Amira Hass, author of the book Drinking the Sea at Gaza and “occupation correspondent” for the liberal Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, is the only Israeli Jewish reporter to live in the occupied Palestinian territories. She has chosen to live in and report from Ramallah, and most of her work emphasizes the extremity of everyday oppression that is life in the occupied Palestinian lands: the roadblocks, the ordinary indignities, the farm lands split by newly built walls, or taken bit by bit from Palestinian villages, and so on. Her beat is a world of everyday misery and resistance that most Israelis now seem inured to or ignore, that goes largely unreported in the mainstream Israeli press, that no longer normally rises to the level of “news” as the Israeli settlements grow, the occupation becomes never-ending, hope for any kind of peace fades, assassinations of Palestinian leaders are the order of the day, and suicide bombings sweep all feeling for the other side away.
As the year ends, it’s worth remembering individuals like Hass, whose commonplace acts constitute a kind of bravery, whose focus never wavers, and whose professional life, even her choice of “home,” acts as a rebuke to Israeli society. This Christmas Day report of hers on life in occupied Nablus is nothing out of the ordinary for her, just another piece at the end of a long year, but like the rest of her reporting its very existence is to be celebrated — and what follows from Asia Times on line is a tiny portrait of Hass herself. Tom
The other Nablus I know
By Amira Hass
December 25, 2002
Ha’aretzThe commander of the paratroopers’ brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Aviv Kochavi, was interviewed at length the day before yesterday on Israel Radio, as the person in charge of Nablus (as he put it) after his soldiers captured the person that the IDF described as “the new Tanzim leader.” Kochavi denied that, as perceived, for every military commander arrested or killed new ones are found, saying that the Palestinians “have difficulty growing new leaders … The rate of growth has been stunted very significantly.”
There has been no curfew in Nablus for two weeks. “The city is alive, active; there is trade. We allow merchandise to enter and we are allowing merchandise to leave…. We have established public transportation inside the city and from it in order to make life easier for the innocent…”
There is no hunger in the city.
The commander of the paratroopers’ brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Aviv Kochavi, was interviewed at length the day before yesterday on Israel Radio, as the person in charge of Nablus (as he put it) after his soldiers captured the person that the IDF described as “the new Tanzim leader.” Kochavi denied that, as perceived, for every military commander arrested or killed new ones are found, saying that the Palestinians “have difficulty growing new leaders … The rate of growth has been stunted very significantly.”
There has been no curfew in Nablus for two weeks. “The city is alive, active; there is trade. We allow merchandise to enter and we are allowing merchandise to leave…. We have established public transportation inside the city and from it in order to make life easier for the innocent…”
There is no hunger in the city.
A Jewish journo among the Palestinians
By Ferry Biedermann
Asia Times (from Inter Press News Service)
December 23, 2002JERUSALEM – Israeli journalist Amira Hass gets “culture shock” every time she travels the short distance from Ramallah on the Palestinian side to Jewish West Jerusalem.
Talking to IPS in a popular cafe in Jerusalem, she marvels at the ability of the Israelis to completely ignore what is happening in the Palestinian territories nearby.
As correspondent first in Gaza and now in Ramallah for the liberal Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, she believes that she has a duty to make her people aware of what is going on there. She is the only Jewish Israeli journalist to live among the Palestinians.
“People always want to know what that is like,” she says. “It is a different world which is hard for them to imagine.” But she is glad that she has now received international recognition for her work and not “just for the fact that I live in the Palestinian territories”.