The New York Times · 20 June 2002

CP-2002-111

He Was Arab and Israeli And Now a Victim, Too

By JOEL GREENBERG

Scan 852 × 1316 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

BARTAA, Israel, June 19 — Ayman Kabaha, an Israeli Arab student killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem on Tuesday, was buried here today on a rocky hillside, mourned by relatives on both sides of this Arab village that lies half in Israel and half in the West Bank. Mr.

Kabaha’s death at the hands of a fellow Arab underlined the predicament of the people living here. A million Israeli Arabs are caught in a conflict between their country and their people. “We’re between the hammer and the anvil,” said Abed Mahameed, an Israeli Arab friend of Mr. Kabaha.

“We want the Palestinians to be free of occupation, but suicide bombing is a savage form of resistance, and we can be its victims along with the Jews. We’re in a tremendous dilemma.” Mr. Kabaha, 25, was one of 19 Israelis killed in Tuesday’s suicide bombing as he rode a bus to a teacher training college where he was studying special education.

He was among the Israeli Arab students renting rooms in Beit Safafa, an Arab village in southern Jerusalem where the bomber got on the bus. For people in Bartaa, a community of 7,000, Mr. Kabaha’s death in an attack by a Palestinian student-turned-bomber, exposed a painful tangle of conflicting loyalties. As the villagers — all members of Mr.

Kabaha’s clan — gathered for his funeral today, there were outbursts of grief but also ambivalent responses to the circumstances of his death. Weeping for his close friend, Amir Arshid, said that Mr. Kabaha advocated peace and befriended Jews as well as Arabs. “The two governments must do everything to reach peace and stop this,” Mr.

Arshid said, sobbing. “It doesn’t distinguish between Jews and Arabs. The death and pain are the same.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from a scan of a whole newspaper page carrying FOUR separate articles; the recorded headline and excerpt are one of them, the only one complete on the page and wholly about the people it names. The other three, each under its own department flag, are 'Bomb Kills 6 Israelis; Army Retakes West Bank Lands', 'Bush to Present Strict Demands to the Palestinians' (both marked 'Continued From Page A1') and 'In Jerusalem, Despair and Determination' by Ian Fisher. The page carries no masthead or folio; the date is not printed and is corroborated instead from the article's own internal dating - a dateline of 'BARTAA, Israel, June 19' and a bombing placed on 'Tuesday', 18 June 2002 having been a Tuesday. The newspaper is identified from the photograph credit 'Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times'. 'MIDEAST TURMOIL' across the top and 'THE VILLAGE' above the headline are standing department flags, not a deck. Everyone named in the article is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, whom the paper calls an Israeli Arab. Read from crops magnified to eleven times page scale.

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