With the Rabbis in the South Hebron Hills.
Friday morning. 5am. My alarm goes. I reset it. 5:30am. My alarm goes again. I push myself out of bed, get dressed, take something from my grandmother's fridge and emerge, more asleep than awake, onto Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem's German Colony neighbourhood. Within two minutes I was at Liberty Bell Park. Abu Rami's minibus was already there, complete with Rabbi Yechiel, who I'd not met before, and Natanya, a sixty-something year-old volunteer. But there was a fourth member to the outing still absent. So we waited. A police patrol car came by. They policemen approached us and asked whether we were Ta'ayush, (another activist organisation). We replied that we were not. They left. The absent volunteer called again, asking for direction: he was at a petrol station, where were we? Then Natanya shrieked. Yechiel and I jumped from the bus. A man at the entrance to the park had been wrestled to the ground. His assailant seemed to be sitting on him. We approached. But out of a blind-spot on our right came a women, brandishing a police id. The flattened man cuffed, his hand behind his back, then yanked to his feet. He was wearing normal trousers and a t-shirt, but also an ultra-orthodox style black scull cap. He had long black side-curls down to his shoulder. Then we saw an older, larger man, also cuffed, also being led away. Both men glared at us. The police asked if we were Ta'ayush. Again we said we weren't. Then we were told that the two arrested men had come to attack us. Our details we taken and we drove away, towards Hebron.
Initially we thought that Ta'ayush must have been the targets. But then the absent volunteer came to mind. The police's number didn't work. Rabbi Yichiel recalled hearing orthodox music in the background when speaking to him. He called the man, and heard an answering machine in which he used religious language. It now seemed clear. This man had directed the two would-be assailants to us. We had indeed been the target. But his stupidity we extreme: later on he called again, saying that he was in (the settlement of) Kiryat Arba, and whether he could join us. This confirmed all our suspicions. No-one who would volunteer for Rabbis for Human rights would drive alone to Kiryat Arba.
So we arrived late at the village of Tiwani, south of Hebron. Tiawani has the misfortune to neighbour Ma'on, or Chavat Ma'on (Ma'on Farm), one of the most notoriously violent settlements. We went to work, harvesting wheat with bear hands. Clambering up the hillside to use the lavatory I looked down at the rolling desert hills, descending all the way to the Dead Sea. From that direction came there emerged a flock of goats, (do goats come in flocks?) Then, following the herd (that sounds better), came the shepherd, Jihadi, and his sons. The goats swarmed over the hill and down into the wadi to eat the wheat we'd missed. Jihadi in return came to work with the villagers. Later I got to chat with him. None of the family we were with spoke either English or Hebrew, making verbal communication all but impossible as none of the volunteers had good Arabic. But Jihadi had almost perfect Hebrew, polished over two years working in a factory in Holon, south of Tel-Aviv. He was a friendly man, intelligent, dark. His hands, when we shook, were large, his skin tough. His analysis: on both sides there are people who benefit from the conflict. On both sides they claim to be religious. But on both sides their religiosity is false, phoney. Those who are truly religious see all as equal. Those who fear God care about people more than land. His children have a daily escort of three Israeli soldiers on their way to school. These protect theme from the settlers of Ma'on who have, in the past, developed a habit throwing stones at parties of school children. Jihadi told me that when his kids come home and complain about the Jews this and the Jews that, he corrects them: the settlers, not the Jews. But therein lies another problem. Jihadi speaks fluent Hebrew; his children hardly know a word. The older generation of Palestinians often worked in Israel, in some places Israelis came to buy goods from Palestinian shops. But the new generation of Palestinians (about half the population) have seen only soldiers and settlers.
Back in Tel-Aviv I sat in front of my computer screen. I read a report by the Reut Institute, a small independent think tank. They describe what they call the Resistance Network, made up of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and some others. Their strategy, say Reut, is to sit and wait. They will prevent Israel from negotiating, prevent Israel from pulling out. In the long term, they believe, if the conflict continues then Israel will wither and crumble from within, like the USSR and like Apartheid South Africa. The aim of the settlers is similar, to prevent any chance of a Palestinian state in order to maintain dominion over the whole ancient Land of Israel. It is an analysis with which I think Jihadi would agree.
