last Wednesday's events

There's a good article about the events in Bethlehem on the IHT.

In it, the reporter, Isabel Kershner, talks about the funerals yesterday and the display of unity, as members from all political factions gathered at the Mosque of Omar in Manger Square to pray and pay their respects to the dead.  She also talks about the circumstances of the men's deaths, and speaks to several individuals about their reactions.

Talking with co-workers yesterday, I also felt the need to record how people were expressing their reactions to Wednesday's assassinations.  Below is a piece that I wrote with the help of two co-workers.  It is intended to give a deeper view into why these men's deaths are mourned so fervently by so many people, and the sense of shock and loss experienced by the community.  This is not an official response from Diyar or the church here, but my personal interpretation of the responses that a few of my co-workers were sharing with me, regarding last Wednesday's assassinations.

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I thought it might be important to record local reactions to the shootings in Bethlehem on Wednesday.

People here are mainly sad.  One of the men who was shot, Muhammad Shehadeh, was an icon in Palestinian society, and the men's funerals in Bethlehem yesterday drew thousands of mourners.  It was Shehadeh's house that was demolished last week, and his nephew who was taken into Israeli custody.

Shehadeh is a symbol of the resistance movement because Israel had been chasing him since 1989.  He had become a legend, someone who Israel couldn't catch.  He appeared on television and radio after the demolition of his house, saying that he was sad that his house had been demolished, but he was also optimistic, saying that he knew the Israelis were looking for him, but that he was running to stay alive.

So people are sad, not only because he was an icon of the resistance movement, but also because he was a prominent member of society.  A co-worker explained that in Arabic culture, there are the "big men" of the town, historically the leaders of clans, who are traditionally generous, listen to people's suffering, and help people in need, without expecting things in return – they are motivated my community-mindedness, and people are loyal to them, because they are loyal to the community.  So it is even worse that these men were killed because a "collaborator" tipped off the Israelis to their whereabouts, in betrayal of the men and the sanctity of the community.  These "big men" are even more important in a context where the government and police/military forces are seen to be doing little or nothing to protect and care for the citizenry.  The men are seen to believe in Palestine and to have a sort of visionary leadership that governmental officials are not seen to possess.  Most people think that the PA and the Palestinian military are around just for show, and who can blame them for thinking so, when they do not protect the citizens from Israeli incursions?

Finally, people are sad because of the circumstances of the deaths yesterday.  As my co-worker tells it, the men had just bought some hot, fresh bread from the bakery on the street near the Freres School, near to the house of another co-worker and about a 5-minute walk from mine.  This is so intimate, so familiar, that many people feel like the shooting could happen to anyone.  It happened in the center of one of the old neighbourhoods of Bethlehem, on a street that everyone knows, outside one of the town's favourite bakeries.  It really seems to have affected people deeply.

So this is the other side of the story.  People admit that there are bad things about Islamic Jihad, and that none of the men were without fault, but people revere them as symbols and as pillars of the community, and mourn them as such.  That they were killed rather than captured makes them martyrs in the eyes of many, and solidifies their status as symbols of the Palestinian resistance movement.