Ramallah, March-April 2002

THEY came through the wall using sledgehammers. With their faces daubed in camouflage paint and assault rifles and machine guns under their arms, they were a terrifying sight for the Hassan family, who huddled together in fear. There were at least 10 of the Israeli soldiers. They took the family’s blankets and bedded down. Others came and went throughout the night. When the soldiers left the following morning to continue their house-to-house hunt for “terrorists”, their parting gift was to smash the Hassans’ television set – one of the few luxuries enjoyed by this impoverished Palestinian family living in the squalor of al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah.

“Why did they do that?” asks a bewildered Ahmed Hassan , who is standing alongside his sobbing wife and their four children among the shards of broken glass and garbage left by the soldiers in their cramped living room.

A few hours later, less than a mile away at Ramallah’s main hospital, I watch and listen as the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance brings dozens of white-coated orderlies on to the streets outside. Braving gunfire, they have come out to help shift the wreckage of cars crushed by Israeli tanks blocking the way to the hospital.

“The Israelis do it deliberately to stop the ambulances. Sometimes the tanks just sit there in the streets and won’t let them drive past. Why would people do such a thing?” asks Abdul Rahman, angrily, as he watches his colleagues struggle to shift a flattened Toyota while waving frantically at the tank that is delaying the ambulance further down the rubble-strewn street.

Ariel Sharon has the answer to Hassan and Rahman’s questions. It is called retribution. The moment has come to teach the Palestinian people and their leaders a lesson they will never forget. Above all, it is time to crush the resistance and intifada like never before. The man who has earned the nickname “The Bulldozer” is doing just that, bulldozing his way into the West Bank in the most massive and brutal Israeli military operation against the Palestinians since the 1982 Lebanon war and the bludgeoning of Beirut.

Sharon’s government has dubbed it “Operation Defensive Shield”. At face value it is presented as Israel’s almost inevitable response to the series of bomb attacks that culminated in the suicide strike by the Hamas Tulkarem cell at the Park Hotel in Netanya. In reality, it is the long-awaited chance to put into effect a secret plan to annihilate the Palestinian Authority and put Yasser Arafat “out of the game”.

“What is happening there is terrible. You will never get in. The soldiers have it sealed off completely.” Those were the words of the Palestinian waiter at the Jerusalem Hotel this morning when he heard I was heading for Ramallah. As I sat ruminating over my breakfast coffee, I knew all too well that he was right. It seemed almost impossible to get past the cordon the Israeli army had thrown up around the city, let alone stay safe in Ramallah’s streets should I be lucky enough to get there in the first place. If there was a way in, I decided, instinctively reaching for my mobile phone, then my old friend and colleague Mafouz Abu Turk would know about it.

Mafouz is a near legendary veteran Palestinian photojournalist who works for Reuters. Small, stocky, balding, with a rolling gait and huge grey moustache, he is a tough operator who has worked the warring West Bank since the early days of the first intifada. We first met a few years ago during some clashes in the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City. As a photographer he has a great eye for a picture, but can be stubborn, tenacious, and he has that crucial unerring gift for being in the right place at the right time. Well-known among the Palestinian community, Mafouz can get to places other foreign journalists like myself have difficulty accessing. For that very reason , he can sometimes be terrifying to be with. During the first few months of the al-Aqsa intifada, he was shot on three separate occasions.

Mafouz looks well, however, when he arrives at the Jerusalem Hotel . His face is dark from the sun, highlighting even more distinctly the silver moustache that droops from his top lip. “There is a way into Ramallah,” he confirms, quickly adding that he hasn’t used the route for days and by now the Israelis might have closed it. “Believe me, David, this time it’s different, they have brought in so many tanks and soldiers; the place is full of them,” he warns, pausing momentarily. “And they’re not in a good mood.” Nevertheless, we decide to give it a try, and less than an hour later, Mafouz’s battered car is bumping along dirt tracks off the main road on the outskirts of besieged Ramallah. As we drive, Mafouz points to the metal fences, razor wire and watchtowers of the Qalandia checkpoint on the city’s edge.

It is only the beginning. After crossing some exposed waste ground, expecting at any moment to be blown to pieces by a tank shell or helicopter-launched missile, we suddenly find ourselves on Ramallah’s eerily deserted streets. Everywhere the tarmac and earth are already chewed up by the tracks of more than 100 giant Merkava tanks and armoured personnel-carriers that came through only a few hours ago. Some have taken up positions within yards of the compound that serves as Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, where the Palestinian leader, just as Sharon’s cabinet meeting agreed, remains under effective house arrest. Lamp-posts, fences, cars, walls – anything that got in the way of the tanks has simply been crushed, toppled or pushed aside.

All around us, gunfire rages across the city, keeping most of Ramallah’s 40,000 citizens huddled in basements or trapped indoors. Tapers of thick black smoke, from burning tyres and buildings set alight by shells and missiles, drift across the city’s flat-topped roofs that bristle with television antennas.

“I have a feeling this is going to be very bad,” observes Mafouz quietly, before suggesting it would probably be smart to pull over and put on the flak jackets and Kevlar helmets that we have stashed in the car boot. Coming from such a battle- hardened veteran of this unholy land, this is not what I want to hear. In all the years I have spent covering the intifada, rarely can I remember feeling so uneasy. I am struck by an almost overwhelming sense of foreboding. The sound of heavy machine gun fire is deafening as we splash through the raging torrent of broken water mains, burst by Israeli bulldozers digging up the streets to create yet more barricades of earth and broken tarmac or “siege works” as the army call them.

Through a warren of narrow backstreets and alleyways, Mafouz leads me into al-Amari refugee camp, home to 5000 Palestinians and, we have been told, a key target of today’s Israeli onslaught on Ramallah. Everyone we meet is terrified, and expects the worst.

“The Israelis came when it was still dark. The tanks are on all sides. We are trapped,” says al-Amari resident Fatima Awad. As her tiny sons cling to her legs, she tells me that her husband is also trapped somewhere on the other side of town, and that she fears the Israelis will arrest him without her knowing what might happen to him. She has every reason to be afraid. By now Apache helicopter gunships shaped like malevolent wasps have opened fire on the camp from the sky. Then loudspeaker announcements order all men aged 16 to 45 to gather at a school on the camp’s outskirts. As we make our way there, pausing at each street corner to check if we might be exposed to sniper fire, youngsters are already thronging the alleyways, breaking rocks and filling bottles with petrol for Molotov cocktail bombs. None looks more than 12 or 13 years old. Every so often their mothers or older sisters appear from doorways to scold them for gambling their lives in these gestures of defiance against overwhelming odds.

This is the Palestinian resistance I recognise. The eyeball-to-eyeball street fighting of the shebab. “If you are looking for me, then look no further. I’m here, ready and waiting to face off,” is their message. Theirs is a daylight world of head-on confrontation, far from the shadowy, stalking existence of the suicide bomber. It seems a long way from the threats and double-talk of Yasser Arafat’s backroom boys. If the Palestinians have a real resistance movement against the occupation, it is this, their enduring civilian population; people who are prepared to put up with the hardship of curfews or take to the streets in demonstrations, but if given the chance can be reasonable, hospitable and more than willing to talk. By now, though, even the remotest chance of any constructive dialogue has evaporated under the tightening grip of Sharon’s Operation Defensive Shield.

Outside the bulldozed walls of al-Amari school, hundreds of Palestinian men have been herded together under guard by soldiers in armoured personnel carriers. One by one the men are brought forward, their hands painfully manacled with plastic cuffs, and led into the school compound.

“You can’t go there,” shouts an Israeli soldier, pointing his rifle and taking aim at Mafouz and me as we move to follow one prisoner inside. Backing off slowly, we slip through an alleyway behind the school, where we peer through a hole in a fence at what is going on. A group of around 50 are ordered to line up, take off their jackets and shirts, and empty their pockets. They are then blindfolded, their hands still bound behind their backs. Israeli soldiers write a number on each of the prisoners’ forearms before the men are forced to sit silently in the baking sun with Israeli guns trained on them, each waiting his turn for interrogation.

Such methods have even outraged some Israelis who feel they are reminiscent of Nazi practices during the second world war . Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, a member of the Israeli parliament, leader of the Shinui Party and a former concentration camp victim, confronted Israeli General, Shaul Mofaz, during a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, saying that as a Holocaust survivor he finds the IDF methods intolerable and shocking. In a letter to Dr Shevah Weiss, chairman of Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab-Israeli Knesset member, articulated the thoughts of many over Israel’s tactics during the ongoing invasion of the West Bank: “In these wretched days, I’ve asked myself more than once how, within such a short period of history, the victim has become the murderer, and a people who perhaps suffered more than any other from arbitrary repression and refugee status, is capable of meting out the same fate to others.”

Faced with overwhelming firepower, Palestinian resistance at first amounted to little more than groups of rock-throwers. But slowly, militia fighters have begun to take to the streets and confront the huge tanks that smash through neighbourhoods with their rotating guns like tracking radar. Around the central Manara Square, hundreds of spent bullet cartridges litter the alleyways. Hooded Palestinian gunmen leap from behind walls to fire Kalashnikovs and M-16 automatic rifles, while others sit loading bullets into fresh clips before rejoining the gun battles. Behind their masks the militiamen’s eyes sometimes seem to betray a fear or frustration about a fight they know they can never win.

With Mafouz I make my way across the city in a series of nerve-racking dashes across open ground. Staccato bursts of gunfire roll over the olive trees in the surrounding rocky hills and in the main streets of the city centre. We cower next to walls and peer around corners for the sniper guns or tanks barrels that might mistake journalists for fighters. On the few occasions when we pluck up enough courage, we walk openly to avoid suspicion, hoping the bright yellow letters, “TV”, taped to our flak jackets and helmets will identify us as reporters. I hate these walks, when every instinct tells me to run or take cover, but I know that to panic is to look suspicious and risk being shot by increasingly jumpy Israeli soldiers, who rarely pause to check if you are a reporter before opening fire.

The recent death of another colleague, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello, still haunts me. Nobody really knows whether the Israeli tank-gunner who killed Ciriello made a mistake or not. “We came to Manara Square and took a sidestreet because we heard raised voices,” Amedeo Ricucci, one of Ciriello’s colleagues, later explained. “Out of a corner, an Israeli tank appeared some 150 yards away. It was going in the opposite direction but stopped. We started to film, then hid behind a building. I told Raffaele to get under cover because it was dangerous. He got behind the building but he leaned out with a small camera. They got him with a burst of gunfire,” Ricucci recalled.

Mafouz and I were working nearby when we heard that Ciriello had been hit, but moving around had become so dangerous that it was much later when we finally got to Ramallah’s Arabcare Medical Centre. At the hospital entrance, trolleys came in waves, carrying the wounded from gun battles that were raging just a few yards away on the streets outside. Inside the hospital, orderlies, doctors and nurses in bloodstained gowns dashed backwards and forwards. Mafouz asked an orderly if he knew where the foreign photographer had been taken. We had no idea then whether Ciriello was alive or dead. Perhaps he had been working alone and if so it was best to check if there was anything we could do for him. “I’m sorry to tell you he is dead, but I will take you to him,” the orderly replied with a gentle smile. His voice was almost drowned by the cries of pain and orders being shouted, as yet more wounded were ferried in from an ambulance that had screeched to a halt outside. I suddenly felt uncomfortable. What was the point of going to him if he was already dead? We weren’t family members or close colleagues there to confirm his identity. Fear of what I might encounter didn’t come into it. Over the years I had seen countless dead in wars around the world. There just seemed no point. I really didn’t know Raffaele Ciriello that well. I had spoken to him on occasion, but I didn’t know which part of Italy he came from, whether he was married, if he had children, or even who he worked for. Yet something about the orderly’s voice and manner suggested that none of this mattered. At this moment, he seemed to be saying, it was our sacred duty to pay homage to our colleague. “He’s one of your own,” his voice implied, “a sahafi like you, who has come all this way to witness these painful times.”

It was as though, by seeing what had become of Raffaele Ciriello, then all of us – hospital orderlies, journalists, Ramallah’s citizens, Palestinians, Israelis – would somehow collectively realise just what was happening here. That each and every one of us might be bonded by some common experience, which would help make sense of the madness on the streets outside and across this troubled land.

We followed the orderly up a narrow staircase, the sounds of gunfire echoing from outside now louder than ever. On the third floor he introduced us to Dr Mohammed Luai, who told us that Ciriello had been in cardiac arrest when he was brought in. There had been some Italian journalist colleagues with him, but they had since gone, hoping to get through the Israeli army cordon back to Jerusalem to take care of the necessary formalities. “We tried to revive him but he had lost too much blood,” Dr Luai explained.

The body of the dead photographer lay on a trolley in front of us. The exit wounds from the six bullets had left gaping holes in his back. Although his flesh was ghostly white, Ciriello looked at peace. Even though his colleagues had been there, it seemed a lonely way to die. To end up here in this rundown ward, cut off from the outside world and far from home.

Like all war reporters, Mafouz and I had faced moments when death seemed almost certain. It went with the job. War could be exotic, high octane. In that sense it was like “drinking from a very dangerous cup”, as BBC foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen once put it. Sometimes it could be an addictive cocktail of adrenaline, horror and fun. Afterwards, like any hangover, the bitter nausea of fear was quickly forgotten and only the excitement of the party remembered. “It’ll never happen to me” was the prevailing outlook. It is probably safe to say that Raffaele Ciriello thought the same way.

After we left the hospital that day, Manara Square, where Ciriello had been shot, became the scene of a killing of another kind, when angry Palestinians strung up the corpse of a young man said to have collaborated with the Israelis. For several hours, the blood-stained body of Raed Naem Odeh was left dangling upside-down from a metal pylon . A resident of al-Amari camp, the young Palestinian had been shot dead by al-Aqsa Brigade militiamen who suspected him of being an informer for Israeli forces in an operation that targeted a senior Brigade member.

So much death in such a short time – and it is far from over. As the base for Yasser Arafat and the PA, Ramallah has predictably been the first to take a pounding under Operation Defensive Shield, but already even worse stories are beginning to emerge from other besieged towns and refugee camps – places like Jenin and Bethlehem.

In Jenin, which has always been a bastion of the intifada, resistance against the Israeli assault has been fierce, and terrible things have happened there. “Don’t talk to me about the intifada,” one young Palestinian told me, during a lull in a gun battle around Ramallah’s Manara Square. “Those days are over. This is not an uprising, this is now a war. We may not have tanks and planes, but we have our blood, and with that our victory is certain.”

So much blood has already been spilled. How much more will it take, and just what does he mean by victory? The intifada seems rudderless, driven by a momentum of its own, without direction or objectives. It is a dangerous vacuum, easily exploited by the Israelis and those Palestinians who see killing Israelis as the intifada’s sole objective.

One afternoon, during another temporary lifting of curfew in Ramallah around that time, I watch Palestinian policemen fire in the air as the latest victims, wrapped in flags, are carried on stretchers from a mosque to the local cemetery. Nearby, just visible in the sea of faces, a toddler sits on his father’s shoulders, holding up a toy gun. “This can only mean more martyrs, more suicide bombers, perhaps even my own son’s life in the name of the intifada,” the man tells me. His voice is not angry, but resigned. “What did Sharon achieve by sending the tanks here, except to cause more pain?” he adds. “Why did they bother to come at all?”

This is an edited extract from Intifada: The Long Day Of Rage, which is published this week by sundayheraldbooks, £7.99.