|
|
August 11, 2000/10 Av 5760, Vol. 52, No.48
Secure in Jerusalem
But what will happen if peace doesn't come?
STEFANIE L. PEARSON
Special to Jewish News
In Israeli religious communities, classes are offered constantly on every imaginable topic in Jewish history, law and practice. It's one of the nicest things about spending time in an observant community.
Last week, there was a new class for women in Beit El, 20 minutes outside Jerusalem: the basics of first aid - military first aid. Coming up in the series is firearms training. Beit El is getting ready for what every one of its residents is praying won't happen: some sort of an armed Palestinian attack against the community.
Named for the site where the patriarch Jacob dreamt of his ladder, Beit El is home to about 800 families. It practically hugs Ramallah, the large Arab city a short drive from the Jewish capital.
The nearby community of Psagot is preparing similarly. Two months ago, when Palestinian police and protesters from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction fired on Israeli soldiers, it was at the gate to Psagot. The soldiers were blocking the crowd from entering.
That's what people fear might happen: some sort of an attempt to take over a Jewish community. "God forbid," everyone adds instinctually.
Most of the people who live in Beit El oppose the Camp David summit to begin with. They feel that the Oslo Process has failed and many ideologically oppose giving up parts of the land of Israel under any circumstances.
I spend a lot of time in Beit El with family friends. They're normal. They don't breathe fire, and I've never heard them speak nastily about Arabs. They're actually quite mild-mannered.
Why do they live there? Because they wanted to live in the heart of historic Israel, and they feel that Beit El is it. It's less than half an hour from my apartment in Jerusalem.
Two months ago, while getting dressed in preparation for Shabbat at their home, I put lipstick on to the accompaniment of not-so-distant gunfire.
"Don't worry," my friend, the super-nurturing mom of the family, told me. "They send kids to shoot up at the yishuv (settlement) just to provoke the soldiers. It'd be louder if they were actually trying to get our attention."
Oh.
My mother, who lives in Phoenix, tells me that people ask her constantly if she's worried about her daughter who lives in Israel.
No, she tells them, and then explains how her daughter walks around Jerusalem at 1 a.m. on Friday nights, never worrying about getting a walk home from her friends' Shabbat dinners.
And indeed I don't. My Israeli friends laugh at me when I lock car doors. Or, they chuckle when I question whether it's wise for them to leave their apartments unlocked, or to leave their keys in their mailbox so I can let myself in.
Home security systems are practically non-existent and the ubiquitous bars on apartment windows are to keep the kids from falling out, not the criminals from getting in.
Crime? It happens, but I don't have the constant consciousness I grew up with of the bad guy lurking just around the corner, waiting to invade my home and steal my sense of security.
I assure my mother, with some degree of confidence, that if - God forbid - war comes, it won't be to my sleepy West Jerusalem neighborhood. I say this without relief, because I can't stop thinking about my friends in Beit El.
Another friend, a lawyer who serves in the army reserves as a tank gunner, wearily tells me that he's willing to give up land - even the cradle of ancient Israel - if it means more prosperity, more security - peace. But what if peace doesn't come? I ask. He shrugs in the quintessentially Israel way.
He's not worried, but if necessary, Israel will defend itself.
I call my friend who is spending the summer in Hebron, working as a tour guide at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah are buried according to Jewish and Muslim tradition. I hadn't spoken with her in a week or two. I wanted to tell her about a date. I wanted to see how she was.
"Well, things are tense," she said, in a chipper voice.
I'd forgotten.
"Tense" in Hebron means that a fistfight had escalated into an international incident. In this case, an Arab man sexually attacked a Jewish girl. Somehow, this turned into a brawl involving Israeli soldiers.
My hairdresser carries a gun. He lives in Carmel, near Hebron. He is spending a few months living in Jerusalem. I asked him why he was still carrying the gun.
"Well, what else am I supposed to do with it?" he replied in his posh Irish-English lilt. "It's a GUN. Am I supposed to leave it in the house for some kid to find? I have to be responsible for it."
There's no need for a Million Mom March here. People know what guns can do.
Each time I enter or leave Beit El with my friends, I pass a monument to David Boim, a 17-year-old American-Israeli who was gunned down by a Palestinian terrorist. The roommate of my friends' oldest son, he was standing with his friends on the road, hitchhiking.
Hitchhiking?
In Israel, it's called "tramping" and it's a way of life, particularly for people in the far-flung communities. On the way in and out of the city, people with cars religiously stop at bus stations where everyone knows you can wait for rides to Beit El, to Psagot, to Carmel.
It took me two years before I was willing to do this myself, although I'd been in plenty of cars that picked up the trampistim.
"Al t'daget," "Don't worry," my Israeli friends tell me. "It's safe here."
Stefanie L. Pearson, a former Tempe resident, writes from Jerusalem.
|
