I BEHIND THE HEADLINES
IMPORTED
LEATHER
Arabs Tire Of Intifada,
But Nihilists Continue
LOUIS RAPOPORT
Special to The Jewish News
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ImmIlmmmll
wo years after the
beginning of the
Palestinian uprising
in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, the intifada (Arabic
for "shaking off") is vir-
tually over. And although
the embers undoubtedly will
be fanned back into flames
now and again, almost all
that remains of the revolt is
Murder Inc., in the form of
"Black Panthers," "Red
Eagles," and others.
Most Palestinians are sick
of it, and though they still
mouth the arcane rhetoric of
the Palestinian
"Revolution," an
astonishing number of West
Bank Arabs are volunteer-
ing information to the
Israelis about the gangs who
have terrorized their daily
lives. There are now
thousands of
"collaborators." •
In the K a d u r a
neighborhood of Ramallah —
a Moslem slum in this
wealthy, mainly Christian
town north of Jerusalem —
rocks and bottles and
molotov cocktails are still
thrown at army patrols, but
they are lobbed over the
roofs now, by pairs or small
groups of "shock troops," as
the Palestinians stylize
themselves.
And the perpetrators are
often caught. Mohammed
Halil, age 16, grabbed by
two soldiers in a by-now
hum-drum routine,
mumbled an alibi that con-
vinced no one: "I was just
reading in my room. I work
in the bakery. I don't know
_ about PLO or Hamas [the
Moslem fundamentalist
rivals of the PLO] or George
Habash. I didn't do
anything."
No one along the street got
very excited about the
youth's arrest, or seemed
frightened by the firing of
two rounds of rubber bullets
by one of the soldiers. In fact,
it was the first time in three
weeks that this particular
squadron of Israelis had
fired any weapons.
Eighteen months ago, on
this very corner, I watched
hundreds of girls, their
mothers, small children and
"shock troops" burning tires
and chanting "Slaughter the
Jews."
"Fatigue is the word,"
says Colonel Shmuel, the of-
ficer in charge of the
Ramallah area. "The gen-
eral public is tired, sick of
the frequent strikes that
shut down the stores, wor-
ried about the 50-percent
loss in the value of the Jor-
anian dinar which was the
basis of their economy. The
young aren't so tired, but the
euphoria is gone."
Ramallah is a town dotted
with palatial homes. It's a
Christian town, with
perhaps 20,000 former
residents living in Detroit
and San Francisco and help-
ing to fund the Palestinian
uprising. But now, they, too,
are reportedly tired of pay-
ing the bills.
Some Palestinian Chris-
tians, as a minority within
"I took her out to
the street, to the
spot where I
intended to kill her.
I tied her up,
blindfolded her and
smashed her head
in with an axe."
the Palestinian revolution,
often try to come across as
more radical than the
.radicals. Ramallah is known
as George Habash turf, the
Christian doctor who leads
one of the most bloodthirsty
Palestinian organizations.
But the majority of Palesti-
nian Christians are now ab-
solutely terrified of the
Moslem fundamentalist
flood.
The intifada also is dead in
the eyes of editors and TV
news producers.
In Israel, even the local
coverage is nothing like
what it used to be. The ac-
a word that has
tion
entered both the Hebrew
and Arabic vocabularies in
the last two years — now is
generally between the
Palestinians. Every day,
there are murders of
"collaborators," women who
have "dishonored" their
families by having sexual re-
lations outside of wedlock,
sellers of hashish, and a host
of others who have been
deemed "unpure" by 17-
year-old judges.
There have been 170 of
these murders so far.
The most telling incident
was the nationally televised
interview Dec. 2 of a recent-
ly apprehended Red Eagle
Continued on Page 16
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