Innocence and War

by Ian Strathcarron

  I am so close to the settlement at the archaeological site I just have to have a nose around.

  “Can we wander up the settlement?” I ask a wonderfully wholesome girl with sparkling blue eyes. Her badge calls her Sophia.

  “And can I take photographs?” asks Gillian.

  “Of the village, yeah, sure,” she says in an East Coast accent. “We got nothing to hide. Wait. Mum!”

  “Yeah!” It’s mum out the back.

  “You going up?”

  “Yeah. Five.”

  “Give these guys a ride!”, then to me: “that’s my mom, Nancy, it’s a hike up there in this heat. I guess you’ll want to see the new synagogue? They’re coming from all over.”

  “Well, yes, and just a look around, you know. Have you been here long?”

  “I was born here. 1990. My parents came in, like, 1974. They’re from New York.”

  “Oh really, I know it very well. Whereabouts?”

  “Brooklyn. Not sure exactly where.”

  “Well, well, I was there only a few months ago. I’m working on a project that started in a church in Brooklyn Heights. Have you heard of Mark Twain?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s really cool. He, like, hated this place. Don’t blame him back then. Now the Arabs hate us. They are taught to hate us. It’s so sad.”

  “Could be the land. Taking their land.”

  “Oh, this is our land. It’s in Judges. And Joshua and Samuel,” she says cheerily. “Here’s mum.”

  Mum is indeed Nancy and we clamber into her old Suzuki Vitara. “Sophia says you’re from Brooklyn.”

  “It’s Soph-eye-ah, and yes we were. Now we’re from here.”

  She came here as part of an archaeological dig in 1974, her husband connected with his biblical brothers (“we are all children of Israel after all”), and he stayed. She followed him two years later. She’s not a woman of many words; brusque and bigoted, with no subtext, no grace, no subtleties, nothing in between the lines. She drops us at the new synagogue. “There are four other synagogues in Shilo, mikvas for men and women.”

  “Wow!” I say insincerely. “And for how many folk?” “We got two thousand in the village.”

  “Sounds more than a village.”

  “Six births per household. That’s the average. We got four.”

  “And do you get paid per birth?”

  “Oh yeah. OK?” she gestures us to leave.

  I take a look around the new synagogue but I’m afraid to say they don’t mean much to me. We passed a shop half way to here and I drift down for an ice cream or something cold and to have a nosey. The social hierarchies of an American suburb are maintained: mobile homes at the lower level, detached one- or two-bedroom houses at mid-level and on the hilltop three- or four-bedroom houses. Each house and garden is as prim and proper as one would expect; only the cars are older and shabbier than you would expect. I notice that each drive has a pile of wheels and tires and that the cars are bashed about and pockmarked.

  Outside the shop, resting in the shade, an older man is sitting watching the world go by. We fall into conversation. Lionel came here six years ago, brought by his three children and in-laws already living here as he was alone and it was easier all round to have him nearby. Rather than where? Chicago, Highland Park. He lives in one of the mobile homes at the lower level. How is it? Not bad, not home, best thing is his grandchildren. How many? Fifteen - and countin’.

  “So what you doing? We don’t get many foreigners up here.”

  I tell him.

  “Syria, Lebanon? I ain’t been anywhere since I got here. There’s a bus to Jerusalem. Been there once or twice. Where you staying?”

  “In Ramallah. Twenty miles away. Capital of Palestine now, they say. You’ve been there I guess?”

  “Nope. We don’t go there. They don’t come here. We reckon they’ll stone us or kidnap us if we go to an Arab town.”

  I think back to Balata only twenty miles the other way. It’s hard to imagine Shilo and Balata are even on the same planet - or rather that their mentalities are on the same planet. A beaten-up old Subaru drives past. The driver waves, Lionel waves back. “That’s Miriam, she runs the dry cleaner. Everyone knows everyone.”

  I ask about the cars, like that old Subaru, all dents and pockmarks - and about the spare wheels and tires.

  Lionel laughs, and says “I shouldn’t really laugh. The local Arab kids sprinkle down tacks and nails at night. To give us flats. Down at the entrance, they don’t dare come in. Every morning there’s a sweep-up rota before the six a.m. bus to Jerusalem. That’s bullet proof, the bus, you know. The rota man sweeps up the tacks, but sometimes one or two don’t get picked up and folk get flats. Once in a while they organize a spare tire run into Jerusalem.”

  “And the dents? Looks like hail stones.”

  “Oh, that’ll be the catapults. They’re getting pretty good. Use ball bearings mostly. Sometimes they break a window, mostly not. You get used to it.”

  Another car drives up, an old Toyota Corolla. “That’ll be my ride,” says Lionel.

  Gillian joins me under the tree to see off the afternoon heat. Random scribbles from my notebook that afternoon: Chevy (real) truck w/bumper sticker “The Bible says it - I read it - that settles it”. Stocky Orth w/automatic across his back. Sounds of babies thru open windows. All wear relig clothes - not all full h/bangers. So relig, irrelig hatred of Arabs, not unlike t/Christians w/Muslims in Leb. Hitchhiking around sett t/norm - everyone stops. Ad for local elections. Buses to Jer. + TA via other setts. Setts like mini-Israel. Old joke: Jews like everyone else only more so - so setts like Israel only more so?

  Construction sites around, no freeze ref Jer Post piece? Every boy curls hair, girls long skirts. Susp looks from every passer. No recycling. No solar or roof water tanks. Odd as all else so mod?

  It’s time to go, time to call up Mr. Farki. A second after realizing that I have left my mobile phone in his car console I remember he cannot come and collect me anyway. We walk back towards the synagogue in the hope of passing Nancy’s car - and so finding her house - and seeing if I can call from there. No need - after half a minute a white four-door pick-up truck pulls up.

  A darker man, about thirty, asks what we are doing.

  I explain. He laughs and says in the settlements they have the highest percentage of mobile phones per person in the world. Why so? Because we always keep one free and use it just for emergences. I call Mr. Farki on his non-emergency phone and we agree to meet at the entrance in ten minutes.

  “Wait,” says my new friend, “I better clear it. Jump in I’ll take you there.”

  He makes a call on a VHF ICOM radio identical to the one on Vasco da Gama.

  I see he uses Channel 67, which sailors use for the coastguard. He talks in Hebrew to another man then says to me: “What car and color is it?”

  “It’s a white Daewoo with Chevrolet written on it.”

  “So is it a Chevrolet or a Dae-woo?”

  “Daewoo. Either, both, neither. Chevrolet. White.”

  “It’s a white Chevrolet,” says Gillian patiently.

  In a couple of minutes we are at the entrance. Another truck is already there and they talk to each other on the radio again. My new friend says we can wait in the other truck till the Arab arrives. My Arab arrives a few moments later; I’ve never been so pleased to see an Arab in my life.

  “Where next Twain effendi?” says Mr. Farki.

  “A bar,” replies Twain effendi.

  Actually we head back to the Grand Park Hotel in Ramallah, shower and change and then repair to the bar there for a debrief.

  There are about half a million Israelis living in over one hundred and twenty official settlements, mostly in the West Bank but also in the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Some are just mil
itary outposts, others proper cities of between thirty to fifty thousand people. There is supposed to be a halt on new settlements and a freeze on expanding existing ones, and it’s clear to see that the latter restriction is being blatantly ignored. It seems, coincidentally or not, that the settlements have been established on the Starbucks cluster principle. The consensus is that about half the settlers are biblically inspired, as at Shilo, and that half are financially inspired by the offer of cheap housing and generous subsidies. As a generalization it is deemed that the former are predominantly ex-American, the latter ex-Russian, and that opposition to the whole idea is predominantly ex-European; as the media here implies, a generalization, but one derived from facts on the ground.

  Everyone agrees that as has already happened in the Sinai and Gaza when - if - there is ever a peace agreement, most of the settlements will have to become part of the new state of Palestine. In Gaza the operation to pull the settlers out provoked a storm of protest from the religious-right but enough of them were mollified by an average compensation of $250,000 that they eventually left peacefully. It also has to be said that most of the settlers in Gaza were financially rather than biblically motivated, and the West Bank settlers won’t be so open to open checks. The Israeli media suggests that pretty much all of the ex-Gaza settlers then re-settled in the West Bank knowing there would be cheap housing in the short term and the prospect of a further payout down the road.

  Mr. Farki says that while from an Arab view the settlements are humiliating and provocative, from a Muslim view there is some sympathy for the idea of fulfilling ancient prophecies, even if they are Toranic and not Koranic. What irritates the Arabs most is the feeling that their noses are being rubbed in the dirt, that the humiliation and provocation of the Wall and the settlements are not done by uncaring invaders who know no better, as would have been the case with the Ottomans, but as a deliberate policy either by a right-wing religious coalition with a land grab agenda or by a left-wing coalition that can only be held together by pandering to the biblical fundamentalists.

  The region’s problems unresolved, we set off the next morning for Bethel and Jerusalem. On the way we pass a shiny new compound with soldiers at the gate. Alongside it is a flattened building. Mr. Farki says that is Yasser Arafat’s mausoleum and the pile of rubble is his old HQ which the Israelis kindly flattened for him.

  We compare notes about Yasser Arafat. The old terrorist never made the leap to statesman when he had the chance offered to him on a plate. In fact he threw the food off the plate at every opportunity. He did succeed in amassing a personal fortune of $300 million - the IMF reckons total embezzlement over his lifetime was $900 million, while Forbes magazine had him down as the sixth richest despot in the world. We see this as pretty disgusting, but Mr. Farki points out that many Arabs think “well done!”, that you’d be a fool not to steal all that money if you had the chance.

  ***

  Bethel has now become the rabbi-ridden settlement of Beit El, twice the size of Shilo and no doubt just as sanctimonious. In Mark Twain’s time it was “a shapeless mass of ruins, which still bears the name of Bethel. It was here that Jacob lay down and had that superb vision of angels flitting up and down a ladder that reached from the clouds to earth, and caught glimpses of their blessed home through the open gates of Heaven.

  “The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and we pressed on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem.”

  But there was rough riding ahead:

  The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and distinct stonecutter’s establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country.

  (Ten years earlier Herman Melville had made the same journey. He wrote: “Judea is just one accumulation of stones - stony mountains & stony plains; stony torrents & stony roads; stony walls & stony fields; stony houses & stony tombs; stony eyes & stony hearts.”)

  ***

  The road up to Jerusalem now is concreted, as are the buildings that line it for the last ten miles. Two of Mark Twain’s memories live well today: the “fragments of stone” and the “tiresome” and monotonous landscape. Rubble and rubbish is the defining motif of Palestine. There seems to be no concept of finishing a construction and then clearing up afterwards. Even brand new hotels are surrounded by rubble and rubbish. No wonder one recalls the images of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli forces; they did not have to bring their ammunition with them, just to bend down and the arsenal is to hand. Twain’s other observation on the landscape near Jerusalem is also apt today, although whereas he saw scrubland desolation, rubble and rubbish we see concrete desolation, rubble and rubbish. At least he was spared the swerving, blaring, darting, incessant traffic. Now it is tiresome not just to the eye, but to the nerves as well.

  ***

  Two hours later the Excursionists had arrived! “At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite bits of wall and crumbling arches began to line the way - we toiled up one more hill, and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!

  “Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the sun. So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.”

  ***

  Our entrance to the eternal city is somewhat less joyous; in fact, we are the cause of a mini-riot at the Wall/Fence. The traffic leading up to the wall starts several hundred yards from it. When he can drive no further we say our sad goodbyes to the redoubtable Mr. Farki and set off on foot towards the wall. This still being Palestine there are no pavements, just roadside rubble and rubbish, so we walk and wheel our luggage squeezed in alongside the stationary traffic. It is stiflingly hot, made worse by the lack of shade and the heat and fumes from the cars and vans. There are no signs so we just follow the jam, then suddenly, fifty yards before the first checkpoint one lane becomes three and the cars rush into their new positions. An old van catches the end of his fender around my luggage strap and accelerates away dragging the bag behind him. I shout “Stop! Stop!” and the bored drivers respond to the sudden excitement by a mass blowing of horns. Suddenly the scene changes from routine resignation to furious maelstrom. As I catch up with the van the Israeli loudspeakers crack into life with shouted instructions - in Hebrew - and two soldiers rush forward with automatics pointing straight at me. They are shouting and pointing, so I shout back in English but this makes them even more jumpy. I am hoping they’ve got their safeties on as they seem somewhat over-agitated. The soldiers and loudspeakers and guns are enough to cow the drivers back into silence. One driver gingerly winds down his window and tells us to go through an unmarked barrier to our left just outside the car zone.

  We walk away with our tails between our legs and repeat in reverse the galvanized turnstile routine we went through at Janin. Incredibly the whole process is still done entirely by camera - inhuman on at least two levels. Emerging the other side of the Wall/Fence we see Jerusalem up close and personal, and like Mark Twain before us feel we have reached a holy grail - of some description.

  35 The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that has ever been devised for keeping a people’s privileges satisfactorily restricted. Followin
g the Equator

  36 Of the 417 commandments, only a single one of the 417 has found ministerial obedience; multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner & saint, scholar & ignoramus, Christian & savage are alike loyal. Notebook, 1893

  37 The Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes. The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession and take the credit of the correction. Europe and Elsewhere

  7: Jerusalem

  A chap needs a bit of luck every now and then. Mine came in a double dose. I was rather dreading having Bruno be our Ferguson again, especially in Jerusalem where a properly trained guide is essential. Two days ago I had received an email from him saying the IDF had messed up his conscription relay and he had to go training with his unit somewhere near Haifa. Very sorry, etc. Then yesterday another email, this one from his father, Prof. Fornaciari - who is also our biblical bouncing board - saying he had just heard about Bruno messing us about. Very sorry, etc. Did we want him to find a replacement? And did we want to use Bruno’s now vacant room in his attic? The answers were no thanks and yes please.

  Mark Twain makes no mention of visiting the American Consul in Jerusalem, Dr. Hedley J. Smith, but I would be surprised if he had not done so. Until the internet it was pretty much standard practice for roving correspondents far from home to touch base with their embassy or consulate; partly to let them know they were around and partly, actually mainly, for an informal briefing on politics and gossip. It is, of course, quite possible that in the summer heat the consul had taken his leave and a one-month break would require several weeks either side for travelling.