A family with more martyrs in waiting

As the el-Louh family mourns their third relation to die recently in Israel, the wall of their home bears a bleak message

Aisha el-Louh believes that Oslo died with Rabin. For Samir el-Louh, Oslo expired at Camp David. Dib el-Louh insists that Oslo was doomed from the moment Ariel Sharon turned up at the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount. But all were agreed that Oslo killed Nahed el-Louh stone dead a few hours earlier. Just as it had cut down Ayman el-Louh a month ago and, two weeks later, young Mirvat el-Louh, a schoolgirl, just 18 when she choked to death on tear-gas.

Aisha el-Louh believes that Oslo died with Rabin. For Samir el-Louh, Oslo expired at Camp David. Dib el-Louh insists that Oslo was doomed from the moment Ariel Sharon turned up at the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount. But all were agreed that Oslo killed Nahed el-Louh stone dead a few hours earlier. Just as it had cut down Ayman el-Louh a month ago and, two weeks later, young Mirvat el-Louh, a schoolgirl, just 18 when she choked to death on tear-gas.

The family home in Gaza was not, you might think, an appropriate place to discuss the corpse of the Oslo agreement yesterday, certainly not when the Israelis were delaying the return of Nahed's body for burial from the West Bank town of Tulkarem. But politics runs like blood through the slums of Gaza; mourners mix grief with argument, anger with history.

As Nahed el-Louh's cousin Jawad said, the Oslo agreement was part of the "New World Order" in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Oslo was not of our choosing. But the PLO was pressured to go to the Madrid conference in 1991 and then, when Oslo followed, we hoped the most sensitive issues - Jerusalem, refugees, Jewish settlements - would be resolved. But they were left to the end and that was when something went wrong with Oslo. The Israelis did not intend to stop the settlements on our land and they would not give us east Jerusalem as a capital."

In the concrete hut behind him, other members of the el-Louh family were on the telephone to Tulkarem. Nahed el-Louh's mother, Salwa, had phoned her husband, Fathi, on Friday. "The boy's gone to throw stones," he told her. Which is how Nahed - who was just 20 - received an Israeli bullet in the brain.

The eldest of eight children, he had left school at 14 to help his father as a construction labourer, travelling up to Tulkarem for work three months ago. Yesterday, the family arranged an ambulance to bring his body to the Erez crossing into Gaza, for transfer to a second ambulance which would take him to the family home. The Israelis, the family said, had refused this arrangement. An ambulance would now have to drive from Gaza, across Israel, and bring the body all the way back. The father would not be allowed to return for the burial.

It would be difficult to find a more effective way of enraging a grief-stricken family. Samir el-Louh's anger broke through his political explanations. "Israel had a plan to push what it wanted at Camp David, to give a little bit on the holy places in return for keeping Jerusalem Jewish, to make us give big things for little things," he said. "But the Palestinian leadership had their own red lines. And when the Israelis couldn't push through what they wanted by peaceful means at Camp David, they decided to do so by force. So Sharon went to the Haram al-Sharif."

Nahed's death was scarcely a surprise. Aisha, his 49-year-old cousin, is a female Palestinian police officer who was a member of the Tanzim militia 30 years ago, jailed by the Israelis on 15 March 1970, after being caught carrying weapons in Gaza. She spent six months in the Gaza Central Prison. A tough Arafat employee, she follows the line. "We felt very happy when the Palestinians came here, when Arafat returned to us. We stopped being afraid. We used to believe in peace in the days of Rabin - because he was a man of peace. But with his death, it was all over. You know, we want peace, we want security for our children. But what can we do against Israel? Our stones can do nothing against them."

Amid the sea of mourners - the men are always separated from the women, their voices louder in grief as they are in politics - there were no more believers in Oslo. There were only believers in UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338; in an Israeli withdrawal from the land conquered in 1967, from all of Gaza, all of the West Bank, all of east Jerusalem. No more settlements, they kept saying.

Dib el-Louh - the father of Nahed's cousin Ayman who was killed last month - was unshaven, tearful, re-living at Nahed's funeral the death of his own son. "We want peace, of course," he said. "All the Palestinians want peace. You must not think that we like fighting. But Oslo was a peace of lies. The Israelis did not want a real peace. Sharon's visit to the mosques showed this. I knew Oslo was finished even before Ayman's death."

On the wall of the el-Louh family home amid the Gaza hovels of Daraj, there is now a grim and powerful message. "Nahed Fathi el-Louh was martyred for the Al-Aqsa Intifada," it says in blue paint. "Ayman el-Louh was martyred for the Intifada. Mirvat el-Louh was martyred for the Intifada. A lot of the el-Louh family are still waiting to be martyred."

* President Clinton has invited Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian President, to talks at the White House on Thursday for a new peace effort, an adviser to Mr Arafat said yesterday. Mr Arafat would reply "within 24 hours", the adviser, Nabil Abu Rdaineh, told Reuters. Palestinian officials said Mr Arafat was likely to accept, a step that Israeli officials have said would clear the way for Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, also to meet Mr Clinton.