Death as a Way of Life

Deadly Routine

December 2001

On November 29, 2001, four Israelis died in a suicide attack on a bus near Hadera, north of Tel Aviv. On December 1, twelve people were killed and 180 wounded in a downtown Jerusalem attack carried out by two suicide bombers and a car bomb that exploded twenty minutes later, timed to strike the oncoming rescue teams. On December 2, a suicide bomber blew up a crowded bus in Haifa, killing fifteen and wounding over forty more. Another bus was destroyed in the attack. On December 5, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bus stop in the center of Jerusalem. Eleven people were wounded. On December 9, Israeli policemen at a busy junction north of Haifa shot a suspicious-looking terrorist. The explosives in his belt detonated, wounding thirty-one people.

One p.m. These are the moments of fear after the terrorist attack in Haifa. The radio speaks of as many as fourteen dead and about fifty wounded from the explosion of a suicide bomber in a bus. They’re all civilians.

Each ring of the telephone might be announcing terrible news from relatives and friends who live there. One young cousin isn’t answering her cellphone. We know that she had been planning a ride on bus number 16, the route on which the attack occurred.

My finger desperately punches the numbers of the hospitals to which the victims were evacuated. Has she been admitted? The operator at the emergency center looks down the list. Seconds that last forever. We think about her. Of what it will be like without her.

The radio broadcasts recordings of cheers from Hamas’s radio station in Nablus. “We will avenge your death, O Abu Hanud,” they promise the Hamas official murdered by Israel last week, after he had murdered dozens of Israelis. The operator gets back to me: No, sir, the name you gave me is not on our list. We can breathe again.

But we really can’t breathe. Incidents run into one another. Another shooting here, another alert about a possible suicide bomber there. Between the reports, the announcements of the funeral times for the ten young people killed the previous night as they sat at a café in Jerusalem. It is terrifying how one event blacks out the previous one. It was only yesterday, after midnight, that we anxiously telephoned all our friends and the parents of our children’s friends who were out at that hour at the place where the attacks occurred. “Lucky that there’s a big history exam today,” my son explains to me lucidly. “That’s why most of my friends stayed home to study last night.”

The giddy madness. The Hamas terrorist’s mother ululates joyously — her son will now enter paradise. She’s only sorry that he died this way — that is, “because he was killed without taking twenty Israelis with him.” After the shooting attack in Afula last week, someone, perhaps unintentionally, covered the body of an Israeli woman who’d been murdered there with an old election poster proclaiming ONLY SHARON WILL KEEP US SECURE. And, in fact, this same Sharon declared three days ago, “We have found the way to deal with the security problem.”

We have already seen the first Israeli retaliation — attacks on Arafat’s headquarters and helicopters. But I’m sure that what we have witnessed is only the beginning of Israel’s response. When Sharon spoke today, there were war drums in his voice. He promised an escalation in Israeli retaliation operations. But who remembers that each escalation by Israel brings about an escalation of terror in turn?

From the way Sharon is talking, it’s clear that the unthinkable is now quite thinkable — toppling the Palestinian Authority, expelling Arafat; all now seems possible. Only one alternative isn’t being considered at all: immediately commencing intensive negotiations without preconditions.

On the other side, Arafat. This is the Arafat who, when notified by Israel that there is a sophisticated explosives factory in Nablus, confiscates the explosives and immediately releases the terrorists. Arafat, who speaks ceaselessly about his opposition to terror but who refuses, out of cowardice and shortsightedness, to finally instigate a courageous battle against the terrorist elements in the Palestinian Authority. He doesn’t understand that it is they who will bring an end to his great dream, and perhaps to himself, too.

How can we bring to a halt this madness in which we are becoming blind, becoming filled with anxiety and despair, forgetting that on the other side there are, at this moment, people like us, anxious and despairing. In other words, how can we make Arafat talk less and do more, and how can we bring Israel to do less and talk more?

In the days to come, Israel will apparendy launch a massive military offensive. The Palestinians will respond with even more terrorist attacks. It’s amazing how the Israelis and Palestinians never turn off this path, the path of violence. The bungled Oslo Accords are, for most Israelis and Palestinians resounding proof that they can never again walk the path of peace.

It is now 3 p.m. I note the hour because there’s no way of knowing what will happen after I send this article off. I have already written so many articles at moments like these, after attacks, before attacks. I’ve tried so many times to understand, to explain, and to find the logic behind the actions of both sides. What I feel like doing now is not writing an article. I actually feel like taking a can of black spray paint and covering every wall in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Ramallah with graffiti: LUNATICS, STOP KILLING AND START TALKING!