27/7/98

Sakhnin: The city that can't hate

    Mohammed chugs up the steep, twisting alleyways of Old Sakhnin, making no sense at all. He's talking about peace and friendship, and it's hard to understand why.
    Sakhnin has been battered by the establishment more than most Arab towns, which is saying something. They have many reasons to hate the Jews, but they don't. In fact, a growing industry here is home hospitality: Arab families giving Jews a warm welcome, a taste of their culture and cuisine, and, if asked, an impassioned discourse on the victimization of Sakhnin.
    Mohammed Shawahneh, a roly-poly, congenial man, is universally liked around town. You can tell, because every car that passes honks at him, every driver smiles and shouts a greeting.
    He risked a lot when, in 1996, he embarked on a plan to swell his crowded city with tourists -- Jewish tourists. He opened Al-Mal Bed & Breakfast at his home on the edge of the compact Old City; by now, there are eight country-style lodgings, and a tourist route through the Old City is being developed.
    Mohammed is a busy man -- he runs an insurance agency, he's a teacher, tour guide and hotelier, and he produces a line of homemade farm products, such as spices and olive oil. Yet he always finds time to show a visitor around.
    It's a city now -- incorporated by Yitzhak Rabin in a ceremony on his last birthday -- but Sakhnin is still little at heart. There are no street names, no addresses. Everyone knows everyone. There's a variety of worldly cuisines -- Chinese, Italian and Middle Eastern -- but all in the same restaurant. Teacup-sized feuds dominate coffee-shop talk. At one point, Mohammed broke off a conversation when he noticed a car on the main drag. "Hmm. I called his office and they said he was sick."
    The 22,000 people of Sakhnin are densely packed onto two rollercoaster slopes on either side of Main Street. It's tinnily noisy, lively, bustling. The constant beep-beep in the streets competes with the regular muezzin's call to prayer from high above. It's confusing, thoroughly Middle Eastern, but not in the least menacing.
    Tiny lanes zigzag willy-nilly. Ask directions and anyone will tell you exactly how to get there, by rattling off a dozen or so "lefts" and "rights" followed by "and then ask," to be told the next dozen or so instructions. That is, unless you ask where the main road is, for which the answer can only be "just go down."
    On our tour of the Old City, Mohammed doesn't merely point out the  attractions, he indulges in colorful description. The mosques, churches and the Jewish tomb (the Zaddik Rabbi Joshua of Sakhnin) are interesting, of course, and the Museum of Palestinian and Arab Heritage -- "the only one in Israel" -- is worth a visit, but Mohammed spends more time explaining the quirks and quiddities of things you wouldn't notice.
    He stops at a darkened home and indicates a symbol above the door: a quincunx (I'll save you a search through the dictionary: it's an arrangement of five objects, like the 5 on dice). It means the Arab home is open to wayfarers seeking food and drink; when only the four corner circles are indicated, you can pop in anytime to slake your thirst.
    "Have you ever noticed a drawing of a clock on some Arab homes?" he asks. I haven't. "That tells you the resident is literate, and can help you with paperwork."
     And there is The Monument To The Dead.
    In 1976, in what came to be known as Land Day, security forces killed three Sakhnin residents and wounded many more -- including a relative of Mohammed's, a young girl who, he says, was shot through the head while sitting in her living room (she survived).
    That incident is but the scab on the pimple of this city's list of grievances.
    People feel they are being ghettoized, hemmed in on all sides by Jewish settlement and army instalations. "Sakhnin set world records for population growth, and soon there will be nowhere to expand," Mohammed says.
    Most irksome is that they are being throttled by development on land taken from them. Arabs are married to land, and this, they feel, is something Jews do not appreciate.
    All the townsmen I met rattled off statistics seared into their national conscience. Gazal Abu-Raia, the handsome, thoroughly amiable municipality spokesman, says the Arabs comprise 20% of the population in Israel, but own just 2% of the land; "We've lost 70% of our land since 1948," he says.
    "Write down these numbers: There were 431 Arab communities in 1948; 300 were destroyed then, another 30 in later years. In all that time, how many new Arab communities? Zero. Not even one."
    Journalist Zaidan Khalayla fumes as he surveys the breathtaking panorama from a lookout above Sakhnin. "All around there, the Misgav region: 186,000 dunam for 8,000 people; now look over there: 9,000 dunam, 22,000 people. That's Sakhnin."
    Towering above their city and bordering it, on land virtually the same size, is a massive military industry, Rafael-Leshem. It is loathed, feared, resented by the residents. What goes on inside is top-secret, but terrifying rumors abound: they're making chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction. Locals can't get close -- they believe they'd be shot if they tried -- but some say they've seen enormous missiles on what they call Mekulas Hill.
    There are homes, and a school, bang-up against the high perimeter fence of Rafael. "How would you like to live in Chernobyl?" Mohammed says bristlingly.
    Day and night, Gazal complains, tractors and bulldozers fill the air with noise, there's a constant pounding, and searchlights glare into homes at night.
    You wouldn't expect the authorities to be sympathetic to the fears and frustrations of a Moslem-Arab city, and indeed they're not: on the contrary, there's a new military instalation being built at the entrance to the city. The IDF claims they're only going to stockpile vehicles there, but of course, no one here believes it.
    Ironically, this new bane might do some good: if there are going to be all these IDF trucks coming through, Sakhnin might finally see some serious roadwork on its dangerous main street. Bumping along through town, Mohammed remarked sarcastically: "You can always tell when you've reached an Arab town: the roads are terrible." (Come to think of it, he seems to be right.)
    So why, for heaven's sake, are these people interested in embracing "the enemy" into their midst?
    Mohammed, Gazal and Zaidan all run B&B's, and all for the same reason: to engender peaceful relations, to familiarize Jews with their culture. Jews of the region have also made significant outreach efforts to their Arab neighbors.
    Back at Al-Mal -- the word "Al-Mal" is to the 1976 Land Day events what "intifada" is to the Palestinian uprising -- the Shawahneh family is busy setting out a splendid meze on the patio, for the evening's guests and drop-in visitors. The food keeps coming (for a reasonable price, they'll whip up a traditional Arab feast), and you learn quickly not to politely decline. This is their way of supplying a little nosh; like some people put out a plate of cookies, they empty out the fridge for you -- and you'd feel foolish asking for a bill afterward. This sort of hospitality is not itemized.
    Arabs and Jews lounge together on the low couches, eating, chatting for hours about things both monumentally important and trivial. Eventually, we get to laughing again about the war. That is, the Candle War.
    During our earlier tour of the city, Mohammed stopped to catch his breath outside a store selling elaborate handmade candles. This is Sami Elias's candle store. Across the street is a mirror image, Farid Elias's candle store. The window displays, and the products, are precisely identical. The two cousins are mortal enemies.
    How, I ask Mohammed, do you choose which store not to go into, if you want to buy an elaborate handmade candle? He makes his decision based on the only difference between Sami's and Farid's: one store, he explains with a grin, has three steps, the other, seven.
    The only way to find hatred in this city is to buy a candle. 

UPDATE: Sadly, hate returned. Sakhnin erupted during the September 2000 hostilities, when Galilee Arabs supported the Palestinians with an unexpected uprising of their own. Two Sakhnin rioters were killed; town leaders accused the police of brutality and racism. After a few days, when the violence subsided, Jews of Misgav and Arabs of Sakhnin began reconciliation efforts.