A Race Against Time: An interview with Sam Bahour
Christopher Brown, The Electronic Intifada, 28 June 2006 (m)
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian city of El-Bireh in the West Bank. He is the co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994). I spoke with Sam via telephone about the worsening situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, U.S. aid restrictions on Palestine, divestment from Israel, and the need for a strong resistance leadership in the Palestinian Authority. He can be reached at sbahour[a]palnet.com.
Christopher Brown: Can you talk about the current climate in The West Bank and Gaza in light of the recent massacres that have occurred at the hands of the Israeli military?
Sam Bahour: I’ve been there since 1994, so I’ve seen ups and downs regularly for the last 12 years. However, during the last six months specifically, the Israelis basically in my opinion have been spinning out of control. They have unleashed, literally daily attacks on Palestinians. Unfortunately, the world only sees every once in a while what’s happening there, when there is a camera taking a picture such as the incident when the whole family of civilians that was on the beach. They were lucky enough to have a camera there to take a picture of that war crime.
For the last six years, there’s been a non-stop onslaught in terms of not only killing Palestinians, but also we’re talking about nightly raids into Palestinian cities where they’re actually arresting people on a nightly basis. I literally cannot think of a night when there isn’t a Palestinian being arrested in the various cities throughout the West Bank, and before they exited Gaza, in Gaza as well; that, in addition to F-16’s and Apache helicopters, which as you’re seeing lately, are basically assassinating Palestinians from the air.