In the Danger Zone

by Stefan Gates

  It's time to leave. I have listened to two sets of people who have wildly differing views on the conflict over these hills, and it's difficult to know who's right and who's wrong, and even harder to see how a resolution to this conflict can ever be found.

  Nablus

  I'm heading for one of the unhappiest places on the planet: Nablus, the biggest Palestinian city in the West Bank, next to both Itamar and Yanun. It's a renowned centre for Palestinian militants, entirely surrounded by the Israeli army, and inside it's awash with weaponry, frustration and anger. Six Israeli checkpoints control all access for people and goods in and out of the city and many people haven't been able to leave since the second intifada in 2001 because of the number of suicide bombers who came from there.

  The drive is tense. I get through the checkpoint with just a few cursory frowns from the soldiers, and a few hundred metres inside I pick up my guide, Alaa (who has great difficulty getting through checkpoints) and he takes over the driving. He tells me that there's a rally going on in the old city for a militant who died recently and suggests that we go along. I'm a little wary, but he assures me that it'll be safe.

  In a small central square, three or four hundred men and boys have gathered to listen to men reading out speeches. The atmosphere is bitter, angry and violent. On the back of a truck about 30 men stand in military clothing, each holds an Ml6, and they fire into the air after every few sentences to show their appreciation, deafening everyone around them. I worry for the hundred or so young boys sitting on top of the adjacent buildings and Alaa says that every now and then people get shot by mistake at these rallies. There are other gunmen scattered around the square who occasionally get so worked up by the speeches that they, too, start firing into the air, at which point everyone starts panicking in case it's the Israelis trying to snatch the militants. 'The men on the truck are all wanted men,' says Alaa, 'but they don't care if anyone sees them – they are dead already and it's just a matter of time.'

  The kids on the rooftops are clearly in awe of the militants, and it's not hard to see why. In a city where children have bleak futures and little cause for optimism, a life as a famous fugitive followed by a blaze-of-glory ending is as much as they can hope for. And quite apart from the sense of retribution, anger and religious zeal, to these boys, being a militant is cool. The guys with guns command respect that they're unlikely to find any other way.

  I stick out a mile, but Alaa has warned people that I'd be here, so they tolerate my presence. I am invited up onto the truck to get a better view, and they fire their guns very close to my ears, so that I'm soon rendered entirely deaf. When a man starts singing a song to the dead militant, Alaa suggests we leave.

  You can sense the pressure in this city, and although the Palestinian Authority has nominal control here, Nablus's main police station has been hit repeatedly in Israeli air strikes. That night, there's sporadic gunfire, including a startling burst as I'm on the phone to my daughter. I speak up and talk nonsensically to try to cover up the noise. Later, I'm woken by more gunfire, but I'm getting used to it now, and I go back to sleep.

  Nablus Bakery

  I get up at dawn and head for the old city. This place is classically beautiful in the mould of Damascus or Istanbul, all white stone and paved streets swarming with old gents smoking and drinking tiny glasses of sweet tea. But when you take a closer look, the walls are covered in flyposters of militants wielding guns, and the occasional outline of Israel, depicted dripping with blood. Alaa says that they are pictures of dead 'martyrs' Some of them look as young as 16.

  It's a while before I notice that sitting in the alleys I stroll past are men holding Ml6 rifles and eyeing me with suspicion. 'There are a lot of wanted men here,' says Alaa, 'militants who would be shot on sight by the Israelis.'

  I ask why they are sitting openly on the streets. 'It's OK; the Israelis can't operate in the middle of the old town, it's too dangerous for them.'

  I wander down tiny alleys, along cobbled walkways and up precipitous staircases until we find Abu Sharif, a gently spoken one-armed baker in his 60s who works with two of his brothers. He lives with seven of his family in a small second-floor set of rooms with a view-out towards the hills ringing Nablus. He agrees to let me help him for the day and we head off to the bakery.

  His two brothers and one of his sons have got there before us and the wood-fired oven is nearly up to temperature. They make four different types of bread – mainly wholemeal pittas and flatbreads made from flour (only Palestinian flour), water and salt – no yeast. I offer to help. 'You can try, but you'll only slow us down,' they say. I manage to bake the simpler breads easily enough, sliding them into the inferno with a flat paddle, and yanking out the cooked ones so they are just about marketable. But when it comes to spreading the dough to make wider ones, I am clearly a shambles, turning perfectly good balls of dough into Munch grotesques. I try to lay out the dough balls for proving instead, but I'm just as cack-handed at that, and the brothers are soon cackling with laughter.

  Despite my ineptitude, the bread tastes wonderful. I pull loaves out and drop them onto a stone ledge where they sit sighing steam. They cool for a minute, then I rip them apart and the wonderful smell wafts into my nose. They are browned and slightly charred in places, and the taste of the charred bits is sublime. We start by making a few brown pittas and then we churn out hundreds of flatbreads of all shapes and sizes. Abu Sharif's brother Keza makes a batch of white flour breads for his family who won't eat anything else, much to his dismay, but the breads that sell on the ramshackle stall outside are the wholemeal ones.

  As they teach me, we talk about the situation in Nablus. They tell me that food has doubled in price since the second intifada. 'There's food in the streets, but no one can afford it, so about half of the city goes hungry.' Abu Sharif says that women go to the market, pick up food to look, then simply hand it back again because they don't have any money.

  The IDF often blocks access to the city and sometimes doesn't allow food supplies in or out, so their bakery doesn't always have flour to bake with. 'Often we can only work two days a week because there's no flour, or there are incursions by the army. The IDF come, demolish houses and arrest people, usually relatives of wanted militants, and then leave again.' In the past, it was rumoured that Saddam Hussein's regime would pay huge sums of cash – in the region of $20,000 – to the families of the suicide bombers. It was taken as read that the Israelis would swiftly arrive to demolish their houses, so Iraq would pay to have them rebuilt again. This is no longer the case.

  We hang out with Abu Sharif and chat some more as he sells his bread on the street corner. 'The Israelis are trying to strangle us,' he says, shrugging his shoulders as though there's nothing that anyone can do about it. Suddenly he lunges at a thin man who passes by muttering to himself and wallops him across the head, sending him wailing up a side alley. 'He keeps trying to steal my bread,' says Abu Sharif. Alaa tells me that there's a high level of psychological problems amongst Palestinians, exacerbated by the pressures they face. But there's little sympathy around here, and I spot the mutterer being abused by various different people throughout the afternoon.

  I wander the streets of Nablus again, stopping to drink hot minty tea every so often. Drinking tea and coffee is an art-form here. The tea is called shai and they drink it black and sweet, sometimes minty and sometimes not, but invariably served in small glasses that are too hot to hold, and a glass of water served alongside. The coffee is a different matter: it's mixed with a touch of cardamom and unfiltered. Each potent little cup is topped with a scum of bitter coffee dust I like the cardamom and the hefty whack of coffee in the first few sips, but if you suck the grounds up by mistake they're pretty unpleasant.

  That night I have supper with Abu the baker and his family. His apartment is in the centre of the old town and from his window the hilly skyline is covered in Israeli army observation posts. Behind the tree line is an Israeli settlement. He says, 'There isn't as much foo
d around because of the economic situation. The way people eat has changed. They are eating less meat and cutting down on costly foods.'

  'How does it feel to have the Israelis always looking down on your' I ask.

  'Neighbours never like their neighbours. So if neighbours don't like each other what am I to think about those settlements over there? They arc monitoring me in my own home.'

  'What do you think of the settlers?'

  'I consider them enemies, enemies to my people, to my homeland. They are like a cancer. It starts small then spreads everywhere, exactly like the settlers.'

  That evening I hear that there's an Israeli army raid into the city. In the firefight that followed a stray Israeli bullet hit a pregnant woman, killing her unborn child.

  Hedera

  I visit Aron, an Israeli stallholder in Hedera where, on 26 October 2005, a Palestinian militant detonated a bomb outside his falafel stall. Aron had just taken over the shift from his brother and was busy serving customers when the bomb went off killing five people and injuring 28, including Aron. 'There weren't that many people killed, but they were people I knew. Especially an old lady, a regular customer, came here every day to eat while her husband did the shopping and she was killed.'

  I ask him how he feels about the bomber and he's remarkably calm about it, reminding me of the Palestinians I met in Yanun: 'Look, I'm 60 years old. I know about Arab living conditions, why the bombers are being sent and who is sending them. They have been taught to have a certain mentality, and I can't change that. But I hope the next generation won't study it, and will move towards peace.'

  Tel Aviv

  I'm back in Tel Aviv and the difference is astonishing. This place is as laid back, secular, friendly and architecturally ugly as Jerusalem is uptight, religiously strict, rude and beautiful. It's all concrete blocks and apartments, but there are cool restaurants and a clear vibrancy to the place. Streets are full of cafes and gorgeous people, and although the beaches are dominated by gargantuan 1970s' era hotels and acres of concrete, there's a palpable relaxed atmosphere. As if to prove the point about Tel Aviv's coolness, Gay Pride day is drawing to a close as we arrive. On the beach below my hotel room, lots of people in shorts and bikinis are dancing in the sunset.

  The next day I go to the Old Port, an area full of restaurants and overpriced surfing shops, and visit a restaurant called Beny the Fisherman. The owner, Beny (a fisherman, as it happens), looks like a very naughty ex-rock star. He's dressed all in white, with a lion's mane of curly Brylcreemed locks tumbling down his back, and a smile that makes him look like Jack Nicholson on heat. He's also a major player on the Tel Aviv scene, and as if to prove the point, his mobile phone rings constantly and customers in the restaurant drop by to pay their respects, Godfather-style.

  He tells me that he used to be a fisherman, but set up this place after blowing a fortune on gambling. His wife now holds the purse strings, and by the wry smile on her face, she had to fight to get him on the straight and narrow. The restaurant, however, is bursting with customers, with people queuing up along the quayside to get in (to the irritation of the neighbouring restaurants). It's hugely successful, but non-kosher, serving shellfish and opening on the Shabbat (bang out of order for kosher observers). The Torah explicitly bans shellfish or any fish that don't have scales.

  Beny cooks my lunch himself, talking as he cooks: 'I've been a fisherman all my life. In the last 20 years things have changed. You couldn't sell seafood before. People wouldn't buy it. Then young guys started going abroad and developed a taste for it. Before, Israel wasn't that cosmopolitan, then everything changed. People came back with a new take on stuff like seafood and other things.'

  I say that Tel Aviv seems to be on a different planet from Jerusalem and Beny explains, 'They don't have sea in Jerusalem. Here there is the beach, it's summer. Summer, sailing and fun, that's Tel Aviv. Jerusalem is the holy city. People there are a bit different. You go there to pray, to visit. People who come here from Jerusalem don't want to go back.'

  I'm slightly confused about secular Jews, though. Lapsed Christians I know back home tend to say they are no longer Christian, but here in Israel, people can be totally secular, yet totally Jewish. Do people come to terms with levels of spirituality or do they just ignore the issue?

  Beny is a case in point: as well as this cheeky non-kosher joint, he also owns Beny Hadayg, apparently one of the strictest kosher restaurants in the city (double-kosher or kosher kosher, as they call it). I visit the restaurant to meet a kosher cop and try to work out this culinary/spiritual relativity. A kosher cop is someone who makes sure that all the food in a restaurant is prepared to kosher rules laid down in the Torah, so he should know what it's all about.

  In Beny Hadayg I meet Raffi, an orthodox Jew complete with pe'otes tucked into a skullcap and dressed in thick black clothing that shows up all the flour, sweat and assorted greasy detritus of a working kitchen. The roaring fires and hissing grills make it too hot for me in here so Raffi must be boiling underneath all those clothes.

  Raffi scuttles about the kitchen sifting the flour for bugs, salting meat to remove the blood, slapping chops on the grill, fish in the oven, and livers on the rotisserie. He blesses the meals, blesses the bread and checks everything for provenance and kosher authenticity. There are hundreds of specific food rules, but the main ones are: no pork or shellfish, no mixing of meat and dairy produce and no bugs. As he potters through the lunchtime prep, Raffi tells me he's 'looking for cockroaches or worms or any other bugs'.

  Raffi is not, however, the chef. The chef is a small, cheerful Arab bloke by the name of Malik who looks on bemused as Raffi runs about doing his kosher thing. Malik says, 'We also have our religion and we have to follow its law so I respect any other religion.' But I get the sense that he thinks this is all a bit silly. He and Raffi have to perform an elaborate dance around each other, with Malik preparing and seasoning all the food, then Raffi checking it and placing it on the grill, then Malik stirring, fiddling and plating everything before Raffi checks it again. It looks suspiciously like me meddling with the food on the rare occasions that my wife does the cooking. Malik concedes that there were lots of arguments to begin with, but they are now a good team.

  I ask Raffi what kosher rules are meant to achieve, and he tells me 'We are commanded by God, who told us what we can and cannot eat. By eating only kosher food I fulfil God's will.'

  I'm still confused about why. 'So if someone doesn't eat kosher food is it possible they'll go to hell rather then heaven?'

  'It's not for me to judge. But foodwise, I feel that by keeping kosher I improve my chances. It's not automatic that if you eat non-kosher food you'll go to hell.'

  I confess to him that I'm still confused, and ask what spiritual difference there is between kosher and non-kosher food, but he doesn't understand – he just says that the rules are there and if you don't obey them, you might go to hell.

  'I can understand that, but why?'

  He thinks my question is absurd. 'You don't ask what the rules are for – you obey them.'

  Beny sits at a nearby table and says, 'I opened this place because my daughter eats kosher and I love my daughter very much and I eat kosher but sometimes, you know . . .'

  Now I'm completely baffled, so I drag Raffi over to try to sort out this kosher thing once and for all. I ask him, 'Is Beny going to heaven or is Beny going to hell'?' He says, 'I can't tell. But sorry to say this, according to religious law a man that opens a non-kosher restaurant is responsible for leading people astray. But if a man opens a kosher place, he is helping people to do a good deed.'

  Beny is sanguine: 'Everything is weighed. How much good and how much bad. That's how you are judged.'

  I take a long look at him, and suggest, 'You've been bad, haven't you?'

  He laughs with a Cheshire cat grin. 'Maybe,' he says. 'Look at Raffi's phone,' he says, 'that's kosher too.'

  Raffi shows me the orthodoxy approval stamp on his mobile. 'Approved! Some
one has checked it that there is no SMS, and no way to access unsuitable things. You can't do anything with it. No Internet, no camera. It's good for the spirituality of kids and parents not to expose them to bad things.'

  After I leave the restaurant, I confess to Efrat that I still haven't got to grips with the issues of kosher, orthodoxy and secularism. She says, 'I am very secular.'

  'Does that mean you're less Jewish?'

  'Don't be insane,' she says. 'You're either Jewish or you're not.' She just doesn't believe that she's going to hell for observing fewer of the rules.

  Haifa

  The ancient port of Haifa is a ghastly sight: a concrete rash that spills inland from the Mediterranean, crowned by a vast oil refinery. I presume that everything in Israel was built in a blinding hurry after the state of Israel was established in 1948. You can imagine the panic: 'Oh, my God, the cousins are coming, and there's nowhere for them to stay.'

  I drive to an immigrant dormitory town with row upon row of crumbling concrete apartment blocks, all ugly, functional, but gratefully received by the newly arrived diaspora. Aviva is one of approximately 53,000 Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted from Ethiopia in two secretive and controversial operations in 1984 and 1991. Back in Israel there was much debate over whether the Ethiopians were really Jews at all, or just freeloading, welfare-seeking migrants. It certainly wasn't easy for them to leave their homeland and all their possessions behind, and integration into Israeli life for Aviva has been difficult.