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Scenes from a reporter's notebook
© St. Petersburg Times JERUSALEM -- Like Americans after Sept. 11, Israelis are engaging in a burst of flag-waving patriotism as they fight their own war against terrorism. On major highways throughout the country, blue and white Israeli flags wave from every light pole. It's a pleasing sight against the green of the hills and the red of the poppies that grow wild here. Many Israeli boys also earn a few extra shekels standing at busy intersections selling clamp-on flags to passing motorists. Israel's flag, with its star of David, stands out in a region where the flags of almost every Arab nation are a combination of white, green, red and black. The white is supposed to symbolize the kindness of the Arab people, the green represents agriculture, the red, blood, and the black, strength and resistance to foreign occupation. Ask what time it is, and you're apt to get a different answer from Israelis and Palestinians these days. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are usually on the same time as Israel, which has switched to daylight saving time and is now seven hours ahead of Florida. But with Israeli troops isolating Yasser Arafat and destroying much of his Palestinian Authority, there has been no official word to move the clocks ahead in the West Bank and Gaza. So when it's 2 p.m. in Israel, it's 1 p.m. in the Palestinian areas. Not that it makes much difference to the thousands of Palestinians under Israeli-imposed curfews. "I don't care about the time, now all we're doing is trying to live," says Charlie Kanawati, an eye doctor in Beit Jala. "It doesn't matter if it's one hour before or one hour after." Since the start of the second Palestinian uprising 18 months ago, there has been a noticeable change in the appearance of many Palestinian men: Their mustaches are gone. From their teenage years, men throughout the Arab world commonly sport thick, dark mustaches. But many Palestinians living in and around Israel have shaved them off to reduce the chances of being stopped by Israeli authorities. "How many Jews have you seen with a mustache?" asks Jamal, a Palestinian whose clean-shaven face makes him look far younger than his 40 years. Jamal, who lives in a Palestinian area near Jerusalem, says he freely travels to Jewish areas of the city without being stopped at Israeli checkpoints. Meanwhile, men whose mustaches give them away as Palestinians are stopped and ordered to bare their midsections to prove they are not wearing belts packed with explosives. Jamal did not want to give his last name, perhaps because he performs an unusual form of public service: He designs "martyr posters" that commemorate Palestinians killed in the second intifada. Buildings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are papered with posters of the dead, many of them suicide bombers who attacked Israelis. A typical poster shows the "martyr" superimposed on a photograph of the Dome of Rock, a Muslim holy site in Jerusalem, along with an inspirational verse from the Koran and a brief description of the date, place and circumstances of death. Although his main business is making commercial signs, Jamal has designed hundreds of martyr posters using nothing more elaborate than a scanner and personal computer. First he scans in a photo of the person. Then, using a software program, he edits the photograph for size, brightness and other factors, and superimposes it on a scenic background. The final step is adding some information about the death and a verse from the Koran. The process takes about 10 minutes and ends with production of a disk, which the dead man's family can take to a print shop that makes the actual posters. Jamal charges nothing for his work, considering it a service that promotes the cause of Palestinian statehood. "Here we are one people, one nation," says the divorced father of five. "This guy died this day, but who knows, tomorrow it may be me or my relatives." Jamal says he designs posters only for Palestinians who were unarmed when they were killed by Israelis. He refuses to do posters for suicide bombers. He doesn't think such attacks help Palestinians "achieve their goal because they kill innocent people." But he acknowledged he has supplied software to a friend in Ramallah, who produces the familiar images of bombers posing with Kalashnikov rifles. As soon as he makes the disk, Jamal deletes the design from his hard drive. If Israeli authorities "hear somebody makes those things, they search your computer," he says. "There are no rules not to do this, but I like to be careful." -- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.
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Times columns today Gary Shelton Susan Taylor Martin |
