Interview with Raymonda Tawil, the militant Palestinian feminist and peace activist whose daughter married Yasser Arafat

Ha'aretz, Aviva Lori – She was known as "the tigress from Nablus," a coinage, probably, of the peace activist Uri Avnery. From her place of exile in St. Julian's, a tourist town in Malta, Raymonda Tawil casts a deeply nostalgic eye over everyone and everything. She even has fond memories of the Israeli soldiers and officers against whom she waged an uncompromising battle. "Unlike those of the present time, those with whom I was in contact were decent people," she says. "Occupation is occupation, yes, but they had a human face. You could talk to them."

The last time Tawil encountered the present generation of the Israeli army was in Ramallah in 2002. Her daughter, Suha, was already married to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "At the time," she recalls, "Arafat was under siege in the Muqata" - Palestinian Authority headquarters, in Ramallah - "and soldiers came to my house to conduct a search. They were not the soldiers of 1967 or even of 1976."

Isn't it possible that you are romanticizing the past?

"No. I spoke with them. They had come to kill in cold blood at the orders of [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon. They killed our neighbor on her balcony. They entered her home and opened fire at her. That would not have happened before, not even in [Moshe] Dayan's time, when there was also killing in cold blood. Then they entered my house and I shouted at them in Hebrew, 'Stop! What are you doing? Have you gone mad?' They were stunned because I spoke to them in Hebrew. They went from room to room and saw the photographs of Arafat and said, 'This is the man we are looking for.' I said, 'This is the man who made peace with you.' It was the day of the attack in Haifa [at the Maza Restaurant]. I asked them why they were willing to accept orders to kill, and they replied, 'If we do not kill, we will be killed.' What could I say to them? That Israelis and Palestinians sat in this house and talked about the future and about peace, and you are pointing a rifle at my neck? I was not the one who perpetrated the attack in Haifa." Read more