Umm Mohamed, mother of a martyr

For Palestinians, in the occupied territories and Israel alike, the uprising is not over yet. Graham Usher writes from Ramallah and Nazareth
Umm Mohamed, mother of a martyr
Last October Israel's one million Palestinians briefly joined the Intifada of their kin in the West Bank and Gaza. Protests erupted in most of their towns, villages and hamlets in Israel, but especially in the Galilee, where about a quarter of them live. In a visceral, ethnically charged repression, Israeli police crushed the uprising of "their Arabs" in about 10 days: 13 Palestinians were killed, 1,000 injured and 800 imprisoned.
It was the worst confrontation between Israel and its Palestinian Arab minority since the Jewish state was established. "The Intifada changed everything," says Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian community leader in the Galilee. "For the first time in years we saw ourselves as part of the Palestinian people and less as citizens of Israel".
The bonds have been tightening and loosening ever since -- notwithstanding a reluctant decision by Israel's then Prime Minister Ehud Barak last November to set up a Commission of Enquiry into the October clashes. In February, 80 percent of the Palestinian electorate boycotted Israel's prime ministerial election, rejecting a political system that had "rejected us," says Makhoul.
Last weekend, marches, rallies, ceremonies and a general strike among Israel's Palestinians mourned and remembered "Black October." A handful of Jewish peace groups turned out in solidarity. But it was only a handful.
Most Israeli Jews (including of course the government) observed the memorials only in the fear they may again be ignited by the mounting violence in the West Bank and Gaza, across an increasingly molten Green Line: "The Intifada changed everything. The world is upside down" twice.
It changed everything for Umm Mohamed Akawi, and for the second time. She was an 18-year old girl in the war that saw Israel born and Palestine lost. On 17 April 1948 she was told by a British army officer to leave her native Tiberias because of the fighting between Arab and Jewish militias. She was taken to Nazareth, then as now, the largest Arab town in Israel.
By the time she arrived Tiberias had fallen, she recalls. Aside from visits, she cannot return, "even though it was the town of my father and mother's families," she says. "Fifty-three years a refugee in Nazareth. Only 53 but it feels like a hundred".
The second loss happened on 8 October last year. Whipped up in the fear and hatred caused by Israel's "internal" intifada, a Jewish mob descended on Nazareth's eastern neighbourhood, a poor, densely populated Palestinian sprawl. Homes were sacked, shop-fronts smashed and Arabs beaten.
The police eventually intervened, mostly on the side of the mob. In the worst night of violence after Nazareth "fell" half a century ago over 100 Palestinians were injured and two killed by live ammunition, almost certainly fired by Israeli police snipers. One of them was Omar Akawi, Umm Mohamed's 42-year old and only son.
"When he left our house, it wasn't in his head to go to the eastern neighbourhood. He knew there was trouble there. 'The world is upside down', he said. But he went. I don't know why. Maybe to watch".
Omar met with a friend on the outskirts of the eastern neighbourhood. But they were "far away" from the clashes, according to eyewitness testimony given to the Commission of Enquiry. Suddenly a shot rang out. A live bullet hit Omar in the left upper part of the chest. A private car whisked him to hospital. He died 40 minutes later. No autopsy was performed.
"The first bullet in Nazareth hit my son," says his mother. "Everybody said this. Their first bullet in Nazareth that night got my son. A martyr is killed for his nationality."
Umm Mohamed is 62 years old. Sitting in her home on Nazareth's western slopes, she wears a headscarf, a long gown and a Palestinian scarf around her neck. Her hair is grey, her lips pinched in grief. The anger is in her eyes. Does she expect the Commission of Enquiry to bring her son's killers to justice?
"I have only the faintest expectation of that," she answers. "Everybody knows there were four Israeli police marksmen on the hill opposite Omar. The police chief admitted they were there -- two armed with live ammunition, two with rubber bullets. But he told the Commission he 'doesn't know' if they shot my son. How doesn't he know? He was responsible for them. The police killed my son. And why -- because for the first time in 53 years we defended ourselves, not with guns, but stones. We protested."
Umm Mohamed protests still. Her home has not only become a shrine to her son but also an archive documenting the events of October. The walls are plastered in Intifada posters, the drawers crammed with newspaper cuttings. Draped over everything there are the black, white, red and green colours of Palestine.
Last Friday she led a march 3,000 strong through Nazareth, with the 12 other families from the "Committee of Martyrs," formed last October. "A martyr is killed for his nationality," runs the committee's emblem. "He is you, me and us."
But her activism is the consequence of her son's murder, not its replacement. She has left his room almost unchanged and leafs through the pages of one of his books. "I don't know what it's about. You should ask Omar your questions," she says. "How I wish he were here to answer them."
Every Friday she visits his grave in a cemetery chiselled into the blue hills above Nazareth. She brushes away the dead leaves, cleans the marble and tends the pile of wreaths that, she says, grows bigger every week.
In the near distance you can see Upper Nazareth, a Jewish neighbourhood built on Palestinian land in 1957 and whence, on 8 October, the mob descended. In the far distance, across the haze of the Jezzril valley, there is Tiberias. You can't see it. But it's there.
Can she forgive the Israelis? "No," she answers, with her eyes. "They took my home, my homeland and now they have taken my son. No," she says again, with a shake of the head.
The rage stares at you. Then looks away. She fondles the scarf in her lap, as though grappling with the point of the question, which is if genuine coexistence is ever to come forgiveness (with justice) is going to be necessary. Looks back at me. The eyes are softer now, almost serene. "No," she says.
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