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From Beirut to Jerusalem From Beirut to Jerusalem Ang Swee Chai “…an eyewitness account of the massacre that cuts through the cottonwool to go to the very heart of the matter.” − The Guardian The Other Press Kuala Lumpur © Ang Swee Chai Maps by Michael Troughton All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Published by The Other Press Sdn. Bhd. 607 Mutiara Majestic Jalan Othman 46000 Petaling Jaya Selangor, Malaysia www.ibtbooks.com The Other Press is affiliated with Islamic Book Trust. To the Palestinians and their friends… Contents Acknowledgements The Wounds of Gaza Introduction PART I : Journey To Beirut Summer 1982 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 PART II : The Sabra – Shatila Massacre Autumn 1982 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 PART III : From Jerusalem To Britain 1982-1984 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 PART IV: Return To Beirut Summer 1985 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 PART V: From Beirut To Jerusalem 1985-1988 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Reflections on the 25th anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila massacre, 2007 Acknowledgements Writing this book has been no easy task: it has involved my going back over the past six years, reliving certain very painful memories and reopening old wounds. I want to thank Steve Savage for his patience, support and encouragement; as well as his editorial advice, without which this book would be totally unreadable. My thanks also to everyone else at Grafton Books. As well as the MAP volunteers, supporters and staff who are mentioned in the book. I want to thank those whose names are not in. either for reasons of personal safety, or by their own choice, or just from lack of space. It is they who are the true friends of the Palestinians. It is they who slave away so that the medical programme can continue. My fellow MAP board members, who have had to put up with me ever since we were formed, especially Major Derek Cooper, our President, and his wife Lady Pamela. David Wolton, our Chairman, and Dr Riyad Kreishi, the acting Director of MAP during Dr Rafiq Husseini’ s absence – I thank them for their enormous contributions to my understanding and their much-valued guidance. The Palestinians always try to thank their friends. Now I want to thank them for being so strong, for being a constant source of inspiration to me, especially in the depths of despair. Above all, I thank the Palestine Red Crescent Society, for all it has taught me, and for making me, I hope, a better doctor and human being. I also thank my Jewish friends who encourage me to speak up and not be fearful. My parents and family in Singapore, whom I have postponed seeing for years, I am grateful for their patience and forgiveness. Francis Khoo, related to me incidentally by marriage, I have to thank thrice. First, for his untiring efforts in bringing MAP to birth. Second, for his advice and criticism during the writing of this book. Third, for not putting me out even though I caused him many anxious and sleepless nights while I was out in Beirut. Professor Jack Stevens, Alan Apley, J. M. Walker, R. C. Buchanan, Fred Heatley, Tom Wadsworth, Ian Pinder, Jo Pooley, Peter Robson, Ron Sutton, Kevin Walsh and the rest of my senior orthopaedic colleagues and teachers who not only trained me, but fought the prejudice of the surgical establishment against small coloured women becoming surgeons, making it possible for me to pursue a career in orthopaedic surgery. Lastly, thanks to many people from all over the world who continue to live in faith, hope and love. Without them, this journey from Beirut to Jerusalem would not have taken place. The Wounds of Gaza I returned to Gaza in January 2009 when it sustained the worst attack since the Six Day war in 1967. The Christmas week of 2008 was rudely interrupted by shocking scenes of Gaza being bombed by land, air and sea. In just three short weeks, 1,400 Palestinians were killed, nearly half of them children. In this tiny part of Occupied Palestine, there were 5,450 casualties, severe enough to require operations; many remain in a critical state today. Over 21,000 homes were destroyed, 4,000 of which were flattened to rubble by the deployment of implosion bombs. Other buildings were not spared – 40 mosques, hospitals, clinics, schools, even United Nations warehouses. The scale of attacks matched that meted out to the Lebanon in 1982, or indeed, during the 2006 invasion, with similar intensity, ferocity and breaches of international law. I have known Gaza since the days of the first intifada, twenty years ago. Indeed, From Beirut to Jerusalem was written during the six months I had to spend waiting for the Israelis to grant my first visa into Gaza. A surgeon was urgently needed to treat the untold injuries sustained by unarmed Palestinians during that uprising, and I volunteered. The enforced wait proved productive; it enabled me time to pause my work in Beirut, produce these memoirs and then head for the Gaza strip when the visa finally came in 1988. I spent the next six months as the only foreign orthopaedic surgeon in the Anglican hospital of Al-Ahli in Gaza city. I first met Palestinians in 1982 when I responded to an international appeal for help following Israel’s invasion of the Lebanon. I was warned by my Church these people were ‘terrorists’ and the Philistines of the Bible. In the refugee camps of Beirut, however, I found camp people who were warm and generous and who kept telling me of a home their young had never seen. Of a place called Palestine they were forced to flee in 1948. And of their determination to return one day. From Beirut, they would return to their Jerusalem. That their wish to exercise their right of return remained undimmed through the passing years and that the Palestinian nation was indivisible. Those in the diaspora was one with those under occupation. They told me the hospital they named ‘Akka’ in Shatila camp was to remember the coastal city many came from. And ‘Gaza’ the hospital in Sabra camp I worked in was named after the tiny strip of land just 147 square miles in Palestine. In September of that year, thousands of unarmed men, women and children of the camps were massacred in Sabra and Shatila. That massacre forced me to acknowledge Palestinians existed and their story of exile was true. This book was written in dedication to those who died and to all survivors who remained steadfast in their determination to return to Palestine. I returned to Beirut many times and was there in 1987 when news of the Intifada emerged. Palestinians rose up in an uprising of civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli army responded brutally to put down the uprising. Many of my friends in the Lebanon were anxious for their families who remained behind and did not flee in 1948 and 1967. But they were also proud it had finally happened after decades of occupation. I told my friends I would go to Gaza and promised to report back on a Gaza most of them had not seen. They were full of hope that morning in 1987. The Uprising was a declaration to the whole world of the refusal of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to live under Israeli occupation. TV coverage worldwide showed Palestinian children confronting Israeli armoured cars and tanks with stones. Women and old folk were not afraid anymore. It was David and Goliath, my favourite Bible story. Occupied Palestine was telling the world, “We will die standing; we will not live on our knees”. Their courage captured the sympathy and imagination of the world. To crush the Uprising, tear gas was fired into unarmed demonstrations, into homes, schools and hospitals. ‘Plastic’ bullets and ‘rubber’ bullets were fired at very close range into the eyes and heads of demonstrators, causing blindness and death. Israeli soldiers were filmed on TV beating a captured Palestinian to death. As Yitzchak Rabin, the then Prime Minister boasted openly that when Israel was through with the Palestinians, they will be a nation of cripples. Because of the large numbers of casualties, the UN asked for an orthopaedic surgeon. I responded and left the Lebanon for Gaza a year later. Despite UN sponsorship, Israel took six months to allow me in. I remember how I first heard of the news of that uprising. I was on a routine morning round with ‘Mamma’ Rita, an 80 year-old retired German ambulance driver and paramedic who volunteered with our charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. We were doing a daily morning milk round, providing milk, basic medical care and advice for the homeless in Beirut. Each family was partitioned from the other by a blanket and had to contend with a living space of 3 metres by 3 metres. Thus a small basement garage was shared by dozens of families. You could smell the overcrowding. I remember that December morning in 1987, wet, cold, dark and damp. The floors of the shelters were flooded; there was no electricity and running water.
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