The Morning Commute

A man sells coffee and tea on the street. From under his moustache, a gold tooth glimmers in an easy smile. His makeshift shop lies at the base of a high metal fence that’s laced with razor wire like icing on a cake. The fence protects a building whose very foundation was built on the fault lines of fear. Though devoid and sterile it still breeds like roaches more fear and its ugly offspring, hate. This stony ediface is a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. While I stand inside I think this is a land of hard things, Israel. Softness is steam from the hot drinks the man outside pours and just as ethereal.

In the lost hours of pre-dawn mornings, he brews thick Turkish coffee in an elegant cone-shaped pot etched with exotic design. Its spout arches, opening up like a petal in bloom. The long straight handle is wrapped in duct tape meant to shield his calloused hands from burns. A few squat stainless steel teapots boil water like engines over a charcoal grill that’s held up on either end by blocks of Jerusalem stone blackened from use.

His morning rush is over by the hour the dawn breaks into long shadows once the sun has finally risen high enough to begin to warm the coldest of desert nights. His customers come from the other side — from Bethlehem into Jerusalem, from Palestine into Israel. They’ve waited a long time and they are thirsty.

Starting at 3am, 4am, every work day, thousands of commuters stand en masse on the Bethlehem-side to funnel one by one, through this structure dedicated to the bureaucracies of security: paperwork, permits, magnetic id cards and the harsh realities of today’s guarded zones: metal detectors, body searches, handscans and no toilets.

Everyday the most heavily-armed are ordered to hover and keep watch from up above, pacing on their paths of steel.

Everyday his customers are routed through the deepening abyss of separation in order to work, to go to school, to get health care, to pray at the holiest of sites.

Everyday his customers pass by a thick glassed-in booth and are spoken to in foreign tongue through muffled intercoms or loud bullhorns — dividing ever-more both natives by language and by culture, the Arab and the Jew.

And everyday his customers must present themselves back at the checkpoint by a specified hour or risk losing their permitted status that allows them to even cross.

Once through the checkpoint, his regulars — these men, women, children — fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters — like us — hurry on to live out their day, their lives.

Holding children close, belts still in hand, they lay down a few coins for their morning cup of coffee, their morning cup of tea. Everyday, just like us.

Dedicated to the women of Machsom Watch an organization of Israeli peace activists and Rabbis for Human Rights. By Ali Berlow.

Reactions to a Visit to Hebron

We visited Hebron's Israeli sector yesterday with Soldiers, Breaking the Silence. According to an agreement reached in 1997 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, Hebron was divided into two sections. H1, about 80 percent of the city, falling under the control of the Palestinian Authority, while Israel maintaines control over H2, which containes significant parts of the old commercial center as well as the Israeli settlements. H2 still has Arabs legally living there. Those Arabs living there are separated from the Jewish settlers by rules and physical barriers making life difficult for them and making us wonder why they remain. During our walk we were confronted with a settler yelling to us that the blood of dead settlers was on our soul because we were visiting. We continued on, ignoring his rants. We expected to shop in the small market that remained in the Jewish area but we were herded on by the police and we could not stop. It made most of us angry because wanted to shop. We also expected to be able to go to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the traditional site of the burial place of the matriarchs and the patriarchs except Rachel. But we were prevented from going because we were with Soldiers, Breaking the Silence. As such the police said we were a demonstration, even though it was only a tour. The police officer also told our guide, a Jewish Israeli citizen that he could never come back. An Israeli citizen could not come back to an Israeli city. There was some yelling between our guide and the police and another guide. There was yelling but we still could not get to see the tomb.

Imagine, someone told me NO for no reason. Me, who believes in the value of being reasonable, that if everyone knew what the other knew then one could easily find a solution. Hebron challenged that world view. There was nothing reasonable about any of it. We could not go into the Tomb because? Just because? Just because? Just because police were said so.

Being white, I really never experienced that kind of irrationality that before. I could more or less get what I wanted by just asking. I was not prepared even at 66 to know the impotence of a crazy situation. Just because, just because. Even my parents who could be capricious like any human being provided some avenue for discussion and getting around an ultimatum. But not here.

Now, imagine, I am not a White American Jew but a Palestinian native of Hebron living in my family home that now is in the Israeli sector. What is it like for me? I live legally on a street in my family house but I cannot walk on the street in front of my house. I have to climb out a window and down a ladder to leave my house to go shopping or to the doctor or to see my sister. Jewish settlers’ children harass me and draw graffiti on my house and steal or dirty my laundry as it is hanging on the porch. So I build a cage around my porch to protect me from the children and maybe their parents. I do not have a curfew but I am caged in my own house. I am confined for my own good. For my safety so they say. To protect me from the newcomers, the settlers who have come to claim my city, reclaim it as they say. Fine, but they care nothing for me and want me out of there. All the harassment is to get rid of me. And the police and the army are there to protect me. And the protection becomes my prison.

The law is on my side—but the law is not enforced and rules change to accommodate the settlers. The settlers violate civil, sometimes criminal and certainly moral law but they control the situation. In the news we see the police and the army marshaled to protect Israelis from the Palestinian terrorist, but here it is to protect us and even the tourists from the Jewish settler. How and why, I do not yet understand. But I know it is so.

Why do the police not enforce the laws from Jerusalem and rulings from the courts? Perhaps fear of a civil war—a war of Jew against Jew. What a shunda, Jew against Jew. It must be prevented. But to avoid that shunda they create another, maybe a bigger one. They create the solutions to prevent violence against me by caging me and separating me. They prevent physical violence against me and they prevent physical violence of Jew against Jew but they perpetuate violence against all our souls, the soul of the soldier, the soul of the police, the soul of The State of Israel and my soul, as I get up from my chair on the porch looking out onto the road, and get ready to climb down my ladder into the back yard so I can go get food for dinner. Maybe violence of the body is better. At least it would be quick. The violence of the soul is insidious not really hurting yet killing gradually, unbeknownst to the victims. So everyday the situation becomes more entrenched and harder to change. Until there is no solution. And hope is gone.

As a visitor to this city and to the State of Israel I feel like the goal of the separation and all the rules were made to make the life of the average Palestinian difficult and unpredictable. In such an environment maybe the Palestinians will all just leave and go to Jordan or someplace else. Most of the Arabs in this sector have voluntarily moved over to the Palestinian sector. How can anyone live like my lady in Hebron? But the Arabs won’t go away. No wall, no road blocks, no settlers’ children harassing old ladies will force them all out and may even harden their resolve to remain. For centuries the world has been trying to get rid of her Jews but with no success. Think of the Arabs as Israel’s Jews. How can Israel be so bold as to think she can get rid of her Arabs? Like 2000 year old olive trees planted in this land at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, her Arabs are here to stay. Now, deal with it.

What's in a Map?

I spent some time in Borders Monday, looking for children's books to take to the Bedouin village we will be visiting as part of our trip to Israel and the West Bank. At a discount store, I riffled through several books with Disney princesses and Big Bird and Elmo, but didn't know if they were appropriate: would kids would know who the characters were and, if not, would the books make any sense? A children's World Atlas was on sale, a big beautiful book like the ones my kids used to page through endlessly, and which they kept for many years, enjoying both the pictures and then, when they could read better, memorizing huge amounts of trivia that they loved to share.
I had the book in my hand and was headed to the checkout when realized I should check what it said about the land where it would be read. The map showed Israel, with a strip for Gaza, but the word Palestine or Palestinian was, of course, nowhere to be seen. I remembered the only other time I was in this part of the world, in 1994, when a group from my synagogue -- dedicated to pursuing a two-state solution in the land -- visited the Deheishe refugee camp. We found ourselves seated under a framed map, in which the "one state" illustrated was Palestine, which shouldn't have shocked us, but did.
I took the Atlas back and picked up another big one, a Children's Encyclopedia. This time, in checking Israel, I saw a listing for Islam and knew I didn't have enough knowledge about the subject to know if the information in the book was correct or if it would be considered offensive. I went back yet again and this time picked up an Encyclopedia of Animals.
Was I making this too complicated? Or had I avoided being seen as insensitive or ignorant? If so, are there other gifts I'm bringing that will say something I don't want them to? I realize how much I don't know.