The 15-year-old Amer Kamal was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint after a night out with his friends. He was trying to get from the West Bank to his home in Jerusalem.
A guard asked him to present an identification card, something required of all Palestinians over the age of 16.
“He wanted to see my ID,” recalled Kamal, now a USM international relations and business major. “He didn’t believe I wasn’t 16.”
Because he didn’t have one, Kamal was stripped and beaten for two hours.
The beatings eventually stopped when Kamal’s father arrived, presenting photos to prove his son was telling the truth.
“I still remember him (the soldier) pointing his M-16 at me and the look on his face,” said Kamal.
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians have gotten worse since then.
From September of 2000 through March of 2002 the Associated Press reports that 1,269 Palestinians have died in the conflict, including 54 suicide bombers. In that same time 416 Israelis have died.
Kamal, who spent all of his life in the Middle East before coming to USM two years ago, said he witnessed students die inside his high school. He said now, when he calls his friends’ homes in Jerusalem, he doesn’t ask their parents how his friends are doing. “I ask if they’re alive,” he said.
His life in his homeland is a lot different than his home at Portland Hall on Congress Street.
“At first I thought it’s worse that I’m living here. Sometimes I felt like a traitor – walking around in one of the most peaceful cities in the world,” he said. “Here, we worry about what we’re going to do this weekend. There, it’s how am I going to survive tomorrow.”
Kamal said he talks to his family in Jerusalem at least once a day. His parents have already told him he can’t go home until late summer, assuming the violence calms down. He said it wasn’t easy to see the recent escalation in fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
“When I first saw what was happening I said I wish I could go back and fight . But then I got thinking maybe I could do more good here,” said Kamal. “What would it do if I went there and got killed?”
But he understands why the Palestinians continue to fight and support their leader Yasser Arafat, despite his declining credibility, even among his own people.
“When you see your country attacked you want to defend it,” he said. “Even if your leader is the worst leader, when he’s under siege everyone supports him . People say ‘if you touch Arafat, we’ll fight until we die.'”
Kamal said he also understands why there continue to be suicide bombers.
“People need to think why someone would strap a bomb on themselves. It’s because his dad and brother are dead and his family is starving in a refugee camp. If we had tanks and F-16s they wouldn’t go blow themselves up.”
He said he’s happy that President Bush has recently tried to intervene in the situation by sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East.
“Right now America could put the world in World War III or in peace,” said Kamal. “It’s all in America’s hands.”
He doesn’t agree with Bush’s previous strategy of simply encouraging Arafat to tell the Palestinians to end the violence.
“If he (Arafat) says stop that would be surrender,” said Kamal. “We don’t want to surrender. We didn’t lose all those people for nothing.”
Kamal is no stranger to the public eye. As a former camper at Seeds of Peace, a Maine camp that brings Israelis and Palestinians together for the summer, Kamal was featured on several national news programs, including “Nightline.” He’s also spoken before Congress.
He said that his experience in Seeds of Peace brought him closer to Israelis for a brief time, but he doesn’t feel any compassion toward them – especially after learning two of his closest Israeli friends from the camp joined the Israeli army.
Following Sept. 11 Kamal said he tried to stay out of the public eye, despite being questioned by federal agents. The USM Police escorted him from his Portland Hall dorm room to the police station to be questioned by agents.
“It was a big-time stereotype. It was only because I was a Palestinian,” he said. “I told them ‘I don’t know the terrorists and I don’t want to.'”
Kamal said he hasn’t had any more problems as a result of his heritage and that his friends at USM are very supportive.
“I’m a happy guy. Everybody knows me and most people here understand me.”
Executive Editor Steve Peoples can be contacted at: [email protected]