Newspaper Article

FACING UP TO ISRAEL AS AN OPPRESSOR

Yossi Melman. Yossi Melman, an Israeli journalist, is co-author of "Friends in Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance," published this month by Hyperion

1994

Overview

As Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho last week after 27 years of occupation, enabling a million jubilant Palestinians to begin establishing self rule, I recalled the terrified eyes of a middle-aged inhabitant there. It was three years after the 1967 war in which Israel took over Gaza along with the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula. I was then, in the winter of 1970, a young conscript serving in the poverty-stricken Gaza area, with a special forces unit of the Israeli army. Our mission was to patrol the streets of the shantytowns and refugee camps. Like my platoon comrades, I wholeheartedly believed in our cause. We knew that the Arab states had imposed the war against us and that the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza hated us. We saw in each of them, including children and women, a potential terrorist who is constantly contemplating killing us. This was my simple, one-dimensional view until I looked into the eyes of this particular Palestinian.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC