Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“Don’t you worry,” said Shimoni.

“But where will you get the money for homes and construction and transport?” Othniel asked.

“I’ve organized a donation from a good Miami Jew,” replied Shimoni.

At the time, Othniel was planning to build a permanent home in Ma’aleh Hermesh but had run into a seemingly endless web of red tape with the council engineer, a troublesome neighbor, and a corrupt real estate attorney.

“Screw them all,” he finally said to Rachel. He’d had his fill of the exhausting bureaucracy, the sleepy, complacent bourgeoisie of Ma’aleh Hermesh, and the daily walk to and from his plot of land, a mile in each direction.

He loved the hilltop, the winds, the ancient landscape; and he longed for the pioneering spirit of his youth — the sorties into Hebron and Kiryat Arba, the visits down south to Yamit before the Sinai town’s dramatic evacuation, the Sabbaths spent in settlements reeling from the barrage of Arab terror during the first intifada, the stormy protests against the Oslo Accords, when he and his fellow demonstrators faced off against club-wielding riot police and water cannons.

Othniel gave in to the urgings of Uzi Shimoni, who had somehow gotten his hands on a pair of twenty-two-square-meter trailers, one of which Othniel, with the help of an expert welder, connected to the office-warehouse container and the guard hut and turned into a home for his family. The Shimonis settled in the second trailer. The two men went off together to the Registrar of Non-Profit Organizations in Jerusalem to set up an NPO, naming it the Hermesh Cooperative Farming Association.

Next came the clearing of an access road to the hilltop. Giora, the brigade commander of the sector, and a friend of Othniel from his military days, claimed to have been unaware of the newly cleared route, which ran, invisible from the main road, from Ma’aleh Hermesh B., down through the deep, dry riverbed, and up the hill. Soon afterward, however, following a call to a friend in the National Infrastructures Ministry, the Public Works Department erected safety guardrails along the dangerously steep makeshift road.

The brigade commander told later of receiving a call on his two-way radio one cold winter night with a report of five new twenty-two-square-meter prefab trailers that had been set up on the land adjacent to the Assis farm. He arrived on the scene to find several trucks and trailers at the site. The settlers, he said, blocked his command car from approaching. The head of the regional council turned up, things got heated, and the brigade commander, who came under a barrage of abuse, called the Civil Administration for advice on how to proceed. The new trailers, he was told, were there without a permit. However, their removal, too, required authorization, which they didn’t have. And thus the soldiers loaded the settlers onto the military vehicles and drove them away — with the records of the army and Defense Ministry duly noting that the outpost had been evacuated. The settlers returned the very next day, and the brigade commander turned his attention to more pressing matters.

Thus the outpost took hold.

* * *

The five trailers were leased from the state-owned Amidar housing company, with the Housing Ministry’s approval forthcoming, thanks to the regional council head’s ties with the deputy minister. Despite the biting cold, mosquitoes abounded, and the prefab structures themselves were somewhat dilapidated. But the settlers fitted nets to the windows, attached wooden doors to the makeshift homes, used a digger to carve out access roads, and paved pathways. One of the structures was set aside as a synagogue (a recently refurnished Jerusalem synagogue had donated its old items, including an ark in good condition, and one of the men turned up with a Torah scroll, without saying where it had come from). At night, after working long, hard days, they stood guard, because the Arabs from the neighboring village were keeping a watchful eye on them. The water and electricity supply remained erratic, but the residents made do with a rusty, leaking water tanker and oil lamps. A mountain hyena occasionally plundered food and items of clothes, and rock rabbits and rats liked to visit, too.

Two of the families left within the first few weeks, but the Assises and Shimonis stuck it out, while the third survivor was Hilik Yisraeli, a political science student in his late twenties whose scraggy face was adorned with thin-framed glasses and a mustache. Seeking to satisfy his pioneering spirit and belief in the redemption of the Land of Israel, Hilik, who grew up in Ma’aleh Hermesh but had tired of its gentrification, moved into one of the prefab trailers with his wife and two toddler sons.

But where there are two Jews, there are three opinions, and where there are three Jews, well, God help us. Hilik questioned Shimoni about the promised donation from the wealthy Miami Jew, as Shimoni appeared to be pumping sums of money into construction and infrastructure, but precisely how much, and who got what and why, remained unclear. Uzi Shimoni, in turn, went straight to Othniel to complain about “that cheeky kid I invited here and who now has the balls to ask me questions.” Othniel nodded in agreement, but after returning home and discussing the matter with Rachel, he realized that the young man had a point, and he went back to Shimoni to get some answers. How much money did they have? Could they get a more powerful generator? What about erecting a security fence and setting up lighting for nighttime? “Everything is under control” and “Stop worrying,” Shimoni grumbled in response. Othniel promptly began to worry.

And then, speaking to them through his car window one day, Shimoni informed Othniel and Hilik that two new families would be moving into the vacated trailers within the next few days.

“What families?” a surprised Hilik responded. “And who decided to take them in, based on what criteria?”

“Listen up, kid,” Shimoni said, glaring at the young man and stroking his thick beard. “Any more of those questions and you’ll find yourself out on your ass.”

From that moment on, Othniel and Hilik formed a united front. When they tried to delve deeper into the money-from-Miami story, the evidence provoked their strong suspicion that Shimoni was dipping his fingers into the NPO’s coffers. Othniel was livid. He had run into a fair amount of corruption in his lifetime, but stealing from the settlement enterprise took the cake. Was nothing sacred these days? He didn’t confront Shimoni directly, choosing instead to pull some strings of his own. Shimoni was well connected, but Othniel also was acquainted with council officials, and he had close ties with its head and with the secretary of Ma’aleh Hermesh. Little by little, Shimoni found himself excluded from the circles of influence.

One morning, Othniel was making his way up to the outpost in his Renault Express. Shimoni’s dog was lying in the middle of the road, scratching himself behind the ear.

“What the hell! Why him? What did he do wrong?” Shimoni yelled as he and the rest of his family came rushing out their home at the sound of the animal’s anguished cries.

“He jumped in front of the car. I couldn’t brake in time,” Othniel responded, still stunned by what he had done.

“Don’t lie! You ran him down intentionally. He’s never done anything to you!”

Uzi’s girls were sobbing. He looked at them in pain and then turned to glare furiously at Othniel. “I never thought you’d go this far, Othniel,” he growled. “Will you guys stop at nothing?”

Under the barrage of Shimoni’s continued accusations, Othniel’s shock soon transformed into a growing rage. “What about the NPO, Uzi?” he asked, glaring at Shimoni. “What’s with the finances?”