From Beirut to Jerusalem

267 Pages·2014·3.33 MB·English

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,
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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