The time had come to resume normal life, but not for Eli and his settlement group. They now were eagerly waiting to continue settlement training and establish a settlement of their own. Quite understandably, the teachers at Ironi Aleph wanted them to complete their high-school education and earn matriculation certificates, like their counterparts in other high schools across the country. Therefore the teachers asked their students to return to school for a brief period during summer vacation in 1949 and to seriously apply themselves to completing their matriculation exams. The teachers volunteered to teach the students in their free time, and most of the students, including Eli, acceded to the request, although, as might have been expected, they were not overly enthusiastic about their new summer plans.
The boys studied for their matriculation exams for another three months, but lacked the patience necessary to continue studying any longer than that. Their parents and teachers ultimately gave in. The momentous events occurring around them over the past two years had disrupted their studies repeatedly and so an effort was made to lighten the burden of the matriculation exams. Eli had not found his studies overly difficult in any event and passed all his exams with ease.
•••
The Scouts settlement group, which consisted of 95 members from around the country, was subsequently sent to complete another training program at Kibbutz Ramat David, located in the Jezreel Valley. From there, most members were sent to the Jordan Valley to Kibbutz Degania Aleph, which is best known for being the first kibbutz; the other members were sent to nearby Kibbutz Afikim. The ultimate goal, however, was to allocate them land to establish a permanent settlement of their own. Eli and his friends were already familiar with Ramat David; they had fallen in love with the kibbutz while attending a work camp there. This time, they were there for a few months, working in a variety of positions at the kibbutz. Eli worked in the field crops, loading bales of hay, among other tasks.
During the spring of 1949, the Scouts group learned that the settlement authorities intended on settling them at a site that later came to be known as Tel Katzir, near the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The kibbutz that was designated to be established there was affiliated with Ichud Hakibbutzim, the kibbutz movement associated with Ben-Gurion and Mapai.
Tel al-Qasr,19 the Arabic name of the hill chosen for the new settlement, was once the site of a small Syrian village. The village had been abandoned and, according to rumors, was now being used primarily for smuggling. The village’s position at the crossroads between the Golan Heights, the Mountains of Gilead, and the Galilee imbued it with strategic significance. During World War I, Tel al-Qasr had been in the heart of the battlefields and during World War II, the British fortified the area in an effort to prevent Vichy French forces from invading Palestine from Syria.
On the night of May 16, 1948, immediately after Israel declared independence, the Syrians invaded the Jordan Valley, occupied Tel al-Qasr, and turned it into the main command post for the Syrian forces threatening the Jewish settlements of the Jordan Valley. They positioned cannons and heavy mortars on the hill and began shelling the settlements in the region. The besieged defenders of Ein-Gev to its north sent a platoon to try to conquer Tel al-Qasr, but did not succeed.
At the end of the campaign, the Syrians gave up on penetrating Israel from their positions in its territory and retreated to their own territory, although they continued to retain control over some areas beyond their officially recognized international borders. One of these areas was Tel al-Qasr. It was only later, in accordance with the Syrian-Israeli Armistice Agreement of July 20, 1949, that the Syrians withdrew their forces to the Golan Heights. The Syrian withdrawal was conditioned on the premise that the area would remain a demilitarized no-man’s land, as both sides characterized it, and that Israel would face strict restrictions regarding its activities there. Although Ben-Gurion and his government accepted this demand, it became clear after the agreement was signed that the sides had different interpretations of the term demilitarized zone. As far as Israel was concerned, the fact that some of the land in question had been purchased by the Zionist settlement institutions and was owned by the Jewish National Fund meant that it was sovereign Israeli territory and could be used for any purpose other than the stationing of military forces.
The Syrians felt differently. When they became aware of Israel’s interpretation of the agreement, prior to the settlement of Eli’s group, they erected a camp just up the hill from it with 104 tents and uniformed soldiers in an effort to deter the IDF from attempting to create facts on the ground. The Israeli government’s response was to work toward the immediate establishment of settlements in the area to serve as counter settlements of sorts. Kibbutz Tel Katzir and nearby Kibbutz Ha’on would be a manifestation of Israeli sovereignty that would clearly mark the border.
It was evident to all that settling there would be dangerous due to the Israeli-Syrian discord regarding the nature of the demilitarized zone as well as other issues such as the struggle over the water of the Sea of Galilee and Syria’s decisive opposition to the draining of the swampy Hula Lake. It was logical to assume that the Syrians would not allow residents of the new settlements to establish a normal routine. This sense of danger only encouraged the passionate seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds to establish the settlement as soon as possible.
“We set out zealously for battle,” Eli explained, describing his feelings at the time.
When we heard where we had been designated to settle, we were overwhelmingly satisfied. We were finally “doing something.” We understood that going to settlement training meant going to a frontier settlement… This was [ideological] fulfillment, pioneering, and Zionism, which is what we had been dreaming of… My father was the proudest of all that I was going to Tel Katzir. He was as proud as a man could be.
The UN stationed forces between the Israelis and the Syrians. According to the armistice agreement, these forces were supposed to establish the principles governing behavior in the area in question. The armistice agreement also called for setting up an Armistice Commission to resolve disputes; if an agreement could not be reached, the UN representative on the commission would have the authority to make a decision. This was the fundamental significance of the UN and its representatives to both Israel and Syria. It was also why, when the settlement was first established, only 35 members of Eli’s settlement group were permitted to move to the site. UN officials had set this arbitrary number and Israel had no choice, at least at the outset, but to comply.
•••
The exact date the settlement was to be established – November 6, 1949 – had been determined far in advance, but Eli and the other 34 members bound for Tel Katzir were informed just three weeks beforehand. Each member was assigned a specific task for “zero-hour,” as they liked to call it. Levi Eshkol, the director of the Jewish Agency’s Settlement Department who would later become the prime minister of Israel,20 oversaw all the preparations. Eli’s description of Eshkol as, “the man who adopted Tel Katzir” was apt. Fearing that UN observers would intervene and perhaps even attempt to halt the construction of houses at the site, it was decided to execute the initial move as quickly as possible, within just a few hours. The existing settlements in the Jordan Valley and the IDF were mobilized for this complex operation. On November 6, trucks were dispatched to Hussein Hill, as it was referred to on the maps at the time (south of the current location of Tel Katzir), carrying everything necessary to construct a temporary settlement. They quickly erected temporary huts and concrete barricades as well as building a fence around the new settlement.
Eli’s group, whose members first arrived at the site wearing police uniforms since Israel was prohibited from stationing military forces there, immediately began “establishing facts on the ground,” as they so fondly described such acts of settlement at the time. This, it was clear, was certain to displease the Syrians. The group had two goals. The first was to prove, with
a formal ceremony before a large crowd, that a real settlement had been established. The ceremony was scheduled to take place on November 29, 1949, 23 days after their arrival. The date chosen, the second anniversary of the UN General Assembly vote on partition, was highly symbolic.
A second goal, which was longer-term in nature, was creating a bona fide settlement. The members therefore reinforced the temporary structures that had been set up on the first day to turn them into stronger permanent structures, erected several public buildings, bolstered the fence, paved paths, and began farming the land. In their minds, they had returned to the mythological days of Jewish tower-and-stockade settlement of the 1930s. After all, they too had built a settlement encircled by a fence symbolizing its sovereignty over the land. After the establishment of these facts on the ground, it did not take long for a new, real settlement to take form.
•••
From the very beginning, Eli and his highly motivated comrades regarded Tel Katzir as their own private estate and behaved accordingly. The most they were willing to do was to let the settlement, agricultural, and military authorities assist them. For example, as the sovereigns of the settlement, they were the ones to decide that its name would be based on the site’s Arabic name, Tel al-Qasr, but would also be related to the country’s Jewish collective agricultural settlement movement. The Hebrew word katzir (harvest) was well suited in both respects, but the Names Committee of the Prime Minister’s Office clashed with the new settlement’s secretariat, then under Eli’s leadership, over the official name for quite some time. The committee argued that since the word tel literally means ancient ruins, the word bayit (house or home) was a more appropriate choice. The name that the committee preferred, Beit Katzir, would have also made a fitting counterpart to the nearby settlement of Beit Zera. The battle over the settlement’s name reached a stalemate. Since the kibbutz was one of the frontier settlements that the Syrians harassed by shelling it frequently, Ben-Gurion was asked once to comment on the situation there. His statement to the press referred to the settlement explicitly as Tel Katzir. Eli took advantage of this golden opportunity and asked the prime minister to intervene in the ongoing dispute between the kibbutz and the names committee. Ben-Gurion did as Eli had expected and supported his position, stating, “Just as there is Tel Aviv and Tel Adashim, which are thriving and growing settlements, I wish the same for Tel Katzir.” A copy of the letter was sent to the names committee, which accepted Ben-Gurion’s authority and finally approved Tel Katzir as the official name of the settlement.
•••
Eli spent four years at Tel Katzir. In retrospect, his experiences during this period seem almost surreal; he and his comrades faced grave danger. From their positions higher up on the mountain, the Syrians could observe everything that went on at the kibbutz and shoot at its residents at will, which they indeed did from time to time. Eli and his comrades were forced to refrain from walking around the settlement unnecessarily and, on occasion, from working in the fields.
Yet Eli bravely took on one of the most dangerous jobs on the kibbutz at the time. In addition to holding a number of administrative positions, he plowed the fields on Settlement Hill (Giv’at Hahityashvut), which meant he was subjected to the threat of Syrian fire. This hill was located to the east of Tel Katzir and enjoyed a commanding view of the valley of the Yarmuk River. Eli did not simply plow the area assigned to him; he occasionally attempted to create facts on the ground by plowing additional areas that were marked on Israeli, Syrian, and UN maps alike as belonging to Syria. He later recalled:
When I plowed, I first used the tractor to mark the perimeter of the area to be plowed, and then I started plowing. We would always begin by plowing the area that had been agreed upon with the Syrians, but at a certain point, and with no advance warning, we would deviate from it. The moment we did so, they would always start shooting.
Because it was known that he would work in this manner, and because the tractor’s engine was so noisy he could not hear the gunshots, Eli often went out to the fields with an assistant who would signal him with semaphore flags when the Syrians were shooting. When this happened, Eli would not flee for his life, but set the tractor to drive itself and continue plowing.
When he used the flags to signal that they were shooting at me and from which direction, I would shift the tractor into first gear, jump out of the tractor on the side facing away from the Syrians, and run beside it. If you knew how to steer the tractor right prior to jumping out, you could run alongside for a kilometer or so, and it would drive fine. But if [your steering] was off, you had no choice but to jump back onto the tractor. This was an uncomfortable situation, as changing directions in the unwieldy vehicle required stopping, and it was clear that the Syrians would fire on you in the process. But what else could you do? You couldn’t leave the tractor there. So, you’d jump on the tractor, correct the steering, shift into first gear, and jump off again…
According to Eli’s somewhat surreal recollections of this period, he grew accustomed to the Syrians shooting at him and believed that they were “intentionally missing” him in an effort to warn him to refrain from “deviating from the borders.” They never intended to hit him, he believed, as this would have resulted in immense military tension, which they apparently did not desire. Only rarely did they shoot with the intention of hitting someone, and when they did, it was typically in the context of major border incidents such as those that took place in May 1951. In one such situation, Eli jumped out of the tractor to take cover and kept running beside it, forcing Yitzhak Modai, the Israeli representative to the Armistice Committee at the time, to appeal to UN observers to extricate him from the situation.
What compelled a rational person like Eli to remain in such a dangerous location? The answer, as he always explained it, was that he felt that he was serving the society in which he lived.
“What we are doing is important for the nation and the homeland,” he explained at the time.
He repeated this sentiment when reflecting on those days some 60 years later.
“It was important for us to demonstrate a presence,” he maintained, explaining the strong sense of patriotism that he and his comrades shared. “Remaining at Tel Katzir was an existential issue for the State of Israel, so we remained there.”
“We were not frightened,” he recalled later. “We never asked if it was rational or not. This sense was extremely powerful and left no room for asking questions… It was an existential matter, as not remaining there was unacceptable. It was a very real feeling.”
Plowing with the tractor, and later with the combine, was seasonal work, so Eli also occasionally worked as a fisherman. Despite being physically arduous, he regarded fishing as a peaceful respite that provided him with hours of relaxation that he could have never dreamed of enjoying while plowing. Fishing was somewhat more complicated than plowing and his training as a sea scout (tzofeh yam) came in handy. But after being instructed by the experienced fishermen of nearby Kibbutz Ein Gev, he felt at home on the waters of the Sea of Galilee.
I had two occupations: I was a farmer and a fisherman. I would fish in the Sea of Galilee. We would sail near the Persian Farm, because there the water was shallow and there were warm pools. It was a paradise for fish. There were masses of sardines. We would attract them with light from a portable kerosene lamp and then throw a net over them and pull them in by hand. It was extremely hard work.
Despite the physical exertion it entailed, the few hours a week he spent fishing was the only time he experienced tranquility during this period.
•••
As time passed, it became increasingly clear to Eli that the settlement was developing. Water was pumped in from the Sea of Galilee to irrigate Tel Katzir’s field crops. The kibbutz also began growing bananas, scallions, and parsley. Later, they planted a vineyard and began to build permanent houses alongside the first shacks. The number of residents living at the se
ttlement also began to increase gradually; the staff of the communal kitchen was not always able to prepare enough food for all of Tel Katzir’s members and its many visitors. In such situations, prepared food was occasionally brought in from IDF kitchens in the area and nearby settlements in the Jordan Valley.
It was as if everyone felt they needed to help the kibbutz that the Syrians wanted to destroy. The person who helped them more than anyone else and who, according to Eli, nurtured them “like his own children,” was Levi Eshkol who then headed the Jewish Agency’s Settlement Department. On one occasion, Eshkol called Eli and instructed him to go immediately to the Jewish Agency warehouses in Ramle to pick up pipes for water, “before anyone else takes them,” to enable the settlement to pump water from the Sea of Galilee to the fields and to the kibbutz itself. On another occasion, when new water pumps arrived, Eshkol ordered that the first ones be sent to Tel Katzir to increase the volume of water that could be supplied to the settlement and its fields. These and many other anecdotes speak for themselves. Eshkol was not the only one who came to their aid. Kibbutzim from the Jordan Valley, volunteers from around the country, military personnel, and many others banded together to support Tel Katzir.
Eli Hurvitz and the creation of Teva Pharmaceuticals: An Israeli Biography Page 6
