ABSTRACT
On the morning of 21 February 2002, I was interviewing ‘Ala Jaradat in his
office at Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organization that gives legal
services to Palestinian political captives in the Israeli prisons.1 I was inter-
viewing ‘Ala as a former political captive, as a person immersed in the nar-
rative of captivity, as a political activist and because of his work in
Addameer. It was a holiday, and except for ‘Ala and myself there was
nobody else in the offices of Addameer. The interview was developing into a
discussion, for I had known ‘Ala for quite a long time through mutual friends. Suddenly, we heard several loud explosions. It was obvious to ‘Ala
that they were Israeli rockets fired from Apache helicopters. Both of us
instinctively jumped to the large window to see where they had landed.
First, we looked towards the headquarters of the Palestinian National
Authority, a few hundred metres to the north, where Arafat was living. No
smoke. Another series of explosions rocked Ramallah. Again, we saw no
sign. The phone started to ring. Then the noisy mobile phones rang con-
tinuously. In such situations, everybody starts to garner information and passes it on. But the callers were looking for ‘Ala for other reasons than the
air raid on Ramallah. A high-ranking political activist, who had been living
underground for a long period, had been captured by the Israeli army, and
it was estimated by human rights and political activists that the Israelis
would harm him seriously if no international agency intervened. This eva-
luation was based on the fact that the Israeli army denied that it had
arrested him. ‘Ala asked me to wait for him in the office, and to answer phone
calls. He briefly explained the urgency of the situation, and left Addameer. Two hours later he came back. We discussed the situation, and decided to
resume our interview. It was around 4 p.m. when the interview ended and
we were both hungry, so we went out for lunch. Life in the streets of
Ramallah was already back to ‘normal’ by then.
