A Hero Returns

Offers of blood and spirit

"Palestine is ours, Palestine is Arab," chanted welcoming crowds in Nablus on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Although roadblocks were set up outside the town to prevent nonresidents from entering; hundreds of Palestinians turned out last week to greet Mayor Bassam Shaka'a, 49, who lost both his legs in a terrorist bombing attack in early June. As Shaka'a returned home from treatment in a Jordanian hospital, Arab women ululated in joy and defiance. Two men climbed atop Shaka'a's ambulance and sacrificed a sheep on its roof. Some of the mayor's followers soaked their hands in the animal's blood. "We offer ourselves to you in blood and in spirit, O Bassam!" they cried. Then three men carried the mayor, the stumps of his legs swathed in heavy bandages, to a velvet sofa beneath an awning in his yard. "People of Palestine, I give you my life, my blood and my love!" he shouted.

Israeli authorities consider Shaka'a a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and he is officially banned from political activity and from giving interviews. He nonetheless warned American reporters that "the situation on the West Bank and in Gaza is more dangerous than at any time before, because the Israeli military government is taking a hard line against our people and institutions." Tensions indeed remain high. Israeli authorities have made little progress in locating the terrorists who maimed Shaka'a and another West Bank mayor, Karim Khalaf of Ramallah. As construction continued on ten new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, three Arabs died in an explosion near Hebron; they had apparently been building a bomb.

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