Intifada Diary: Ten Years After
December 1987 onwards
"'Odai: Captured!"
In the morning, 31st March 1988, we left the house at 9:00am, with me driving. There were six of us. One friend told me that he needed to return a pack of cards to his home. I said, "Listen, leave them here." He said, "No, my father wants them." We drove by Hebron University, all the way up to this guy's house. We dropped off the cards there and his mother told him, "Don't go out today, I need you to help us with some things. You can follow them later."

By the time I left their home, there was a military jeep, driving along the road very slowly and we were driving behind them. As usual, there were three soldiers in the jeep, two in the front and one inside the open back door, sitting watching the street behind the jeep. The guy was looking at the plates of my car. I didn't make any connection. I didn't expect anything to happen. I thought, it's just a normal patrol and there are thousands and thousands of cars like mine in Hebron, Peugeot 404 station wagon. Sometimes, silly things make you lucky or unlucky. One of my friends, the same person that asked me for the tea and sugar, told me, "Pass this asshole. Just pass him! Let's go."

I began to overtake the jeep, when suddenly I heard a soldier screaming from the jeep loudspeaker, "Stop! Stop, or I'll shoot!" There was no way to escape. I looked in the driving mirror and saw the soldier next to the driver had his rifle pointed at us, and my brothers and friends in the back told me, "He's aiming at you. He's going to shoot!" In front of us, there was nowhere to go. I was caught. So, I stopped the car in a place where it was very crowded, where there were lots of shop keepers and shoppers and people and cars, so that they wouldn't shoot me because I was wanted. I knew that they could do anything.

In seconds there were two soldiers with their guns pointed at our heads. "Get out of the car!" they shouted, "Put your hands over your heads!" I got out of the car, and raised my hands, saying, "Take it easy! Take it easy! What's your problem?"

"Shut up! Don't say a fucking word! On the ground!" I lay down on the ground. "Where's your ID card? Which pocket?" one soldier yelled. "In the back," I replied. They didn't allow me to move an inch. They snatched the card out of my pocket and one of them took it over to a radio, and began talking with their base in Hebrew. Suddenly, one of them said, "Bingo!", from the game of the same name, slang meaning they had just caught someone who was wanted. 		See caption below Jeep checkpoints, mobile and often almost invisible, can run up on you suddenly. Road to Wadi an-Nar, 1997. Photo by Nigel Parry.
They told us that they were taking us down to headquarters and blindfolded me and tied my hands with the hard plastic cords that we use for tying pipes and electrical cord together. They put me in the jeep and a soldier drove my car, with everyone still in it, behind us. On the way another jeep pulled in behind it.

We were driving through the middle of the city. It was unfuckingbelievable! Everyone was saying, "Oh! They caught you, they caught you!" Everybody knew that I was wanted. It was good that I was caught in front of everybody as they could not assasinate me, they could not do anything.

On the way, I remember, the jeep stopped. Someone came - an Israeli officer - slid my blindfold up a little, and asked me in this mocking voice, "What is your name?" I told him. "Oooooh! Welcome!" he crowed. It turned out that he was the interrogator responsible for my neighbourhood, the one that had been very keen to see me arrested for months. "You see," he said in a quiet voice, "We can find you." He had been coming to his work from Jerusalem with another interrogator. When they had seen the jeep and that the soldiers had arrested someone they had stopped it to find out who it was.

By the time we arrived at the prison, both of them were waiting for me. They were sitting on the front of their car and laughing. "So you came here! Who are these people with you?"

"You know," I said, "my brothers, my friends. What's your problem? Can you tell me what's your problem? Is there any problem?"

"Oh wait, wait until we get upstairs!" they said, laughing.
See caption below
Plastic 'handcuffs'. From Jordanian TV news, 1996. Photo by Nigel Parry.


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