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CNN Live At Daybreak
Palestinian Families Defiant Even Under Curfew
Aired April 04, 2002 - 06:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The Palestinians in several West Bank cities are under a 24-hour curfew. Well, that's making life extremely difficult for those living under this Israeli siege.
Our Michael Holmes met with one family in Ramallah trying to get through this crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For a certain period with a shortage of food, but without freedom, you can't survive.
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Monsour (ph) heads this household, father to four girls, husband to Rema (ph). Visiting today: a neighbor, Cathy Shubak (ph), Ramallah resident and United States citizen. We met under curfew, a curfew which except for a few short hours yesterday, has kept this family inside for more than five days.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have your worries, you are anxious about what is going on, about you, your future, your kids, about your people or your country and history.
HOLMES (on camera): Are you worried that a bullet might come through the window?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It happens, because -- before six month and last September -- more than six months, all of the windows here, shutters, glass were broken. All of the ceiling and the walls were bullet holes, yes? We settled that personally. So we know this feeling.
HOLMES (voice-over): Monsour's (ph) daughters, Myis (ph), 22, Nuwah (ph), 17, Ruba (ph), 15, Heba (ph), 12, incredibly still able to laugh. Normal here is like normal nowhere else.
(On camera): What's it like to look out of your window and see tanks, soldiers?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They think that we will cry, or we will do anything. No, we have never cried from seeing tanks or even when they shoot at us. No, when we seen tanks, it fills us with anger.
HOLMES: So action like we have seen in the last week here, you think achieves nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing.
HOLMES: It just makes you angrier.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For more and more generations to come. This will never end.
HOLMES (voice-over): Unable to leave home, more often than not short of food and water. They somehow see even power cuts in a positive light.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So I think that the darkness here make you think deeper, and this is a very good experience. And I think my character or any character is here better than in England or in the West.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it makes us stronger, much stronger.
HOLMES (on camera): So you see it as a valuable experience in some ways.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Better than living in a perfect life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is a very bad thing to live like this, especially I am a teenager. And I didn't do anything, and then just innocent girls that tried to live in a free country.
HOLMES (voice-over): This family is not political, holds no affiliation with political organizations, and they wish for a world without suicide bombings. But they view theirs as a country with minimal weapons to fight an occupation, and after this siege, their support of Yasser Arafat has only strengthened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What they are doing, this is not terrorism. What they are doing, they are depriving everyone from his father or his mother and not letting even ambulances go to get injured peoples or -- so many dead people on the ground left for four days or five, yet this is not terrorism for them.
HOLMES (on camera): Do you think what is happening here now makes it worse, makes more suicide bombings?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of us, we want to go. HOLMES (voice-over): If there is defiance and strength in these daughters, there is fear and sadness in their mother.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Always I am not peaceful. I can't eat, or I had the pains, stomach pain, a pain in my head, headache, always a headache. I feel -- I can't think of the future.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Over there, you sleep. You are not hearing no gunshots. You are not hearing the tanks coming by.
HOLMES (voice-over): Neighbor, Cathy Shubak (ph), over there is where she was raised, Chicago. She has seen life in two very different environments.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here, it's where are you going? Let me see your passport. There, we have never held -- we have never held a passport. Here, it's like whatever you have (ph), wherever you go, your passport is in your pocket.
HOLMES (on camera): Do you sleep well?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, at first, it takes a little time to fall asleep, because you hear the gunshots and stuff. I hold a U.S. passport, they can have it if they want. I don't want it.
HOLMES: Why, you have given up on the U.S.?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are not helping us, so we give up on them. I mean, I never -- with him. He never helps us. I never voted for him. So I don't give a damn. He can have his passport if he wants it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know that they are in there first, and they are afraid. And we are in our own house helpless and we have nothing, and we are not afraid. So it's clear who will win.
HOLMES (voice-over): Michael Holmes, CNN, Ramallah.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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