The West Bank Blog

Eli

Last Friday I went for a Shabbat arranged by a website, anywhereinisrael.com, which enables people to host others for religious Sabbaths. I went to Eli, South East of Ariel, South of Nablus (Shchem).

(Some names may have been changed)

At Jerusalem Central Bus Station on Friday afternoon I bought a slice of pizza. I noticed that all the busses to settlements are located at that far end of the line of bus docks. The guy at the pizza stall confirmed that this was so. I got on the bus for Eli and sat near the back. We snaked through the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, slipping imperceptibly past the Green Line. A girl sitting behind me named for me the areas as we passed them, hill by hill.

We drove for about forty minutes and arrived in the driving rain. I ducked beneath my umbrella and called my hosts. I had gotten off at the wrong stop. Within a few minutes Avi, the husband, had arrived in his old people carrier. I bundled my bags onto the back seat and jumped in.

At his home I met his wife, Adina, and eighteen-month-old son, Shlomi. I was parked in front of the box to watch a repeat of the Barcelona vs Real Madrid match - and also play with Shlomi - while preparations for Shabbat were being finished off.

Avi got on the phone and managed to get enough people to come 'round to his to do a service there, thus avoiding going to synagogue in the rain. So we duvenned (prayed) in his living room then, once all had left, had dinner. Out of the window the clouds gathered over the hills. On the opposing hilltop was a newer part of Eli, some houses being built. No Arab homes were visible.

Conversation was pleasant though uninspiring. It turned out that both Avi and Adina were on their second marriages. Normally her two sons and his two daughters would've been there too, but all were at their other parents' places in near-by settlements. He was originally a New Yorker, from Queens; she from New Jersey. But she had moved to Israel (Petakh Tiqwa) as a teenager while he had arrived more recently. We spoke in English. They had moved to Eli because he had had enough of the big city: he wanted the quiet rural life in a friendly religious community. This he had found. He worked in Jerusalem, a forty or fifty minute commute away, as a lens grinder; she (like me in a previous life) a nursery teacher. The belief that Eli and the lands which surround it are an intrinsic part of Israel went without saying as a prior and innate condition for their moving there.

In the morning we went to synagogue with Shlomi in tow. I prayed. Avi stood, prayer shawl on, book in hand, Shlomi held on his arm hovering above the pistol strapped to his waste. A few of the men had these pistols, and a couple also carried massive machine guns slung over their backs. Out of the window the hills stood, large and impressive. On top of some were Jewish homes. Bellow and to the left, on lower slopes there was a Palestinian town.

We had kiddush (snacks, drinks and blessings) at the home of a convivial Mancunian couple: herring, Israeli pickles and drinking-whisky. I asked one of the few Israeli-born Israelis present about the number of Anglophones in Eli. Almost everyone he said; good for his kids' learning English. Many of these inhabitants either don't or else hardy speak Hebrew.

On the walks between locations I chatted with Jay, a bearded, friendly, (American), friend of Avi's, also with pistol strapped reassuringly to waist. He was eager to tell me about Eli's history and politics. In synagogue for minha (the afternoon service) he had pointed out two of it's founders, standing at opposite ends of the room. One had led the council by diktat for years, using the seven-man council as a rubber-stamping committee. Elections dates had continuously been postponed by virtue of unanimity. The other had eventually broken off and formed a new party. Now they stood at impasse; the struggle continues.

Jay had come for ideological reasons, to use his phrase. As we walked he pointed out the hill tops and named them for me. I noted that in the direction we were looking we could only see Jews. In that direction (East), he said, you could draw a line around a piece of continuous land that would give a Jewish majority all the way down to the Jordan Valley. Turning a corner he pointed out the Arab town to the north. There's another to the South.

After lunch I tried to read and fell asleep in a chair. When I awoke, I asked Avi about going for a walk. I wanted to get up the hill we could see out of his window. He had told me that it had been built to make sure that the Arabs didn't build there, on the highest hill around, overlooking Eli. Now he told me that I should be able to get there and back before ma'ariv (evening service). I took the long path spiraling to the right, around the south of the hill. The walk was steep and muddy. On the hilltops in front and behind were rows of red-roofed houses and white rectangular caravans. I kept going. Then, almost at the top the path turned and suddenly I was on a road back in Eli. I hadn't moved, hadn't climbed a hill, hadn't gone anywhere. Same houses, same lights, same people. Some of these now walked in the opposite direction. "Shabbat shalom" we said to one another as we passed by. Beyond the houses there were two rows of caravans. Beyond these there was what seemed to be a plateau. I walked along a road there and saw the metal frame of a watch tower around which the hill fell away on three sides. As I climbed it the wind suddenly hit me: cold and strong. I got to the top and looked a round: finally a full panorama. Looking north, Arab villages lay plastered to the slopes. Looking east and west: a chain of Jewish-settled hilltops as far as the eye could see. It seems that this had been the plan more than two decades ago when the project was begun in earnest: a chain of the tallest hilltops stretching west to east, first on one in every few hills then on those in between.

At some point in the afternoon Avi made the comment that most sticks in my mind: the attacks of 9/11 had been a good thing. Then he caught himself. He was a New Yorker and had always looked up at the Twin Towers as he walked in south Manhattan. Their absence still affected him when he visited. But 9/11 had woken America up to what the Arabs really were. I mentioned that Iraq doesn't seem to have gone so well for the US. This he brushed aside. The importance of that day was that it brought America on side.

After Havdala (ceremony for the end of the Sabbath) Avi tried to burn me a DVD of the first series of '24'. But that went too slowly and I had to leave for the free bus to Jerusalem. He walked me most of the way. I asked a question or two. People lived there, he said, because it was quiet, rural, communal, religious and near enough to Jerusalem or even Tel-Aviv to commute. That the area was Jewish by right went without saying. As did the fact that it ought therefore to be controlled by Israel. Its seems that the motivation of strengthening the Jewish presence there is explicit for some like Jay, implicit for others. No one there would want to abandon sovereignty of the area, even if offered identical homes and communities in the Galilee. Some of the newer bumper stickers and magazine covers there read 'yesha shelanu', 'our Judea and Samaria'.

I ran to get there for the bus, then joined the queue. I sat behind the driver. The bus was subsidized by the army he said, to prevent all these people trying to hitchhike back on a Saturday night. We snaked back to Jerusalem. I got to the German Colony in time to dump by bags at my grandparents' flat, brush my teeth and get out of the door to arrive on time at a friend's bachelor's party on the high street bellow.