Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.

by Mark Thomas

  ‘There has never been a state called Palestine,’ he says emphatically, ‘so how can there be Palestinians?’

  ‘Well, they call themselves Palestinians and it’s really up to them to decide what they like to be called,’ I say, adding softly: ‘It is not up to you.’

  ‘Arabs. They are Arabs.’ His voice is raised now.

  ‘Palestinian Arabs.’

  ‘There never was this place! They are Jordanian, in fact.’

  ‘What you call Palestinians is your decision, but they do live here.’

  ‘Ach, this is our land. God gave us this land. It is ours. There are twenty-two Arab states and only one Israel: let the Arabs take them.’

  I am tired of this spouting. I have heard Israelis say it all before; it was dull and bigoted then, and it is dull and bigoted now. I have listened to this long enough and can feel myself reddening with anger. Phil calmly jumps in at this point, saying, ‘Oh, is that a picture of the Pope?’ He points to a knick-knack on the wall.

  Before he can stop himself, Natan says, ‘I know him.’ Phil smiles and Natan continues, ‘From the seminary. I know him.’

  After supper things take a calmer turn. The plates have been cleared away and Natan leads us into the relative calm of the living room. We sit on the sofa and start to relax with the bubbling hum of the fish tank and silent figure-skaters on TV. Natan, however, is still in full flow: ‘I show you something. You will like this. I used to do security.’ Opening a photo album he says with a wink, ‘Here, this is me as a younger man. I look good then, huh?’

  He is wearing a white shirt and has permed hair and a moustache.

  ‘Yes, you look very fit,’ I say.

  ‘I look good.’

  ‘You look very handsome,’ says Phil.

  ‘You know who this is?’

  ‘No, I don’t … looks familiar, though.’

  ‘Richard Clayderman.’

  Prompted by his silence and staring, I say ‘Ohhh, Richard Clayderman! How did you meet him?’

  ‘I do security. After the army.’

  I smile, content to look through the photos of him posing with famous celebrities, making the appropriate noises when needed, leaving arguments to one side for the time being. It might be boring but you can’t go wrong with a photo album.

  ‘You recognise this person, don’t you?’

  It is a photo of Denis and Margaret Thatcher.

  *

  When I get up the next morning, Natan and his silent wife have already left for their guided tour. Making coffee in the kitchen, I look out of their kitchen’s massive glass windows. The West Bank’s hills are magnificent from this vantage point as they unfold in all their scuffed glory. In the garden, the daylight shows Snow White and her small companions to be even more hideously saccharine than I’d supposed. And a few metres beyond them is the Barrier. We were sleeping almost next to the Barrier with its electric fence, military road and red warning signs. From here, the fencing appears to be protecting Snow White, as if miles of barbed wire and motion sensors and military patrols have been designed to specifically guard this unfortunate king’s daughter and her diminutive plaster protectors, as though the Israeli military machinery is there to keep her safe from woodcutters and evil stepmothers, safe indeed, from any random crone clutching suspiciously delicious fruit.

  Here on the ridge, secure from demons, the Barrier protects a fairy story.

  chapter 9

  SETTLING IN

  With a cloud of profanity and talc the day begins.

  The Ariel settlement is essentially a long rock ridge and as the road leaves the settlement, the Barrier runs left and right; we are at the middle point of the fingernail.

  Our starting point for the ramble was to have been Ariel university but in an unplanned and almost unconscious fashion we have ended up walking onto the Barrier itself, trespassing onto a closed military area. There is a checkpoint here, but no soldiers in sight.

  ‘They are very relaxed now the terror has gone,’ says Itamar. We have two Israelis walking with us today, Fred and Itamar, who are both instantly likeable. Fred is the shorter of the two and originally hails from the USA. With a scruffy, short moustache and wearing a baseball cap, you could be forgiven for thinking he is a car mechanic from a small town in the Deep South. Itamar was in the Israeli army but refused his reservist call-up for the second Lebanon war, earning him time in jail. He is also very active in Combatants for Peace, an Israeli/Palestinian group of ex-fighters working to end the military occupation through non-violent struggle. He sports a classic bald look: letting his unshaven stubble grow long enough to merge with his remaining haircut so you don’t notice the join. He wears a checked shirt and carries a rucksack, and looks like the ex-army peacenik he is.

  For some reason – rather than coming off the Barrier – we feel compelled to keep walking. With a casual curiosity we simply wander, passing the unmanned checkpoint and turning right through a set of open gates onto the military road, the central core of the Barrier. We know that the army patrols this road, which trails along the ridge flanked by the usual barbed wire and fencing on either side, but we all step onto it in unvoiced agreement and literally Walk the Wall.

  On one side of the tarmac lies the settlement; on the other is scrubland and thermal currents, good only for birds. There is nothing above us but sky, and below us, Palestinians. The day’s grey hazy cloud is easier to define than the lives unfurling under the shadow of the ridge, down amidst the blurred mass of buildings, toiling invisibly. The view alone makes masters of us.

  ‘Israel thinks it cannot have a minority of Jews and have a democracy,’ Itamar says, explaining Israel’s eternal obsession as we stroll confidently in the light breeze.

  ‘For Israelis, you have to have a majority of Jews in order to have a democracy … the Wall means you can have the majority of settlers in the West Bank and bring them on the Israeli side of the line. This is our demographic fight.’

  As we chat of politics and walk to the clack of my hiking stick – on the tarmac surface it occasionally skitters, forcing me to hold it out at right angles like a dandy’s cane – it occurs to me that being on the Israeli side of the Barrier has made me approach it in a completely different way. Oh, I still hate it and can rail about its effects on Palestinian lives, but, interestingly, being on the same side as those who put it up means the Barrier is no longer aimed at me. The Barrier was built to keep the Arabs out, ergo, on this side, I am no longer in its sights; I have nothing to fear from the Barrier and feel completely at ease walking upon it.

  My comfort here is entirely logical: on the Israeli side of the Barrier, the gate is open, there are no soldiers and the signs that say MORTAL DANGER face outwards, none of it is directed at us at all. I have none of the fear of the closed military area that I had in the north. Just by being on this side of the Barrier we seem to have developed a strange sense of entitlement. Onwards. We stroll like we own the place and nothing will dent our confidence. Even when an army jeep appears at the far end of the yellow line heading towards us, I feel completely calm and merely ask, ‘Should we be worried about this?’

  ‘Nooo,’ says Itamar. ‘There was no sign up telling us not to come in. So why should we not be here? Just leave the talking to me,’ adding with a shrug, ‘What is the worse they can do?’

  The jeep pulls up and stops directly in front of us. A soldier climbs out wearing shades but no helmet, no jacket, not even webbing of any kind; he holds his rifle loosely at his side.

  ‘It must be “Dress Down Friday”,’ I say to no one in particular. The presence of the army is irritating rather than worrying, and in the fashion becoming of a dandy with a walking cane, the encounter bores me.

  Itamar and the soldier speak for a few minutes in Hebrew. Itamar points this way and the soldier points that way, then they shake hands and the lad climbs back into the vehicle and starts to drive back the way he came.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he wanted us to go back
to the start. I said there is an agricultural gate maybe a kilometre ahead of us, so if you let us keep walking in this direction we will get off the Wall quicker.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said OK.’

  We continue walking on the Barrier and when we come to the agricultural gate, we open it and step off it. Itamar promptly sits under an olive tree, gets a gas burner out and starts to make coffee, chatting to Fred who has propped himself up against a stone wall. Phil and I find a discarded red sign that reads: MORTAL DANGER: MILITARY ZONE. ANY PERSON WHO PASSES OR DAMAGES THE FENCE ENDANGERS HIS LIFE and start mucking about, posing with it for photos as the sun comes out and shines upon us.

  Our day’s illicit wanderings have taken us around the southern side of the Ariel finger, and now on the northern side our best option is to use a pathway that has the Barrier beneath it and suburban gardens rising above: on one side, the path is decorated with garden porches, trees and satellite dishes (we even spot Snow White peaking over the brow), and on the other side, down the hill, is the ‘fence’. The pathway is used by few folk at this time of day, mainly dog walkers striding purposefully with a lead in one hand and a plastic bag in the other; even settlers, it seems, must suffer the universal indignity of handling warm canine stool in a Tesco carrier.* A few couples are out too, taking a stroll and soaking up the early evening sun.

  The path periodically stops and we are forced onto residential streets for a while before the thin dirt trail reasserts itself. We are wandering the back end of suburbia, and to that extent at least it provides a break from it. In one of these quiet streets, a white truck reverses into a parking bay and out of it gets a thick-set man nearly as wide as he is tall, with a layer of work dust clinging to him. Slinging a grey sweatshirt over his shoulder, he nods a greeting to us. We nod hello back and a minute later we have struck up a conversation in the street. His name is Elias, he’s Romanian, and came to Israel in 1961.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask why you came to Ariel?’

  ‘No, you can ask,’ says Elias. ‘I moved here from Tel Aviv about ten years ago because my daughter wanted to. There is no ideological reason for me moving here; we just wanted a nice place to live.’ He gets a chiller box from the truck and kindly passes round bottles of water for us as we chat.

  Normally, the English middle classes are struck with near terminal squeamishness when it comes to discussing how much they paid for something, and if you ask, a look creeps over their faces as if they have just defecated through a sieve. The exception to the rule is house prices. Reverting to type I ask, ‘How much did you pay for your house?’

  ‘$250,000,’ he says proudly. ‘It is big, too, as you can see; three storeys, and a lot of space inside. In Tel Aviv you would pay $700,000 for it. And here we have this too, look,’ and Elias points to the hills and land glowing in the evening sunlight. ‘Only the snow is missing,’ he says, ‘If we had snow it would be like living in Switzerland.’

  The comparison is not an apt one, for starters the aspect of neutrality might be a sticking point as also, I suspect, would the whole Nazi gold thing, but I take Elias’s point: why would anyone want to pay more money to live somewhere that didn’t have this view? Only this morning, Fred and Itamar had been inspired by another view; one of new developments and cranes, prompting them to discuss why houses cost less here: ‘Purchasing homes here in Ariel is much cheaper than purchasing homes inside Israel and that is the main reason people move here, because of cheap housing. Normally when you buy a house on a new build, you pay for the infrastructure, too, but these places are subsidised. The price doesn’t include the cost of bringing in the roads, water, sewage and electricity,’ said Fred.

  ‘Or the land,’ adds Itamar.

  ‘Here you only pay for the materials, labour and the contractors’ profit, nothing else.’

  ‘Remember, the land doesn’t belong to anyone.’

  But this only goes partway to explaining why life here is cheap. The Israeli government has funded the settler movement to the tune of $100 billion,19 and every year spends $556 million maintaining it.20 The settlements are deemed to be ‘national priority areas’ and, as such, receive benefits and subsidies from six government departments to provide more cheap housing, tax breaks, better social security and key worker provisions than anywhere else in Israel.

  Elias’s dog comes over wagging its tail as we finish our drinks in the street. My dad was a self-employed builder and I feel comfortable in their company, recognising the way Elias gulps down his water to damp down the dust of the day.

  ‘Thanks for the drink,’ I say, ‘but we should be going. We have all of Ariel to walk around.’

  ‘Have you been to the country club?’ Elias says.

  ‘You have a country club?’

  ‘Yes, we have a country club.’

  ‘Are you a member?’

  Elias leans casually against his truck, ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘While you’re here, you should go and see it.’

  Over that evening and following morning, I meet a number of other settlers. One of them is Palti, who makes green tea in his new kitchen while cradling his daughter in his arm. She has blonde, wispy hair that sticks straight up in the air and wide eyes, like a toddler Stan Laurel.

  ‘Shall I pour?’ I volunteer.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Palti. He is wearing tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt, and is rocking slightly the way parents holding young children do.

  ‘The first time I came here I fell in love with it: clean air, free from traffic; a good place to live and good house prices.’

  His daughter sucks her dummy noisily, once, twice, and then returns to staring in bemused interest.

  ‘How do people react when they find out you are from Ariel?’

  ‘When I talk to people who don’t know Ariel they think I am religious. That I walk around with an Uzi. That we are all fanatics looking for a fight and carrying weapons.’

  I want to tell him that this was exactly how I had imagined the settlers to be, but the words come out as, ‘Some people are happier demonising each other, rather than looking for the truth.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he says.

  We chat and drink tea, and I unconsciously start swaying slightly in an act of parental solidarity.

  ‘And the fence – do you want to see the Wall built all the way along the Ariel finger?’

  ‘Yes, I want to see the whole fence up … It is the only way I can live in Ariel and Israel.’

  The cost of diverting the Barrier from the Green Line to capture Ariel adds approximately fifty kilometres to the Barrier, at a cost of about $75 million. But from Palti’s point of view, it makes sense; if you live twenty kilometres into the West Bank in an illegal settlement and want to be part of Israel, then you need to change the border. Looking at it from this angle, you get quite a lot for your $75 million.

  On our second day in Ariel, we meet our first religious settler. Though many settle here for economic reasons, there is an undeniable ideological presence, too.

  After the morning rituals of swearing, foot care and coffee, we head to a container-home park near the city’s university. Container homes are the settlers’ tool of choice when starting a new outpost as they can be easily loaded onto a truck, driven to the required site and unloaded, providing a cheap and instant home. There is a swathe of them in the city, providing accommodation for students and new arrivals. One of whom is Elzak, who waves at me from the entrance gates.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ I call out. ‘Are we going to your home?’

  He shakes his head. ‘It would not be appropriate.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, my wife and children are there.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Have you got any suggestions of where should we go for a chat?’

  ‘I don’t know the city very well.’

  ‘There is the country club …’ suggests Itamar.

  ‘The country club!’

  ‘The country club,’ agrees Phil.

&nb
sp; ‘OK,’ says Elzak.

  Elzak is a religious man and from his appearance you might indeed guess he is more interested in the spiritual aspects of life than the material. His beard is bushy, his yarmulke green, his shirt is button-down and if it got any plainer it would be a sack. But he has a warm smile that is quick to appear and, in all fairness, I shouldn’t judge too quickly as I currently look like an ageing David Cassidy impersonator who has just woken from a coma.

  At Ariel’s country club we pass through the double swing doors into a leisure centre.

  ‘They have a swimming pool here?’ I ask, aware of a warm smell of chlorine.

  ‘Yes,’ says Elzak. He suddenly looks small and a little bit lost in the entrance hall.

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really? It’s only up the road from your home, so why is that?’ I blunder.

  ‘Men and women in the same pool … I am religious,’ says Elzak smilingly. ‘It would not be appropriate.’

  Walking into the café bar, I whisper to Phil, ‘Are you Catholic?’

  ‘I’m atheist,’ says Phil. ‘Born a Catholic, though.’

  ‘I was brought up Protestant.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew just walked into a bar …’

  The bar is a bar in the sense that it sells alcohol, but basically it is a mix of sofas, throw cushions and waitresses who serve a lot of cappuccinos. A few women sit in the comfy chairs with their legs neatly folded to one side and designer shopping bags by their feet.

  ‘Why don’t we sit here,’ I say unthinkingly, motioning to a table. It is next to the glass wall that runs floor to ceiling down the entire length of one side of the bar, giving us a perfect poolside view.

  ‘Er … OK,’ says Elzak. As we both catch sight of the bikinis and Speedos, he continues, ‘But perhaps we can draw the curtain across?’

  We drape the curtain, which is only a thin muslin veil, over our section of the glass wall. Elzak pulls up a chair, motioning to the pool behind the cloth and saying, ‘It would be inappropriate …’ He sits with an opaque curtain shielding him from the pool, but is unable to escape the TV mounted on our table that periodically pipes adverts onto the screen.