A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy

“Palestinians from Anata found themselves absorbed into the urban fabric of an expanding Jerusalem. […] [T]hey drove cars on Israel’s multilane highways, bought food at its supermarket chains, and used Hebrew at its office towers, malls, and cinemas. But Anata’s social mores remained unchanged. Prenuptial relations were forbidden, marriages were frequently arranged, and cousins coupled in order to retain wealth and land within the family. Enemies put on a show of great politeness toward one another, life outcomes were powerfully shaped by household reputation—a wayward daughter could ruin the marriage prospects of all her sisters—and the entire drama was shrouded in ritual and courteous speech.”

Between the 1967 conquest of the occupied territories and the 1987 First Intifada, relations between Palestinians and Israelis within those communities were more amenable to cooperation and even collaboration, as Palestinians found economic livelihoods in Israel and Israel sought little other than non-confrontation among the Palestinians. While those years were far from ideal for any involved, it was at least possible for Arab inhabitants of the occupied territories to live a kind of double life, subjects of Israeli law, while still carrying on the traditions of their ancestors.

“Infighting among Palestinians was one of the harshest aspects of the intifada, and it was more widespread than anyone cared to admit. Hundreds were killed and countless others were injured [in disputes among rival factions].”

The Intifada was supposed to represent a moment when Palestinians, in Palestine, for the first time, mounted mass resistance to the Israeli occupiers. This, of course, did happen in many crucial respects, as Palestinians arguably formed a true sense of collective self-consciousness for the first time under occupation, but in doing so, they inflamed many of the divisions that had been brewing for decades. It was a tragic but likely inevitable consequence of national awakening.

“Among [the inmates] were journalists, attorneys, physicians, professors, students, trade unionists, civil society leaders, advocates of nonviolence, and members of Israeli-PLO dialogue groups, which were illegal. Unlike Abed, most were not told the reason for their imprisonment.”

The Israeli authorities accurately recognized the Intifada as a major breakthrough for Palestinian national consciousness and responded swiftly to nip that process in the bud. Abed Salama had been actively working against the Israeli occupation, and while he may not have been guilty of a crime, his political activities made him suspicious. Even so, it is clear from his imprisonment that anyone even theoretically capable of contributing to a Palestinian state was essentially rendered a criminal.

“The Oslo Accords were purportedly for an interim period for five years that was supposed to conclude with negotiations over all the major issues, including the status of Jerusalem. In advance of those negotiations, Israel had every motivation to weaken the Palestinians’ claim to the city—to diminish their presence, increase Jewish settlement, and make East Jerusalem’s absorption into Israel an irrefutable fact.”

The 1993 Oslo Accords were supposed to be the high-water mark of the peace process, and the main signatories all received the Nobel Peace Prize that year. As meaningful as it was, it was only an interim arrangement, launching a process intended to culminate in a later series of agreements. Since Israel was by far the more powerful party of the two, the Oslo Accords encouraged them to tilt conditions in their favor in anticipation of the final deal, which ultimately killed the peace process before it could come to fruition.

“Abed vowed to start anew. He would be a better husband, a better father, a better person. For the first time in his life, he started to pray. Not at the old mosque in Anata, controlled by the sulta, which censored any meaningful political content from the sermons of the imams, who instead bored everyone with instructions on how to wash before prayer. Abed preferred to go up the hill to the mosques of East Jerusalem—in Dahiyat a-Salaam or Shuafat Camp. There he would hear substantive political sermons, as these mosques had remained under Jordanian supervision and were comparatively free of Israel’s oversight or that of the sulta.”

Religion plays a relatively small role in the narrative—it organizes certain critical parts of communal life, but few of the main figures are especially religious, and Abed notably worked for a secular, even Marxist, Palestinian organization rather than an Islamist faction. Yet this short passage reveals how religion is another area in which the political situation dominates every aspect of life. The authorities have made it so that there are few social outlets capable of forming an independent message that might challenge their rule, which has, in turn, dulled their intended role as spiritual ministers.

“Most of the tens of thousands of Naqab Bedouin had been forcibly displaced in 1948, fleeing to the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring countries. In the four years following the war, Israel expelled some seventeen thousand more. In total, around 85 percent of the population was removed. Those who remained in the Naqab were corralled into a reservation, the siyaaj, or fence, while their land was confiscated. Along with the majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, they lived for eighteen years under the rule of a military government, which imposed curfews, travel restrictions, a ban on political parties, detention without trial, and closed security zones.”

This passage refers to an infamous chapter of history known as al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” when a significant portion of the Arab population in what is now Israel either fled or were pushed into the surrounding territories, which Israel would then conquer in 1967. As refugees under international law, even their descendants have a right to return to their ancestral homeland, but as long as the Israeli government refuses and has the power to enforce its refusal, generation after generation languishes in substandard conditions while in many cases being able to literally see the land from which their families were ejected.

“After graduating from medical school, Huda agreed to join her uncle Ahmad in Tunis. The PLO was then at one of the weakest points in its history. It had lost its territorial base in Lebanon, with its fighters now scattered across the Arab world, most of them far from the territory they sought to liberate. The organization was internally riven, and there were calls to overthrow its leader, Yasser Arafat. Jordan and Israel were cooperating in the occupied territories, Syria supported PLO dissident factions, and the strongest Arab military power, Egypt, had formed a separate peace with Israel.”

A major precondition for the emergence of the peace process in the early 1990s was the pitiful weakness of the PLO in the 1980s. Having been chased from the occupied territories to Jordan, to Lebanon, and then to West Africa, they were torn asunder by their factional differences and almost completely incapable of putting pressure on Israel, either through armed force or international diplomacy. Once the PLO decided to recognize Israel, it was from a position of near desperate inferiority, which helps to explain why the peace process did so little to dislodge Israeli supremacy and thereby improve the lot of ordinary Palestinians.

“Ordinary people came to resent the returnees, holding them responsible for Oslo, corruption, and the impossible bind of the Palestinian security forces, which were key to maintaining Israel’s occupation. The figures close to Arafat pocketed tens of millions of dollars in public money, much of it funneled through a Tel Aviv bank account, and even some profited from the building of settlements. […] Arafat knew he was threatened by the widespread unhappiness with Oslo—and with the authoritarian regime it had created.”

One of the many ironies to result from the Oslo Accords was that it allowed the return of a Palestinian diaspora to their homeland (or at least a portion of it), but in doing so, created a major rift between those who had left and those who had stayed behind. Those who had left tended to be more educated and cosmopolitan, with the resources and connections to survive (in some cases thrive) abroad, versus those who had stayed to endure the harsh hand of Israeli rule. When the new arrivals took up disproportionate positions of power within the new apparatus that was supposed to form the core of a new Palestinian state, but instead proved all too willing to cozy up to the existing power structures in order to benefit themselves.

“Hadi’s year and a half in prison was the hardest stretch of time in Huda’s life, harder even than witnessing the bloodshed and grief in Tunis in 1985. It opened her eyes to a hidden universe of suffering that touched nearly every Palestinian home. A little over a year after Hadi’s release, a UN report found that some 700,000 Palestinians had been arrested since the occupation began, equal to roughly 40 percent of all the men and boys in the territories. The damage wasn’t only to the affected families, each of them grieving lost years and lost childhoods. It was to the entire society, to every mother, father, and grandparent, all of whom knew or would come to learn that they were powerless to protect their children.”

Individual stories in the book are meant to illustrate broader social problems. That is a common method for illustrating problems that cannot possibly be described fully, but it is particularly appropriate in this case because the things that happen to the people are practically universal experiences for Palestinian families. Imprisonment, torture, and death are so commonplace that even those who do not experience it directly must reckon constantly with the possibility.

“For Nader, in a crisis, all the different legal statuses of Palestinians were irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was whether the patients were Palestinians or Jews. He could never, under any circumstances, bring someone Jewish to a Palestinian hospital. But he had brought Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to West Bank hospitals—and, for all he knew, he was not ferrying two more.”

The tragedy surrounding the accident has a seemingly infinite number of layers. For those who arrived in a somewhat timely fashion with both the will and the ability to provide care, they had to navigate a host of political questions regarding the status of patients, one more layer of interference in what was already proving a dense network of obstacles to prompt and effective care to those who needed it most.

“As a teenager, Dubi had flirted with the possibility of living a very different life. He was what was called a shabaabnik, a little wild, barely following the Halakha. He left the yeshiva and only half-observed Shabbat, the Sabbath. He even wanted to be a pilot in the Israeli air force, which would have made him an outcast among haredim and estranged him among his family. His parents said it was time to choose—he couldn’t keep one foot in the haredi world and one foot out.”

A recurring motif of the book is light religious devotion, which may be a way of indicating that opposition between the peoples involved is not necessarily a matter of opposing scriptures or views of how a divine figure has configured the land in question. Even so, the intensity of opposition between the two communities gave it an unalterably religious dimension, making it harder for anyone to have their own position divided between one community and another.

“It was Saar’s call, and he agreed, without even checking with his commander. It was the first and only time Sar saw the army relinquish control in Area C. Had the victims been Jews, it would have been out of the question—and Ibrahim would never have even asked.”

This episode should stand as one of the most heartwarming stories of the entire narrative, when two authorities from the respective communities come together, break protocol, and do what is in the best interest of all involved. Any satisfaction that might be derived from such a conclusion is utterly sapped by the fact that they are doing so only after a horrific tragedy has occurred, and their actions are, at best, a mild palliative on a catastrophe for the communities they are both supposed to protect.

“His working life was over, and so was his friendship with Sami, who disappeared after the accident. Radwan would spend the rest of his days confined to his home in Jaba, his wife wheeling him from room to room, the explosions from the limestone quarry sounding in the background as he watched the dust settle on the fig and olive trees in his front yard.”

Among the many tragedies told in this book, the tale of the bus driver Radwan is particularly painful, especially among the adults. His faults were little other than ignoring some bad premonitions, and for that, he not only bears the incredible physical costs of the accident but the incalculable psychological toll of bearing witness to the horrific death of so many under his care.

“The separation barrier was the largest infrastructure project in Israel’s history. At the time of the accident, it was in its tenth year of being built, and the cost had reached nearly $3 billion, more than twice the price of the National Water Carrier.”

The peace process was meant to delineate the final boundaries between the communities of Israel and Palestine, but Palestine had little means of affecting the outcome except through violence, which would then draw overwhelming Israeli retaliation. Ultimately, Israel decided to invest the financial and political resources not to the peace process but into a separation barrier that would relegate the Palestinians to permanent subordination.

“His antipathy toward religious practice, however, did not mean spurning the Bible, which even some of the most secular Zionist leaders claimed as the justification for establishing a Jewish state on a land inhabited by Arabs. ‘Our right in Palestine is not derived from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration,’ [first Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion declared to a British Royal Commission.’ I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate.”

Just as Abed was not particularly religious but could not help but notice the overlap of religion and politics, the Jewish settler whose territory abuts the scene of the accident was not a particularly religious man, especially since there was often tension between the secular ideal of the Zionist state and the long-residing Orthodox population who worried that political power would undermine the divine plan. Ultimately, political actors were willing to turn the Bible into a political program to justify a bid for power, whether or not those involved cared about the religious implications.

“All the while, the violence was intensifying. Dany was afraid to send his daughter to school in Jerusalem. Bombs were exploding all over: buses, cafes, markets, nightclubs, and pedestrian boulevards. Nowhere felt safe. With the country burning, there was enormous pressure on the government to do something. Both sides of the political spectrum called for separation from the Palestinians.”

While Nathan Thrall is ultimately harshly critical of the security barrier, he does understand the reason for its construction in the first place. The Second Intifada, if ultimately more deadly for Palestinians, was also horribly deadly for Israelis, and it made sense for them to want to protect their communities from what seemed like the relentless and unpredictable violence of outsiders. The fact that the wall ultimately caused far more harm to Arab communities does not negate that its origins had some bearing in legitimate concerns.

“Being in solitary had put Ibrahim under severe psychological stress. Though he had never prayed before, he started beseeching God. In his tiny cell, he tried making his heavenly appeals while standing, sitting, lying on one side and then the other. Nothing worked. It was around then that he began to question his old beliefs, concluding that there was no military solution to the conflict.”

Ibrahim Salama, Abed’s cousin, ought to play one of the heroes of the story, a member of the Palestinian Authority who is doing all he can to alleviate relationships between the communities. This is not necessarily untrue, and as this passage reveals, it is based on a legitimate conviction of political possibilities, but ultimately, the narrative leaves little room for Ibrahim besides making awful situations slightly more tolerable.

“As one of Adam’s most prominent figures, Beber wanted to make clear that the community took no pleasure in the suffering of its Palestinian neighbors and bore no responsibility for the crash. When he came back from the site, he got people involved in making a large banner offering condolences from the community of Adam to the families of the children. It was posted near the Jaba checkpoint, over a settler bypass road.”

Beber is a Jewish settler, and while it might be tempting to regard such a figure as a villain, Thrall is generally sympathetic, showing him as a member of a minority within the Jewish community who, like anyone else, is trying to earn the privileges and rights accorded to his fellow citizens. For Jews in Israel, this includes the founding of a settlement, and Beber clearly does not want his settlement to contribute to a network of oppression. Nevertheless, hanging a sign after a terrible tragedy has occurred is not the most effective way to convey the desired sentiments.

“The families were buzzing with news and rumors, which were passed on to Abed throughout the day: Milad is at the military base outside a-Ram; he’s in a hospital in Israel; the army’s letting Nour al-Houda parents with green IDs into Jerusalem. Abed felt as if he were being dunked in barrels of water: first boiling, then freezing. Hot, cold, hot cold, hot again, cold again.”

Even beyond the agony of worrying about an injured and potentially dead child, the parents involved had to navigate a frightful mix of rumor and delay before they could even hope to learn the truth about their children. In Thrall’s telling, it is another instance where the occupation applies layer after layer of indignity, where the same conditions that put a child in an accident then prevent the parents from finding out any reliable information so that they have to stir in maddening uncertainty before they find out the terrible truth.

“Livnat worked with another ’48 Palestinian, Khalil Khoury, a veteran nurse from Haifa. To him, the hospital felt like one of the only places in Israel where Palestinian citizens seemed somewhat equal to their Jewish coworkers. Although there was plenty of racism in the hospital—Hadassah segregated Arab and Jewish maternity patients at the request of Jewish mothers—Khalil felt well treated by his colleagues. […] When Ariel Sharon had a stroke in 2005, Khalil helped care for the prime minister and wrote about it in the American Journal of Nursing.”

For Palestinians in the most valued positions, those who are capable of providing medical care to a Prime Minister in a medical emergency, they can enjoy a modicum of respect, but even that proves fleeting. Those who work alongside them might show respect, but far too many Jewish patients prove unwilling to be treated by Palestinians, and many of their fellow Palestinians regard them as complicit with Zionist institutions. It is another example of those who are simply trying to do good suffering for their works.

“Had it been a normal death, Milad would have been brought home to be washed and purified by the men of his family. His left hand would have been placed on his stomach as Abed and his brothers rocked him back and forth until any remaining waste was released […] but none of that could happen now.”

The tragedies in this book tend to layer upon one another, and here is one more. The Islamic religion places immense importance upon the body and its proper status for burial, and in the case of a five-year-old child, he was too badly burned for the rituals that have informed a community for countless generations. It is one more silent cruelty visited upon a people who have already endured the worst.

“Compounding Nansy’s guilt for signing the permission slip to go on the trip, there was now the deepest regret that she hadn’t said goodbye to Salaah.”

A major theme of the book is the sense of guilt for the horrific event that occurred, and often, the burden is felt by those who are least deserving. Nansy is simply a young mother who wanted the best for her son, only to have her husband torment her after the mere signing of a permission slip was allegedly the cause of his death. When a host of confusions and restrictions prevented her from seeing her son before he died, she was left with another burden despite nothing being her fault.

“Arik asked Abed in Hebrew if he had seen the jubilant posts [about the crash]. Abed had heard about them. All the parents had. All of Anata and Shufat Camp had. Most people Abed talked to thought the Israeli authorities had wanted the children to die. Everyone knew how quickly Israeli forces would descend on a West Bank road the moment a kid started throwing stones. Yet the soldiers at the checkpoint, the troops at Rama base, the fire trucks at the settlement nearby, they had all done nothing, letting the bus burn for more than half an hour.”

After the accident, journalists talked to Abed about Israelis who made vicious online posts about how gleeful they were at the death of Palestinian children, who, in their view, died before they could grow up to be terrorists. Confronted with this awful information, Abed does not seem terribly surprised or even upset because he has already assumed that a large number of Israelis helped to ensure that his son died rather than merely gloating at his death after the fact. Mean-spirited online posts are a relatively mild manifestation of the same phenomena that put his son on a dangerous road and then deprived him of care when he needed it most.