Thirty minutes outside of Kiryat Shmona, a northern city in Israel, the winding roads of the Golan Heights begin. They cut through vineyards, fields and orchards. Before the 1967 war, all of these fields were a part of Syria. Now they’re under Israeli occupation.
As one field ends another begins. One field, however, is not full of cherries, olives or wild flowers. Small yellow signs hang on the barbed wire fence with large black notices “Danger: Mines.” This is the reality while under Israeli occupation. This is the reality the people of Majdal Shams live in.
Ameer Jabal was born and raised in the town of Majdal al-Shams in the Golan Heights. He had been born under occupation and died under it. When he was only four, Ameer stepped on a mine that had been placed by the Israeli army in the town and died.
***
I crave hummus and good shisha, a water pipe with flavoured tobacco, at all hours of the day. I smile every time I hear Arabic and call my friends habiti, Arabic for “my love.”
But I also find myself waking up crying and walking around restlessly enraged most of the time.
I try to explain what I’ve seen, but I feel as if I’m a mute trying to talk to the deaf.
This is what my life has become since returning to Canada from Palestine.
I’m not frustrated because I can’t say anything. I can say plenty – and often do, sometimes even too much. But I want to explain to people why I feel the way I do and answer that annoying question all reporters are asked: “Why do you go there and why do you care?”
***
A word of caution for those who may be bamboozled by certain elements of the story: If I were to write a detailed account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rise of the modern state of Israel and the history of the Palestinian state before 1948, I would end up with an encyclopedia, volumes of information on what these countries have seen and experienced.
I am not a historian. I’m a journalist. It’s my responsibility to tell the stories of the people who won’t be mentioned in the history books.
What you need to know is that I travelled to Bethlehem, Palestine, a city in the West Bank that is under military occupation by Israel. If you can’t find it on a map, just remember it’s where Jesus Christ was born.
I worked there for Palestine News Network (PNN) in the English department for two months this summer.
The story I am going to tell you happened in the Golan Heights, another place under Israeli military occupation, that was part of Syria before the 1967 Six Day war.
The people in this story do not consider themselves Palestinians, but Syrians. They consider their plight a by-product of Israel’s refusal to negotiate and recognize a Palestinian State.
***
As a staff reporter for PNN, I wrote reports on everything from Stephen Harper standing up for Israel at the G8 summit, to how many peaceful demonstrators were injured or arrested by Israeli soldiers.
In between writing these reports, going to demonstrations and having M-16’s pointed at my face while being shoved by Israeli soldiers, I chain smoked – a lot. And in between the chain smoking I listened to my editor tell me the story of how he had to sew his cousin’s body back into one piece after an Israeli tank ripped it in two or how he had been shot 27 times while covering stories.
Fast-forward another couple of weeks and I needed a vacation. I was in Tel-Aviv to get drunk and go swimming. My editor said if I was bored I could travel to the Golan Heights and get a story there. I decided to ditch the overpriced drinks and sea-view hotel and go.
***
The town of Majdal al-Shams’ 10,000 is inhabited mostly by the Druze, a sort of hybrid religion between Islam, Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism.
White stone houses dot the narrow roads that lead through the town. In the town square there are two monuments dedicated to famous Syrian heroes and fighters.
Atop one of the hills in the town, sits the local cemetery. The quiet of the hill, overlooking the town below and the fragrant wild roses that grow there make it seem like the perfect final resting place. Unfortunately, the hill is also the site of the Israeli military outpost that looks over the village.
A small yellow sign hangs on a dilapidated barbed wire fence. The mines and barbed wire that encircle the military outpost are only feet away from the graves. One must take care not to trip over the barbed wire while visiting a loved one’s grave, in order to ensure you don’t set off a mine.
The explosives are planted in between the wild flowers and tall grass, in order to secure and protect the Israeli soldiers. From what and whom, this is unclear. It seems unlikely any local would try to storm the military compound while there are fully armed soldiers with M-16 machine guns.
Nonetheless the deadly explosives sit in the middle of this scenic town. Other mines are planted in between homes and cherry trees. It would only be a matter of time a child would find themselves playing in the tall grass and flowers, or perhaps picking cherries from a nearby tree and very suddenly become causalities of the conflict.
This was the fate for four-year-old Ameer Jabal.
***
Ameer was the eye of the apple for Safeia Abu Jabal and her husband.
The little boy had been born after a long and harrowing time for the family, after 12 years of Safeia’s husband being imprisoned by the Israelis.
“His birth and his presence among the family created a new happiness for the family,” Safeia said.
Ameer was an energetic, clever and cheeky child. At just three years old, he was one of the brightest children in the home.
“He knew all the capitals of the states, all the continents of the world. We encouraged him and we loved him more,” she said.
The day was like any other day in the town. Ameer noticed there was a carpet caravan in the town and rushed to his mother to tell her about the new site.
“What I will never forget in my life, is that day. It was about three or four in the afternoon. The baby rushed to me to say that there was a carpet seller,” Safeai said.
Safeai told the anxious boy she had enough carpets for now. But all the carpets in the family home had been bought before Ameer was born and he wanted to have a carpet that he himself picked out with his mother.
“I want to share in choosing one of them,” Ameer told his mother.
Safeai relented and went along with her son to go see the man about a carpet. By the time both of them got to the carpet caravan, the man was already packing up his merchandise. Safeai reminded Ameer she also had to go get milk from his grandmother.
“I want to go with you,” Ameer told his mom.
Looking back on those events today, Safeai believes if she had nagged the carpet caravan man to unroll the carpets and show them, Ameer may have died with more dignity. He would have died with her.
Safeai went back to the house and sat down with her daughter. Ameer also came home and found a playmate – one of the neighbour’s daughters. The two scampered off to play. Within moments Safeai heard an eruption behind the house, no more than 100 metres away.
“I was afraid that the baby would be scared of the eruption, so I told my [other] son Halid to go and look for Ameer,” she said. “Everyone was calling him but there were no replies. Then I noticed my neighbours rushing to the hill.”
Safeai frantically asked her neighbours what all the commotion was about and people told her a mine had been set off. She rushed up to the hill with her neighbours, and as she did she noticed the little girl rushing back from the mines.
Safeai asked if Ameer was on the hill somewhere, but she already knew the answer.
“I knew the accident happened to my son,” she said.
But Safeai couldn’t go and find her son’s body, hold his hand or carry him. No one could get near the young boy because his body now lay in a mine field. Safeai and everyone else had to wait over an hour until an Israeli army helicopter came and collected the boy’s body. But as soon as Safeai had reached the helicopter, it was already taking off.
“This happened 22 years ago, this day I will not forgot. I cannot remove the images from my eyes, from my mind,” she said. “The only thing I can think about is that I was raising him in love and in a warm family.
“In one stupid moment, one stupid explosion, because the [Israeli] army put mines beside my house, I lost him. There is nothing more to think about.”
Safeai says that she blames the Israeli army for killing her son.
“Of course they did [it],” she said.
Even if the Israeli army would come to the Majdal Shams and ask for forgiveness, sorry doesn’t hold much weight.
“What can you say after this? The Israelis will not express any sorrow. If they want to express sorrow, they should clean all the mines from here,” Safeai said.
***
Nothing keeps Safeai from seeing her little Ameer. When she sees Ameer’s friends in the village, all grown up, she sees her son in them.
“When several of them got married, I see my son Ameer. I see him getting married and having his own family now,” Safeai said. “If Ameer would be alive today he would be out there protesting for freedom and equality, like on Naksa or Nakba Day.”
Today, Safeai has another son named Ameer, in honour of a child lost to the brutalities of military occupation. Ameer has done his parents proud, going off to Damascus University, becoming a well-skilled young man.
“Life itself keeps me going,” Safeai said. “I have suffered much in my life and if I were to give up, I would have to have given up a long time ago.”
“This is the order of life – to survive, to continue.”
***
I’m sure there are some who are still left wondering why I care about this. The Golan Heights are 10,000 kilometres away. But as a journalist, bringing information about the world around us to the reader is the job. I only hope by reading this, people will recognize the wrongs in our world and use that information to better not only themselves, but society.
Below are more photos from Ania’s time in Israel.
