August 24th: Talk, talk, talk

Our itinerary today is to hear from a variety of voices about the prospects for peace in Israel. First, we hear from a General with the Defense Ministry. A man in his late 60s, he talks in a low, husky voice, with a heavy accent, and is not only a dull speaker, but very difficult to hear. Being from the Ministry, he is cautious in his remarks, and really I do not learn anything new or startling. He actually defends the Barak government's decision to return part of the Golan to Syria, which I am inclined to believe will never happen. [N.B.: Even then, in August, 2000, I was convinced it wouldn't happen.]

The one thing I find noteworthy about the General's remarks is that he keeps saying what "wonderful people" the Palestineans are. Those are his exact words - "The Palestineans are a wonderful people." He says it three or four times in the course of his talk, and each time, it strikes me as remarkably patronizing. Later in the morning, Yitzhak, our guide, asks me what I thought of the General, and I share my impression - that saying repeatedly that the Palestineans are a wonderful people just comes off as patronizing, and that it reminds me of how, in my grandmother's day, people used to say that Negroes had a wonderful sense of rhythm. Yitzhak doesn't follow this analogy at all, even though he was born in Massachusetts. In fact, I think he is mildly offended with me for making it.

After the General, we hear from an Orthodox Feminist, who has organized a peace movement of Orthodox women. She is from the States, and at least we can hear her, but all in all, I do not find her remarks very interesting either. I am far more interested in gathering my sweat-drenched clothes to be sent out to a cut-rate laundry service, a deal arranged by our tour guides. I make an inventory of all that I am sending out, and bundle the whole stinking mess into a plastic bag, writing my name all over the bag in indelible marker. I will later get everything back, clean, folded, but un-ironed, and one older shirt will prove to have been unable to withstand the ordeal - it is reduced to rags, nicely folded rags, but rags nonetheless.

After we have all turned over our laundry, we board our busses for the next stop on our itnerary, a school for Ethiopian refugee children, located in an absorption center on the south side of the city. The absorption center is a dismal place, strewn with trash, the walls of the ticky-tacky homes smeared with graffiti; for all the world it looks like one of our own inner-city ghettos. However, we learn that this place is now largely empty; the refugees have resettled elsewhere and in a year this absorption center will have been closed down. Would we could one day say something similar about our perpetual holding-places back home!

We disembark in front of the school, a dismal, one story structure only slightly enlivened by paintings of animals on its facade. Unfortunately, the school is not actually in session, but we all go into one of the classrooms, where an Ethiopian social worker tells us a bit about the lives of these refugees. Before leaving the states, our group took up a collection of toys and cash, which originally we wanted to give directly to the families we met the day before, but were convinced it would be better to donate it to the agency which runs this school and the absorption center. The classroom is a bit shabby, but not as depressing as the neighborhood outside; the walls are decorated with posters and children's drawings, and mobiles of paper cut-outs hang from the ceiling. It is not unlike one of our stateside kindergartens, except a bit shabbier.

From the absorption center, we head south to the Etzion Block, a group of Israeli-Jewish settlements which is technically on the West Bank (beyond the 1967 Green Line). It is a beautiful region, where deep red soil contrasts with dark green stands of trees and rows of grapevines. The Etzion Block was originally purchased by the Joint and settled by kibbutzim before 1948. But during the War of Independence those first settlers were massacred by Jordanian troops, after being beseiged for weeks. The last defenders were hiding in an underground bunker, and their location was betrayed by a local Arab; ironically, the story is told that scouts from the kibbutz had surprised this Arab several days before, but let him go rather than take him captive or kill him, because one of the Jews recognized him as a neighbor, and they assumed he would keep silent. They were betrayed, and the Arabs slipped up to the bunker in the night, tore open a hatch and threw in grenades, killing nearly everyone.

Needless, to say, after the 1967 war, this area was one of the first to be resettled; in the intervening years no Arabs had lived there. It is now a sizeable community comprised of half a dozen settlements, some, like Efrat, large enough to be considered small towns. We stop at a restaurant and gift shop for lunch, which is cafeteria-style. In the restaurant, at a table nearby, a settler dines, a pistol in the holster on his belt. Though we are on a tight schedule, everyone wants to spend time in the gift shop, which has on sale a large selection of art and religious articles created by settlers within the Etzion Block. It is almost all of a high quality, and I acquire several small paintings there which will grace the walls of my home.

After nearly two hours, we're back on board the busses, heading into Efrat, which is also the home-town of our intrepid tour-guide, Yitzhak. There we split into three smaller groups, each to hear a perspective from one of the settlers. My group goes into a nearby synagogue to hear from an American-born woman with a strident and sarcastic manner. At one point she notes that she "can't call the West Bank Judea and Samaria because it makes me sound like a right-winger", which of course, makes her sound like a right-winger. She maintains that Israel makes all the concessions, and that nothing is ever enough for the Palestineans. They won't settle for anything less than 100%, which means no Jewish state. She goes on to tell us that the Palestineans are indoctrinating their children to kill Jews; their maps show all of Israel and the West Bank as "Palestine", crossword puzzles identify Jaffa (!) as an "occupied city", textbooks refer to even that part of Israel behind the 1948 borders as "occupied territory", and media cartoons show virulent Jewish stereotypes.

Most of this is surprising to us; we have heard little about this sort of propaganda on the part of the P.A. back home, and it will, after all, be another month before the fragile façade of rapprochement concocted by Barak and the Clinton administration is torn to tatters. Within a year, all that this woman, who seems so edgy and strident to us this August afternoon, all that this woman says will be corroborated by history. She tells us that the Peace process must be stopped, for there will be a blow-up regardless and better it should happen now than later, with Israel weakened by untenable concessions, with borders that are no longer defensible. Her words seem hyperbolic and dangerous to us, but ... we do not know what lies ahead.

In fact, under the agreements being negotiated in the summer of 2000, the Etzion Block and some of the other well-established settlement areas will likely remain part of Israel and be annexed. Gush Etzion in particular has a long history, having been settled and evacuated three times before 1948. Jewish roots run deep here, even in contemporary terms.

From Efrat, we travel to the Aida refugee camp outside of Bethlehem, the oldest refugee camp in the region, having been established shortly after the 1948 war. On our way there, we cross the Green Line several times; it is late afternoon, and as we come into Bethlehem, the Border checkpoint is jammed with workers returning home from jobs inside Israel. Traffic is at a crawl, and the sidewalks are thronged with pedestrians and street vendors selling everything from books to shoes to tapestries to fresh vegetables. It's quite a lively scene, for all that the ordeal of the checkpoint crossing must be, for the average Palestinean, excrutiating and dehumanizing.

The Aida camp is immediately adjacent to Rachel's Tomb, and we are let off on the corner outside the tomb. We've enough time to go in and have a look; the entire of the ancient beehive-shaped mud-brick structure that houses the tomb is now enclosed by a modern building, so we walk down an air-conditioned corridor, past large plexiglass displays to the entrance to the tomb, and go in the men's side. About ten Ashkenazi Chasidim are davening inside; the actual mausoleum is covered by a dark velvet tent, and I can see that many small notes have been folded up and tossed onto the top of the tomb. A mechitza lops off one corner of the room to form the women's section; the mausoleum is entirely in the men's section, ironically, with only one wall visible to the women. We look about respectfully, barely noticed by the davening men, some of whom rock their upper bodies back and forth with such vigor and fervour that one could almost get whiplash just watching them. After a few minutes, we depart, and upon reaching the street again, turn down the unpaved lane alongside the Muslim cemetary which abuts Rachel's Tomb.

When we come to the end of the cemetary wall, we are suddenly met by a wizened older gentleman with a ragged mustache. He salutes us and welcomes us, then gestures toward the cemetary and says that his people, the Palestineans, revere Rachel, mother of the Jews, and love her so much that they have chosen to be buried next to her. This strikes me as an odd thing to say; it dawns on me, though, that this must be one of the Palestinean refugees with whom we are supposed to meet. It turns out he has lived here, in the Aida Camp since 1949; as he is of my late father's generation, he must have been a young man when he came here. We follow this gentleman another two blocks down the lane to a grim concrete building which is the community center, next to the U.N. headquarters.

We are escorted into the basement of the community center; it is a cavernous room, strewn with folding chairs and a few tables. The walls are decorated with posters; since the text is in Arabic, it isn't immediately clear what the posters are about, but one shows a map of the Land in which Israel is represented as a locked door. I'm not sure what the key to the door is supposed to represent, but I can guess. On another wall, a poster shows an old man weeping in the desert and being comforted by a young girl; later, Haya will tell us that the Arabic legend on this poster reads "The Holocaust Continues". To the undiscerning eye, these posters must appear as innocuous as movie advertisements, but in fact, they are quite inflammatory. And it is here that we are to meet with representatives of the Palestinean refugees - those that will speak to us. The meeting has been arranged by our tour agency through Rabbis for Human Rights, an organization seeking to promote dialogue with Palestineans and Israeli Arabs, and which also (as the name suggests) advocates for Arab citizens and Palestineans when the Israeli government violates their rights. So, we are accompanied today by a liberal Rabbi from this organization, who wears a Bokharan kippah, and has long curly hair.

Perhaps it is because we have just come from the Gush Etzion, or perhaps it is just the forbidding nature of the place, but I am on my guard. In addition to the Rabbi and the old man with the ragged mustache, there are two middle-aged men with neatly trimmed Saddam Hussein-style mustaches and cell-phones, who sit in chairs throughout the meeting (except when one goes outside to answer his cell-phone) and are introduced as "friends", but who never speak.

Glasses of lemonade are passed around, and the older man speaks to us in halting English. At first what he says seems reasonable, if a bit disingenuous (my eyes keep straying to the poster of Israel as a locked door). He bears no animosity to the Jews, who are his brothers after all, but simply wants his rights as a human being to be respected. He has lived in this camp since its founding and yearns for the day when there will be an independent Palestinean state. He goes on for several minutes, in an elliptical fashion, and during this time, a young man comes in with a video-camera. My back stiffens immediately. It is one thing to listen and hear the perspective of these people, who have certainly been mistreated and have legitimate grievances; it is another to be filmed doing so, and to have that film used for G-d knows what purpose by the Palestinean media. I am reminded of the way the Soviets used western visitors during the 20s and 30s the legitimize their regime, and decide I want no part of being filmed and perhaps having my face used to legitimize the demands of the Palestinean Authority before the world. I am prepared to walk out, but then the man with the videocamera leaves; I will later learn that he was asked to leave because others also objected to being filmed.

Throughout the meeting, I feel nervous and on edge. Men burst into the room at seemingly random points, and the two men with cell-phones do not inspire any sort of confidence. I maintain a calm exterior, but in the back of my mind I wonder if we will end up being held hostage by Hammas extremists. It is a very tense situation, even if half that tension is invention on my part. When the older man finishes, another, younger man, a doctor, trained in Paris gets up and speaks to us. Again, we hear how he bears no animosity to the Jews, but ... and this fellow is more explicit in his demands. Justice will only be served, he avers, by granting the right of return to all Palestinean refugees and their descendents. This is when I realize how utterly intractable the situation is here. This fellow is my age, perhaps ten years younger, actually. He was not even alive when his family left Israel - and now he wants a piece of land his father or grandfather abandoned fifty years ago? How is this justice? We are getting as slanted a portrayal of the situation from these fellows as we got from the woman in Efrat; but the difference is that the woman spoke freely - no-one in sunglasses was sitting in the corner to monitor her every word. These men -the doctor and the older man- are speaking in guarded terms, and though they talk of brotherhood, in fact they are simply parroting the official line of the P.A. - they are not at all free to speak their true minds, and whatever their true feelings may be, we will never know. It is not we, but they who are hostage - hostage to their own leaders. And, moreover, this is not a true dialogue between Arab and Jew at all; these people are speaking at us, not with us. All in all, it is most unsettling.

Time is given for questions, but it is a farce. I have no questions; all the answers are in the posters on the wall before me and in the stoney expressions of the two men in sunglasses who never speak. Some of us do raise questions, but the tensions are high, and I cannot say the questions asked are not themselves inflammatory. In any event, all that we are given by way of an answer are more elliptical statements which say nothing very substantial, but leave no doubt that from the perspective of these Palestineans -the moderate ones, the ones who will actually talk to (or at) a group of American Jews- justice means nothing short of the return of all Palestineans to the Land, and though no-one says that this will mean the end of the state of Israel, of course, that is exactly what it would mean.

At last, the meeting concludes. It's late in the afternoon, and it is important that we get out of Bethlehem before dark. Originally, a Palestinean activist was to be released from Israeli prison this afternoon, and we were slated to be out of the camp before dark in order to avoid the celebrations (an unpredictable situation which could turn violent if Jews, even American Jews, were discovered in the camp). Now it turns out the release has been delayed; there won't be any revelry, but it is still a good idea to get out of Bethlehem before dark. Outside in the dusty street, a group of Palestinean boys comes toward us; they are probably about nine or ten years of age. With a bit of a shock I realize that one of them is carrying a pistol. Yitzhak calls to the boy in Arabic - "Where did you get that pistol?" The boy smiles; it turns out the gun is not even loaded, it's a rusty old Russian-made thing. But this small incident does little to dispel the tension we are all feeling.

Before leaving, the older man (who I suspect is truly sincere in his desire for friendship) takes us around the corner to show us his home, a worn-looking concrete cottage, one of the first homes built in the camp. At one time, four families lived there; now just his family. Past his house, there are old apartment buildings, grey and crumbling in the desert sun, and women and children stare at us from the distance. The sun is in the west, and we must be on our way; we make our farewells, and trudge back up to the main street next to Rachel's Tomb. In a few months, the very street we are walking on will be a battleground, the front-lines in fact. Soldiers and civilians will die here. Their blood will stain the dust.

We do not know this, but we do know that there will be an explosion. If we had any doubts before, those doubts are banished now. The situation is intractable. There is no other word for it.

Yerushalayim at Night

It is near sundown when we arrive back at the hotel. A group of us decide to go into downtown Yerushalayim for dinner - Rabbi Fred & Minna, Louise M, Garry G & Adrienne K, Elaine B, Haya L & her daughter, Bill K & Judy D & their sons - so we summon two taxis, and I climb into the second with Garry & Adrienne. Recalling some advice from Rabbi Fred, I point to the meter and demand that the cab-driver turn it on - "Moneh, moneh!" The common practice here is that the drivers will "forget" to turn on the meter, and then charge an arbitrary rate, usually double what they are supposed to charge. Somewhat begrudgingly, the cabbie flicks on the meter. "To Zion Square," we tell him, and he speeds through the streets by what seems a circuitous route, and it is, for he drops us at the head of Ben Yehuda Street, some three blocks from Zion Square. He really did not like being told to turn on the meter by an American tourist! But we are charged a fair rate, twenty New Shekelim, and we learn later that another group was charged twice that, having forgotten to tell their driver to turn on the meter!

Ben Yehuda Street is lively and crowded. It reminds me of downtown San Francisco - the same sort of partying vibes. There are street musicians, fire jugglers, panhandlers, and mobs of local Israelis and tourists thronging the street, which is closed to traffic. At the foot of the plaza, we meet up with the rest of our party - and then immediately split up again, for there are too many of us to find one restaurant which can seat us all. I join Garry, Adrienne, Louise, Fred, & Minna in a vegetarian restaurant named "T'mol Shilshom", which is also a used bookstore. We dine amid shelves of books on excellent fare; I have a mushroom omelet which still makes my mouth water to think of it. We learn there is to be an open-mike poetry reading later that evening, but I opt not to stay for it, having brought nothing with me to read. After stopping off in another used bookstore down the street, we walk back to our hotel, passing the City Hall and the David Citadel, and so to bed.

                            

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