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So far, Muscatine man's family is OK

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By Thomas Geyer / QUAD-CITY TIMES | Tuesday, April 09, 2002 | No comments posted

John Dabeet is not looking forward to his next phone bill.

The Palestinian native who teaches economics and statistics at Muscatine Community College has been on the phone each and every day, calling his parents, siblings and cousins in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank.

"So far, they are okay," Dabeet said Sunday. "The electricity is back on, although the water is on and off. They also are still under curfew, as they have been the past 10 days."

It has been a horrifying time for him and for his family, he said.

"On Wednesday, the Israeli soldiers went into my mom's house, put my mom and my sister in a room and pointed their guns from the windows. They were in the house for about an hour. You can imagine how terrifying that must have been. It's nonsense."

Then on Friday, he said, Israeli tanks rolled down the street where his mother lives.

"With loudspeakers, the Israelis ordered all men between the ages of 15 and 45 to leave their homes and go into the street," Dabeet said. He is not sure how many of the men were arrested.

But it is not just the actions that Israeli forces have taken in Palestinian controlled areas that are infuriating, he said. It also is the fact that Israeli weapons have come to bear on American citizens who, by providing more than $2 billion in foreign aid each year, have paid for Israel's weapons. Add to that the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will not heed President Bush's call to withdraw, and Dabeet begins to doubt the Israeli leader's often voiced desire for peace.

"We paid for their tanks and their F-16s," Dabeet said. "They get billions of dollars every year from us, and they're not even listening to us."

Dabeet believes that at some time, the peace process will get back on track.

It has to, he added. "This conflict threatens everybody in the world, one way or another."

As president and founder of AMPAL, or Americans and Palestinians for Peace, an organization that works closely with the United Nations and the Palestinian delegation to the UN, Dabeet will meet April 19 with the U.S. Congress Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the conflict. He then will meet with representatives of the U.S. State Department.

"I think if the U.S. wants the peace process to get back on track, we can achieve it," he said, adding that to achieve at least a cease fire, the U.S. will have to put a lot of pressure on Israel.

But, Dabeet said, there is no way that the U.S. cannot be involved. "The U.S. is involved by virtue of the fact that it gives so much money each year to Israel."

Maybe, he said, the Bush administration should get the advice of somebody like Jimmy Carter, who engineered the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. "Anything that might help the situation and bring the people together, let's try it," he said.

Thomas Geyer can be contacted at

(563) 383-2328 or tgeyer@qctimes.com.