The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine (22 page)

Ali looked at Nurit and smiled. “You are going to eat. The question is do you want to eat now or a little later?”

So, as usual, we stayed longer than we planned, and they fed us like kings. Eitan and I had
maqlouba
, a signature Palestinian dish, for the first time. It is a casserole of chicken and rice that is embedded with potatoes and cauliflower, served with savory yogurt.

It was dark by the time we left. We all piled into the car and drove in silence for a while.

“I am so glad we went,” I said.

“Yes it was very special,” Rami agreed.

There could have been nothing more natural than this visit to Beit Ummar, except of course that we were all supposed to be enemies.

As we passed the checkpoint, Rami’s phone rang. Khaled wanted to know: “Did you pass the checkpoint all right?”

“Yes, we’re fine,” Rami reassured him.

About 15 minutes later, Khaled called again, just to be really sure.

The last time I was attacked and fought hard to overcome the “fear virus” was in December of 2005. I decided to visit the West Bank on my own for the first time. I drove from Jerusalem to Bil’in, a Palestinian village west of Ramallah that has distinguished itself by its commitment to non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. In a story shown on Israeli television news at that time, Bil’in was described as a small and impoverished village. They made no mention that it was neither small nor impoverished until Israel confiscated 60 percent of its land to build a Jewish settlement and the Separation Wall. The wall actually ended up separating mostly Palestinians from one another and from their own land and was eventually deemed illegal by an international court.
¹
The settlement that was built, Modi’in Illit, offered apartment buildings for Orthodox Jews on Bil’in land at very low prices.

Every Friday since February of 2005, local residents, Palestinians from the surrounding areas, and Israeli and international peace activists have been gathering in Bil’in to protest the confiscation of land. Even though the protests are peaceful, they have been met with heavy-handed treatment by the Israeli army. That includes large amounts of tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, and live ammunition. The more persistence the people of Bil’in demonstrate, the more brutal the force employed against them by Israel’s army.

An Israeli peace activist wrote to me and told me about Bil’in and particularly about Mohammed El Khatib, who is one of the leaders of this non-violent resistance movement in Bil’in. She suggested that I speak to him, and she gave me his cell phone number.

I was intrigued; the persistence of the Bil’in people was very moving. So I called Mohammed El Khatib from the U.S. and told him I wanted to visit Bil’in and meet him. I told him I got his number from an activist friend, and he introduced himself as the head of the local council of Bil’in. Though relatively unknown at the time, today his name is synonymous with the Bil’in struggle, which is one of the most important elements of the greater non-violent Palestinian struggle. We spoke on the phone several times, and when I visited Israel in December 2005, I finally had a chance to meet him.

I traveled to Bil’in in a rental car with the yellow Israeli license plates. I was worried that this made me easily identifiable as an Israeli. If Nazareth frightened me at first, the West Bank was the lion’s den—and this time I was alone. Once I passed the last checkpoint and was in the occupied West Bank, the demons began running around in my head like crazy. I had failed to determine where, exactly, I was supposed to meet Mohammed, and I had no idea what he looked like.

I also did not know exactly where Bil’in was. Somehow I had assumed he would meet me as soon as I entered the Palestinian territories, and I was disappointed when I realized I was wrong. As I drove through the winding hill roads, I could see none of their pastoral beauty. Just as in so many storybooks I read as a child, I could only see Arabs lurking behind every curve of the winding road, every rise in the land, waiting to harm me.

At one point I picked up a day laborer who needed a ride to his village, which was on the way. He had a speech impediment and spoke no Hebrew, but he uttered the word “Bil’in” and pointed me in the right direction. I dropped him off where he wanted, and I was driving alone once again.

I called Mohammad several times from the car to be reassured that I had followed the right path. But even with his reassurance, I was scared. Everything I had ever learned told me this trip was a terrible mistake.

The road to Bil’in was full of anxiety and uncertainty
.

Finally I stopped by a small house where an elderly couple sat in their front yard.

“Bil’in?” I asked.

“
Hadha Bil’in,”
the old man replied. This is Bil’in.

I called Mohammed again, and he said to keep going until I reached the mosque. As I maneuvered through the potholed streets, I saw a lot of graffiti in Arabic, a few posters of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and many posters of Abu Ammar (the
nom de guerre
of Yasser Arafat), which I found to be comforting. I never would have thought a poster of Arafat would be a comforting sight. I also saw children, lots and lots of children, in uniforms, with backpacks on their shoulders, going to and from school, some with their arms slung around each other, chatting and laughing.

At last I found Mohammed near his home. He was a young man, the father of three. No sooner did I arrive than his mother brought out a freshly baked pastry topped with fried cauliflower and eggplant for me. We talked for a while, and then he said he wanted me to meet two friends of his.

We got back in my car, and he directed me. We had just pulled off the main road and into an unpaved alley when out of nowhere came two young men. They had dark hair, dark skin, and an unshaven look—in other words, they looked exactly like the young Palestinian men I had been conditioned to see as dangerous. They were Eymad Burnat, the filmmaker, and Iyad Burnat—two brothers who have built their reputations by courageously facing off against the Israeli army in countless protests. They were among Bil’in’s resistance leaders, principled young men and fathers, equally dedicated to justice for their people and to non-violence.

The four of us walked together toward the edge of town where the Separation Wall was being constructed. Since there was no army present at the time, we ventured into the “seam zone”—the area between the wall’s route and the Green
Line—an area prohibited to Palestinians. It is interesting, by contrast, that Israeli law allowed any Jew in the world, whether an Israeli citizen or not, to live on that land.

Mohammed El Khatib is one of the leaders of the non-violent resistance movement in Bil’in
.

We managed to walk all the way to the settlement of Modi’in Illit without being stopped and saw some of the huge apartment complexes being built on Bil’in’s land for a planned Orthodox Jewish community.

The sheer size of the buildings struck me. This was a massive project. Billions had been invested.
These settlements are not going away
, I thought,
and this land will never be handed back to its rightful owners
.

I recalled the idea of land swaps that is often mentioned in Israel as a solution to the building of settlements on Palestinian land. According to this idea, when it comes time to make peace, Palestinians will be compensated for the land taken from them to build Israeli settlements. Israel will give them land elsewhere. Suddenly, it seemed like a totally insane notion. Families from Bil’in would be given land somewhere miles away, probably in the Negev Desert, in return for these choice ancestral lands right next to their village. I found it hard to believe that anyone really took this seriously. Was there a single Israeli who would agree to take a land swap like that?

Mohammad insisted we talk to some of the residents, who were either moving in or had already done so. Many had only recently immigrated to Israel and barely spoke Hebrew. Mohammed, on the other hand, spoke Hebrew quite well. I couldn’t help but think it ironic that these new immigrants, who could barely converse in Hebrew, had rights over these lands that the Palestinians were denied, simply because they were Jewish. Quite unbelievable!

We walked up and down the streets, moving farther from Bil’in and deeper into the settlement area. I felt uncomfortable, worried that these guys would get in trouble.

Their courage inspired me. They were the ones taking the risk, and if they didn’t care, I sure wasn’t going to stop them; I had come to support them.

After several attempts at striking up a conversation with the new residents of this neighborhood, none of whom spoke Hebrew, we found an immigrant from Britain who did understand. We introduced ourselves, and he asked if we wanted to see his apartment, apologizing that it was not yet furnished because his young family had just moved. He seemed to have no problem inviting me, along with two young Palestinians from the nearby Bil’in, into his home.

“Do you know where the real-estate developer got the land?” Mohammed asked the settler.

“Yes,” he said, “we saw the bill of sale. It was purchased from the people of Bil’in at a fair price.”

“Who showed you the bill of sale?”

“The mayor of Modi’in Illit.”

“I’m head of the town council of Bil’in, and I can tell you that no one has sold this land, it was taken by force.”

“Well, that’s what the mayor told me.”

“I will tell you what,” Mohammed said, as he took out his cell phone. “I have his number, let me call him.”

Mohammed rang him, but the mayor of Modi’in Illit didn’t answer.

I marveled as I watched Mohammed asking all these questions, completely relaxed, knowing that even though this was Bil’in land, he could be arrested and held for an indefinite period if soldiers showed up and found us there.

Now I was becoming curious. I asked the resident, “How much did you pay for the apartment?”

“Only $80,000, which is why we moved here from the nearby town of Modi’in.” Modi’in is only about a mile or two away but is still on the Israel side of what used to be the border. This was a four-bedroom luxury apartment, with easy access to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

It was all strangely pleasant and civil given the bizarrely charged circumstances. I suppose because the man ultimately had no qualms about his rights this land. We thanked him for graciously letting us into his new home and walked back toward Bil’in.

As we were leaving the settlement, a security guard gave us a suspicious look, clearly wondering why these Arabs were wandering around the neighborhood. I challenged him in Hebrew: “Is there a problem?” He walked away mumbling something about “damn peaceniks.” I was afraid he might call the army and turn this into a scene.

Walking back to Bil’in, we could see Palestinian day laborers with their heads hanging low going home from the settlement construction site.

“What do you think of these Palestinians who are building the settlement?” I asked. I don’t know what I was expecting, but Mohammed’s response both surprised and comforted me.

“They have no choice because they need to feed their children,” he said, “and since Israel confiscated their land there is no other work available to them.”

But as these laborers walked past us, it was clear they were not proud.

Considering that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank symbolize, more than anything else, the declining possibility for Palestinians to gain freedom and independence, Mohammed’s explanation was worth noting. There were, and probably still are, national resistance movements that would not look so kindly on their own people participating in an act that obstructed their very struggle for freedom. In other places, they would be punished for collaborating.

Back in Bil’in, the four of us talked more about the situation. Mohammed was emphatic: “We completely refuse to participate in any violent resistance.” He had just returned from Jordan, and he was kept for eight hours at the border crossing by the
Shabak
, Israel’s internal intelligence service. “They try to get us to react with violence, but they won’t succeed,” he continued, “and we will not give up the fight either.”