In the dead of night, woken by nightmares of being chased by stone-throwers, I lay awake thinking with dread about childbirth. But I had to confront the growing reality. As far as obstetrics was concerned, the choice was between two philosophies: European or American. The European model was practiced by Palestinians; the American was favored by Israelis. I had trained in the former, given birth in the latter, saw the options and made my choice.
My three experiences of giving birth in New York had been perfectly safe, but I was a vehicle in a system geared to thinking litigiously. I had had to battle the staff not to be tied to a CTG* continuously, to keep my babies beside me, to prevent the nursery staff giving my babies a bottle rather than letting me breastfeed them, and to keep some control over what was happening to me and my babies. And it is no fun fighting when you are in pain, and against people who are good, kind, and only doing their job, but who are looking after too many mothers and too constrained by “medicalization” to allow that birth is not just another surgical procedure but a normal physiological process, one that can, of course, go wrong—in which case medicine is very welcome. Then—but only then—please step in and intervene, thank you very much.
This time there would be a different battle: to get to the hospital. Less importantly, I also had to defend my choice. I was never questioned on my choice of dentist, pediatrician, optician, or vet, but I was berated for my choice of obstetrician. The former were Israeli; the obstetrician was Palestinian.
Having trained as a doctor in Britain, and seen British midwives’ genius for helping women to experience labor as something positive, I longed to have a home birth under their care and direction. “Hell,” exclaimed some friends, “how dangerous is that!” Statistically, less dangerous than a hospital birth for a low-risk case like mine. But home-births were hard to come by. So, if not a home birth, I would have to have the baby in hospital. And yet I was frightened by the thought of a birth in Israel or Palestine. The stone-throwing dream rolled into a waking nightmare: I was lying on a bed bleeding after the delivery, saying to a gray shape trying to push me away: “Tell them I’m bleeding,” but no one was coming to help me; they were letting me bleed, unheard, alone.
In reality I was under attack for being irresponsible—fairly, for not finding prenatal care as early as I should have, and unfairly, for choosing a Palestinian hospital. How could Palestinian obstetrics compete with Israeli obstetrics? Some Palestinians asked the same thing. On the way to Bethlehem in labor the year before, my pregnant American friend Julie had been stopped at the Israeli checkpoint: “What are you doing going to a Palestinian hospital? There are great hospitals back there in Israel,” the soldiers demanded. She and her husband insisted. Further on they were stopped by Palestinian security: “Hey, what are you doing going to a Palestinian hospital? There are great hospitals back there in Israel.”
I had visited a number of hospitals in the area; seeing obstetric departments was making the pregnancy real, the denial harder—something about the sight of stirrups. Even chintzed-up “delivery suites” were still dark cells with huge stirrups on the “beds.” They might be the discreet, pop-up-when-you-need-them variety, but you know they’re there, the drill by the dentist’s chair. I phoned the Israeli midwife everyone recommended in one last attempt to arrange a home birth but she refused on account of my address. She wouldn’t, she said, put herself in any danger.
The Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem offered everything I was looking for: a progressive approach, mother-centered care, excellent credentials,* and good facilities in a glorious setting. Admittedly it was in the middle of a war zone but as long as the town was quiet when I went into labor, the Holy Family was the place. I talked to Julie about giving birth there the previous Christmas. Her verdict was that the hospital had been excellent, and that although the bombardment of the town during her labor had been “a little off-putting,” she had been sure the IDF would not target a hospital.
Architecturally the Holy Family was not so much hospital as monastery: wide airy corridors of limestone arches and a cloistered courtyard of orange and grapefruit trees which the lab technician, who was on site to do any test the doctors ordered without delay, tended with particular care. I watched him one morning, walking about the cloisters in the sun, scattering his coffee grounds about the trees’ roots to nurture them. The hospital was ideal, both philosophically and technically, assuming supplies were allowed through the checkpoints. The rooms were spotless, comfortable, and unpretentious, the staff kind and accommodating. And Dr. Salsa was a calm, sympathetic doctor, a considerate teacher to the medical students who followed her about, and we laughed together as we reminisced about our experiences of working in British hospitals.
As soon as I’d decided on Bethlehem it became a war zone again. This happened every now and then. At the end of August 2001 the IDF assassinated Abu Ali Mustapha, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and occupied the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala. In retaliation the Palestinians fired on Gilo, the settlement on the opposite hill. A British intelligence officer working for the EU brokered a local ceasefire. This lasted for more than six weeks, giving citizens a much-needed break and the chance to sleep at night. But the ceasefire ended when the IDF assassinated three Fatah officials (one of whom the PA was supposed to have arrested) and predictably the Palestinians fired on Gilo again. The IDF then reoccupied Bethlehem in response to the Palestinian “breach of ceasefire.”
That was Bethlehem. The war-zone factor intruded again when on October 17, by way of further retaliation for the killing of Abu Ali Mustapha, the PFLP assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister, Rehavam Ze’evi. By now we were used to the news of assassinations by the Israeli army—the IDF had executed more than 35 people in the past few months—but this was the first by Palestinians.1
Bethlehem, my increasingly unlikely location for giving birth—and I was now in my seventh month—was invaded. Israel gave the PA an ultimatum to hand over Ze’evi’s killers within a week. The PA did not comply. One of the assassins was known to be in Bethlehem, but Bethlehem was under total curfew, making it difficult for PA forces to move around and arrest him without being shot for breaking the curfew. While I worried about the effects on Bethlehem, others were worrying that the more the IDF attacked the PA’s security services—arresting and killing their personnel, bombing their offices, destroying their vehicles—the more Sharon demanded that these same forces perform security miracles. Even those Palestinians who berated Arafat said it was unreasonable to blame the PA chairman if someone wasn’t arrested when he himself was under house arrest.
When the invasion of Bethlehem began, five people were killed within a few minutes and the IDF cut off the town’s water and electricity. None of this boded well for a quiet delivery. After a fortnight, an Israeli editorial concluded that the invasion had paralyzed civilian life as never before, intensified Palestinian hatred, and increased support for the resistance.2 I let myself believe that editorials like this were a sign that a change in policy was possible.
I was overly optimistic. Bethlehem for childbirth now? Bombed and blitzed and under curfew, with no water or power? Andrew wanted to know if I’d changed my mind. “A mother and her baby died at the checkpoint. Do you know that?” he asked. Yes, I knew that. Rihab Nufal had been trying to get to the Bethlehem hospital to give birth. The soldiers would not let her through and she died: died in childbirth, blocked from getting to the hospital. Her unborn child had no chance.
I was supposed to go to the hospital for a routine check-up. That was out of the question while the army continued storming the city. Bethlehem had shut down, its inhabitants terrified, unsafe even in their homes, the streets full of rubble and tanks.
Then came news of another woman in labor stopped at the checkpoint on her way to the Holy Family Hospital. Her baby died. Unlike me, these two women had nowhere else to go for medical help. Unlike me, this woman had no children. The mother, Rawida, pregnant after five and a half years of waiting and IVF, went into labor early. Her husband Nasser drove her to the checkpoint and pleaded to be allowed through, explaining that his wife was in labor and how critical it was to reach the hospital. The soldiers were adamant: “No.” The couple hurried home, picked up Nasser’s mother in the hope that she might have more influence, and tried again. Again the border guards said “no.” In desperation the family drove around the checkpoint, across fields and along dirt tracks to get to the hospital. It took them an hour and a half and the baby was born on the way. The Israeli organization, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel), reported that the baby weighed 1,416 grams—a birth-weight with a good chance of survival given proper care. But the baby arrived in serious condition, too late for proper care. The doctors’ attempts to save him were futile. He died an hour later.3
PHR-Israel had managed to slip into Bethlehem when the tanks were pulled back from the two main hospitals for a few hours to allow a solidarity visit by Muslim and Christian leaders. PHR-Israel came out saying: “Today, not only do patients find it almost impossible to access medical aid, and doctors cannot reach their work—now even patients within medical institutions are exposed to gunfire and danger of injury and death.”4
IDF tanks had shelled the Holy Family Hospital. The PHR-Israel team were told that anyone who moved within the hospital courtyard was fired on, including a woman who had just been discharged. She hurried back for cover. The neonatal department had to be rapidly evacuated: all the newborns were trundled off to a part of the hospital that was out of range of the IDF. The children of the hospital’s orphanage were paralyzed with fear, the few staff doing their best to hold them, to soothe them. In Beit Jala an anesthetic technician and the doorman were shot and a man next to them killed outright; they were standing at the door of a hospital when they were picked off by a sniper in the settlement of Gilo opposite.
Tomer Feffer, director of PHR-Israel, received reports that the army was firing on the hospitals and went to see first-hand: “With my own eyes, I saw the bloodstains, the places where the building had been hit and the bullet holes...” But, said Feffer, “the IDF spokesman claimed that nothing of the kind had happened and that the IDF is a humanitarian army that tries not to harm civilians.”5
Julie had been sure that the IDF wouldn’t fire on a hospital; I had thought the only risk of having a baby in Bethlehem would be the checkpoints, and if the soldiers wouldn’t let me through then all I had to do was turn around and retreat to my back-up hospital in Jerusalem. The other criticism leveled at me, that a Palestinian hospital was by definition a bad one, was racist and groundless. But the IDF did fire on hospitals, and had shelled the Holy Family itself. Why not give in and opt for second-best?
Not yet. Things couldn’t get any worse. Andrew and I decided to be flexible; before attempting any visit to the hospital we would make a decision based on the level of IDF activity in the area and the political situation. Revenge attacks with tanks and F-16s had so far been launched some time after the provocation. Where once I had thought that waiting for IDF retaliation was painful, I now found it useful; the waiting would give me time to get out of Bethlehem. If there were any risk of an IDF attack, we would go for second-best. I knew I was lucky to have that option.
I went to Bethlehem as soon as it was safe. The IDF had trashed the city. Tanks had made a point of crushing everything they could find: there were zigzag tracks from the tank treads snaking from one side of the road to the other—every traffic light, road lamp, car, and pylon had been pulped. Buildings were bombed and the town strewn with debris, flattened vehicles, the detritus of the military operation. Hotels were gutted: the new Intercontinental in pink and white stone that had so impressed us when we first arrived had been commandeered by the IDF and was sordid. In the streets Bethlehemites were getting on with life, glad to be free from curfew at least, to be allowed out of their houses, and had started to clear the debris. They would rebuild, make repairs and patch up their city—until the next round of invasion.
As my pregnancy progressed the days shortened and the nights grew cold. Our house felt jerry-built, with power outages every other day and every time I used the toaster. The children came back from school talking about schoolyard superheroes. When I tuned into their talk, I learned that their Palestinian friends’ heroes were not Digimon or Zorro but martyrs and sharpshooters. There was sudden and unusual rain and the house flooded, adding a dampness and moldy smell to the general feeling of gloom. The pregnancy was making me heavy and tired, my pelvis ached from the hormone relaxin, and anemia sapped my energy. The rules were broken this time: taking vitamins, eating properly, being serene and happy, seeing the doctor regularly for prenatal care. At least I had the option of good medical care, whatever happened. Dr. Salsa said how glad she was that I had a back-up in Jerusalem. She, like the other medical staff, would not complain or be drawn on the situation.
“We could never allow the situation to stop us from providing proper medical care to our patients,” she said. For three seconds the doctor in me felt envious of her: head down, sorting out people in need, dealing with their problems whatever the obstacles. Then the obstacles became real for me: how trapped and angry and hopeless Dr. Salsa must feel. I was being doctor-woman-mother-wife, but I had choices. As a pregnant woman I might be under siege and occupation, swanning in and out of the city where Dr. Salsa was captive, sampling their ordeal, but I could always escape back through the checkpoints. In the Israeli world I lived with terror, not daring to go to malls and restaurants and public places, but I could escape this too, heading into East Jerusalem or away, abroad.
I also existed inside the Israeli bubble, the place where some of them hid. Every time I passed Pizza Sbarro my body clenched with a small but acid fear. Every time I parked in Mea Sharim I wondered, what if...? I hated going to Ben Yehuda Street and admired the buskers I sometimes saw there, playing their defiance. I was convinced that the German Colony would be targeted, but I had to go there too. And on that September morning I had driven the children away from the school bomb, knowing afterward that if we had not been late they might have been killed—killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber fitted out with explosives and sent by Palestinian dispatchers who had every intention of destroying as many lives as possible. And for what? To block any remaining peace process and so condemn all Palestinians to collective punishment and the wrath of the IDF, and all moderate Israelis to the power of their extremists. I talked to Andrew, wondering if he should be more afraid of the suicide bombings or of those other, daily, bombings and crossfire incidents.
He took me to the Jerusalem Theater to hear Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht. By chance we ran into Israeli friends as we were having our bodies and belongings checked for bombs at the entrance. “Let’s have a drink in the interval,” they said to us from the other side of the security guards. Later we sat waiting for the concert to begin. The director of music took the stage and made an announcement. “I want to thank you all for showing such support. I want to thank you all for coming here, for being here in spite of all the dangers.”
During the interval Andrew talked to the husband about the music, I talked to the wife about the announcement. She had not been surprised that the director wanted to make such a statement. “He just wanted to be frank. That’s what he really feels. We all feel. People accuse Israelis of manipulating the role of victim, but you can’t expect us to be rational in the face of terror.”
“That’s what terror does,” she said. “It imposes rule by fear: we’re watching our kids and our families being blown up by people who may have miserable lives, okay, but to murder civilians like that? Is that going to get them anywhere? And then when we defend ourselves the world gets upset? I know we have the most powerful army in the region, by far—thank God—but do you think that we don’t feel afraid, terrified? That we’re not still dying? And if we don’t protect ourselves, who will?”
Maha gave birth early. She had been struggling by taxi, servees (minibus), another taxi, on foot, and then yet more taxis to Ramallah every week for lectures in pursuit of her master’s degree in social work. It had become increasingly hard for her. Finally, there were flare-ups and rain and shooting across Qalandia, and Maha was running in the mud and the fear and the mayhem, and her contractions came on that night. Mohammed drove her to the Red Crescent Hospital and she delivered an hour later. It was a boy, named Feris after Mohammed’s father, who had died in the 1967 war trying to defend East Jerusalem.
The situation in Bethlehem eased. My check-ups at the Holy Family became frequent, almost weekly, and to make the check-point waits less worthless I combined the trip with shopping for groceries in Bethlehem. Storekeepers were having a hard time after the invasion, but they kept trying to pretend that life was normal. There was one greengrocer whose pyramids of oranges, apples, avocados, and peaches were always especially architectural. He also built mounds of luscious dates and soft piles of figs, and ranked jars of date syrup thick as black treacle, and honey by the gallon. Next door was a butcher who ground freshly cut, trimmed lamb or beef and threw handfuls of clean green herbs and maybe an onion into the big metal grinding machine. The butcher kept mounds of eggs that he would secure in cardboard trays, wound in wide ribbons of cellophane to stop them breaking on the journey home. And while I waited a boy would be sent for coffee.
Once there was no wait at all at the checkpoint. I was so inured to being made to wait that it felt odd when it didn’t happen. It was more like being in the hospital itself, where there were no queues, no waits, and no hanging around for blood tests or being sent miles to another clinic. Nor was there the “no service until you pay up front” system. The administrative quagmire of “advanced” medicine had not yet reached Bethlehem.
In the broader picture, however, the situation was worse than ever, and I knew that Bethlehem’s quiet was still precarious. In Khan Yunis, Gaza, an IDF explosive device had killed five little boys from one extended family. Senior Israeli officials expressed regret for the deaths. This regret was published in Palestinian papers, but the Palestinian public reacted in same way as the Israeli public when Arafat expressed regret for Israeli deaths. Israeli commentators noted that the boys’ deaths were closely followed by the “liquidation” of a Hamas leader and other IDF “provocations” intended to raise the temperature before the arrival of the latest US negotiator, General Anthony Zinni, to pull off a ceasefire.6 The holy month of Ramadan was barely a week old, and twenty Palestinians had died since it began.
Israelis who knew the daily goings-on in the Occupied Territories were exasperated. In an attempt to show his readership what was happening, and how Palestinians felt when the PA demanded a ceasefire, veteran Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein listed a sample of seven days of IDF actions (on top of the twenty Palestinian dead that week): the IDF had “withdrawn” from Tulkarem—except they didn’t, it was “only symbolic”; destroyed more swathes of the agricultural areas in northern Gaza, wiping out families’ incomes and decades of work as well as their futures; and confiscated 200 dunams of land from its owners in Dir al-Balah, in the middle of the Gaza Strip, handing it over to the Jewish inhabitants of the adjacent illegal settlement. One of the main roads out of Ramallah was completely blocked. In another town a closure had been imposed that stopped pupils getting to school. Family visits to Megiddo Prison were suspended. Birzeit University had been raided by IDF troops. Jewish settlers had invaded a village near Nablus, cutting electric wires and polluting the water system. And the Israeli authorities were preparing to seize more Arab houses in East Jerusalem.
This, Rubinstein said, was a typical week of occupation reality. He added that as well as all this, on TV and in the papers every day there were pictures of the dead and the funerals, and of IDF tanks ranged against children and IDF soldiers stopping worshippers from praying at al-Aqsa—during Ramadan. He concluded that given all this, when Israelis hailed American Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech demanding that Arafat stop the violence, it was hardly surprising that Palestinians asked in astonishment: “We are the ones who have to stop the violence?” Despite the constant diet of IDF aggression, Rubinstein reported, Palestinian officers and commanders had received explicit instructions not only to prevent terror attacks at any price but also not to respond even if Israelis opened fire on them.7
Israeli friends were as worried as some Israeli commentators about the sincerity of their government’s intentions to make peace—particularly now that Arafat seemed to be making a real effort: not only was there the directive to the security forces, but Arafat had finally risked the wrath of his public and forced Hamas to agree not to attack Israelis inside Israel.8 Our friends’ worry turned into open dread when the IDF assassinated Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the commander of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank, on November 23, 2001.9
Sure enough, there was a salvo of suicide bombings in retaliation: twenty-nine Israelis were killed and hundreds wounded in the week after the assassination. On November 26, two border policemen were wounded at the Erez crossing in the Gaza Strip; November 29, three Israelis were killed and nine wounded in a suicide bombing on a bus en route from Nazareth to Tel Aviv. And on the first of December, late on Saturday night, two suicide bombers killed eleven Israelis and injured nearly 200. The bombers chose Ben Yehuda Street at a time when it would be full of young Israelis enjoying the end of Shabbat. Then a car bomb exploded nearby twenty minutes later, to pick off those trying to help the victims of the first two attacks.
The situation was worse than ever. The children and I joined an English couple in their garden the next day. The children played, the adults sat in despair. As we sat, news came through that yet another bomb had gone off: fifteen Israelis had been killed and forty wounded, several critically, in a suicide bombing on a bus in Haifa.
Andrew called: he had been instructed to go to see Arafat in Ramallah. And just then—boom! Another explosion—and I wanted to call back and say “please don’t go to Ramallah tonight, not tonight, I’ve seen what F-16s do to cars, maybe it’s the wrong night for you,” but I held back and it turned out that the noise that had set me askew had been the Iftar gun, the signal to break the Ramadan fast. He did go to Ramallah and in the end it was not the West Bank’s turn that night; the IDF attacked Gaza instead.
A few days later I went to the music store on Ben Yehuda Street. I knew of no other store to find the music the children needed, so I had no choice but to go. I told myself that this would not be a problem. While there I met a French Israeli woman I knew, and we stopped to talk, but neither of us wanted to stay in the danger zone for long. Instead, she came to see me at home, not scared by the area, and we discussed other things determinedly for a while.
Then: “You know,” she said, “two of my friends were killed in Saturday night’s bombings.” I didn’t know. She wanted to tell me about them, and why they had died, and how near she had been to losing her children. She had to talk. We talked, I listened. Two of her children, she told me, had wanted to go out that night, and with those same friends who had been killed. But her children hadn’t gone, and now they were still alive because she had said one word: “No.”
“What if I hadn’t said it? What if I’d stuck to what I normally do, letting them go out when they want to go out because you can’t lock young people up inside their homes and tell them they can’t go out. Not— ‘just in case’—can you? Not night after night. That’s no life for them, they’d go crazy. And so they do go out, and I go crazy, until they get back. Except I did say no this time, but I nearly didn’t.”
I kept listening. She wanted to talk about “them”—trying to understand, somehow. What was it that made them do this? Why do they hate us so much? Why do they have to destroy? “What more could we have offered than at Camp David?”
It was not the moment to reply, as so often it was not. I silenced myself because she was caught in the middle, just as most people were caught. It began to rain, and she hurried away.
The rain was pouring down outside. Outside the bubble there were more deaths, no negotiations and little hope. And why, Israelis were asking in disbelief, was Washington so wholeheartedly behind Sharon when so many Israelis were saying “Stop?” Not just liberals, peaceniks, and journalists, but the foreign minister, Shimon Peres. He was reported to be standing up to the prime minister, saying the government’s policy was wrong and that he would resign from the coalition if the destructive repression continued. But with no backing from the US, and Europe powerless to make anything except statements, Peres lost the argument and failed to resign. Furious at the role of Labor in Sharon’s government, Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset, said later, “We have become the fig leaves of the radical right wing... a fig leaf to a government bent on destroying the Palestinian Authority in order to avoid giving up settlements.”10
The baby—what a time to be delivering—was technically full term. Going into labor now, or in the next few days, was not a good idea. Officially no one was allowed even to visit Bethlehem, and the UN had evacuated many of the Gaza staff to Amman. Our old friend Michael was stuck in Gaza, his wife Kim and their daughters waiting for him in Jerusalem. And the weather: relentless, washing rain. Yet again the cycle of vengeance: in revenge for the bombing that was now devastating Gaza and the West Bank, a young man turned himself into a bomb, exploding outside a King David Street hotel at 7:30 in the morning on his way to another West Jerusalem destination. The bomb claimed no victims, but brought the area to a standstill, so it was nearly impossible to get to school. But the violent were still determined to carry on attacking until the other side gave in. An Israeli government spokesman, Arye Mekel, blamed the incarcerated Arafat, saying: “So far, he has not heard our message, and we may have to send some more.”11
Another few days and the cycle calmed again. It was my due date, December 12, 2001, and I was to go back to the Holy Family for yet another check-up. The wait at the checkpoint was so long that I parked the car by the side of the road and walked across. The air was clear and warm, the views across the valleys sharp. I wove my way through the concrete maze channeling pedestrians and joined the end of the line. I could see the fan of cars a few meters away, pushing but unmoving. The pedestrian line was long, but at least it was moving, and I could get a taxi on the other side to make my appointment. In front of me shuffled a somber collection of women, children, and old men. A similar line approached us from the other direction. The children were inexplicably tolerant, quiet and uncomplaining.
Ahead of me was a wizened, bent man, his face furrowed with sun lines. He looked like Abu Anis setting off to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque when he would dress himself up, swapping his baggy tracksuit and gardening sweater for a suit, and his bobble hat for a white keffiyeh. Now in the queue, this old man stood in his best clothes, a clean white buttoned-up shirt, a dark suit too wide and long for his shrinking body, a crisp keffiyeh. He presented his papers to the two soldiers standing in their private shade. One soldier looked out from under his metal helmet, eyeing the old man, and then down at the papers in his hand. He turned them over, and muttered something. The old man protested, but the first soldier was decided and the second made no move. Other supplicants joined in, and I asked what was going on.
“He wants to go to the mosque to pray,” said one man.
“And they won’t let him through?”
“No, they won’t, but we don’t know why. The soldier says there’s something wrong with his papers, but he won’t say what.”
The old Palestinian gave up trying to persuade the young soldier to let him through. He turned slowly, repositioning his walking stick homeward, and then walked away.
“He’s been going to the mosque to pray for decades before that Russian soldier immigrated to this country, and now the Russian can decide the old man will not go today.”
The line was silent as people watched the old man’s defeated tread. The next person up presented her papers. Some were allowed through, but within three minutes three people seeking health care were denied passage. Two were trying to get to appointments with their doctor, but the soldiers, who swapped from time to time, declared variously that something was wrong. Dennis—I asked him his name when my turn came—the young Russian immigrant who had stood between the old man and his prayers, became more specific, perhaps aware of the mutterings, declaring that one woman had the “wrong insurance.”
The third was a woman with a belly like mine. The curve of her pregnant uterus began just under the arc of her ribs, and rounded outward and downward, stretching her clothes smoothly. We mirrored each other. She offered her papers and her appointment card, as the two others had done in front of her. Dennis was unmoved, and motioned with one circling finger for her to turn around. She complied, wordless. An American woman in the line muttered to me that there was no logic to the soldiers’ decisions, and that even her US passport was of little use in easing the check-point ordeal. Her husband, she said, was not permitted to leave Bethlehem. Her problems had begun at the airport—because she was married to a Palestinian.
My turn came. I held the red of my British passport in my hand but did not immediately offer it. Dennis and I had no common language beyond, “What is your name?” The other soldier lurked. I asked him why they had refused to let the other pregnant woman through, adding, “She can’t get to her prenatal appointment now.”
Challenged, he looked mildly embarrassed.
“How do I know she’s pregnant?” he said, bolstering himself. “Everyone’s fat round here.” Pleased with his assertiveness, he waved me through, passport unchecked.
I found a taxi, attended my check-up, and headed home again.
That night we had dinner with a group of friends and Andrew’s work colleagues at a large, empty restaurant inside the Jaffa Gate—much of the Old City was empty these days. We had planned to go to Ramallah for a Mexican Christmas party, but in the early evening the news came through that Palestinian gunmen had ambushed and killed ten settlers in the Gaza Strip, and that two suicide bombers had detonated themselves at another settlement. During dinner a call came from a colleague in Gaza to say that they were being bombed by F-16s. Around the table people sat in silence. We wondered where else the IDF would attack: maybe Bethlehem. The Braxton-Hicks contractions that plagued me most of the time strengthened and became intense. Andrew, watching me, was mouthing “Please, not tonight.”
Bethlehem was spared that night, and I did not go into labor, but the next evening Andrew’s Gazan colleague called again while we sat at home. For the second night running he and his family were under heavy bombardment, over and above the routine. His children were hysterical, he said, and he had lost the wherewithal to calm them. What could he tell them? Across the table I could hear the blasts reverberating out of the phone. The bombing continued. Another call came through in the morning to tell us Andrew’s office in the UN compound in Gaza had just been hit, the explosion shuddering through the building, throwing people out of their chairs and off their feet, showering them with glass. The window of his office had been blown in, his chair sprayed with splinters. I said I was glad that my still-pregnant state had kept him from that. He, hearing the fear of his colleagues, was not comforted.
The character of several IDF operations and the trail of destruction that the IDF was now leaving through the West Bank and Gaza Strip challenged the security myth: it appeared that the prime minister’s aim was, still, to destroy the Palestinian national movement whatever the price.12 And Palestinian attacks were helping achieve this goal. Virtually no foreign diplomats were in touch with the militants, the majority talked only to the PA. Andrew was almost the only international official who sought out Hamas and Islamic Jihad in an attempt to persuade them to stop their attacks. Questioned on this by diplomats with similar briefs who either chose not to or were not allowed to see Palestinian extremists, he would respond, “What’s the point in the UN going yet again to see Palestinian ministers with no influence? We want to stop the violence—the people we need to persuade are the ones who are doing the bombings.”
Israelis and Palestinians were dying in the streets and the extremists were dictating events. Israeli journalists were not holding back from the obvious conclusion.13 Ze’ev Schiff, Israel’s leading military correspondent and rarely critical of IDF actions, was blunt: “It is impossible to shake off the impression that the Sharon government is more fearful of the quiet that will follow a cessation of Palestinian violence than it is of the attacks perpetrated by the Palestinians.”14
Arafat delivered a major speech to the Palestinian people calling for an end to all hostilities, including suicide bombings. The following morning Sari Nusseibeh, an urbane, tweed-jacketed Oxford philosopher, scion of one of the oldest families in Palestine, was arrested for holding an Eid reception. His guests included the British consul general who described it as a sober affair. Likud minister Uzi Landau insisted the reception was “terrorist activity.” Some Israelis openly admitted that Palestinian moderation was a risk to their agenda, which relied on projecting all Palestinians as extremists. Ze’ev Boim, parliamentary leader of Likud, said of Professor Nusseibeh: “If he is a moderate, he is dangerous.”15 Indeed, along with ex-Shin Bet* chief Ami Ayalon, the professor had produced a joint peace plan, confounding again the claim that there was “no partner for peace.”
Arafat’s speech had launched yet another ceasefire: this one lasted three weeks and opened the way for progress at last. And for me it meant that I could give birth in my hospital of choice. At the pre-Christmas parties I turned up to, still pregnant, I was gently teased for holding out for a Christmas baby born in Bethlehem. “Maybe it’s the checkpoints putting the baby off—which I presume is going to be a boy?” said one. Cindy, an American friend, mother, and health professional, reminded me to stick up for myself in the delivery room and not be bullied into whatever the hospital staff determined was convenient. Steve, who was more concerned that I should get to the hospital in the first place, offered: “We’ll give you a convoy of journalists loaded with cameras and recording gear. That’ll get you through, no problem.”
When labor started, Andrew checked with his IDF contacts that the ceasefire was still on, that Bethlehem was quiet and, most important, unlikely to be targeted. No one could vouch for Palestinian militants not breaking the ceasefire, but it had held so far. Our friend Libby arrived in her dented Toyota and took the three children to her house. Andrew and I left for the hospital. The ceasefire was holding; Bethlehem was peaceful. The checkpoint was abandoned apart from a crowd of soldiers. A contraction came on just as we came to a halt at the barricade.
“Why do you want to go to Bethlehem?” He looked at the two of us, from one to the other. I was clutching the armrests.
Andrew looked across at my pregnant posture and said the obvious: “We’re going to the hospital.” No reaction. The soldier looked at my belly. Andrew pulled out our foreign passports and I put on a smile as the contraction ended, hoping it hadn’t made me appear aggressive.
The passports pleased the soldier once he had had a good look. He handed them back and turned away to talk to his friends.
Bethlehem was quieter than ever, but I wasn’t thinking about sieges or retaliation or shells landing on hospitals—I was thinking about labor. Two nights before we had sat with friends in a favorite restaurant, Askadinia. I had stared at the bare high wall in front of me, block after block of limestone right up to the roof, picking at an arugula and pomegranate salad, picturing the other wall in front of me: labor. Now here it was, and I wished I’d opted for an elective C-section.
I felt combative when we reached the hospital, but the doorman was expecting me, said “hello” and welcomed me by my first name. This gave me pause: for Catriona’s birth the welcome had been simply: “Do you have a number?”—this from a nurse whose eyes remained stuck in the paperwork on her desk. I softened. The midwives also said “hello,” and showed me to my room, bustling about. I tried to make the most of the contractions being moderate, but I couldn’t rest—right outside my window was a huge truck, red and yellow, bearing a crane. I couldn’t read, my mind was island-hopping. A concrete mixer was mating with the crane, its drum spinning deafeningly, spewing concrete. I gazed out at a poinsettia tree among the roses and across the path to the hospital building, which had been pierced by an IDF tank shell a few weeks before, sending shrapnel into all these rooms. The crane and the concrete mixer were making repairs.
I was trying to finish an article I had been writing, but was slowly turning into a patient. Dr. Salsa came by and assured me I would have the baby today. Then paused, smiling, “or tomorrow.” Wanting to keep moving, I visited neonatal intensive care, where a newborn set of triplets, huge, were doing well, lying in their little incubators. And Andrew and I walked about the cloistered courtyard in the sun, detaching ourselves from the outside world. A statue of the Virgin Mary looked down at us from the top of the courtyard wall. We went inside again and walked along the limestone corridors. The midwives had urged me to walk, walk, walk, squat, gyrate, rotate, and let warm water pour over me in the shower. Andrew stayed with me the while, sitting, reading, trying to talk between contractions, not looking at me when each one came on, just rubbing my back, helping.
With labor moving along, Dr. Salsa came in to see me again and said, in her matter-of-fact way, “What about pain relief?”
“What are you offering?”
“Well, there’s pethidine, there’s epidural, there’s gas and air, there’s...”
“Gas and air would be great, I always wanted to try that.” It had not been on offer for my first three deliveries.
She started pulling at the tubing, and then said, “Oh, I’m really sorry, the mask seems to be broken.” She looked around, and the midwife apologized, saying “We’ve been trying to get the parts, but... you know, supplies aren’t getting through...”
I carried on without. The pain changed: intense, but centralized, and shorter in duration. Andrew sat on one side of me as the midwife started to run a new CTG trace (monitoring the fetal heart rate and uterine contractions). The midwife, Imam, was from Deheisha refugee camp and a village near Ramla. While Imam ran the trace she and Andrew talked across me, about the camp and the situation. Hey, I thought, for once can’t we drop the situation? Sandwiched, speechless, and a tad forgotten, I tried to focus on the pain, breathing softly, eyes shut, willing it not to get on top of me. But it was getting on top of me, slowly, by the time she’d finished the trace and their conversation.
The delivery rolled me along: midwife, doctor, and Andrew supporting, encouraging, enabling. No more talk of the situation or of refugees. No more worries about checkpoints or being bombed. Hearing my own gasping screams and seeing flashing lights and losing it, and then the flood of instant, absolute relief as indescribable as the pain. The baby, a boy, born late at night in a welter of pain and power, the two of us folding into one another with his arrival.
Later, they put me in a wheelchair and took me back to my room. My pelvis creaked in disarray, bones not linked to each other. Andrew made sure I was looked after, rang family in England and went home to be with the children. The two midwives asked if I’d like anything to eat.
“No, no,” I said, “don’t worry.” It was midnight.
“Yes,” they insisted. “Tell us what you’d like and we’ll bring it for you.”
“Well... I don’t suppose there’s any soup?”
“Anything you like.” And they brought hot brothy soup a little while later, with bread and fruit and good things to get me to eat. Sated, exhausted, I fell asleep instantly. The baby, all nine-and-a-half pounds of him, lay swaddled in nylon wool knitted by some kind person with great care in fluorescent yellow and green. Then I woke and had a strangely sleepless night. Having been emptied out in the delivery room I slowly felt myself filled again, and the situation faded well away. Little noises kept breaking my thoughts: the baby.
With his limbs curled back into the shape he had formed fattening inside me, he was content to sleep off the efforts of being born while I took in the contours of his face, wondering who he might be. I pushed back the swaddling green from his brow to kiss the softness of his head, remembering the same kiss for each of his siblings. Tomorrow the three of them would launch themselves at their new brother, exuberant but wary, watching him take his place in the family.
The following day Sister Sophie, in charge of the hospital’s orphanage, visited me and peeped at my wrapped-up baby. We talked about children. She said the orphans in her care were much better now that the invasion was over, and she prayed that it stayed that way. Bethlehem radio, Reuters, local TV, and al-Quds newspaper came to interview me, the expat who had chosen a Bethlehem hospital in the city attacked so frequently. The obstetrician had ordered an X-ray, and the radiologist came for me just as the first camera crew arrived. The midwife and radiologist argued while I was being lined up for the X-ray, lying captive on the slab, fretting to get back to my new baby. The radiologist looked down, adjusted me for the shot, and launched in: “To understand things, we have to go back in history,” he intoned.
“To the British Mandate?” I said, weakly, hoping this would be brief.
“No—to the Canaanites,” and I knew I was in for a long one, as he listed every power that ever flexed in the Holy Land. Reaching the Mamluks, he broke off, a sudden thought he must enlighten me with: “You know, 2,000 years ago there were no Jews here.”
I don’t know the Arabic for “Don’t be bloody ridiculous,” but that was clearly what the midwife blurted. Leaving them to a noisy historical row, I hurried back to my room, where the TV cameras wanted me to be lying in bed, the newly delivered mother, babe in arms.
Andrew came to fetch me, cross after being held up for an hour and a half at the checkpoint. My bones were coming together again; pelvis feeling more steady. We wrapped up our baby boy and said our goodbyes to the midwives, me lingering; I had become a patient and liked being able to call for analgesia. Andrew bustled me out of my dependency, hurrying to get me home and back to the children. Having patiently respected my professional judgment and personal choice, he wanted to bring my childbirth-in-Bethlehem experience to an end. As we drove out of the hospital and through the town, Bethlehem was hushed and black-dark, with no streetlights left upright. We went slowly through the darkness, past piles of rubble still lying here and there. As we approached the soldiers at the now-empty checkpoint, they seemed to be dancing in the middle of the road. We came closer. They really were dancing, cheerily singing a version of “YMCA.” They saluted jovially as they waved us straight through, unhindered and unchecked. We waved back and went home.
Our friends called and visited, bringing presents and saying “mazel tov,” “mabruk,” “congratulations.” The family and I adjusted to our new sizes over the days, opening stockings, singing carols in the nearly empty St. George’s cathedral, and eating turkey at the American Colony Hotel. The children swung from the walnut tree, hurtled down the hill on their Christmas bikes, and ran back periodically to look at their new, still nameless, brother.
On New Year’s Eve I gathered up my baby and returned to Bethlehem. There was to be a second attempt at a peace march organized by a group of Christians and Muslims, led by the Latin Patriarch. The first attempt had been blocked: a well-publicized peace march was more worrying than a violent rally. IDF officers sometimes confided16 that they dreaded a well-coordinated mass campaign of non-violence above any other form of resistance: Palestinians were not supposed to look moderate, reasonable.
The plan was to walk from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, encircle the Old City in an “embrace of peace,” and pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Many of our friends were going, and I joined one, who brought along her baby and her mother-in-law. We parked before we reached the checkpoint and walked. Palestinians were lined up for inspection, but instead of following the makeshift signs painted on the concrete blocks pointing us through the enclosure, my older companion, Lady Adams, made straight for the soldiers. She had been the British ambassadress in Jordan and Egypt some years before, and carried an air of unquestionable authority despite her 79 years and not being very tall. None of the soldiers made any attempt to stop her. They seemed bemused by our intention to visit the place they were guarding, our babies in our arms, their arms at their hips. They warned my friend and I not to go through with children, explaining frankly that they thought it better because there were “a lot of our soldiers in there.”
But on we went, following the indomitable Lady Adams past the checkpoint toward the many, massing soldiers in full combat gear, lined up across the road, backed up by new, heavily armored riot-control vehicles and jeeps, and snipers positioned in the trees. The peaceful, church-led procession approached from the opposite direction. The soldiers were looking uncomfortable: they were not going to allow a peaceful demonstration beyond the limits of Bethlehem, let alone to reach Jerusalem.
There was Charlie Glass among the clerics coming toward us. Debonair as ever, he leaned over the linked arms of the soldier-barricade to kiss me hello. The mood was light, and friendly, beaming messages of peace, balloons bobbing, banners flying, all in cheery contrast to the dark drama of the military. The IDF had let the marchers through the first roadblock only on condition that they wouldn’t ask to go beyond the outer Bethlehem checkpoint. Instead the march leaders said prayers at the checkpoint. The Latin Patriarch called for an end to the violence and the occupation. Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University, stated the unequivocal: that Jerusalem should be a city open to everyone, including Palestinians.17 With no choice, and up against the power of the Israeli army, the march dissolved obediently.
I had written a piece for the Christian Science Monitor about the problems checkpoints were posing for pregnant women. Its publication provoked a gentle, impassioned letter from an Israeli doctor. He reminded readers that the pain for Israelis and Palestinians alike had made understanding each other’s suffering almost impossible. But, he said, he avoided blaming either side.
“The historic and emotional patchwork here is multilayered. In the pain and emotion of these miserable times it is tempting to seek myopic solutions. Indeed, this seems to be the pattern of the day. The solutions of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas who are dismissive of any Israeli claims of justice, as well as those of the Israeli right, who are equally insensitive to Palestinian rights and aspirations, leave us to wallow in this quagmire... For now I yearn for a time without checkpoints, when I can return to my calling without the justifiable fear of being shot or lynched by hate-filled people for whom I am just another ‘enemy.’”
The Israeli doctor longed for “great leadership,” but there was none. The ceasefire still held and the deadline passed but the promised return to negotiations had not materialized. Soon after the New Year the Israeli navy seized a cargo ship, the Karine-A. Captained by an officer from the Palestinian navy, and with Iranian support, it was carrying arms including rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, mines, and explosives destined for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Had these weapons reached their intended destination the Palestinians would have been equipped to fight tanks and, with rocket launchers with a range of about 12 miles, would have been able to threaten communities inside Israel. Caught, the PA lied about having had anything to do with the shipment, and thus looked stupid as well as deceitful. For many Israelis the sight of the shipment’s weaponry displayed on their TV screens and newspapers showed that Arafat was indeed bent on destroying Israel, lying to everyone as he pursued his aim. Other Israelis, after pointing out how small, even pitiful, a cache it was when compared to the weaponry being used against the Palestinians, asked why the PA didn’t just admit they were bringing in weapons—after all, someone had to defend the Palestinian people against the Israeli army, air force, and navy.18
Despite Israeli officials’ fury over the weapons shipment, the US envoy General Zinni returned: he declared that he was pleased with progress by both sides, and that Palestinian violence against Israelis had effectively stopped since Arafat’s December 16 ceasefire. Yet the American administration was hesitating and, instead of engaging the two sides in negotiation, echoed Sharon’s demands for “seven days of total quiet”: that seven-day deadline had passed, ignored, on Christmas Eve. For once we were waiting not for revenge or retaliation, but for talks; this was a real moment for progress, and moderates on both sides were calling loudly for action. But action required the backing of the US administration.
“What are they waiting for?—Arafat has finally done it, now is the time to capitalize, to go for peace...” groaned a US diplomat over dinner. The Americans had only to push for implementation of the Mitchell Committee recommendations.* The Palestinians had repeatedly been promised progress on these issues if they could bring about a reduction in violence against Israelis. Stopping violence had been pulled off, at significant domestic expense. Afterward, the former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi concluded that the US was unintentionally perpetuating the conflict.19
Instead, the Palestinians reeled under a wave of IDF bulldozers in Rafah, destroying more than fifty houses, leaving hundreds homeless in the bitter cold. On top of that there was another assassination. The IDF killed a local Palestinian commander, Raed Karmi, and the conflict flipped straight back into the cycle of revenge. Israeli commentators vented their rage about the effects of and motivation behind this policy.**
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades responded to the assassination with an inevitable, bitter, statement: “The hoax of the so-called ceasefire is cancelled, cancelled, cancelled.”22 Shortly afterward, Palestinian gunmen shot an Israeli dead near a West Bank settlement, and now many were concluding that Israel’s assassinations generated far more damage than the benefits they were supposed to bring.23 For a moment it had looked as though leaders were going to set the agenda. Now the conflict was back in the grip of the extremists.
Not long after Sholto—we settled on a name at last—was born I had to return to the hospital to be given the postnatal all-clear. The baby was feeding, sleeping, and growing well, monitored by an Israeli pediatrician, but I was still under the care of Dr. Salsa in Bethlehem. I heard that a friend had driven into Bethlehem one morning and decided to grab the chance to go there for my checkup while things were quiet.
As I entered the quiet courtyard of the hospital, a battle-scarred Virgin Mary, blackened and full of bullet holes, looked down at me from the high point of the cloister. A passing pediatrician explained: “She was machine-gunned last night by a tank. I don’t know why the IDF went to the trouble of aiming up there.” The statue had been erected 120 years ago and had withstood all previous occupations. The hospital’s legend, the doctor told me, held that a Turkish officer tried to have her removed but as he waited for his men to take her down, he was kicked by his horse and died. The statue had remained ever since, but now had to be taken down; too many holes to be mendable.
The hospital director, whom I had met many times, came across the courtyard.
“Bombed again,” he said gamely. “How’s the baby?” He showed me some of the damage from the previous night’s attack. Doctors and midwives had hurried from room to room carrying mattresses and shepherding the mothers and their babies into a ward facing away from the line of fire. He took me to one blitzed room: “The lab tech left his bed here to do a test one minute before the bomb hit.” Now the staff were complaining that there was nowhere in the hospital without windows, no basement and no safe place to shield patients from incoming fire and rockets.
“It’s not the sort of complaint I’d expected to be fielding as hospital director,” he said, in his mild way. “Some of the staff are suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and they’re all permanently on call at the hospital these days, leaving their families in order to look after the patients.”
He had tried to mobilize support wherever he could. “One of our board members lives next to Colin Powell and has contacted him about the hospital being bombed. We’re waiting for a response. The Order [of Malta] has contacts in Ireland, Britain, France, all over, as well as the States. They’re all trying, but it’s hard. The French military attaché in Tel Aviv, for example—he contacted the Israeli authorities about the last time we were hit, and he received an answer. There was, apparently, ‘no tank activity’ here in October.”
We visited some of the mothers in the maternity ward. One of them, Abeer, had arrived in the night by ambulance, petrified by the sound of bullets and bombs as they drove her and the other passenger, a dialysis patient, through the curfew. The Red Cross had negotiated with the IDF their safe passage through the town, and when they were stopped at the checkpoint the soldiers had seen that Abeer was having contractions and let them through. The ambulance men sang songs and laughed as they drove through the dark in an effort to keep up the spirits of their charges.
Abeer, nursing her newborn son, began to cry at the thought of the previous night. She rocked little baby Ahmed against her breast. “Having a baby is meant to be something we celebrate, something to make us happy, but we have nothing to be happy about now. We have only fear.”
I headed for the registry to register Sholto’s birth—late. I was fined seven Jordanian dinars. It seemed odd to hold me to their deadline when there were curfews and IDF bombing campaigns, but I didn’t argue the point. While I went through the paperwork the registrar talked. He was Christian, he told me almost immediately.
“Do you know how long we have been here?” he asked. “Always. We were the first Christians.”
He went on, wanting to know my data. “How many children do you have? Where were they born? In America? Oh, those Christians in America are so strange. I don’t understand why they have no feeling for us fellow Christians. Where is their humanity?”
I explained that it wasn’t all Christians in America, only some Christian fundamentalists who seemed oblivious to the rights of Palestinian Christians.
As I finished the forms, Andrew phoned me.
“Where are you by the way?” he asked as we were saying goodbye. “—in Bethlehem? What the hell are you doing there? Please, get out right now. And call me the minute you’re out.” He had heard that there was about to be heavy military escalation that day. Foolishly, I hadn’t checked with him.
I hurried through the paperwork and was back home when the escalation started.
* Cardiotocograph, monitoring contractions of the uterus and fetal heartbeat.
* Accredited by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
* The Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service.
* A settlement freeze, the lifting of the closures, and the resumption of permanent status negotiations.
** Ma’ariv said the policy could be seen as “a deliberate provocation intended to cause the collapse of the ceasefire,”20 and Uzi Benziman concluded that it was “impossible to shake off the suspicion that this method of operation serves Sharon’s unwillingness to take advantage of the truce periods in order to renew the political dialogue.” He noted “a pattern of Israeli behavior that has recurred since Sharon began running the country: When a period of calm prevails in the confrontation with the Palestinians, circumstances are created that induce Israel to carry out military operation in a manner that renews, or accelerates, the cycle of violence.”21