Brown University Prof. Jarat Chopra has worked in war zones. Ramallah, he says, is not one.
In a war zone, there is, alongside the fighting, a thread of normal life. The West Bank is different. It is a "combat zone."
"There is only the abnormalcy of conflict, without any of the normal life," he explained by phone from Jerusalem yesterday.
It was midnight there, and it had been an extraordinarily emotional day, he said. Chopra escaped Ramallah yesterday after being trapped for 11 days in a house with a quickly diminishing supply of food and water. The explosions outside were the "fairly methodical destruction" of the city.
Chopra, who had traveled to the West Bank during spring break at Brown as part of his work as an adviser hired by the British to advise Palestinians of peacekeeping matters, had unsuccessfully attempted to flee twice.
He and his colleagues finally made it out of Ramallah, thanks to a friend who knew an Israeli general. Chopra spoke by phone yesterday with several journalists gathered at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The 37-year-old British citizen is an assistant professor and researcher there.
At a checkpoint, Chopra's friend handed a cell phone to the guard. The Israeli general was waiting on the phone line, and ordered the border guard to let the group through.
They walked 50 feet into Jerusalem with a "great, heaving sigh," and were shocked at the normalcy of life only a few feet away, Chopra said. Chopra plans to return to the United States tomorrow night.
Once they were out of Ramallah, Chopra said he had had "an emotional meltdown."
"Not just about getting out of the city," he said, "but about the situation at large, which is deeply . . . depressing."
Chopra said he witnessed a "humanitarian disaster."
Many residents in Ramallah, he said, are without electricity, clean water and food. At stores, there is almost no fresh fruit or vegetables.
The city is not collecting garbage, which is overflowing and, Chopra believes, contaminating the water supply. There are a number of rotting bodies in the streets, because ambulances and relief workers, fearful of being fired on, aren't coming into the city. With the decay of trash and bodies, there is a fear of an epidemic, he said.
As Chopra left Ramallah, he saw that the city was being ringed with barbed wire. Israel, reacting to a series of terrifying suicide bombings and attacks, has declared the West Bank a "closed military zone." Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his parliament that the Israeli offensive would continue until Palestinian militants had been crushed, according to wire service reports.
Chopra was part of a United Nations transitional team that two years ago helped to establish a local government in newly independent East Timor.
He supports Secretary of State Colin Powell's vision of a peace process between Israel and Palestinian authorities. But now, he said, there must also be drastic measures by perhaps the United Nations to rebuild the West Bank.
Basic services have been damaged, he said. From inside the house in Ramallah, he often heard large explosions which seemed out of context: the noises did not sound like gunfire. It was the regular destruction of roads and buildings, he said.
On Sunday, he said, the Ministry of Education was looted of its computers and files.
Before the offensive, Ramallah residents had rushed out to shop and prepare after the series of Passover suicide bombings by militants. They feared an invasion, Chopra said. Yet, they had been surprised by the "dimensions of it, the power of it, the totality of it."
Amjad Aatallah, a legal adviser who is working with Chopra on advising Palestinians on the peacemaking process, was part of the group that made it out yesterday.
Asked if there was any grain of hope for the peace process, Aatallah said there must be hope, "because the alternative is unacceptable."
A few Brown students came to hear Chopra's comments. They included Lara Harb, a 21-year-old sophomorewho is from Ramallah.
"It has never been this bad . . . people scared for their lives," she said of the conflict in her homeland.
Her parents are stuck in their house. Her father, a heart surgeon, was struggling to treat patients. Several of her male friends had been arrested, she said.
Harb said the majority of Palestinians oppose the suicide bombings, which she described as being the work of minority right-wing parties who think violence is the only answer. She went home last summer, and is not sure when she will go back.
"I love Ramallah," she said. "It is beautiful. It is home. It was always a place to go back to."
