Published: Mon, June 5, 2017 @ 12:05 a.m.

Second of a two-part series

By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

LIBERTY

Fearful of a low-flying jet fighter, Yasser Ismail broke his hand at age 10 when he jumped off a stone wall he was sitting on during the Six Day War of June 1967.

They were flying very low. We got scared from that, Ismail said of his familys experience of the terrifying roar of military jets as they lived 9 miles north of Jerusalem.

Ismail, who lives in Liberty Township, said he believed they were Israeli jets.

My hand healed crooked after his mother fashioned a homemade cast for it, he added.

When the war erupted, men vanished from his neighborhood, he recalled.

My father left. All the men left the area. I heard the older people saying that the Jews are killing all men, so all the men left for the interior of Jordan, he said.

We woke up one day and they were gone, he said of high-ranking Jordanian army officers and their families, who lived in the vicinity of a Jordanian army base near his home.

That base is now an Israeli military base with an Israeli settlement next to it.

Ismail lived in a home without electricity or running water in the central West Bank city of Al-Bireh, which is adjacent to Ramallah.

The West Bank was under Jordanian control before Israel began occupying it during the 1967 war.

Besides his memory of injuring his hand, Ismail recalled hiding in a cave near his home for several days with about 60 of his neighbors during the war.

He heard news accounts of the war on a battery-operated transistor radio from a Jordanian government-run radio station.

As Israel emerged victorious, Ismail recalled he and his brother ran toward buses carrying occupying Israeli soldiers arriving to establish a checkpoint.

My mother started screaming at us and said, Come back. Come back. Theyre going to kill you, Ismail said in a recent interview.

The soldiers came and assured my mother there was nothing that was going to happen to us. They gave us candy, he added.

Ismail, however, recalled one incident in which his mother became angry when she heard an Israeli soldier make a derogatory comment about the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

An Israeli officer scolded the soldier and apologized to Ismails mother, promising that such utterances would not be repeated, Ismail said.

After the Six Day War, the economic well-being of West Bank residents improved, Ismail said.

We were way below poverty under Jordanian rule, he noted.

Under Israels occupation of the West Bank, People started going into Israel and started working. The economy all of a sudden was going, and we started having enough food, and everybody was working until the 1970s or 1980s, he recalled.

Ismail obtained employment as a dishwasher in a Jerusalem restaurant and as a construction worker.

You get paid good money when you work in Israel. Its nothing like when you work in Palestine, he said, adding that a laborer can earn six times more money in Israel than in Palestine.

Ismail came to live in the United States in 1978 and now owns a Farrell, Pa., check-cashing and health and beauty aid store.

He still maintains a residence in Al-Bireh, however, where he typically spends one month every two years.

Today, he said, the life of Palestinians is a lot harder than before because of these walls Israel built for security reasons, which make travel difficult.

If youre a student, you never make it on time to your college because of these checkpoints and walls. If youre a worker, you cannot make it to work on time, he explained.

Now, they [the Israelis] dont hire Palestinians because of security reasons, he added.

The Jewish people dont have security and we [the Palestinians] dont have security, he said.

Ismail believes the arms race promoted by the United States and Europe is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

The United States and the Europeans are the problem, and theyre using the Palestinians and the Jews, he said. Theyre using us to keep their interests going to be able to sell military equipment to the region.

The Russians sell it to the Syrians; and the Americans sell it to the Saudis and Qatar. Everybodys got their own gang. If there is peace, they cant sell this stuff anymore, Ismail said.

I wish peace comes through one day, he added.

The goal of achieving peace and security for all in the Middle East is also articulated by Youngstowns Jewish community.

You have numerous individuals who are living in areas of the West Bank and Gaza who have little security in their lives right now, and they deserve security as much as the Israelis do, said Bonnie Deutsch Burdman, director of community relations and government affairs for the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

Their quest for statehood is no less legitimate than the Jews quest for statehood in 1948, when modern-day Israel was established, she added.

The Jewish community overwhelmingly supports a two-state solution, in which Israel would coexist peacefully with a Palestinian state, she said.

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Liberty man broke his hand and hid in cave - Youngstown Vindicator