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“Peace Process”

 

or the OITM travel issue, I
Fdecided to once again tackle

the complexity of Israel from
my American Jewish feminist per-
spective. I haven’t had the guts or
money to return for nine years, but
I’m due for a trip any minute now.
Meanwhile, I’d like to share some
excerpts from my 1994 journal when
I traveled to the region for the
“Women, War and Peace
Conference” in Jerusalem and took a
camping trip to a wildlife preserve in
a desert oasis across from the Dead
Sea. My freedom of movement back
then was enviable. My only hope is
that soon, the rich diversity of
tourists and residents will be able to
roam the region and interrningle like
I did back in “the good ol’ days.”

“As part of the peace con-
ference we are offered a ‘tour’ of
parts of Israel which are not your
typical sightseeing attractions. We go
to an ‘unrecognized village’ called
"Arab Naim arranged by our kib-
butznik [resident of a communal farm
in Israel] tour guide — a radical femi-
nist diplomat who lives in the area
and does outreach work. This small
settlement of Bedouin [once desert
nomads] touches me deeply. They
have enough money because they
work as laborers in Israel and pay
full taxes but receive no services and
are not allowed to build stone houses
— only corrugated tin shacks —
because they are not ‘legal.’ (The
Bedouin had lived there for 300 hun-
dred years.)

“They put generators on
when the sun goes down, but turn
them off at midnight because they
make too much noise. They draw
water from central wells. They serve
us bitter coffee and a piece of candy
as we look into their houses with
their permission. They want us to
publicize their plight. No furniture —
just a rug on the floor, a few pillows,
a mattress and a wood stove in the
comer. The children seem so open.
One of the feminists I’m traveling
with from Zambia in Africa deliber-
ately walks over to a huddle of gig-
gling, mildly frightened children and
says, ‘Now I’ll give them something
to be really scared about’ with a big
smile on her face. Sure enough they
run away with excited screams.

“There is something of the
spartan hippie in me that appreciates
the simplicity of that simple room
without furniture. Are they constantly
frustrated and miserable or do they

. find some joy in their hillside exis-

tence in the open air without a lot of

‘ distractions? Am I being over-roman-

tic? Perhaps. When I go back to the
bus, I start to cry quietly, my heart
full of shame. I say to the French
Jewish lesbian in my group, ‘I’m so
ashamed of what my government is
doing.’ She tries to comfort me by
touching my arm saying, ‘But it is
not your government.’ Well,,I sup-

pose not, but I certainly feel connect-
ed. I can’tjust disassociate myself
like some anti-Zionist American
Jewish dykes I know. Then I remem-
bered Harlem and Appalachia.
When’s the last time I made a tour of
those blights on our national charac-
ter? At any rate I feel compelled to
take some small action for these 200
unrecognized villages whose lands
will be confiscated sooner or later if
nothing is done.

“After the conference I take
a bus to the desert in the south to go
camping. Nothing restores hope in
me more than immersing myself in
the natural world. I get a little way-
laid in the wadi [desert wash] as I
wander off the road due to a magnifi-
cent twilight, so I have to whip out
my flashlight which I stuck in my
backpack just for emergencies such
as the one I created by becoming a
little too mystical at sunset.

“I return to the overly well-
lit campgrounds and muster up the
energy to heat up my less-than-deli-

ithe

camping so I eagerly engage her in
conversation while boiling my eggs.
“She’s Honduran, married
to a white German man — an artist,
who came over to Israel a few years
ago to build a fountain commemorat-

ing the Holocaust in a small political-

ly conservative town over the Green
Line [in the Arab territories]. She
herself says she’s conservative. She
says the Arabs want it all. They
refuse to budge. There are plenty of
hills, but they want the exact hill the
Jews are building on. She says they
have plenty of money from the oil-
rich Arab nations.

“She also says her German

I husband got in trouble with the

German authorities for coming over
here to build the fountain. She says
the Germans don’t mention the past.
‘It’s taboo to talk about the Jews in
Germany.’ She says they skip over
the Holocaust when they teach histo-
ry in the public schools. She says she
never went to Yad Vashem
[Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum.]
‘No way. It’s enough I live in
Germany.’ She said her husband is

anti-establishment, and that’s why he I’

built the fountain despite the flak he
got from the German government.
“On the way back to

Jerusalem I have to stand in the
crowded bus. I engage in conversa-
tion with a lovely Ecuadorian woman
travelling with her two young sons.
She starts the conversation by asking
me where Masada is. I figure out the

The Bedouin in this settlement work
as laborers in Israel and pay full taxes
but are not allowed to build houses --
only shacks -’- because they are “not

cious soup powder and water with
typical unmeltable Israeli cheese in it
to add substance. I fish through the
flavored water around the bottom of
the cup for a rubbery blob of equally
undelicious gunk. But at least the
powder came from the shuk's [open-
air middle-eastem market] version of
a health food store. I should have lis-
tened to the warnings of the store-.
keeper who said, ‘Here’s something
with no sugar, no monosodium gluta-
mate, no preservatives, no soup’ I
noticed in the ingredients it said
‘antioxidant.’ ‘What does that mean?’
I asked the ever-helpful storekeeper
wondering if it meant that it was
impossible to add oxygen. He merely
shrugged and said, ‘Who knows. If
it’s ‘anti’ it must be OK, no?’ I could
have used a little ‘pro’ in this soup. I
ask at the information booth when
the spotlights [would] go off in the
campground and am told ‘in the
morning. Security.’ Great. So much
for desert moon and stars.

‘ “In-the campground I
notice a beautiful black woman who
is with a white man. I long to interact
with her but don’t have the nerve to
just approach her. As she walks near
my campsite where I’m preparing
breakfast, I drop something loud in
the trash. When she turns to look, I
say hi. She smiles and asks if I’m

bus had already passed it a long time
ago. She shrugs her shoulders (notice
how much shoulder shrugging goes
on in Israel) and says, ‘OK. So we go
someplace different.’ I say she’ll
probably go to Jerusalem because-
there’s nothing between here and
Jerusalem. ‘Well, we’ve already been
there, but OK, we’ll go again.’ I
compliment her on her hang-loose
attitude.
“She’s married to a half-
Dutch, half-Ecuadorian man who ‘
also has some Jewish thrown in.
They are living in Holland so he _
came to Israel to get in touch with his
Jewish roots. She says he was very
emotional when he got here. She was
so touched by his reaction that she
‘fell in love with him all over again.’
She is traveling without him this
week because he was only here for a
few days. She has a hard time visit-
ing her family back in Ecuador ‘
because it’s so heartbreaking when
she has to leave again. She said the
people in Ecuador are much more .
outgoing and open than in Holland.
‘They are like the people here in this
country.’
“She asks me if I am trav-

elling alone. I decide not to come out
to her. I say I like being alone. I have

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