Middle East Frustration Springs Eternal

By Scott MacLeod

December 1987 to December 1988, a heavy toll: 318 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers, eleven Israelis dead, more than 7,000 Palestinians injured, 15,000 arrested, 12,000 jailed and 34 deported.

For the cause, the sons of Palestine are ready to die. That simple but powerful fact keeps the intifadeh going strong a year after it erupted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Khaled Tbeilah, 14, who worked in a candy factory to help feed his family when he was not throwing stones at Israeli patrols, became one of the most recent Palestinian "martyrs" on Oct. 18, when a plastic bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank city of Nablus killed him. His parents and nine siblings are grieving but are no less determined to fight on against Israel's occupation of their land.

THE FATHER Abdul-Wahhab Tbeilah, 58, is a generation removed from the young men who started the revolt, and did not think like them when the uprising erupted. His political sensibilities, like those of other older men in Nablus, had dulled after 21 years of occupation. An auto mechanic, he worked hard to keep his large family in their 400-year-old two-room ancestral home in the Casbah of Nablus. He lived for his children, hoping they would be educated enough someday to become doctors and teachers. Then politics intruded into his quiet life and, given the frequent general strikes called by intifadeh leaders, he decided to quit his job in Israel. The $130 a month he now earns as a guard at a religious school is not nearly enough to provide even modest comfort. "Financially," says Abu Ali, as he is called, "I am tired."

In some ways, he wishes he could turn back the clock to before last December, but he has accepted the violent politicization of his life through a combination of religious faith and nationalism. Despite his grief, he speaks with pride of Khaled's "martyrdom." "Our contribution to the intifadeh," he says, "has moved the Palestinian cause forward."

THE MOTHER Fryal, 41, betrays the strain of trying to run a home during a year of anguish. She still oversees her large household with a firm hand, although providing the daily necessities is no longer a simple task. She has drawn up a stringent budget that allocates her husband's paycheck entirely for groceries and the children's clothes and medicine. Amid shortages and strikes, the simple act of buying food has turned into a time-consuming, frustrating chore. Meat is rarely served at her table; even chicken or frozen fish appears no more than once a week.

Much of the time Fryal is terrified that Israeli soldiers will break into the apartment and take her men away for interrogation. Remembering such nighttime incidents, she blinks back tears. "I start bleeding inside when I see my husband humiliated and my sons beaten." Yet she does not attempt to dissuade her sons from active involvement in the uprising. Opening a photo album, she stares at the face of the Khaled she remembers as a "very quiet boy, obedient and very sensitive." In the next breath she proudly praises him as a "Palestinian nationalist."

A DAUGHTER Rana, 17, is shy and not keen on throwing stones, but she is pleased that other young Palestinian women have joined the confrontations. Rana spends her days reading books of philosophy and poetry. Like all youngsters in the occupied territories, she has missed a half-year of formal education because the Israelis shut down government-run Palestinian schools as collective punishment for the intifadeh. Her mother keeps her inside the house for safety and to help with housework.

Rana dislikes politics; she wants to be a writer "to convey the pains and hopes of human beings." Her poems, however, catch the pervasiveness of the intifadeh: "In its cage the bird is sad/ Does it cry because it is in exile?/ . . . Or is it the grievance against the rancorous enemy?" Though the death of her brother came as a terrible shock, Rana insists that it has not made her hate Jews. "But I do hate the occupation. If the Israelis are really bothered by the Palestinians hating them, then they should leave the West Bank and Gaza."

A SON Adel, 19, is a veteran of the streets. At 16 he joined the Shabiba, an illegal P.L.O.-affiliated youth group, and later he led a protest strike and was jailed twice. When the intifadeh caught fire, he moved to the front line of the shabab, the young militants who keep the rebellion alight. Last winter the Israeli authorities threatened to demolish his family's home if he did not turn himself in. He complied and spent 8 1/2 months under administrative detention. At one point, he and two of his brothers shared a tent in the harsh desert camp at Ketziot.

Hard-line politics has become Adel's life. He dropped out of high school, and says he has no time for marriage. A dedicated nationalist, he will settle for nothing less than an end to Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state in its place; he is furious that Yasser Arafat is talking about recognizing Israel's right to exist. "If Arafat asks the Palestinians to stop the intifadeh, we will show him the back of our hands," Adel says. "I am willing to sacrifice. I am convinced that we are going to win."

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Nablus