"You can go," the soldier told me as he cradled a well oiled rifle. He was leading a squad of similarly armed soldiers who were protecting workers with a boom crane as they set 6' tall concrete blocks into place. It appeared that they were blocking off vehicle access to the dead end street that led to the pedestrian crossing from Bethlehem towards Jerusalem. A crowd of angry taxi drivers milled around, for this was where they gathered to take fares into the center of Bethlehem and elsewhere. I walked past the equipment, up a hundred foot pedestrian tunnel, through a tall turn style. I showed my passport and visa to the soldier there, crossed an empty parking lot, down a pedestrian tunnel, through another tall turnstyle cage, through a metal detector while my knapsack was x-rayed. Through a line to a booth and another passport check, and I stepped outside into Israel. Easy for me, but a daily gauntlet for Palestinians who might be lucky enough to have a pass to work in Israel.
Looming behind me as I walked up the hill to Tantur was The Wall. Snaking as far as the eye could see in either direction, the "separation barrier" is built of concrete panels 20' high and 6' wide to make a solid barrier. Occasional watch towers and razor wire complete the picture. Israel started the wall during the 2nd Intifada as a way to prevent suicide bombers from infiltrating into Israel, where they had been wreaking havoc and killing scores. Ostensibly a temporary measure only because of the bombings (which stopped in 2006), construction continues. Unlike its famous Berlin prototype which was on the border, it is built on Palestinian land, sometimes miles inside the Green Line (1967 border). It winds around villages, wraps Israeli settlements into the main body of Israel, and often cuts Palestinian villages off from their crop lands. It can only be crossed at heavily guarded checkpoints, either full barriers like I just crossed, or vehicular crossings on specific highways.
While the Palestinians hate the Wall, likening it to living in a prison, the Israelis consider it an unfortunate necessity due to terrorism. No mere theoretical possibility, the memory is seared deeply. I was being shown around Gilo one evening, the leafy suburb/settlement next to Tantur, and several different memorials were pointed out to me of people, often children, killed. One was for the guard at the elementary school, who died preventing a terrorist from getting into the classrooms. A week ago a policewoman died in a knife attack near Jerusalem's Damascus Gate. For Israelis this is but the latest round of two thousand years of persecution, pogroms, and genocide: They want to kill us. We must be strong. We will be armed. We will build a wall, no matter the cost. Security trumps any and every consideration.
"Good fences make good neighbors" has its ultimate expression at Hebron. Hebron had a centuries long co-existence as a city holy to both Jews and Muslims due to the shrine of the Patriarchs. Abraham had bought the field of Machpelah to bury Sarah, himself, and subsequently his son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and his son Jacob and his wife Leah. (Jacob's other wife, Rachel, died in childbirth and her tomb is at Bethlehem.). Then, in 1929, fearing the increasing presence of Zionist colonists in the region, local youth went on a rampage, killing scores of Jews. The survivors, some of whom had been sheltered by their Arab neighbors, fled to Jerusalem. Hebron remained uniformely Arab until Israel conquered the West Bank in the 1967 War.
Shortly thereafter, highly motivated religious Jews moved back to the city, building a suburban settlement and a couple of enclaves in the heart of the city near the shrine. There were periodic clashes, bombings and riots perpetuated by both sides. A cycle of retribution set in, until "who struck first" was completely lost in the smoke. The nadir came when a US born Jew entered the mosque at the shrine during prayers, and shot dead some 30 worshippers and wounded a hundred others. Bystanders subdued and killed him when he stopped to reload.
His grave, in a park in the settlement, is revered as of a martyr by the most radical settlers.
Enough! Said the authorities. So Hebron is under a different military order than the rest of the West Bank: total and complete separation between peoples. Palestinians are forbidden to enter Jewish areas and vice versa. Surrounding the Jewish enclaves in the city are buffer zones, where Palestinians may go on foot, but there are no cars allowed, commerce has been eliminated, and most homes abandoned. It is like walking through something from a Mad Max movie, a post-apocalyptic Twilight Zone of abandoned streets, shop doors welded shut, barbed wire at every turn, and soldiers on every street corner. The Jewish enclaves are surrounded by barb wire and checkpoints at every entrance. While some Palestinians can cross into Israel in other areas, there are no crossings here. Is this the ultimate conclusion of the Wall, two peoples side by side but never even seeing each other?
There is one more wall to consider, one with more hope: the Western Wall. This wall is the west side of the foundation platform Herod the Great built to support his greately expanded Jewish Temple. The Temple was razed by the Romans in AD 70 and the site stood derelict until the Mosque of Omar and the Dome of the Rock were built in the 7th century. Sometime in the 18th century, Jews started praying there as the closest one cold get to the temple site. After the 1967 War brought the area under Israeli control, housing was cleared and a plaza constructed so now hundreds of Jews and others visit the wall every day. There they pray and leave prayers an intentions on slips of paper in the cracks. It is a richly spiritual place, sanctified by thousands of prayers.
Which wall will truly endure? Berlin's lasted merely 30 years. China's Great Wall has endured for centuries, even if it didn't ultimately keep the Mongols at bay. I would hope that the praying wall is what endures. That some day, both of the peoples of the land, Israeli and Palestinian, would join to
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
No comments:
Post a Comment