David Shulman
The Villages Group
August 30 2014
There is innocence, and there is the smug delusion of innocence. It’s not
hard to tell them apart. I saw a lot of both today. Suhail was born in the tents of
Wadi Simsim and has lived his whole life here, in the wadi, with the goats and the
sheep. This is his world. He knows every rock. He never studied. He speaks only
Arabic (the lush, musical dialect of the south). Yet he is a man of the world, and
he knows right from wrong. He’s holding in a lot of anger. The settlers in the
“illegal outpost” of Chavat Mor, ever since they came here with their caravans
and seized the hill above the wadi—maybe two years back—are ruining his life.
He tells me: “I sowed these plots myself, up to fifty meters away from the fence
they’ve put up. They’re our fields, our lands, all of them. The settlers have no
limits (mush ‘indhum hudud), they can do whatever they want, and the soldiers,
who pretend they’re protecting the law, do what the settlers tell them to. They
say they have a law, but there is no law here anymore, and they know it. They
make it up day by day. They don’t care for us or our losses or our grief.”
Suhail has the sun-scorched face of a south Hebron shepherd. Deep eyes.
A certain natural, visible goodness, an ease of being and speaking. He knew today
was going to be hard because already at 5AM he saw, from his tent, how the
soldiers turned up in their jeeps. We left Jerusalem at 6, when it was barely light,
and by 7 we had climbed down the fierce slope of Zanuta and made our
rendezvous. For half an hour we sat in the shade of the hill and watched the
flocks of hungry goats devouring thorn after thorn. If you haven’t seen the goats
rushng through the wadi just past dawn, white and brown and black against the
sand and the huge russet sweep of rock and slope, you haven’t fulfilled the gifts
of light and sight.
I thought that, like last week, we’d have another hour or more before the
soldiers came—enough for the goats and sheep to eat their fill—but I was wrong.
But none of this did us any good day, and meanwhile the soldiers were
pushing shepherds and goats deeper into the desert, with the exception of one
hungry sheep who opted for Gandhian non-violent resistance and, fixated on a
particularly ramified and clearly delectable bush of thorns, simply refused to
budge. By then the flock had moved on. “What’s with that sheep?” says the
officer. “She’s hungry,” I say. He couldn’t get her to budge. Gandhian methods
usually do work. He waited, still bored but invoking a principle of charity just
this time. He’ll allow this one sheep to eat her fill. By 8:00 the sun had turned up
the volume on the heat, so, like us, he was also surely feeling hot—incipient
combustion.
Finally the soldiers decided they’d made their point and slowly left us in
peace and the goats spilled back into the CMZ and no one cared. We sat in the
fiery stillness and watched until the goats and sheep were ready to go home,
kicking up clouds of white dust as they crossed the rough bridge in the wadi over
the steady trickle of sewage, probably from the outpost, and headed south.
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“But,” Suhail asked me several times, “what will happen tomorrow
morning? The settlers always come down and chase us away.” I can see we
should really be here with them every day. It would make a difference. Also, at
night, every night, bands of armed settlers invade their encampment and seat
themselves on the water wells; they sit there for an hour or two, just for the
pleasure of terrorizing Palestinians. I told the officer about it and he promised to
put an end to it, but I’m not hopeful that he will.
You know real innocence when you see it. It’s a beautiful human thing.
Suhail is angry but not bitter—not yet. Of course there’s the lunatic category of
“state lands,” redefined by Israeli courts on the tenuous basis of the old Ottoman
land regime. I’m not going to tell the story again. It’s enough to say that this
redefinition has provided the legal fig leaf for the whole systemic land-grab in
the territories, since the late 1970’s. This legal fiction is what has now reached
out to torment Suhail and his friends, not to mention the goats.
That was the morning. By mid-day—white heat sucking up the very blood
in our veins—we are back in Tequ’a, which you may remember from one of the
August reports. I figure things may end badly today. Two weeks ago the Civil
Administration put an end to the settlers’ attempt to create “Tekoa V” on lands
stolen from the Tequ’a owners—and indeed the caravans are gone. (But you can
never escape settlers, really; they were promised a whole package of benefits in
exchange for the loss of Tekoa V, including, it seems, changing the status of
Tekoa IV, the hodge-podge of houses on the hill overlooking the Tekoa V
campsite, from that of an outpost to that of a legal settlement.) Settlers from
Tekoa IV are the enemy who come flying to attack us today after they see a
tractor plowing the now deserted field.
Let’s go back a step. The Tequ’a landowners have taken a big decision.
They’re now ready, despite much fear and doubt, to try to reclaim their stolen
lands. We’re here to stand by them as an old blue tractor with attached plow
bumbles its way over the dirt path and down the hill. The driver makes a start on
the field, some of it still littered with cement blocks and other remnants of short-
lived Tekoa V; there are also a few Israeli flags left behind. He makes two wide
arcs around the perimeter. This is no season to sow seeds; the point is to begin
the dreary business of staking the claim. It’s a brave move, and we know it will
meet with resistance.
At first, as the settlers pour in, it’s scary. Some of them look like toughs
and bullies only too eager to assault us. And there’s a real danger they’ll take the
tractor—a significant potential loss for any Palestinian farmer. They swarm
round the driver, screaming at him, at us; they stop the tractor in its tracks. I’m
holding on to the high back wheel, Uri beside me, Amitai in front; we’re prepared
to defend this tractor at whatever cost, and it looks like the cost could be great.
They’re also filming us, one by one, and we’re filming them filming us, and
they’re filming us filming them filming us, and so on, so we’re in a deep post-
modern mode from the start. I have to say I prefer the war of the cameras to fists
and clubs. We’ll need this footage in court.
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Right from the start, it’s clear they’re not all cut from the same cloth.
They’re religious, of course, their tzizit fringes frying in the sun; but some are
more ready than others to lash out. You can see faces twisted by hatred. Some of
them, however, feel a need to convince us of our criminal foolishness. We are
anarchists and provocateurs. If it weren’t for us, the Palestinians of Tequ’a would
be docile, safe, and even wealthy, since they work (presumably for a pittance),
some of them, building the houses of Tekoa IV, and the settlers buy gas from
them and other items. In short, if they would only give up all claims on the land
and collude with the settlement project, everything would be fine. It’s all our
fault. The settlers are convinced, with fanatical certainty, they we have paid
these Palestinians to come down here and plow today. Why else would they do
it?
Guy has meanwhile called the police, and the first jeep of soldiers turns
up just in time, soon followed by several others, and now the hill is heavy with
these soldiers and policemen and officers of the Civil Administration, all of them
staggering under the sizzling metal of their guns and helmets. The initial
moment of danger has passed. It still seems more than likely that they’ll go for
the tractor, impound it, and we’ll have to try to protect it and the driver, too, and
there will be arrests and who knows what else. I’m not happy, actually I’m
feeling a bit sick, but I’m ready.
Ezra has melted into the hills, for good reason, and the landowners have
climbed up the slope and are watching this odd congregation of warring Jews,
and a few Druze from the Civil Administration, meandering over the rocks in
furious, mutual disdain. Little by little, before the CA officers go into action, the
rage is channeled into a series of vociferous debates. I know it serves no
purpose, but I, too, join in, as does Erika, our daughter-in-law, who has joined us
today. But it is Guy Hirshfeld who is revealed as the great artist of these long,
burning hours. He gives no quarter, but he’s so good, and witty, and sane that
after a while one of the settlers grudgingly admits: “You’re not such a ‘Spoiler of
Israel’ after all, like I thought you were, you’ve got some Jewish spark in your
heart. But I can’t see what you’re doing here, helping Arabs.” Guy calmly
answers, “I’m not here to help Arabs, I’m here to help myself.” This seems to go
over the settler’s head. He doesn’t get it. To him, Tel Aviv and Tekoa IV are
identical. He sees no difference. He has, he says, a kushan—a deed of
ownership—over the entire Land of Israel. The Bible is his kushan. But in his
own eyes, he’s a moderate, even generous, man, and quite prepared to
compromise. He’ll let the Arabs keep all the land east of the Euphrates. That’s his
limit. All the rest is his. And what can we do, God Himself helps the Jews. He
fought the Six-Day War for them and gave them back all the land.
“If you think like you do,” says this settler to Guy, “why are you still here
and not in Australia or somewhere?” “I’m attached to this place. Not because I’m
a Jew, I don’t keep any of the commandments, none of that speaks to me, but
because I’m an Israeli and this is my country.” “Where did your grandfather
come from?” “The Ukraine.” “So why not go live in the Ukraine?” “They didn’t
want me there.” “My grandfather came from Czechoslovakia. But he felt a
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connection to the land, unlike your grandfather.” “How do you know what my
grandfather felt or didn’t feel?”
It goes on for an endless, fruitless time. I’ve heard it all before, too many
times. Maybe it’s one of those Jewish rituals. What these settlers definitely lack,
among other things, is a modicum of irony. Makes one wonder if they’re really
Jewish after all. They’re of course convinced that they’re all innocence and also,
of course, all victims of something or other—of our provocations, for example.
One of them climbs up the hill to harangue the Palestinian landowners in fluent
Arabic. He points at Tamar: “You want to know who’s the real cause of all our
troubles, the very worst person here? It’s her.” One of the landowners leaps to
her defense: “She’s the finest person here.” Later I tell her that it was worth
coming just to hear those words.
Eventually, after a couple of hours, it ends in a flurry of threats, and we
disperse, not before Tamar, inspired by Maria, bravely takes down the Israeli
flags that the settlers have planted again on this Palestinian hill. Of course the
soldiers race up the hill to save their idol. Another round of violent abuse. Tamar,
standing her ground, makes a suggestion. “Take them for dry-cleaning.” There’s
no end to the wickedness men can do in the name of a flag.
As for me, I know I’m anything but innocent. I’m complicated, preyed
upon by doubt, a volatile test-tube of contrary, confusing feelings, easily
disheartened, impatient, sometimes spooked, often sick and tired of the Jews and
very sad for their evidently lonely, perhaps despairing god. I think I’m here
because I love the landscape. I might even envy Suhail. But if I had to guess what
will happen at Tequ’a over the next months, maybe years, I would say that we’ll
go through the usual tedious routine of coming back, week after week, with the
owners, and we’ll plow again, and maybe when the rain comes we’ll sow the
seeds, and from time to time we’ll get beaten up or arrested or both, and we’ll
have to stick with it and fight for every meter and every thorn, and we’ll take
pictures and get whatever we can out of the courts, and there’s no way to know
how it will end. Maybe someday we’ll even win here, like at Umm al-‘Amad.
Today was a damned good start. |
