The City of the Dead - Part 2
by Aron Trauring
"I Know This City"
Up the road from where our "base" was situated is the city of Kiryat Arba. It is a Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Hebron which has a population of about 4000 people, many of them new Jewish immigrants from Russia. The mayor of Kiryat Arba at the time was Zvi Katzover (for all I know he still is). One day I was on patrol near the Cave, when I saw a car parked on the sidewalk. We had very strict orders that no car was allowed to park near us, since it could block our view of the street. That would make a drive-by shooting ambush hard to see.I walked over to investigate and saw Zvi Katzover talking to a group of American tourists. As I walked over I heard him say "Our [the settlers] presence in Hebron and Kiryat Arba help increase Israel's security." I interrupted Katzover and asked him to whom the car belonged. He said it was his. I politely asked him to move it. He said, "No that's ok, I'll be done in a few minutes." Normally I would have let it pass, but his statement had gotten my blood boiling. So I said "Sorry but we have strict orders." This put Katzover in an uncomfortable position. After all, he can't ask me to contravene my orders. He hesitated for a moment, and then said "Well it will only be a few minutes." The tourists were watching the interchange with a puzzled look, not understanding the Hebrew. I smiled sweetly and said "Well I'm sorry but orders are orders." I could tell Katzover was angry but because of the tourists he had to control himself. "Look," he said, "I know this city like the back of my hand. There's no danger at all." I said "I don't care. Move your car, please." Controlling his anger, he got in the car and drove off.
While he was gone I started talking to my landsmann, my fellow Americans. After a moment of pleasant interchange I said: "You know what Katzover was saying to you. It's a lie. They have no business being here. Me and my friends and hundreds of soldiers have to risk our lives to protect them. Precious army resources are being diverted to protect them instead of the citizens of Israel." One of the tourists protested by saying "Well the cave belongs to us and the Arabs all hate us. When it was in their hands, they never let us visit." To which I responded "It is the behavior of the settlers that make them hate us. When we reach an agreement with them, we will have access to the Cave. These settlers shouldn't be here."
Today that statement seems so obvious, even tame. But at the time, it was a pretty radical statement for me. That was really the first time I ever said anything like it. When we first moved to Israel in 1983, I had a pretty simple view of the situation. While I didn't support all the settlements, I did believe that Israel had rights to the West Bank and that some of the settlements were there for security purposes. I believed that most Palestinians were unfairly antagonistic to Israel, even if I didn't believe all of them were murderous Jew haters. I opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, although I did believe that the Palestinians should have some sort of political autonomy, as Begin agreed in Camp David. In short, I was the typical "Labor" Israeli.
My army service, which began around the same time as the first Intifada, opened my eyes. On my very first tour of duty which was in the Ramallah area, our commanding officer lectured the officers when we took up our post. In his briefing he said: "All the Arabs understand is force. If we show weakness, then we will have trouble the whole 30 days we are here. We have to kill a few Palestinians as soon as we take up our position, and then we'll have quiet. Otherwise, they will be uppity [lit: they will lift their heads up]" And in fact, that is what he did. The first day out he took a few soldiers into a suburb of Ramallah. Immediately the stone throwing began. And true to his word, he killed a teenage Palestinian stone thrower. Some of the officers and soldiers were angry about it [not angry enough to do anything formal], but most agreed with what he said and did. I was pretty shook up by this. Our commanding officer was someone I knew well from the community I lived in. I ate over at his house on occasion, and our kids went to school together. He was just a normal guy. I couldn't assimilate the brutality of his actions. "Maybe he is right," I thought. "Maybe that is the way we have to treat the Palestinians since we are at war with them." But my heart told me was he had done something very wrong.
People don't remember that the first Intifada was mainly characterized by acts of civil disobedience. Besides stone throwing there were very few incidents of gun shooting. There certainly was no Hamas or suicide bombings at the time. [That was because the Hamas only began to form during this Intifada with the encouragement of the Israeli Shin Bet. The Israeli government was doing everything it could to diminish the influence of the PLO in the territories to prevent the Palestinians from demanding statehood and independence. So they encouraged the formation of the Hamas as a local opposition group that the Israelis believed they could totally control.]
Most of our activities in fact, consisted of walking the streets of whatever town we were in and doing two things:
- removing Palestinian flags
- making Palestinian shopkeepers whitewash graffiti slogans
When I asked my officers why we engaged in these foolish games, they said: "You don't understand. If we don't stop these kinds of behaviors, it will escalate. Soon they will be shooting at us." The great fear of the army was that the Intifada would move from civil disobedience to armed conflict. So the civil disobedience had to be crushed, even if it was with great force.
The more I participated in these kind of activities, the more futile they seemed to me. I grew up in America during the days of Martin Luther King , Malcolm X and the civil rights movement. Kids throwing stones didn't seem to me to deserve a death sentence, especially one handed out without judge or jury. More and more I began to feel a great empathy for the Palestinians and there desire for freedom, independence and dignity. More and more I began to question the connection of my army service to the defense of Israel.
And yet, like most Israelis, I continued to cling to the belief that we had to hold on to the West Bank for "security" purposes. In fact, I had often made statements very similar to Katzover's: "We need the settlements for our security." Yet, I couldn't resolve the conflict between my deep-held belief that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and the reality of how that ownership effected the lives of the Palestinians.
Being in Hebron, however, forced me to face this conflict with unflinching honesty. We had far less interactions with the Palestinians here. Our duties, for the most part, did not involve spray painting and flag removal. But here in Hebron, I saw the true face of the settlers. The overturning of the stalls in the market. The kids kicking Arab passerbys. The unmasked racism. The contempt for us soldiers. The anti-democratic language and thinking. The tight connection between the army and the settlements. The deep disruption the settlement and the settlers caused in the day to day life of the Palestinians. It accelerated my thinking. I could no longer honestly speak like Katzover. In fact, I finally knew it was a lie.
Just as I completed my sentence, Katzover returned. He looked at me suspiciously and quickly led the tourists toward the cave. The following winter, a reserve soldier was shot in a drive-by ambush, precisely at the spot we had been. I often wonder if Katzover's car had blocked his view that day.
[to be continued]