Some shunning the Palestinian hard stance

BUREIJ REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip -- After his 12-year-old son died in a hail of bullets in 2000, Jamal al-Dura became the public face of Palestinian suffering as the second intifadah began. He traveled across the Arab world, standing as a symbol of perceived Israeli brutality and growing wealthy from the largesse showered upon him.

Nearly five years later, however, Dura says he has tired of mouthing the counterproductive mottos of Palestinian hard-liners. Instead, with Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last month, he has turned to building a grand new home for his eight surviving children and he has forbidden his eldest son from joining any militant movement, at least until he finishes university.

''One martyr from this family is enough," Dura, 43, said at his home in Bureij.

He's only the most famous of a minority of Gaza Palestinians who are rejecting the all-encompassing culture of intifadah, jihad, and martyrdom that has turned camps like Bureij and Jabaliya into locomotives of the Palestinian militant factions.

These Palestinians believe Gaza has reaped few results from decades of war and militia leadership; now, these disenchanted Palestinians say, it's time to replace calls to arms and total victory over Israel with real improvements for Palestinians, like better education, housing, and jobs.

Hamas, the strongest of the militant factions in Gaza's camps, has trumpeted the Israeli pullout as a triumph of armed resistance. With almost daily military parades and speeches, Hamas's leadership is trying to parlay disengagement into a recruiting boon, an internal power-grab over its more moderate rivals in the Palestinian Authority, and a spark for further militant attacks in the West Bank and Israel.

But the Dura family, long content to allow Palestinian fighters to harness the powerful image of its loss, now has turned inward, charting a path to prosperity for itself instead of concentrating on the public sphere of Palestinian politics.

Iyad, at 19, wanted to join the Fatah movement and fight the Israelis. ''My father said to me, go and study. After you get a degree you can decide what to do with your life," Iyad said. He is leaving soon for Algiers on a scholarship to study law.

Jewish settlers were evacuated from 21 settlements in Gaza by Aug. 22, but the Israeli Defense Forces will occupy those areas for about another month until they demolish the settlers' homes and coordinate a security handover with Palestinian forces.

Since the withdrawals began, militant factions in Gaza have staged political rallies, burning dollhouse-sized replicas of settlers' homes, marching through Gaza City with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and most important, claiming credit for the pullout.

The Palestinian Authority had promised to restrain militant factions and make sure the Israelis didn't pull out under fire. But, according to the Israeli military, Palestinians opened fire 18 times during the disengagement, lightly wounding two soldiers. They also launched two Qassam rockets and fired 10 mortar shells, while Israel foiled three separate planned bombs.

''Celebrate the achievement of your martyrdom," thundered Hamas official Subhi Rasheed, the imam at Friday prayers in Jabaliya, a refugee camp north of Gaza City. ''The Jews will never stop assassinating you unless the Islamic nation is strong."

Such rhetoric has long been the staple of places like Jabaliya, which is nicknamed ''The Citadel of the Martyr Warriors" because its youths have long fed the factional Palestinian militias, mostly Hamas and Fatah.

''Citadel of fools is more like it," declared Jamal abu Nasser, the owner of a taxi fleet whose dispatch center is across the street from the main Hamas mosque in Jabaliya.

''Look at them," he said as hundreds of teenagers in green Hamas baseball caps and headbands converged on the mosque, preparing for a Friday afternoon militia rally. ''They act like it's some kind of wedding."

Abu Nasser, 52, said he tired of the imam's kind of talk a decade ago. He is a no-nonsense businessman who holds forth for hours at his dispatch center, indifferent to the scores of young Hamas and Fatah supporters who can hear his scathing critique of the leaders he describes as ''corrupt, delusional militants."

''We cannot defeat Israel. Jerusalem will never be a Palestinian capital. This is empty talk," Abu Nasser said. ''Most people don't understand this reality."

Such opinions are a counterpoint to the kind of talk that is common currency in Gaza. Nearly every Palestinian in the Strip, when asked about the Israeli withdrawal, opens their reply with an identical phrase, borrowed from the speeches of their political leaders.

''I am happy, but my joy is not complete, because Israel still controls the sea, the sky and the crossings," said Mohammed Ahmed Moussa, 62, a grocer in Jabaliya.

But then, as if finished with the standard talking points, he ridiculed the Hamas supporters across the square.

''Let's be frank. If Israel didn't want to leave Gaza, no one could have forced them out," Moussa said. ''Those who claim the rockets and attacks made them leave are kidding themselves."

Moussa has been a member of Fatah -- the building block of the Palestine Liberation Organization and now the Palestinian Authority -- since 1965, but that doesn't stop him and his family from lambasting the Palestinian leadership.

The cult of ''martyrdom" is everywhere in Gaza. Paintings, murals, and posters memorialize young men, usually depicted with headbands and guns, who have died fighting Israel. Banners, fliers, and stickers remind people of the party message: armed struggle until Israel is totally defeated.

In the background on a recent Friday afternoon, a sound truck circulated through Jabaliya repeating the same message over and over from enormous speakers: ''Victory has been achieved by the hands of the mujahideen!"

It is against this backdrop that the Dura family initially embraced its high-profile role. French television broadcast a now-iconic image of young Mohammed cowering in his father's arms before he was shot dead on Sept. 30, 2000. His father carries the scars of eight bullets that struck him, and his right hand is a ball of gnarled fingers he can't move.

There has been heated debate in recent years whether the Duras were even struck by Israeli bullets during the gunfight or whether they were instead hit by wild Palestinian gunfire. A campaign led in part by Boston University Professor Richard Landes has sought to portray the Dura case as an example of ''Pallywood," or theatrical Palestinian propaganda.

But there's no question that Mohammed became the most famous ''martyr" of the intifadah. His image was issued on postage stamps in Arab countries, and Algeria sponsored an international poetry festival in his memory.

Now, though, his family has eschewed the heated political posturing of most of their neighbors in Bureij. Most houses fly either a green flag for Hamas or a yellow flag for Fatah, but Dura flies neither from the roof of his apartment building.

Dura doesn't think the intifadah is over. ''This is just a truce," he said. He has returned to work as a construction contractor for the first time since he was wounded five years ago.

He is building a four-story apartment building for his children, full of luxurious touches like decorative molding on the ceilings. A rich Gulf sheik gave Dura $100,000 to build the new house, he said.

But his family's turn away from the spotlight shouldn't be mistaken as a full embrace of peace.

''I wanted to be a military commander," Iyad said. But the Palestinian Authority rejected his application to be one of the handful of students it sponsors to study at military academies in friendly Arab countries.

''Now I want to come back to Gaza and work as a prosecutor," Iyad said. ''I will be a lawyer, and others jihadis. Both are important."