people who hate the Israelis so we are a more powerful force,' he explained.

The difficulty now is to assess exactly what this new Palestinian leadership has achieved after eight weeks of unrest which has cost 38 Palestinians lives and wide- spread suffering. By far their most signifi- cant achievement is to have put the Palesti- nian issue back on the international agen- da.

Furthermore, they have exposed an alarming amateurism and incompetence in the approach of the Israeli authorities to the occupation. People are well-acquainted with Israel's institutional arrogance, which allows it time and again to do exactly what it wants, when it wants, irrespective of world opinion. But the West has not been impressed to discover a new and more ugly side to the Israeli system, namely the indiscriminate use of live ammunition and systematic beatings to quell the unrest.

It is no longer sufficient for Israel to blame the lot of the Palestinians on the negligence of the Arabs. The Israeli eco- nomy has grown to like cheap Arab labour while the new nationalist flavour of Israeli politics has encouraged the belief that the Palestinians deserve what they get.

Con Coughlin is the Middle East correspon- dent of the Daily Telegraph.