November 9, 2003?
Between Two Homes and Two Peoples, a Soldier ?
Wanders
By JAMES BENNET ?


IMONA, Israel - During an Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip in October, a helmeted ?
soldier in combat gear was photographed crouching in the sand, his M-16 rifle in his right ?
hand. ?
It was just another of the countless images from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the ?
familiar fault line where two peoples grind against each other with almost tectonic ?
inexorability. ?
Yet the truths of the image were more complicated than that, at least to the anonymous ?
soldier who recognized himself in the photograph in the pages of an Israeli newspaper. ?
To begin with, there is the question of his name. ?
To his Israeli, Jewish mother, Stella Peretz, and his few friends in Dimona, the Israeli ?
town where he went to high school, the soldier is Yossi Peretz. ?
To his Palestinian, Muslim father, Adel Hussein, and those who knew him in Nur Shams, ?
the Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank where he grew up, he is Muhammad ?
Hussein. ?
To his divorced parents, when they speak of him together - and they seem to speak of ?
little else at such times - he is simply "the child," their only one. ?
It may seem to an outsider that this child of twin identity - at once Muhammad Hussein ?
and Yossi Peretz - was given a rare gift: the ability to understand both Israelis and ?
Palestinians at a depth few reach. An outsider might see his story as hopeful, as evidence ?
that the divide between the two peoples is not so deep, or, at least, that it does not have to ?
be. But the soldier says he does not see his story that way. He sees it as a tragedy. He is a ?
child of divorce, not only of his parents but also of their peoples. ?
He comes from a family neither wealthy nor educated. Theirs have been the small ?
problems of any family: where and how to make a living; where and how to raise a child. ?
But history had its own ideas for them. ?
For the child's first 16 years, the family was able to blend its identities, living in Nur ?
Shams, next to the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, and freely visiting Jewish relatives in ?
Dimona or making trips to Tel Aviv. ?
Then, in the late 1990's, a hopeful peace effort curdled. The boundaries around the family ?
sharpened. The child, now a teenager, put on the uniform of a Palestinian fighter. His ?
education, even his life, seemed at risk. ?
Mr. Hussein divorced his wife, because, they both said, she would not have left ?
otherwise. With her son, Ms. Peretz returned to Dimona and to Judaism. The boy had his ?
bar mitzvah and quickly mastered the Hebrew that his parents had spoken with him since ?
childhood. ?
Mr. Hussein tried to stay behind in Nur Shams, planning regular visits with his ex-wife ?
and son. But masked men chased him away, accusing him of being a Jew, he said. He ?
fled to Israel and took up the life of an illegal Palestinian worker, passing as an Israeli ?
Arab and snatching visits with his son when he could. ?
Now Israel has built a barrier of concrete and fencing along the edge of Tulkarm, and Mr. ?
Hussein fears that if he is caught and sent back, he will never see his son again. He ?
carries a picture of himself with the young man in his Israeli uniform, to show to any ?
policeman who demands his identity. ?
Like his parents, the soldier, 21, does not talk much about the big issues of the conflict - ?
about Jerusalem, or the Palestinian refugees. He talks about trying to make his way in a ?
riven world. Although he has chosen to serve in the army under his birth name, ?
Muhammad Hussein, he firmly identifies himself as an Israeli and a Jew. Yet he says he ?
belongs with both his parents. His mother hears him crying in his sleep. ?
?"Once I thought, `This is where my mom and dad are, and this is where I'll build my life,' ?
?" Sergeant Hussein said as he rode one night last month from his base in Gaza to his ?
mother's home in Dimona. "Now my dad is over there and my mom is over here. And I ?
don't know where I am in all this." ?
Lives Warped by Conflict
In telling stories of lives warped or ended by the conflict between Jews and Arabs, it can ?
be hard to know where to start, to which first cause to anchor the ever lengthening chain ?
of linked effects: to the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 that led to Israel's occupation of the ?
West Bank and Gaza Strip; to the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 at Israel's creation; to ?
Abraham's own divided family and the origins of Judaism and Islam. ?
All of that history was bearing down when, in 1973, two runaways from broken homes ?
met by chance in a Tel Aviv restaurant. One of them, Mr. Hussein, then a waiter, ran ?
away from the West Bank city of Jenin after his father pulled him out of school to tend ?
sheep. The other, Ms. Peretz, had run away from her family in Dimona. ?
?"It was a very big love," Ms. Peretz said, speaking here in her humble apartment, ?
decorated with porcelain dolphins and pictures of Moroccan rabbinic sages. ?
Mr. Hussein, who had come to relish life in Tel Aviv, had applied to convert to Judaism ?
and been turned down by the Israeli religious authorities. So Ms. Peretz converted to ?
Islam for the two to have a state-approved marriage. ?
Although such Israeli-Palestinian marriages were rare, those were days of openness ?
between Israel and the occupied territories. Israel issued special identity cards to ?
Palestinians, but there were no fortified army checkpoints, no fences. ?
The newlyweds moved to Tulkarm. They also rented an apartment in Tel Aviv, less than ?
an hour's drive away. ?
In the Nur Shams camp, the Husseins built a three-story home with a ceramics factory in ?
the basement and a patio on the roof. Today, Ms. Peretz, a dignified woman of 48, credits ?
her ex-husband with teaching her to speak Arabic as well as to read and write her native ?
Hebrew. Having run away at 10, she was illiterate when they met. ?
After nine years of marriage, the couple had Muhammad. They gave up the Tel Aviv ?
apartment and settled in Nur Shams. ?
Both parents said that, as children of unhappy marriages themselves, they were intent on ?
a loving, intact home. ?
?"My father didn't look after me," Mr. Hussein said. At 52, he is a slender, confident man ?
with a shock of white hair and pale blue eyes. He was speaking in the home of a family in ?
an Israeli-Arab village where he was staying, hiding from the Israeli authorities and ?
working in a restaurant near Tel Aviv. He asked that the village and restaurant not be ?
named. "I don't like politics," he said, more than once. ?
All three family members spoke of their early years together in the West Bank with a ?
nostalgic tenderness. Still, there were jarring incidents.?
Ms. Peretz recalled how, during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980's, a passing ?
Israeli soldier hurled an insult at her through her open window. She said she ran out of ?
the house, calling for the commander in Hebrew to protest. "My husband ran after me, ?
with my slippers in one hand and my veil in the other," she said.?
It was around then, during that first uprising, that the young Muhammad began chasing ?
after Israeli soldiers with stones in his hands, Ms. Peretz said. ?
In Nur Shams, Palestinian residents remember the family well. They knew that the ?
mother was originally an Israeli Jew, but they said they accepted her and her son, a claim ?
the family confirms. "She was considered a Muslim," said Omar Issa, 19, who said he ?
remembered Ms. Peretz coming to cook with his mother. ?
Like others, he said he recalled one quality clearly about the parents: The way they ?
hovered lovingly over their only child. ?
Sergeant Hussein remembers hikes with his father through nearby pine forests. He ?
remembers dreams of becoming a doctor. He remembers the Sony Walkman his father ?
bought him as a reward for a stellar report card. ?
For his 15th birthday, on Aug. 24, 1997, his parents threw a party on the roof patio. A ?
lengthy family videotape of the party shows him in a black suit, white shirt and silver tie, ?
dancing in a circle with Palestinian youths, arms over one another's shoulders. ?
Ms. Peretz is there too, with matronly amusement coaxing a young boy through some ?
dance steps. In a gray suit, Mr. Hussein, the proud host, father and husband, beams as he ?
takes it all in.?
Yet Ms. Peretz said that it was as early as the first Palestinian uprising that things began ?
to go wrong.?
Mr. Hussein traces the trouble to the Oslo peace effort that followed that uprising, and to ?
the arrival in the occupied territories of Yasir Arafat and the rest of the leadership of the ?
Palestine Liberation Organization. The societies began sharpening their edges; the ?
refugee camp became more hopeless. ?
?"Before they started with this peace, we were living in peace," he said. ?
The family, and residents of Nur Shams, say the Husseins steered clear of Palestinian ?
politics. Mr. Hussein said he never belonged to any of the factions and tried to keep his ?
son out of them. ?
Sergeant Hussein that he used to read pamphlets he was given extolling factions like ?
Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He would ask his father about them and be told, firmly, ?
to stay away. Then, one day, he showed up in the Palestinian uniform. ?
The next Palestinian uprising was some three years off, but violence, though sporadic, ?
was increasing. Hopes for a new Middle East were fading. As usual, Mr. Hussein's ?
worries were more personal: "I saw my son deteriorating. I have only one son. I have ?
nothing else." ?
He sent the boy and his mother to Dimona. ?
Together and Apart ?
A handful of places in the desert town of Dimona were refuges for the boy from the West ?
Bank who, at 16, ceased to be Muhammad Hussein and became Yossi Peretz. ?
One of them is a small park of palm trees and rose bushes that frame a curving pool. In ?
the pool are four fountains, a large and small one standing together and two others ?
separated at the pool's extremes.?
The first time he saw the fountain, Sergeant Hussein said, he thought of a father and son. ?
?"Here they are together," he said, pointing at the two mingled fountains on a recent balmy ?
evening. He pointed at the two other fountains: "Here they are apart."?
Less than a three-hour drive - checkpoints excepted - from the windswept West Bank ?
hills where Muhammad Hussein once hiked with his Palestinian father, Dimona stands in ?
the Negev Desert, built upon sand, hammered by the sun. ?
It is a place where, in apartment houses of crumbling concrete, Israel has settled poor ?
Jewish immigrants. In recent years, Moroccan names have given way on the mail slots to ?
those of Jews from Russia and Uzbekistan. ?
Though his story was stranger than most, Yossi Peretz found himself an immigrant trying ?
to assimilate alongside other immigrants. He mastered Hebrew with other new students at ?
a special language school within the high school. ?
He had family waiting for him in Dimona, an advantage over some other immigrants. He ?
took to attending Friday night prayers at the synagogue with his grandfather, who lives in ?
the apartment next door to his mother's. ?
Having attended schools in the West Bank that were segregated by sex, he was startled to ?
find himself in class with girls, some of them in snug clothes. He wondered at first if he ?
was considered stupid, he recalled, because he had a woman for a teacher. ?
He won an award for an antidrug play he produced. He received a certificate for teaching ?
Arabic. But, he also struggled in a new school system, and, as his mother confronted a ?
new poverty, his hopes for a medical career died. ?
Eventually, he found a Russian girlfriend - and learned Russian. He hung out and ?
smoked cigarettes with other teenagers, on a rise from which they could easily see ?
approaching teachers. ?
Yet, even there, the young man sat a little apart. Other immigrants had switched societies. ?
He had switched sides. ?
He was also leaving behind the man he considered his role model and best friend. At one ?
point, he did not see his father for at least a year. ?
Mr. Hussein said that, when he sent his family away, he thought he would remain behind ?
in Nur Shams and regularly see his son and ex-wife. But local Palestinian officials ?
demanded that he bring back his son. He said that when he refused, masked men showed ?
up at his house and shot at his door. ?
His house was partly burned and smeared with graffiti accusing him of being a Jew. ?
Since then, he has lived the fugitive life of an illegal Palestinian worker inside Israel. ?
Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel have been executed in the streets of ?
Tulkarm.?
Today, the steel door of the house is puckered with seven rusty indentations that may ?
have been caused by bullets. Two six-pointed stars in faded red paint appear nearby.?
In the refugee camp, residents acknowledge the attack on the Hussein home, but they ?
give a different reason for it. They say that, after his wife departed, Mr. Hussein took in ?
as a tenant a married woman, a violation of local mores. ?
?"He's not a collaborator," Ibrahim Nimr, 32, the head of the local services committee, ?
said of Mr. Hussein. "But this is a conservative society." ?
Ms. Peretz also says she believes that her ex-husband got involved with someone else. "I ?
love him," she said, "but I can't go back to him." Mr. Hussein denies any other ?
relationship and says he hopes to reunite with Ms. Peretz some day. ?
A Turning Point
In Sergeant Hussein's narrative of his own life, his father's flight from the refugee camp ?
marks a turning point. He had been anxious at the prospect of having to join the Israeli ?
Army, but the way his father was treated changed his feelings. ?
?"I was considering if I could face the people I grew up with most of my life," he said. ?
?"But when they burned down our house, and wrote that graffiti on the walls, it made the ?
decision very easy." ?
When he was called up for army service, his father encouraged him in his desire for a ?
combat role, Sergeant Hussein said. ?
Mr. Hussein said of his son: "I tell him `If they post you at a checkpoint, and you see me, ?
and I'm not supposed to cross, then you should stop me and not let me through. You ?
should do your job with total loyalty.' " ?
He said he did not think of his son as fighting against Palestinians. Rather, he viewed him ?
as "guarding his own land." ?
Pressed as to how it felt to yield his claim on his son's identity, Mr. Hussein said he had ?
no choice, given the times. His son could no longer divide his home or loyalties. ?
When the young man joined the Israeli Army, he insisted on retaining the name on his ?
birth certificate, Muhammad Hussein. An officer tried to talk him out of that, but he ?
replied, "If you don't like what I am, I can't change it." He serves in a unit largely drawn ?
from Israel's non-Jewish, Arabic-speaking minorities. ?
The family is seeking legal status for Mr. Hussein in Israel, arguing that he chose to ?
provide Israel with his son. ?
?"He did the right thing when he divorced me and gave our state a man who has a head on ?
his shoulders," Ms. Peretz said. "It's not possible that a man gives his blood and his soul ?
to this country and they won't come forward to help him out." ?
In letters to the Israeli government, Sergeant Hussein has mused that Israel will let his ?
father legally see him only if he dies in combat. "Through no fault of my own, I live ?
without Father that is, the most vital thing in the life of a person," he wrote in one of two ?
letters in March to the interior minister, Avraham Poraz. ?
Israel has recently tightened its already strict rules governing "family reunification." The ?
government says that Palestinians were using sham marriages to Israeli Arabs to move ?
from the territories into Israel, threatening security.?
Now, father and son seldom see each other. When they meet they do so, Mr. Hussein ?
says, like two thieves. Mr. Hussein is so anxious, he did not visit his son when a foot ?
problem put the soldier in a hospital for a month.?
Sergeant Hussein is defending Israel against Palestinians, while fighting with his ?
government to accept his Palestinian father. Maybe that is why he speaks sometimes with ?
such bitterness of both societies he has known. ?
?"I saw the life here, and I saw the life there," he said. "It's the same thing. Everybody's ?
looking out for their own interest, and that's it."?
Mr. Hussein imagines a future in which he helps buy his son a restaurant, then works ?
there himself, always keeping his eyes on the child. Ms. Peretz says she will mop floors ?
to help the child pay for a medical education.?
But Sergeant Hussein says he does not know what he will do, or even where he will live. ?
Maybe, he said, he will try to build a life in another country.?
His father seems to wonder how his son identifies himself, deep down. "I can't tell you ?
what's deep in his heart," Mr. Hussein said. "What I keep telling my son is, it doesn't ?
matter. Respect the old and guard the young, and be loyal. There are Jews who love ?
Arabs and Arabs who love Jews, and God above everything. Everything else is ?
secondary."?
There are rare moments when everything else does seem secondary for Sergeant Hussein. ?
On his own, he is a sad, lonely young man. But in the presence of either parent, he ?
blooms. Meeting or parting from his father - he has seen him three or four times in a ?
year - Sergeant Hussein weeps. ?
When he saw him here for the first time in several months recently, he shook with sobs: a ?
burly Israeli sergeant in olive fatigues, a star of David on the chain around his neck, ?
clutching his Palestinian father on a Dimona sidewalk, not letting go, defying his state, ?
defying, it seemed, the centrifugal conflict itself. ?