Marie Colvin - On the Front Line

Marek, who speaks Arabic, by all accounts fell at first sight for Mattar, who was educated in a convent school in Bethlehem and used to babysit for tourist families.

Mattar says it was mutual. In her hotel room last week, she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled when she said: ‘Yes, I love him. We met for the first time eight months ago; we have been happy ever since.’

Sitting looking out on a view of a west Jerusalem street, the Jewish side of the divided city, she reflects on how circumscribed her life has become. She cooks meals on a gas burner in the room and feels out of place among package-trip tourists who fill the lobby. She is also three months pregnant with Marek’s baby.

But Mattar says her life has always been difficult. Her father drank and gambled until her mother kicked him out, and she married at 16 to a man who already had a wife and five children. When he was imprisoned she returned home to Beit Jalla with a child.

Marek began his courtship by calling to her from his army jeep as she walked to a friend’s house. Soon her mother, Nina, noticed she was out all night every night.

‘When I asked,’ she said, ‘Abir replied that it was none of my business. Then I noticed an army jeep would stop outside and beep. The jeep seemed to be around all the time.’

Nina worried that her daughter’s relationship would bring unwanted attention. The Mattar family was already ostracised. Nina’s lifestyle is hardly suited to a traditional Arab village. Last week she dressed to greet visitors in leopard-print stretch pants and a black lace top.

Nina went out to work when her husband left, something that is not done in traditional Arab culture, and had a series of boyfriends before remarrying. ‘I’m not a virgin,’ she said, chain-smoking as she looked out at the village of sun-splashed stone homes. ‘I’ve always had a boyfriend. That doesn’t make me a whore like everyone in this town says. Look at my apartment, if I was a whore I would have made some money. I’ve only one bed and not even a proper bathroom.’

She also collaborated with the Israeli occupying forces. Left with seven children and spurned by her neighbours, she says she felt few loyalties. The police gave her 200 shekels (about £70) every time she passed them information. She stopped when the intifada began.

Before that, such activities meant ostracism. Now, with young teenagers controlling the streets and talking of purifying the Palestinian community, they are life-threatening. About 200 Palestinians have been killed for collaboration or prostitution.

But although Nina warned her daughter she was endangering the family, there was little a mother could do. ‘Their love was burning. Avi was crazy about her and she lost her head.’ The young couple would return together in broad daylight after nights of passion in Marek’s jeep and Mattar would bring him coffee before he returned to his unit.

The family began to receive threats and Marek made things worse. He and his unit began picking up local teenagers and beating them. Nina says she thinks he was trying to show off to her daughter.

Desperate, Nina complained to the police and sent word to Marek’s Israeli wife. The police ignored her but his wife came down and staked out the house in the Arab village. When Marek and Mattar returned, she ran out into the street with a kitchen knife. Mattar made off in his jeep but the story was too public to be kept quiet.

The military suspended Marek. Mattar found a mongrel dog hanging in the family toilet, dead, its head in the water. She quickly left town. Publicity about the case has made it the gossip of Israelis as well as Palestinians.

Mattar says she and Marek plan to marry after they both divorce. She says she will convert to Judaism. ‘I can’t go back to live among the Arabs,’ she said. But she is worried that Marek’s return to Israel may change him. He has been heavily criticised in the Hebrew press.

Marek now faces a military tribunal to explain the liaison. His defence is that he was only fraternising with Mattar in a patriotic endeavour to recruit her as a spy. At the moment observers are not betting on a happy ending to the tale.

Desperately seeking answers in the Arafat slipstream: Yasser Arafat

5 June 1990

The Times

When people know you have spent a year making a film about Yasser Arafat, the question they ask most often is ‘Were you ever afraid?’ At times I felt frustrated, angry, despairing and very tired, but not afraid. In his manner, Arafat is one of the less threatening people you are likely to meet.

Making a documentary of him takes endurance, not courage. We had flown into Tunis for a scheduled interview to begin our filming. But Arafat was in Baghdad. The film opens with a Tunis to Baghdad telephone call. It is 2am and Arafat seems to think the only way we can get a connection in Baghdad in time to meet him is to find a boat to Paris. We agree instead to fly separately to China where he is due for a state visit, then fly back together in his borrowed Iraqi jet.

This scene must cause great pain to BBC accountants. But at the time it seemed the ideal trip. We would film behind the scenes in an exotic location while the terrorist-turned-statesman wheeled and dealed, then have him as a captive interviewee for the hours it took to fly back to the Middle East. The latter was the most alluring. Arafat grows bored in interviews and will often stand up, unclip his microphone and thank you as he walks out.

But the Chinese Foreign Ministry called Arafat while we were somewhere over Pakistan and said: ‘We cannot receive you, the students are causing trouble.’ We headed back to Tunis, arriving in time to board his borrowed Iraqi jet and set off to the summit in Casablanca. But the China trip did pay off. Arafat takes everything personally. Had we decided not to go it would have signalled a lack of commitment, however well-founded our misgivings.

Marie with Yasser Arafat, c. 1994.

When we finally caught up with him, he owed us one. We were instantly famous in PLO ranks as the crew that had gone to Peking to see the ‘Old Man’ and been stood up. Everyone had a similar tale; this time it was not Arafat’s fault, but it usually is. People around him, a travelling entourage that is both family and staff, began helping with tips on the etiquette of living alongside him. One of my journal entries notes a word of advice from a senior aide: ‘When I break your foot, you have gone wrong.’

Arafat’s schedule is exhausting and it wears down everyone around him. Half the hotels in Tunis seem to be filled with people waiting to see Arafat. Fighters with blood rivalries meet in the lobby of the Hilton and turn their backs. Arafat maintains his own rigid personal organisation within the chaos around him. Days are for seeing to problems such as parents seeking university tuition for their children. Serious business takes place at night, dating from the time the PLO was an underground organisation. Meetings begin about 9pm and rarely end before 3am. Everyone is expected to be at Arafat’s call.

He never tells anyone, even close aides, his schedule in advance for security reasons. When you fly with him you do not know your destination until you take off. Asking a simple question at breakfast such as ‘What are you doing today?’ brings startled stares from aides and silence from Arafat.