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American Morning
A Day in the Life on the Road to Nablus
Aired May 29, 2002 - 08:34 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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Three Israeli teenagers have been killed by a Palestinian gunman who opened fire at a religious high school near Nablus in the West Bank. Two more students were wounded before a security guard shot and killed the attacker. The Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, the military wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Now it may be hard to remember in the face of ongoing violence in the Middle East, but more than eight years ago, many Palestinians believed that the Oslo Peace Accords would bring peace and prosperity.
In her continuing series "Inside Out," CNN's Carol Lin went inside the West Bank with a Palestinian-American who put his money into the peace process.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nasser Abdelhabi starts his morning commute buying vegetables in East Jerusalem for his hotel in Nablus in the West Bank. His story is a mixed bag of sorts. He's a Palestinian with an American passport who grew up in the West Bank but graduated from the University of Alabama.
NASSER ABDELHABI, PALESTINIAN COMMUTER: We used to go on spring break from Alabama to Florida. The taste of freedom that I've tasted in the States is out of -- it's incredible. Now here, it's -- you cannot drive your own car.
LIN: Nasser returned to the Middle East to invest in what he thought would be lasting peace. He bought a hotel thinking millions of Christian pilgrims would come to historic Nablus for the millennium. Nine months later this latest intifada erupted.
ABDELHABI: Sometimes you will find five, six checkpoints, sometimes two, sometimes none. We don't know today.
LIN: Nasser's 40-minute commute to his hotel can now take four hours or four days.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nablus.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nablus.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nablus. LIN: A Palestinian taxi at the main Israeli army checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank is just the beginning. It's around 9:00 in the morning.
10:15 a.m., the road ends at another army checkpoint where the soldier motions us to go back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, stop.
LIN: 10:30 a.m., another checkpoint, this time our taxi driver wants to convince the Israeli soldiers to let him pass. The soldier motions him to flip up his shirt and twirl, presumably checking for explosives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are we going to go back? We're in -- stuck between two roadblocks.
LIN: Instead, our driver returns to put up his hood, pretending to have engine trouble until the soldiers pass. Nasser looks worried because the hard part is still ahead.
ABDELHABI: We're going to go through another dirt roads.
LIN: He wasn't kidding, and we weren't alone. At times the road was so pitted we had to lighten the taxi's load and walk part of the way.
ABDELHABI: See, those are my seed (ph) shoes, specially.
LIN: 11:14 a.m., word has spread on which roads are opened and closed. The olive groves where John the Baptist wandered in biblical times are jammed with traffic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, we haven't seen anything yet. The fun just started.
LIN: The strangest part was still to come.
(on camera): I'm told at this point this is it for the taxis. And we've got another hour to go. Some of it's going to be on foot, and we might have to try something else.
(voice-over): The Palestinians call it animal service, and a bizarre scene began to unfold. I met soda merchandisers and building contractors on the donkey trail. It made me wonder if the pressure Israelis put on Palestinians to stop the suicide bombings could work.
(on camera): The Israelis would say that the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority can change this. They have -- Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority can change this so that people don't have to live like this.
ABDELHABI: It is just a vicious circle. Now the Israelis are putting siege on the cities because of security reasons. But again, if you make people poorer, they will be more desperate, they will do more.
LIN: You don't have to.
ABDELHABI: I don't have...
LIN: You could sell the hotel in Nablus.
ABDELHABI: I don't know if I can sell it now. I don't think anybody will buy anything in the West Bank, real estate is down. But even if I'm in Phoenix (ph), I think we'll do it maybe because it's our country and because it's -- our family is here.
LIN (voice-over): Four-and-a-half hours after leaving Jerusalem, Nasser Abdelhabi arrives in Nablus. His commute, like the peace process he invested in, right now a ride into the unknown.
ABDELHABI: We're home.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: And so am I, Paula, back here in Atlanta.
Some 200,000 Palestinians, it's estimated, travel between Jerusalem and the West Bank almost daily, most of them doctors and nurses and teachers, people who have to get to where they're going. And it's not as if the Israeli soldiers are completely ignorant of these back paths or even that we're traveling on the road, we actually passed several tanks and soldiers along the way. But it's purely at the discretion of the Israeli soldiers standing at post as to whether they allow the Palestinians to travel that long road to Nablus.
ZAHN: Wow, what a trip for you. Once again, is -- can you put this into context, how many people do this on a daily basis and have to put up with this -- the delays?
LIN: Sure. Between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and in particular Nablus, because it's the largest city, we were surprised by its size, the largest city in the West Bank, an estimated 200,000 Palestinians travel between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But throughout the West Bank, and right now, Paula, as you know, it's a closed military zone. But right now throughout the West Bank, it's estimated one in five Palestinians travels the back roads to try to either get -- either get to family or to work or to move merchandise so that people still can eat and live. So a lot of traveling.
ZAHN: I don't want to make light of what you just witnessed there, but I tell you, there are some potholes here in New York City that would rival the ones you attempted to drive over and had to get out of the taxi to walkover.
LIN: And you know what, if we had the system in New York City that they had in the West Bank, I'm not talking about purely security issues here, I'm talking about life. What was really interesting is the survival techniques they use on these trails to signal each other -- hand signals to tell each other where the roads are closed, where there are checkpoints. And once again, these are ordinary people just trying to go about their day, helping one another on a trail.
ZAHN: Whole different world of communication.
Thank you, Carol Lin, for bringing that to us this morning.
LIN: Sure.
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