6:00
a.m. and I am picked up by U. and A. at a Tel Aviv
intersection. U. smokes, and A. sings and apologizes
for it. I tell her, "no, no, keep singing."
In a posh neighborhood north of Tel Aviv we meet
D.B. and move to her car. She's married to a famous
Israeli actor and entertainer. A few days earlier
we spoke on the phone and I asked her permission
to write about her, using only her initials. She
said: "No, no, use my name, tell everything,
I want the world to know." But for some reason,
I don't know why, I am using only her initials after
all.
D.B.
drives in the West Bank as if she was born there,
knowing every nook and cranny, every road, and many
families by their names, stories and professions.
It's the first time I met D.B. - a former business
woman now in jeans and t-shirt, now going to the
checkpoints weekly for the past three years as part
of Machsom (checkpoints) Watch, now going to demonstrations
against the wall, against the occupation, and member
in several women's groups for peace, justice, freedom,
some of them international, all of them including
not only Jewish Israelis but also Palestinian Israelis
from within the green line, and Palestinian women
from the West Bank and Gaza. "It's great that
an opinion leader like yourself is doing so much
work," I told her on the phone when we first
spoke, "you have a large circle of influence."
She responded humbly, maybe hopelessly. I know she
does what she does not in order to gain fame or
recognition but because her heart is broken. She
must do what she does. I once heard a saying that
"The tears of women will heal the world",
may it be so.
Twenty
minutes from the beautiful, truly beautiful Tel
Aviv city, we were in the West Bank parking D.B's
car next to a run down shack, crossing the modern
highway, and over big rocks and barricades placed
there by the Israeli army as one of many ways to
enclose the Palestinians, to obstruct any attempt
of leaving their villages. Three young men, no older
than nineteen, stood next to an old dilapidated
car, smoking, complaining, "No work".
We agreed they'll wait for us a couple of hours
later to take us back to the main road, while another
Palestinian man, a school teacher with whom D.B.
had made arrangements, now drove us to the checkpoint.
D.B. pointed out the village market, how it's empty
and closed because everything is closed, a ghost
town, hard to go in, hard to go out, no merchandise.
A
Jewish settlement, Shaarei Tikva - The Doors of
Hope in Hebrew, is built right in between the Palestinian
villages Bet Amin and Bet Azun. To "protect"
this settlement, a checkpoint had been built in
the center, right next to a sewer. It was 7:00 a.m.
when we arrived, the line of cars already long and
waiting for an hour, school children in their uniforms
and carrying school bags waiting to pass through
to go to school. A yellow metal gate with lock and
key, the site of which I had only seen in documentary
films, in power-point presentations and on Palestinian
calendars, was now a reality. And on both sides
of the yellow gate, a nine meters tall barb wire
fence stretching to the north and to the south,
and next to it a sign: "He who approaches,
endangers himself with death."
By
8:00 a.m. the line of cars waiting at the checkpoint
was still long and included teachers who'd purposely
gotten there early, but it meant nothing to the
soldiers that classes begin at 8:00 and they'll
be late. One of the soldiers asked A., one of our
group of four women, to pick up the cigarette butt
she'd just thrown on the ground. She did. From the
filthy ground next to a smelly sewer which was getting
smellier and smellier as the settlement's residences
were beginning their day. An older, lean Palestinian
man approached us complaining his ID card had been
taken from him by the soldiers the day before. He
slept the night among the olive trees nearby and
now, as he came to pick it up, the soldiers told
him they knew nothing about it and waved him away.
One of our women spoke to the soldiers. To her they
said they knew about the ID card, taken the day
before. "When will it be returned?" A.
asked. "I don't know, today, tomorrow, if we
can find it...." This officer in charge had
eyes emptied of any care or concern. D.B. immediately
phoned a higher army official, complained, and was
promised the ID card would be back at the checkpoint
by 12:00 noon. The older Palestinian man shook our
hands, thanked us and went to rest among the olive
trees. One of his eyes was blue and the other was
missing. I wanted to ask him why but I did not.
He was patient, spoke Spanish and told us he'd lived
in a South American country. Later that day, as
I spoke to one of my women friends in Tel Aviv,
she waved off the Machsom Watch project saying:
"Ha! It does not have any political effect,
it does not really change the situation." I
told her about the man with one blue eye. How we
spent his moments of distress with him, how for
a short while we made him feel like a human being
who counts, how for this short grave time he was
not alone...
By
9:00 a.m. most of the Palestinian teachers, students
and families had passed through the checkpoint.
We found Zoher who took us back to the main road
through the village, the market still shut, empty,
deserted. D.B. knew of a house, demolished just
a week ago, and we stopped to take pictures of it.
The grass was still very green and fresh, the blooming
rose-bushes in such contrast to the ruins, a tall
red flower with large silky petals looming over
the horror.
The
horror did not stop there. I must put a face to
it, a detail, I must de-generalize it and place
a human story to it: An isolated Palestinian house
has remained between the settlement of Elkana and
the nine meters barbed wire fence, very close to
the settlement. So the army surrounded this house
with barbed wire fences on all four sides and gave
the key to the older couple enclosed in it. When
they need to, they can open the gate from inside
and go out. But no one is allowed to visit them.
Not even their grown children or grandchildren who
live in the nearby village. The mother had to say
to her daughter, D.B. told me: "Please don't
come, they will demolish our house if you come."
The
four of us continued to another village to meet
a Palestinian woman, a social worker by profession,
who works with groups of women to empower them.
We met her in a house where internationals live.
A room full of laptops, maps of Palestine since
1917, four Anglo Saxon women. F.H arrived. Long
gabardine coat the color
of olives, silk scarf on her head and eyeglasses
on her intelligent face, like the smartest student
in the class. She embraced the Internationals and
knew each of them by name. We were then all introduced.
F.H positioned herself on the low mattress. We spoke
about the situation. The checkpoint to a town nearby
is open from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m, and from 5:00
p.m. to 9:00 p.m. When she asked the soldiers why,
why is it closed from 10:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m., they
said: "Security reasons." D.B. immediately
called the army liaison who deals with Machsom (checkpoints)
Watch. At present I don't know the result.
After
sitting across from F.H., I was now pulled to sit
next to her. It was hot, and in the company of women
she took off her scarf, wiping the sweat off her
forehead, then she removed her coat remaining in
a short sleeve t-shirt. She sighed, she smiled,
and she leaned onto U. who was next to her on the
mattress. F.H. told us about the group of women
for peace and empowerment she leads, over one hundred
women of all ages. I told her that I work with Palestinian
American women's groups in Los Angeles through writing,
and that maybe we can work together. She took my
card which says: "Personal Story Writing."
"Personal
stories?" she exclaimed! "I'll tell you
a personal story." And she told of a young
Palestinian woman, a friend of hers, who was working
in the olive harvest. Only one day she came and
the trees had been cut to the ground and burned.
The young woman had lost her work and her trees.
F.H. was now crying. We held her. D.B. had her dark
sunglasses on. I felt how hard it is for her to
witness F.H.'s pain.
We
then crossed barricades, rocks and a narrow metal
bridge toward D.B's car, helping F.H. in her long
coat. We drove her and embraced her goodbye at a
large cemetery for cars, - hundreds of cars taken
away from their owners and gathered there, - another
way to obstruct the movement of Palestinians. We
watched F.H. as she walked away from us, tall and
elegant, and disappeared among the cars.
Elana
Golden is a Romanian Israeli living in the US since
1978. She is part of Women in Black, Los Angeles
and a writer, filmmaker and has a school for Creative
Writing in L.A.