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October 6, 2000/7 Tishri 5761, Vol. 53, No.2
Peace at risk, Israelis go about their business
STEFANIE PEARSON
Special to Jewish News
For three days, helicopters have been flying overhead, jarring the usual quiet of my sleepy West Jerusalem neighborhood.
In spite of what everyone knows is happening, things seem no different in my corner of the Jewish capital. Schoolgirls laugh and shout as they walk to the school. Parents drop their toddlers off at kindergarten.
But those helicopters keep reminding me.
My new year began memorably, trapped in Beit El, a Jewish community near one of the areas where rioting began last week and continues still.
The Western media has tied the riots exclusively to Likud leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount last week. But the violence had already begun by then.
A terrorist bombing in Gaza had killed a soldier and a border policeman was shot at point-blank range by his Palestinian counterpart in one of the joint patrols established by the Oslo Accords to regulate security in tense areas.
Thursday night, just before Rosh Hashana was to begin, things were tense enough that my friend who was driving me to Beit El told me he wouldn't be offended if I wanted to go with someone else - someone driving a car fortified against the rocks and bullets sometimes flung at Jewish cars passing through the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. I said "no."
When we drove into Beit El, I saw that the community's guard gate had been fortified.
A bored-looking soldier sat on barricades erected on the side of the road, his rifle balanced on his lap.
I detachedly concluded that the piles of sandbags were there to provide cover for the soldiers, should anyone attack the community.
I must be becoming more Israeli. It's not that I am cavalier about such things. It's just that I know that each bus I board could be the one that some Islamic extremist decided is his one-way ticket to paradise. If I stopped to think about it, I'd never go anywhere.
"Things were happening" but no one knew how much or how badly. Beit El is a religious community, so all telephones, TVs and radios were off for the duration of the holiday. Rumors still flew. At lunch on the second day, we heard that an Israeli helicopter had returned a rioting crowd's fire, killing 80 people. I was numb, confused about what sort of emotional response was appropriate.
Once we made havdalah and ran to the radio to hear the news, we found out that the 80-people-killed story was just a rumor, but we also found out that the roads to Jewish communities were closed and attempts had been made to attack two Jewish communities.
What does one do in that situation?
We did the dishes.
What else can one do?
The roads were open the next morning, but we were allowed to leave only in convoys that left at specific times. Rather than driving on the main road, we were directed through the army base adjacent to Beit El. But once inside, the cars zipped along at their own pace and the convoy quickly dissolved. Although we'd began in the line's midsection, by the time we exited the base, I could see only a car or two in front of us.
I had expected army Jeeps to lead and end the cars, but instead the lead was taken by a lime-green Clio, a tiny European import.
I doubled over laughing at the ridiculous sight of this Chiclet leading a security convoy.
As we turned onto the main road, Palestinian cars were merging. Some of the plates identified the drivers as Palestinian police officers.
Each time we passed a police car when I was a little girl, my mother would say, "I feel safe!" Now well into my adulthood, "I feel safe!" echoes in my head whenever I see a police vehicle. Palestinian policemen are the folks who began firing live ammunition at Israeli soldiers in the riots; seeing their distinctive license plates in front of me did not make me feel safe.
I looked at my friend's hands on the steering wheel; although he seemed perfectly calm, his knuckles were bone-white. I looked out at the hills I find so beautiful.
Although poverty in most Arab villages is acute, huge, resplendent homes sit atop most of the hills along the road. I've always found them architecturally interesting, but as we sped by, trying to stay close to the car in front of us, the houses seemed menacing. Anyone could be hiding in one, I thought.
Later, my friend told me that he'd been worried about snipers hiding in those houses. The same thought that had crossed my mind.
Ten minutes outside the military base, we'd finally come upon a slow-moving army Jeep. I was astonished when the cars in the convoy started passing it.
Wasn't it there to protect us? Shouldn't we stay behind it?
The point of the convoys isn't merely to have us drive together, explained my friend.
The jeeps swept the roads prior to our group departure, making sure no one was waiting to ambush us as we passed. The slow-driving one was looking for roadside bombs, ready to absorb the blast to protect us civilians.
Regular breathing returned when Pisgat Ze'ev, a Jerusalem suburb, came into view. A side road was littered with enormous stones - apparently remnants of unrest from the day before.
Jerusalem seemed to me strangely quiet. There seemed to be none of the usual mid-morning traffic; the radio was filled with recriminations and, overwhelmed by too-rapid Hebrew, I simply stared out the window and said a silent prayer of thanks that I was home.
What does it feel like to be here?
I've promised my parents I will call them each day, more attuned to their worries than my own. How can I explain that the strangest thing is how normal things seem - on the surface, at least.
People are doing the same things they normally do. Dropping off the kids. Going to work. Going home. But there's an undercurrent of tension that's impossible to put your finger on, but impossible to ignore.
Every sonic boom from an overhead plane or backfiring car is more jarring than usual. My roommate observed that one bus line that doesn't go through the center of town is more crowded than usual. Most of the terrorist attacks were on buses passing through the center of town. But then, the No. 26 (which passes by my apartment) was blown up as it passed through suburban Ramat Eshkol.
There are no assurances.
The night I was stuck in Beit El, I joined a group of six or so women who gathered to read Tehillim, psalms. As they read them, they prayed for the safety of the soldiers.
"Reading Tehillim," one said, "is what you do when you can't do anything else."
As we left, one woman quipped lightly, "So what do we do if someone attacks?
Everyone keeps talking about the preparations but no one ever told what to do."
My hostess had taken a bath while her daughter and I did the dishes.
"I told my husband that, if anyone attacked, to be sure to give me my bathrobe before they get into the house," she said. We all laughed.
Because there was nothing else to do.
Former Tempe resident Stefanie Pearson writes from Jerusalem.
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