Under the Shadow of the Disengagement
Gaza in Summer
by Mijal Grinberg
The ease with which I pass through the security check at the Jerusalem bus station reminds me of the privileges I regained when I left At-Tuwani. As I think of At-Tuwani' which I left ony two hours earlier' images of the past week go through my mind. The sight of Nai'm yelling and driving his sheep away from the poisoned land. Settlers laying in ambush for Um-Hafez', Kifa's young son who can not understand why he can't drink the milk and the smile on Mohammad's wifes' face as she was expecting him back from prison. The bus takes me back to Tel-Aviv and to the modern amenities of a comfortable life. More than anything, I yearn for a hot shower. A week's supply of water for a resident of At-Tuwane and three kinds of soap later, I still can't forget the reality of life at At-Tuwane.
Much has discourse been happening in the south Hebron hill, which is where At-Tuwane lies, but not much of it has been heard amidst the talk of disengagement. Palestinian children are attacked with stones on their way to school and international and Israeli peace activists are beaten and shot at by the settlers. In recent weeks a new form of abuse was added: the grazing lands of the village which is near the ‘Ma’on Farm’ outpost were poisoned with a particularly dangerous poison. When the growing list of incidents is considered an ugly picture emerges. Children and Adults were seriously injured, some of the assailants were documented and identified and forty complaints were filed in the past four years yet it seems that no one is being held accountable.
The area is in a part of the west bank which is still under Israeli administrative and security control and includes about 20 Palestinian villages. The area also includes a number of Jewish settlements and outposts. The latter are unauthorized settlements though in practice, the creation of outposts is encouraged and supported by the government and the army from behind curtain of legal fictions- the workings of which are detailed in a recent report by Adv. Talia Sason. The report was commissioned by the prime minister’s office in response to American pressure and it details how the local councils, the army and various government offices offer logistical support and funding or turn a blind eye to the outposts. The South Hebron area settlers who are considered relatively extreme have been making the lives of the local residents miserable. In the midst of the current talk of disengagement on the one hand and the expansion of settlements in the west bank I decided to go out and experience for myself the daily lives of these people who seem defenseless in a struggle for survival. I wanted to change my point of view, to gain a deeper understanding of how it feels to be a Palestinian villager under Israeli control. I chose to wear a head cover, pants and a skirt and try to pass as a Palestinian. Wearing my new outfit I got into a car which took me to downtown Hebron in order to join the residents of Twane which is adjacent to the ‘Ma’on’ settlement and the ‘Ma’on Farm’ outpost.
The trip to At-Tuwane is tense. The looks I get through the car window tell me that they think I am one of them- a Palestinian. I am relived that I don’t have to speak and prove them wrong. In spite of myself I can not rid myself of my ingrained fears. We reach At-Twane which is the largest of about 20 small villages in the area. Near them is an army training grounds which is not used much and also a number of settlements and outposts. In most of these villages the people live in caves without running water or electricity. Even though I am expected my heart rate raises as I approach, I am waiting for the moment when I will be addressed in Arabic and give myself as a Hebrew speaker. An outsider.
Shortly after arriving in the village I am given an escort. My escort is Muhammad, a resident of Yeta – the central city in the district. Muhammad's family owns land in At-Twane and a few years ago the army has destroyed the house they built there because they had no building permit. His brother Mahmud still lives in the remains of the house. In spite of Muhammad's excellent Hebrew I seek out the company of the women and join the group of them in front of Mahmud’s house. Actually it is not exactly a house in he sense that we know it. These are three old walls with a plastic tarp for a roof. I approach and receive two kisses on my cheeks from one of the women, other women kiss me three or even four times. “How do you know how many times to kiss” I ask one of them. “The more the better” she smiles. We sit down and look at each other. “Jewish?” she asks. “Yes” I answer. We make some more small talk until the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. It turns out that we are waiting for Mahmud, the husband of one of the women who was arrested two days ago, “He has been in Kiryat Arba’a [a settlement adjacent to Hebron] for two days now”. “What happened” I venture. “He went out with the sheep and two other shepherds, that was on Sunday” smiles his wife, a gold tooth shines in her mouth. A beautiful woman of 37, a mother of 11 children. “Nine settlers came down. Mahmud panicked and called the police but it took them a long time to come. When the police finally came they took my husband and M’fadi”. I look at her confused, thinking I must have missed part of the story. I hope that I will get the rest later. “Have you talked to him since he was arrested?” I ask. “No” she says and gets up to milk the goats. “If I were you I would have died” I tell her hesitantly. She bursts out laughing repeating the sentence to her daughter in law and her sister. Now the three of them are laughing. I get a little insulted thinking they are laughing at me, but one of them tries to explain. “For us it is a matter of course, there are always incidents with the settlers. They come down, beat us and then we are the ones taken to jail”. Now they laugh again. My naïve question will be repeated to all the women.
It is milking time and the women are busy. I am left alone but not for long. Some of the children see me and decide to adopt me. “Iznabi”. “Iznabi” they call me, the foreigner. The children take me on a tour of their school which is near Mahmud’s house. When we get there the children start running from classroom door to classroom door kicking them and shouting in Hebrew. “Open the door! Open the door!”. They burst out laughing and explain to me that they learned the phrase from the Israeli soldiers. When they finish playing we return to the house. The rumors are that Mahmud might be released today. The village people are demonstrating in front of the Hebron police station waiting to see if he could return home with them on the bus.
Mahmud's brother, Muhammad, sits on a stone in front of the house looking at the opposite hill on the other side of the village. “come see” he says. “look over there. Do you see the old woman?”. “Yes” I reply. I see an old Palestinian woman shepherding her flock. “Can you see that two settlers are hiding not far from her?”. He is right, not far from the old woman two settlers are lying in wait but Muhammad and I are not the only ones to spot them. The two American peace activists who are staying in the village see them too and approach the shepherd. The settlers see them and move away. “This is Hafez’s mother” says Muhammad, “the settlers have caught her many times and beat her. She is one of those who lives closest to Ma’on Farm. And do you see Juma’s house, at the end of the village, he is closest to the woods. They attack him a lot, once they shot into his house and hit his son.” He keeps talking without pause, “Once they burnt the hey of someone from a neighboring village. It took him a month and a half to harvest and collect it and in one second they destroyed it all”. “But wait” I try to get his attention back to Hafez’s mother, “isn’t she afraid to herd her sheep? To go around?”. “No” says Muhammad. “What will she do? This is her home”.
We hear the busses arrive. They are returning from Hebron with the demonstrators and with them is Mahmud who has been released. He is a small man and his face is sunburned. He sits on one of the many mattresses in his house and his friends from the village sit next to him. The women are somewhere else but my curiosity is stronger than the urge to join the women. I stay with the men. “What happened?” I ask. “You see” Mahmud says and looks at me “I alerted the police because the settlers came to harass us and I get put in jail for two days. And also, as always the police had done nothing to the settlers”. He pauses for a second and continues “There is a saying in Arabic: beat me and complain about me, this is exactly what happened to me. If you don’t believe me you can ask the police who called them?” I lower my eyes as if I were guilty. Muhammad asks the children to take me to Nai’m’s house and they rush to do so. This is where I will sleep for the rest of the week.
The poisoned land.
Morning. We get up with the cock’s crow. Sabha and Naim begin the day with a prayer, the first of five. Sabha’s second task is to bake pita in the communal tabun (a traditional oven) which is owned by the extended family. The tabun is inside a concrete cove and is covered by a large metal cover. The pita bread is baked directly on the coals. Sabha seems to not feel the hot coals as she separates them from the pita with her bare hands. I look at her and am ashamed to ask if it hurts her. I give it a try to see for myself, and it does burn. After leaving the ash filled cove we prepare breakfast, milk the goats and churn the milk. I try to help with whatever I can but Sabha does not let me, as if I am not suited for it. "Don't you have servants at home?" she asks, "no" I say. I am allowed to wash dishes. It is not clear if the permission is granted for my benefit or for hers. At about 8 it is time to take the sheep out to graze. Every day is someone else’s turn to take them out. I go out with the two oldest daughters, Sausa and Hi’am. In spite of it being Wednesday there is no school today. Sausa tells me that there is a teacher’s strike in the Palestinian authority today in protest of Abu Mazen underpaying teachers. “They make 1000 shekels a month [about 220 dollars]”, she says. “The principal makes 1500 shekels. This is because all the money goes to the police, for guns”, she adds. In the fields, she picks plants that I then find out are edible and we approach the spot where I saw settlers lying in wait for Hafez’s mother the day before. My heart beats faster. My alarms is hightened by the fact that in the morning, Sabha replaced my pants and skirt with a ‘dishdash’ or ‘jalabiya’- a traditional long loose dress. My hair is covered and no one will recognize me as Jewish dressed this way. I breath deaply and try to relax. I tell myself that if they can live like this, in constant fear, then why shouldn’t I be able to. Sausa sees that I am afraid “Once I saw the settlers approach Hafez’s mother from a distance. I was with my mother and the sheep and goats” she says. “I ran home. I did not go to her”. We continue in silence. The sheep eat constantly and Nai’m joins us. We try to teach each other new words. “What does 'get out?' mean” she asks me, I translate “you see?” she says “too bad these are the words that we know”. “About a year ago the army used to enter the village a lot” she explains “on one of those times they got to the store and aimed a gun at my little sister. Then they entered out home too. They took all the people from their homes and marched them” she tells me calmly. Later Adv. Shlomo Leker will tell me that the battalion which was stationed in the area at the time was the ‘Lavi’ battalion and that in the same march the villagers were told to curse the name of Ezra Nawi- an Israeli peace activist with ‘Taayush’ (an Israeli/Palestinian peace organization, the word mean partnership in Arabic) as a part of a long series of preasures exerted on the villagers to terminate their connection with Israeli activists. The battalion commander Dov Ginzburg was investigated by military police which found him guilty but nothing was done to him. Rumors are that he now works for the General Security Service. \
Suddenly Sausa and I hear a shout, it's Na’im: “Sam!” he shouts. “Sam!”. We come closer with the speed that the dishdash allows. Nai’m is all shaken up and is driving the sheep away. He looks at the ground and sees turquoise colored pebbles of poison, but refuses to believe his eyes. Just two weeks ago on March 21st large tracts of grazing fields were poisoned in the area. 17 sheep died and 72 got sick. The milk, which is the village’s main source of income, can not be drunk ever since for fear of poisoning. Testing the milk turned out to be too expensive so there is no choice but to not drink the milk. Hafez and Naser who shepherd close by, arrive at the sound of the yelling and hurry to examine the poison. We begin to walk around and estimate the extent of the damage. We find two kinds of poison, one is identical to the kind used two weeks ago and the other kind is pink. We place a pile of stones next to each concentration of poison that we find so that we can pick it up later. The stone piles increase. The poisoned area belongs to Hafez and is near a fence which the Ma’on settlers erected a few months ago. The new fence appropriates a part of the land of the A-Reini family. Even the Israeli civil administration recognized the A-Reini ownership of the land but today the land is worked by Tai migrant workers employed by the Ma’on settlers.
We sit down. Naser tries to understand how this could have happened. “I remember seeing a red car there at night” he recalls. “It was standing on the road by the field and it gave me a bad feeling, I could not tell what it was doing there”. At the very same time we see the red car go by on the road. Later, Na’am Abu Aram, a 16 year old boy from the village will tell me more about the red car. On March 28 he was taken while shepherding to the Susia Military base. “They covered my eyes, tied my hands and started to beat me. They asked me all sorts of questions about my family and people in the village. After that came the settlers. I could recognize them through cracks in my blindfold. The settlers also beat me up a bit and asked where we were going with the sheep. They threatened me that I should not dare come there with the flock. In the end they threw me in a red pickup, like that one. I know the settlers, they are from Ma’on Farm”. We look at the ground and try to estimate the amount of poison. It is a lot smaller than last time, the feeling is that this is a warning poisoning. “As if to tell us this is not the last time that this will happen. You will never be safe” says Hafez. The objective is achieved, the grazing fields of the people of Twane are getting smaller and smaller whether it is by harassment by the army or settlers or by poisoning.
In the next two days everyone comes to the village to see the poison. The police, the army, the Nature Preservation Authority and the Ma’on security coordinator. The people of the village are joined by Israeli activists, from ‘Taayush’, and the International volunteers who live in the village. I wonder around in the commotion in Sabha’s red dishdash and try to understand what is going on. I sit with the women at a short distance from the gathering place. An inspector from the Nature Preservation Authority arrives to take samples of the poison. In response to pressure from the Israeli activists he requests that the army allows the people to clean up the poison. Two weeks earlier when Taayush activists arrived with the villagers to clean up the poison the army declared a closed military zone and delayed the cleanup. The declaration of a closed military zone in order to prevent Palestinians from entering their lands is a common practice.
The police also arrives in the form of an officer who looks at the poison again and again and says “this is not enough. You better find evidence. Maybe wait for them at night with cameras”. The people around me smile and someone explains that whenever they carry cameras the army harasses them and the settlers simply break them. One possible lead for the police investigation is the fact the poison, which has been identified at Beir Zeit University as [floro-atastmede] requires government permit for purchase. This poison is so dangerous that it is completely banned in 7 countries and is only used rarely in other places.
After that, the army arrives. These soldiers could be the brothers of my classmates but their presence does not make me feel more secure. One of them tells another that the settlers say that the Palestinians have spread the poison to justify the fact that their sheeps have died. Hafez’s mother yells that this can’t go on and Naser’s and Na’im’s mother joins her. A news photographer from Hebron arrives. The soldiers say that they have nothing to do with the matter. “property is not a mater for the army” says one of the soldiers to the shepherds. “We only deal with matters of life and death. If you go to kill him in the settlement , then I will come. If he comes to kill you, I will come then too”. He adds. One of the women asks that I translate for her and I do. She smiles and asks me "why then do the soldiers demolish houses in Twane?" As of today there are no building permits in Twane. Saber, Hafez’s brother had his house demolished in 2004, and this is just one of many examples. “And why did they move so many people from their homes, from the caves in the area?” She continues to ask. I remain silent and see another car arrive from the corner of my eye. It turns out that this is the car of the security coordinator from Ma’on and Ma’on Farm. Everyone knows him. Hafez’s mother notices him and throws some of the poison she collected on his car in anger. The Palestinian photographer photographs her and she does not stop asking “Why? Why did you do it?”. He does not say a word and just looks around. A few days ago one of the international volunteers filmed a conversation with him where he said that he does not agree with the poisoning and hinted that he knows who did it and that they are not Palestinian. This testimony was also given to the police. Later, the men tell us where to collect the poison and we collect all we can and return home. I help Hafez’s wife to wash the dishes. Not an easy task without running water. Instead we use a large tub and a bucket of clean water. Evening is falling now and I return to Na’im’s house. The only house with running water in the area. Thanks god I am staying there- or rather elhamdulallah [praise be to god].
"please marry my son"
The days go by filled with non stop work. Because of the poisoning, the milk must be thrown out or turned into yogurt cheese that might one day be approved for consumption. The laundry is done by hand, and there is also weeding and cleaning and making piles of straw for the sheep. There is no such thing as being out of work, especially for women. In addition to the agriculture the family's income is supplemented by a store. Hiba- who does not like school - keeps the store. The family business was established by grandfather who traveled the area on a donkey selling his merchandise. Because Hiba's family has the smallest plot of land in the area the store is an important secure source of income. During the day Hiba meets people from the whole area, most of them come riding donkeys. A Halwa treat costs a shekel and many of the products are Israeli brands with Arabic writing. All the prices are slightly less than in Israel. A woman enters the store with her 21 year old son. Her faces lights up when she realizes that I am Israeli- "marry him and take him to Tel Aviv and find work for him" she asks.
Agriculture has become the main type of livelihood since employment in Israel was prohibited at the beginning of the current Intifada. The water supply for agriculture and domestic use is so low that showers are taken once or twice a week. The lack of water is due to the fact that the water in the well is only rain water, if the water runs out you must purchase more in Yeta. In addition, a year ago a well was poisoned with a dead chicken which was thrown into it. Like the poisoning of the land, no one has been punished for this act as well. For about a year, Hafez has been running electricity for a few hours in the evening. Since there are no permits for electric infrastructure the electricity is supplied by a generator. Most of the other small villages still lack electricity. With nightfall we gather at Na’im’s to watch television. This week was a very eventful, Twane was featured twice on the news from Hebron. The first time because of the demonstration in Hebron and the second time because of the poisoning. “Twane is on the map” says Sausa with a cynical smile when the poisoning is reported.
On the Israeli maps Twane appears in area C. After the Oslo accords Israel retained municipal and security control in area C. Under the control of the civil administration, the people of Twane were denied permits for an electric system, a water supply building permits for new homes and physical safety. A significant number of the employees of the civil administration are the settlers themselves as they are in the ranks of the army. The settlements which sit above Twane lack none of this things. The infrastructure exists, the will to use it does not. “Here in the village we have no political party affiliation or anything like that, they have no excuse, they just want to drive us away from here” says Hafez, who draws a salary of 1280 shekels a month (about $280) as a Palestinian policeman and lives off the sheep and goats. “They are all settlers, the police, the army, they want this area empty of Arabs so they can annex it. Three years ago I woke up to screams and saw a settler plowing my lands. Two years later an army bulldozer came to plow the same plot. Now because of the poison we are afraid to even go to our land. They say they are fighting for land, once I found them on my land and they said "you have a lot of land, give us some" but they don’t love the land. What kind of love is it when they poison it? If I thought that they would be satisfied with a little land I might have given them some but no, they always want more and more, they want everything” says Hafez with a tired face, returning his gaze to the screen, to other people’s stories. Between shows we see a video clip with images from the first Intifada, the main phrase of the song is "where are all the arabs". Sausa says that the song is addressed to the whole Arab world which has abandoned the Palestinians. Amongst other things, this can make some Palestinians overly appreciative of the help they get from Jewish activists.
Suddenly I feel sick. It seems that the sun and food got to me. A group of men enters the room and all the women, including myself flee to the other room. "The men and the women from abroad have a meeting now. They have to talk about the poisoning and decide what to do about it" explains Sabha. All the women sit around me trying to make me feel better. They cover me with a blanket and try to make me laugh. "So how is it in Tel Aviv" asks Kifah, Sabha's sister and Nai'ms sister in law. I don't know where to begin. "Do you do your laundry by hand, like us" she specifies. "No" I say. In order to break the tension Kipah adds "Do you know that Hafez's brother lives in Eilat and is married to a Jewish woman ?". "Yes Yes" Sausa jumps in "his wife is called Zehavit and his daughter is called Adar". My condition is not getting any better and the women notice it and Sabha wispers to Sausa that they should get Christina. Christina is an Italian volunteer. she got here 8 months ago with a group called "Operation Dove". She is a veterinarian and she is the best answer we have now to my problems.. Then it dawns on me "wait a minute, what do you do when you are sick ?" "There is a clinic here that the people from Taayush set up but it is still empty. If we need medical care we go to the hospital in Yatta" says Sabha... "but they don't always let us go through". Hiam breaks in. "4 months ago father was sick and the army did not let us pass at night. Actually we could not even get out of At-Tuwani, you see, as it is, we can not reach the main road because of the settlements around us but at least we can go to the mountain on the other side and try to go to Yatta. On that day the army prevented us from reaching the mountain too, sometimes it happens on the way to school too" "Once they stopped Juma's wife when she was pregnant" Sausa adds. "And they gave us so much trouble about the clinic. They did not want to give us building permits, in fact we still don't have them but because of pressure from the Israeli activists there is an unofficial agreement that the clinic stays" Hiba enters the room with tea, "this is herbal tea from the herbs in the area, we have a lot of medicinal herbs around, drink, drink, it will help". Juma tells me that on one of the times he was stopped when he needed to go to the hospital he saved his life by using medicinal herbs. I take the cup with the yellow fluid and drink it. The women laugh as I cringe from the bitter drink but I feel a little better.
The vet arrives to check me and gives me a small pill she happens to have in her bag. "I hope this helps" she says and adds "it could be the tea, people here drink tea all the time and we are not used to it". "True" I say. We continue to talk, Christina updates us on the condition of the sheep. "We have to find out if the milk is poisoned" she repeats what everyone has been saying for the last two weeks. Then Kifah adds "I have not told my children why they can't drink the milk. If I do they will be scared and never want to drink milk again. They used to drink it all the time so for now we made up a reason and that is it. As it is, it will be hard for us to convince people to buy our milk. Everyone says our sheep are poisoned, we got a bad reputation right at the most productive period of the year. This is when the flowers bloom and the sheep eat only what they choose and produce a lot of milk. They hurt us right at the most painful spot". Christina asks me to translate and I do. "yes" Christina says. "but we have to verify that the milk is not poisoned and that pregnant women who drank it are not hurt in any way". She tells Kifah who is five months pregnant that they will try to arrange a doctor visit for her in Hebron.
The foreigners
This is my last day here. I join Nai'm and Juma in shepherding. We are joined by two volunteers from Italy and the U.S. As we sit and watch the sheep slowly grazing Christina tells me how she got here in September. "We came in the summer because of the trouble with the poisoned well and the settlers who cut down Palestinian olive trees. The villagers asked us to remain here permanently. At first most of the activity was around the clinic. The army would come and threaten the workers who were building it. Then the attacks on the children from Tuba started. The children would walk to school the long way through At-Tuwani because the settlers would attack them along the way. Once they cracked one of the girls' head open with a stone. We would walk them back and forth every day until two volunteers were attacked and injured. They were attacked by six or seven black masked settlers with bats and chains. A month later we were attacked again close to the village by settlers armed with stones. An Israeli activist was next to me and luckily he saw the stone coming. He pushed me aside and told me to run. Then they made a big deal about it in the Knesset and the result of it was that we were forbidden from accompanying the children. It was decided that only the army or police can do it. Now we only go to make sure that they arrive on time. Sometimes the children wait for the army for hours and sometimes they are harassed in spite of the army's presence. We also accompany the shepherds where they are afraid to go by themselves. However, we are not immune from attack ourselves. On February 16 an Italian man named Yohanes was attacked. He accompanied the shepherds and then masked settlers arrived and broke his jaw. He had to return to Italy right away. Another volunteer, Adriano, was also attacked with bats and chains. "That was on October 9. We returned from Tuba to At-Tuwani, we were about 300 meters from Ma'on Farm and we suddenly saw masked settlers going down towards us armed with bats and stones. We called the police right away. They stole my camera and started to beat me. We tried to talk to them but they told us "you came to help the Arabs, you must go". We told them they were wrong and that we came to help to bridge differences. The police finally came half an hour later. The settlers had already returned to Ma'on Farm and I was on the ground, unable to move. I asked the police to take me to the settlement so I can identify one of the settlers whose mask has fallen off. They said that I can't be sure that they are from Ma'on Farm. I asked them who else would enter the farm. They did not answer."
The sheep around us look like they are ready to move on to the next field. Juma looks at the woods in front of us and listens for sounds coming out of it. I ask Adriano if he is afraid "why did you come back after being beaten?" He looks at me calmly and says that he is not afraid. "What can I do" he explains in response to my confused look. "I see the children here. I see the way they suffer and I can't let myself be afraid and excuse myself. Other than the fact that I love this place, I feel that if there was peace here there would be peace all over the world". As he finishes talking Juma continues forward. We split up and I stay with Juma. From a distance, we can hear the voices coming from the woods. Ma'on Farm is the only place in the area which is surrounded by woods. One can only guess what happens inside. I hear the voices and my heart skips a beat, Juma tells me to not be afraid but keeps telling me stories of violent attacks by settlers. The voices in Hebrew coming from the hill become clearer and clearer. Every Hebrew word increases my fear. Only a few days ago, the site of Arabs in Hebron scared me, now it is the voices in my own language which scare me. Naser approaches us with the rest of the volunteers. The sheep are already done and it looks like there won't be a settler attack today. Naser says that there is nothing to fear and that we will go back to the village soon.
In the village I meet Erzra Nawi who has been waiting for me. Ezra, along with the other members of Taayush started to work in the area in 2001 in an attempt to prevent the expulsion of residents, and to enable them to continue their agricultural living and improve their standards of living. Slowly, through the years a partnership was created between Taayush and the Palestinians in the area in which Ezra plays a main part. One thing that is heard from most of the villagers is that many things have changed since the beginning of the Taayush activities. The international volunteers for their part are credited with a decrease in army violence towards the Palestinians. Ezra's activity in the area is so visible that a month ago the police told him that threats were made on his life and that he should take precautions. The first warnings were in case Ezra returns to the occupied territories but lately the threats have included threats to Ezra in his home as well. In informal conversations with the police Ezra asked why the police on the ground do nothing to stop the settlers attacks, and he was told that "there is nothing we can do, these are orders from above".
Before I get into Ezra's car I drink one last cup of tea and run to say goodbye to the women. We kiss two or three time. "When you come to see me in Tel Aviv" I start to say but before I finish Sausa says "mamnua" "what?" "mamnua, mamnua" she repeats "we are prevented from entering Israel" I snap back to reality, to the reality of my freedom of movement, my ability to simply leave, to run away and to the fact that none of the people I met this week can come and visit me. We get into the car and head for Jerusalem. I say goodbye. At the checkpoint the soldiers ask Ezra where we are going. Ezra takes his time answering which causes the soldier to address him in a violent tone which changes as soon as he realizes that Ezra has no Arabic accent. We drive into the stone covered city whose beauty is diminished by thousands of stickers "A Jew does not expel a Jew", The settlers slogan against the disengagement from Gaza Strip.
