Edeet Ravel - Look for Me

I wandered away from the gathering and caught a glimpse of El a leaning against her blue car and staring out into the distance. She was holding a cup of co ee in one hand and tentatively touching her cropped hair with the other. The sign taped to her car window read: Everyone has a right to a home. I took a photograph of her with my zoom lens; she looked as homeless as any cave dwel er.

We didn’t leave until two o’clock because one of the lawyers who was involved in the South Lifna trials had been held up in court; he’d been trying to stop the deportation of foreign activists. When he nal y arrived, we returned to our cars and headed out across the invisible border between our country and the occupied territories. The landscape changed at once: green was replaced by gray and pale brown; there was no irrigation here. The hil s on both sides of the road rose and fel gently, as in a child’s drawing of mountains. As we neared South Lifna, we saw distant gures watching our procession from the mountains, tiny people against the pearl blue afternoon sky. They were not al owed on the road; this was a restricted highway, built for the set lers, and it was o -limits to Palestinians. Despite the distance between us, we felt their gratitude; you could tel they were happy we’d come from the way they stood there, their bodies very stil , as if they were afraid to break the spel of good luck that had brought us here.

The army had been trying for years to get rid of the cave dwel ers. They didn’t like the idea of Palestinians scat ered throughout the hil s, three or four families on one hil , ve on another. You couldn’t enclose them, it was hard to control their movements. And the government wanted the land.

The army tried expel ing them: they put them on trucks, blocked wel s, destroyed tents. Possibly they found it di cult to understand why anyone would want to live in caves and tents, in such di cult conditions. And at rst I wondered, too, when I spent the night in one of the caves the previous summer, in an e ort to stop the latest evictions. These were large natural caves, dark mouths on the sides of the hil s. I slept just outside the cave, because I couldn’t bear the damp and misery inside. I had never seen such poverty up close. I quickly understood that the cave dwel ers needed clothes and medical care and bet er food and more utensils and plastic sheets for the oor of their caves and waterproof mat resses and toys, but they loved their homes, and I could see why. The hil s were like huge friendly turtles, turtles you could love as intensely as you loved any human. The cave dwel ers had been on these hil s for over one hundred years. In court their lawyers explained that the caves were their homes, and they had nowhere to go. The nearby town, Lifna, had no place for them and they didn’t t in there: they were shepherds and farmers.

Apart from their di culties with the army, the cave dwel ers were continual y assaulted by the set lers. One cave dwel er had already been kil ed in a dispute over a stolen sheep.

Our caravan of cars was stopped twice by the army, but for less than an hour each time. But three kilometers before the path that would take us to the cave dwel ers, the army stopped us again, and this time they said we would have to turn back. The o cer in charge had a friendly, worried face and he peered at us apologetical y through his round metal-rimmed glasses. He wanted to let us through, he said, but the set lers from Elisha were blocking the road. “They’ve driven their cars onto the road, and they won’t let you through. You’l have to go back. I don’t want a mess here.”

We could see the set lement of Elisha in the distance, eighty or ninety suburban houses with triangular burgundy roofs arranged in sti clusters on a hil top. The houses looked out of place in this ancient landscape, like smal Monopoly pieces; houses without a past, without a future, suspended in a fantasy world their inhabitants claimed was God’s. Volvo’s family lived in a set lement like this one.

“We’re not going back, we have permits, we have blankets to deliver,” the main organizer said. He was a young man with oppy black hair. Beatrice knew him wel ; he taught in her department.

“Al right, I’l see what I can do,” the of icer in charge said. “Maybe we can get tow trucks to tow their cars away.”

We wandered along the road and waited. The rabbis who had come to pray with the Palestinians began to worry; they had to be home before sunset.

I sat with Ra by the side of the road. We waved at the Palestinians in the distance but we couldn’t see whether they were waving back.

They were too far away.

We waited for three hours. We were very hot, and nearly al of us had run out of water. Ra passed around the extra bot les he’d brought.

Some of the women had to pee, and they wandered away from the road in smal groups. There were no boulders or trees to hide behind, so they either took turns sheltering each other or else relied on the courtesy of averted eyes.

The rabbis had to leave; they wouldn’t be able to have a joint prayer session with the Muslims after al . I phoned Beatrice on my mobile phone and left a message. I told her we were delayed, and that I’d be too tired for a visit tonight.

Final y the army announced that the area had been declared a closed military zone. The lawyers argued that this was a government road: it couldn’t be declared a closed military zone. If there was no choice, they said, we would just disobey and start walking.

But the army was adamant. So everyone locked arms and we began to walk past the army trucks and police vehicles. The police had been cal ed in, just in case, and now they went to work. They were furious. They hit the marchers at the edge of the procession and pushed them to the ground. One o cer knocked down Farid, a heavy man in his fties, and knelt on his chest. A group of demonstrators pul ed him o Farid, and the of icer turned on them, but Farid was able to get back to his feet.

I lost sight of Ra for a moment; he’d gone to help Shadi, who had been dragged into one of the police vans. Then he came back into view. He was trying to enter the van too, but a police o cer pul ed him by the col ar, slammed him forward against the front hood of a police car, and twisted his arm behind him. With one hand the o cer held Ra ’s head down on the hood, with the other he twisted Ra ’s arm. I saw Ra ’s face contract with pain, but I couldn’t reach him, there were too many people between us. I couldn’t photograph him arm. I saw Ra ’s face contract with pain, but I couldn’t reach him, there were too many people between us. I couldn’t photograph him either, because a wave of nausea came over me, and I thought I would vomit. And then abruptly the violence ended. The army announced that they would al ow us to proceed through the mountains and bypass the people from Elisha. But Shadi would have to remain behind; he was under arrest.

Several demonstrators lay down on the ground around the police van in which Shadi was being held. As soon as the police dragged one person away, another moved in. Final y they agreed to release Shadi, though he was given a summons. He stepped out of the van, the summons in his hand, his thin red ka yeh wrapped stylishly around his neck. He was young and fearless, and his eyes glowed with amused pride. I took a photograph of him emerging from the van, and I wondered whether he was a heartbreaker.

I heard two o cers talking. Now that the struggle was over they were relaxed and gregarious. They didn’t care one way or another about the convoy. One of them shook his head and said, “Al this for some blankets … couldn’t they just mail them?”

We each took a blanket or bag of clothes, and we began climbing the hil . The ground was dot ed with flat white rocks that looked like the roofs of underground houses. Dark green bramble grew between the rocks, and the earth was hard and dry under our feet. The mountains stretched out on al sides; they looked resigned and mournful under the soft gold of dusk. A large area had been expropriated by the military and was cordoned o by barbed wire and spotlights. We had to walk four kilometers to circumnavigate the enclosure. A few soldiers accompanied us.