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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
My husband, children and I moved from Cleveland to the West Bank just before the latest intifada. We're told that we're the obstacle to peace -- but we don't see it that way.
May 28, 2002 | In the first couple of weeks after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside our local pizzeria, killing three teenagers, I spoke with my parents every couple of days. Each time, one or both of them would make the same request: pack up the four children and "come back home" to Cleveland, Ohio. Four months later, I talk to my parents once or twice a week. We don't talk about suicide bombers or leaving Israel, but I can still hear it in their voices -- Come home, come home.
My mother and I e-mail each other every day. If I am late writing, she begins to panic that something has happened to me here in our settlement of about 6,000 people near Kfar Saba, located just a 10-minute drive from the Green Line, which separates the West Bank from Israel proper. It's the land Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, land that Palestinians and Israel critics still refer to as "occupied" territory. We both watch CNN continuously, so if an news anchor or banner mentions any action near the Palestinian city of Kalkilya, located down the road from here, I make sure to call to reassure her that we are, indeed, all right.
I am not just a "settler" here. I am also easily identifiable as a recent American transplant. With my dearth of Hebrew language skills, my Midwestern accent, and my lack of Middle Eastern aggressiveness, Israelis in stores and on the bus often ask me how long I have been here. Almost two years, I now answer proudly (but also sheepishly, if I have failed to understand someone's basic Hebrew!). It does not take long for the questioner to do the math in his head. Are you crazy? he asks. Who would come here now with all of our problems?
In truth, we arrived exactly two months before then opposition party Knesset (parliament) member Ariel Sharon took his historic pre-Rosh Hashana stroll on the Temple Mount, touching off riots that led to what is now known as Intifada II. Because of this, nothing about our absorption into Israeli life and culture has been "normal."
Before we arrived, our community coexisted with its many neighboring Palestinian towns and villages. Our neighbors shopped at their roadside stands and drove on Route 55 -- the main artery into Israel proper -- with few concerns. Palestinians worked here in the construction industry, at the local supermarket and as city gardeners. Since we arrived, only bulletproof public buses are in use and all Arab workers have been banned from our community. A security fence has been erected around the entire settlement, and members of the community trained in firearm use do security patrol alongside the professionals. Last week my husband and I joined the dozens of residents here who have purchased bulletproof vests for use in the car.
We did not move to a West Bank settlement to help fulfill former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's vision of a "Greater Israel." Actually, as soon as we moved here, we knew we might be required to leave, should a peace plan force us to. And we would have done so, trying to be optimistic that it would be the right thing. But now, as the president of my homeland seems intent on pressuring Israel to give in to a "Palestinian state," and his secretary of state, Colin Powell, speaks of how the "settlements are a disturbing and destabilizing factor in our pursuit for a solution to the Middle East crisis" that will have to "be dealt with," the situation has changed. And I have, too. I'm no longer sure I'd be so happy to leave, or optimistic as I packed up our belongings.
