Newly freed Palestinians bittersweet

Arafat gets new deal’s land maps

Hugh Dellios, Tribune Foreign Correspondent, Bidu, West Bank

Newly freed Palestinians bittersweet — Chicago Tribune, 10 September 1999 — Chicago Tribune · Chicago, Illinois · 10 September 1999

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Transcribed from the clipping

“BIDU, West Bank — Behind the tears in Beyan Mansur’s eyes was barely restrained joy as she and other Palestinians on Thursday tasted the first fruits of peace in the Ehud Barak era. For the first time in eight years, the 10-year-old Palestinian girl clambered into the lap of her father, Samir, and kissed him on the cheeks.

Well-wishers streamed through the family’s home to embrace him. On the porch, women wailed and beat drums in bittersweet celebration, awaiting their turn to smother Samir in hugs as friends sent fireworks bursting over the village.

Samir Mansur was among 199 Palestinian security prisoners freed Thursday by Israel in the first step of implementing the peace treaty signed Sunday between Barak, the new Israeli prime minister, and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hours later, Israel gave Arafat maps delineating another 7 percent of the occupied West Bank to be returned to the Palestinians.

While Israeli soldiers retain ultimate authority over the land and few Palestinians will benefit directly, Arafat’s police will control civilian affairs and no Jewish settlements will be allowed there… Although the Palestinians celebrated, they also expressed deep disappointment that 1,800 prisoners remain behind bars in Israel, where Israelis victimized by past terror attacks accused Barak of jeopardizing the nation’s security by freeing detainees who had murdered Palestinian collaborators… ‘What is going on here now symbolizes the victory of terrorism,’ said Meir Indor, chairman of the Terror Victims Association, displaying wounds from two attacks by Palestinians, one when he was a soldier.

The bus then headed into the Palestinian city of Ramallah, where it was mobbed by well-wishers grabbing at the prisoners’ hands and tossing cigarettes into the open windows. At the central police station, the freed men received a heroes’ welcome.

‘I think this gives us hope that the new government in Israel will go ahead and implement agreements,’ said Marwan Barghouti, head of Arafat’s Fatah faction in the West Bank. ‘People were frustrated to see that every year we have a treaty without any change on the ground. I think this is an important day.’”

Context added by this archive

A ten-year-old girl who had not sat in her father’s lap for eight years, named in the first sentence of a Chicago Tribune story. The Israeli objection to the release is printed in the same column.

Cite this clipping

"Newly freed Palestinians bittersweet," Chicago Tribune, 10 September 1999, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1999-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1999-001