Tanks bring sleepless nights to Ramallah

One of the Israeli tanks deployed in the prosperous Tira neighbourhood of this West Bank town had been parked for a month beside the gate to the UN training centre, in spite of the large sign which reads: "Fire arms prohibited."

The other had drawn up across the road beside the Greek Orthodox church-run St George's school, frightening both pupils and parents.

On Thursday, a team of UN Relief and Works Agency Refugee Affairs Officers (RAO), the agency's trouble-shooters, walked past the tanks with the 17 children who turned up for classes. The great majority had stayed at home. By the time school ended, the tanks had withdrawn from Ramallah.

At five o'clock they returned, brushing aside and crumpling the Palestinian Authority's checkpoint. The Palestinian soldiers in the breeze-block shelter fled, leaving their dinner of lamb pilaf on the table. Yesterday morning, a cat was picking out the last morsels of meat. The tanks had parked 150 metres up the road beside an unfinished block of flats. A plastic sheet over the window showed that their crews had taken up residence on the third floor. The RAO team I accompanied looked for signs of life, to make certain the inhabitants of the grand houses were alright.

We rang the doorbell at the handsome two-storey stone villa of Mr Jad Mikhail. He invited us in and his wife, Mrs Cynthia Mikhail, served us coffee and Christmas biscuits. "This incursion wasn't vicious like the last one a month ago," remarked Mr Mikhail, an uncle of Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokeswoman and human rights campaigner. "I don't think they'll stay long."

My companions asked if the neighbours were at home. "Yes," Mr Mikhail replied, "but they keep their shutters down and don't turn on the lights. Sometimes the Israelis break into houses they think are empty, so I put on the lights and keep them on 'till midnight so they know we're at home. People are afraid. Five homes were hit a month ago. Between one-quarter and one-third of the families have left. We're 600 households and 700 children in this quarter. Some people have gone to relatives, others to hotels."

The Mikhails' son, Charles, built the house for his parents from his earnings from the "big tobacco lawsuit" in Pascagoala, Mississippi, on which the film The Insider was based. "Palestinian tenacity helped win that battle," observed Mr Mikhail. "And Palestinian tenacity keeps us here. Since we moved into the house, we haven't had one night of rest."

Piled on an armchair across the room were blankets and pillows. "We sleep here so we have two cement slabs over our heads. If it gets bad we go to the bathroom inside."

On the way back to Jerusalem we drove by the headquarters of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat. The tank had gone but three armoured troops carriers were still 200 metres from the compound and Israeli soldiers continue to occupy the rooms on the top floor of the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs from where they can observe goings on at the presidency.

My companion asked the Israeli who checked our identity papers, "Are you going?" "No," he shrugged. Others in his unit sat on the kerb, smoking, as if they were in Tel Aviv rather than the West Bank.