Even the yuppies have had it [BARF ALERT]

Ha'aretz ^ | 15 jul 02 | Gideon Levy

[white trash redneck]

Even the yuppies have had it

She wears Prada, Yves Saint Laurent and Fendi but, even for Samar Daoud, occupation is occupation is occupation

Her kitchen is by the exclusive Israeli firm of Kastiel. Stainless steel, stone, and wood. As is most of the living room furniture. Paintings by Tamar Bachar of Herzliya hang on the walls. Her clothing and handbags are Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Fendi, Christian Dior and Thierry Mugler. The CDs are Miles Davis, Barbra Streisand, Omro Diab and Dalida. The coffee table books are Picasso, Delacroix, Matisse, Moroccan interior design, "All that Remains" by Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in Arabic, almost the only national symbol in the house. The Alessi coffee set was purchased at Les Galeries Lafayette in Paris. She serves French cheese and Oriental cookies. The doors are cast iron and the elegant many-paned windows overlook Ramallah, Neve Yaakov, Beit Hanina and the A-Ram checkpoint.

The relocated A-Ram checkpoint is now right under her nose, and everything is changed. The windows are soundproofed, yet the din of the checkpoint, the sirens and shouting, penetrates the stylish apartment on the fourth floor of the building and ruins an otherwise tranquil view.

Here in Beit Hanina, in northern Jerusalem, Samar Daoud lives with her two children. The kids study at the French School in West Jerusalem; she works out at the spa at the Hilton. Once every week or two she drives her BMW, with its yellow Israeli license plates, to the beach at Tel Baruch to work on her tan and then to the Ramat Aviv Mall, although she does most of her shopping abroad.

Yehoshua Kastiel of the upscale home furnishing shop is a friend, along with many other Israelis. She's divorced, 37, a liberated and beautiful woman. Her father owns land in Beit Duko, with vineyards and olives, and her brothers own the largest Palestinian car rental firm, which leases 90 vehicles to the international observers force in Hebron and dozens more to foreign correspondents. Five of her eleven siblings live in the United States and own a chain of everything-for-a-dollar stores in Detroit and Chicago. Every summer, they come to Israel to visit the family.

Her mother receives dialysis treatments three times a week at Bikur Holim Hospital in Jerusalem. One of the roads near her house is open only to IDF vehicles: The tanks use that route to Ramallah. She hasn't visited the village where her brothers live in six months; it's so complicated to get there now. Her parents' house, visible from her window, is sometimes hours away because of the checkpoints. Her house - in Jerusalem - is surrounded by four checkpoints.

She has lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She studied business administration in Houston, Texas, and her daughter Noor, 13, sister of Shadi, 15, was born there. She's an independent television producer and has worked for the BBC and the Saudi network MBC, and she writes occasionally for the Palestinian daily Al Quds. And: "Don't forget to write that I'm a Muslim," she phoned to tell me after we'd left, "because the Israelis always think that a modern, open Palestinian woman has to be Christian."

Once I met her at the beach at Tel Baruch and she joked that if the situation continues this way and Saint Laurent starts making suicide belts, she'll buy herself one. She's had it - even a yuppie like her from Beit Hanina; she's sick and tired of the omnipresent, insidious, inescapable clutches of the occupation.

"Yesterday afternoon, I was in Ramallah and they announced a curfew at two o'clock. Everyone disappeared; I didn't know what to do. Could I get out in time? I wasn't prepared to stay overnight there. I started walking, took a cab to Semiramis, another to Qalandiyah, waited two hours at the checkpoint, went through on foot, and arrived at 6 P.M. with an excruciating headache. A horrible feeling. I have to go to Jerusalem five times a day. I thought I was living in Jerusalem; now I live far away. They've destroyed our lives, they've invaded our privacy, they have us surrounded, and it's very painful.

"I have to go to the beauty salon, here in Beit Hanina, a few hundred meters - and I can't. It's my private life, isn't it? My clothes are at my parents' house and I can't get there. I want to see my mother every day; she's been sick. They've completely disrupted daily life. All because of this checkpoint, no one can live with it, no one. I don't have to be political to complain about the checkpoint. I'm a nonpolitical citizen and I've had it, really had it, I'm in despair. Our life is a disaster. A new occupation has begun. Hamas, Fatah, ordinary citizens, it's all the same to them. They treat us all the same.

"Why is this checkpoint here? We all pay property taxes, income taxes, we have Israeli ID cards. In the end, we get to Jerusalem; how does security benefit? We hear that word all day, security, security - we're sick of that word. They say we educate our children to violence? If our children see soldiers at a checkpoint - which is what my kids see when they wake up every morning - then they're the ones teaching kids violence. They humiliate us in front of our children. I don't want my children to see that.

"We can't use our nice cars. I'm not willing to stand for two hours at a checkpoint, cross on foot wearing my nice clothes, and good perfume, with my children and their nice schoolbags. Long queues of people lined up like sheep. It's humiliating. `Where are you going?' How dare the soldiers ask me that? I think they teach the soldiers, in your schools, not just to hate us, but to humiliate us. Do they study humiliation?

"We wake up at 5 A.M. to get to school at eight in Jerusalem, and we look out the window first thing. How many people are at the checkpoint, how many cars, which way should we go today. That's my children's morning. A checkpoint. They see an old man prevented from crossing, they see my mother, their grandmother, who can't walk anymore, waiting two hours in a car, three times a week, to get to dialysis. We try to explain to the soldiers that there's a sick woman in the car; they always say, `Back in line.' I show my Israeli press card and they don't even listen. They see us, but never hear us. You're well-dressed, you're blonde, you're Hamas - everyone's the same. All they do is yell at you.

"I will not put up with this anymore. We're Jerusalemites. We're allowed to go to Tel Aviv, but it means nothing anymore. Not this way. Yesterday I came home at midnight from the American Colony; the driver let me off at the checkpoint and I walked home in the dark. It's terribly dark here. I'd rather stay home.

"I'm a single mother and sometimes I'm so scared. Sometimes I have nightmares about what would happen if they suddenly show up at my door and see that I'm alone. What will they do to me in front of my children? Humiliate me in my own house? I wake up terrified. I have an apartment that I love, the furniture, the books, the atmosphere, the design, the closed windows. But as soon as you remember where you are, the fear overcomes you.

"I'm always smiling, but I'm a sad woman. I can't get to friends in Jerusalem, to my brothers' village, to my mother every day. It makes me sad. I don't know what to tell my children anymore. Sometimes they go to the community center alone, and they have to pass the checkpoint. The soldiers know kids don't have ID cards but they make them wait anyway. It's an unfair, uncouth occupation. It doesn't fit with what Israelis say about democracy.

"Until they moved the checkpoint over here, they called this Beit Hanina A-1: the wealthiest, the quietest. Now it's something else. If someone is sick, heaven forbid, no ambulance will come here. A neighbor died and no ambulance came. Where would it come from? Ramallah? Shuafat? Magen David Adom? This is A-1? It's zero. There are no services, no garbage collection - and this is Beit Hanina. They know everyone here, so why the checkpoint? Isn't Qalandiyah enough? They don't want us in West Jerusalem? So put a checkpoint there. But not between me and my mother's house. Not between me and my supermarket. I'm lucky there's a supermarket right on the corner, but I have to cross a checkpoint to get there. Last year they shot a child with a schoolbag there. I'm afraid for my children. I don't let them out alone with a schoolbag.

"I think their real goal is to get us to leave. To give up in frustration and just leave. People here could go to Paris, the United States. In Gaza and the West Bank, millions have nowhere to go. But most Palestinians have learned from history: They'll never leave again. Even the wealthy who do go will return.

"You already took most of the country. Give us this 22 percent, period. Don't negotiate. You took everything and you're quibbling over 22 percent? Not even a quarter of a percent. 22 percent without negotiations. That's the only deal, then we can end this.

"I'm not willing to live under occupation. I have a right to oppose it. Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. It's all occupation, occupation, occupation. And all the Israelis have to hear repeatedly that they're occupiers, occupiers, occupiers. And we're opposed, opposed, opposed. End the occupation and there won't be suicide bombers. We're not a nation of suicide bombers. We're a people who love life. We appreciate life, I tell you this from the gut. We don't want to kill ourselves or anyone else. The occupation has created people with nothing to eat. It's their love of life - when their life is over, they kill themselves.

"I want my children to grow up here. I want them to see what happens, what Israel is doing to their people, and how beautiful Jerusalem is and how beautiful the beach at Herzliya is and how beautiful our Israeli friends are - I feel really at home with some of them. But in the end, I need security for my children.

"I don't need people to be killed here in order to leave. The checkpoint is enough - my life is over. Frustration, fear, it's over. They've done it - maybe I'll leave. It's enough. Five times a day to hear, `Where are you going, open your bag, stand there, wait.' Sometimes I think it's good that I don't understand Hebrew and don't know what they're saying. Sometimes they yell on the loudspeaker at night and I'm glad I don't understand them. Only because I can permit myself to think about maybe leaving. They are forcing me to leave my home. To go look for a home in Paris and think about the home I left behind. My home is here, my family, everything. But there's this huge monster with a stick, saying: You don't belong here. What are you doing here? Go away.

"Peace is dead. I don't want peace anymore. I want freedom. I want freedom first of all. That's what I need. I need freedom. Only after I get it can I decide if I want peace and how to behave with my neighbor. But first, my freedom. After you give me my freedom, maybe we'll talk about peace."

[white trash redneck]

Palesterrorist valley girl thinks that the Jews are so, well, uncool.

[FreeTally]

"Peace is dead. I don't want peace anymore. I want freedom. I want freedom first of all. That's what I need. I need freedom. Only after I get it can I decide if I want peace and how to behave with my neighbor. But first, my freedom. After you give me my freedom, maybe we'll talk about peace."

What the hell?

[BikerTrash]

After you give me my freedom...

Looking for yet another handout, I see.

[Catspaw]

Whines like a Palie valley girl, too.

Here's a hint to her: tell your buddies to quit blowing up Jews. Tell your buddies to quit shooting Jews. Then you'll be able to go to your hair salon in peace and freedom.

Like DUH.

[sonofdemnomo]

She's like, totally dumb. She wouldn't last long if her Muslim cute guys drove the Israelis into the sea. She would be forced to wear a designer burka. A Muslim Bimbo. She talks just like a limousine liberal. Designer suicide belts are just her style.

[GunRunner]

Boo-hoo.

Peace is dead. I don't want peace anymore.

You never did want it.

[Catspaw]

Oh, when she can't stand it, she'll just move to France. They'll welcome her with open arms. Then she'll just gnash her teeth, wear a keffiyah and march down the street of Paris, yelling Palie slogans--as long as her hair, make-up and designer clothes don't get messed up by the rabble.

[BrooklynGOP]

I'm not willing to live under occupation. I have a right to oppose it. Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. It's all occupation, occupation, occupation. And all the Israelis have to hear repeatedly that they're occupiers, occupiers, occupiers...

Didn't she just say that she was apolitical?

[roadcat]

Whines like a Palie valley girl, too.

Here's a hint to her: tell your buddies to quit blowing up Jews. Tell your buddies to quit shooting Jews. Then you'll be able to go to your hair salon in peace and freedom.

Like DUH.

Ha-ha-ha! Yes, Like DUH and DUMBER!

[1rudeboy]

Dude, all she needs is freedom to go to the hair salon. Then she'll talk about peace.

[Reagan is King]

"I have to go to the beauty salon, here in Beit Hanina, a few hundred meters - and I can't. It's my private life, isn't it? My clothes are at my parents' house and I can't get there

Gosh, life is just so difficult. And all the Israeli's have to do is think about getting blown to bits every time they go to a public place. I wonder who has it rougher? Maybe the Palestinians will figure out that supporting the bombings isn't worth the hassle of the occupation. I won't hold my breath on that one though.