"What Will You Do When April Comes?"
potok, Chaim
"WHAT Will YOU DO WHEN APRIL COMES?" The permanent boundary between Egypt and Israel is the recognized international boundary between Egypt and the former mandated territory of Palestine. . ....
...He had large dark eyes and moist lips...
...Do you know what a difference there is between a living and a dead business...
...Until April...
...Her name: Jeannie Illan...
...But I have two sons in the army...
...But once having done what we did, I see no way out other than to give it up...
...I heard a joke at a party in a friend's house that evening, an urbane one-liner reflecting the weariness and contempt of some Israelis over the growing dust storm in the south: "There are two kinds of settlers in Yamit today— sand-diggers and gold-diggers...
...That's not fair...
...Now all the entrances in the perimeter fence save one were blocked and near the open entrance were sandbags and barbed wire...
...You're asking, 'What's your personal trauma here today?' You have to understand...
...For the residents of Yamit, their city had missed by a single mile the future they had all sought in its midst...
...I climbed the circular staircase...
...Look, it's very difficult to judge us here today," he said...
...Besides, there were about eleven settlements already here in the area...
...The government stated, said the newscaster, that only a few families had settled recently in Yamit, not the hundreds claimed by certain groups...
...He has a terrible accident...
...They want to be compensated for their factories and shops in the same way the settlement people are being compensated for their farms...
...In the shade of a house a woman was energetically washing an expensive car...
...It's inevitable...
...At least that's the feeling I have...
...Until April...
...His name was Yosef Sasson, he said...
...He said it to five hundred people here...
...Yamit seemed bereft, stricken...
...There was no sign of the army in Yamit, no interference from the police...
...Later that afternoon I wandered alone through the city...
...Most of the people were going into farming in Israel...
...She walked with me back to the flagstone path...
...People are here, children...
...He wanted to be able to say that he was able to force Israelis to withdraw from settlements...
...No one seemed in control of the city...
...Now they say they'll talk to us...
...There were young pines and lemon trees and rose bushes...
...It took me a long time to build it up.' We said to the government, 'Let's build another Yamit nearby.' My friends and I, we all want to be together, to live and grow old and die together...
...You're taking it all from me...
...This will show the world that the people want the Yamit region...
...And I feel very bad for the people who have to give up homes—particularly in the agricultural settlements where they are really a developed community...
...And business people who have shops and factories, light industry...
...It seems to me that's one of the reasons why Sadat insisted on it even though it's only a mile from the border...
...He built bases in Taiwan and other parts of the world...
...A few hundred meters to the right and left of this road are the impassable dunes of the desert...
...And the kids have become very violent...
...But we will not be among those who will have to be forced out...
...The government used to advertise in the newspapers, for people to come and settle in Yamit...
...If the government does have something up its sleeve, that's a very cool way of handling the situation...
...You can never trust them...
...It's very, very upsetting...
...I knew every bunker, every gun...
...Treaty of Peace Between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Israel: Article II CHAIM POTOK On the twenty-sixth day of this coming April, the Sinai Peninsula is to be returned by Israel to Egypt, in accordance with the Camp David peace agreement, and Yamit—a green and beige seacoast city set like a shimmering mirage in the wastelands of the northern Sinai—will cease to exist...
...I had family problems—my wife couldn't have a child...
...They are the thresholds of sanctity...
...And, by the way, the house burning is more show than real...
...Each of us has to think what to do...
...I want to be a good citizen...
...Please, have a biscuit, he said...
...We will be among the last to leave...
...She had the look of a surburban housewife dressed for gardening...
...Do you think there will be a confrontation when the time comes...
...They're asking for more...
...plastic-encased greenhouses...
...I asked him if he could account for the apparent inability of the present government to deal with the people of the Yamit region...
...I think they shouldn't be doing it...
...An Israeli flag flew at half mast from a television antenna: another symbol of protest...
...All of Yamit, everything in it that cannot be moved—its garden apartments and elegant private villas, its paved streets and spacious central business area, its modern shops, schools, synagogue buildings and youth centers, its underground power lines, water conduits, sewage drains, its trees and parks and gardens, its air raid shelters, and its soaring monument to the Israeli soldiers who died fighting for this area against the Egyptians in the 1967 war—all of it, all one billion dollars of it, will be handed over to Egypt...
...Things had begun to work...
...Do you see what it's like out there...
...she had gone to Israel in 1967 and met the man she later married...
...People ask, 'How can you burn buildings?' For three years they have been giving us a runaround...
...There was anger in Yamit as well, immediately and coldly visible as I entered the city...
...Was there any sense to that...
...There was a resident he knew...
...The government intervenes in the economy in many ways and compensates people for all sorts of things, and there are departments that know how to handle this, and there are people who know how to make estimates...
...If this country can live in peace—we are willing to give up the place...
...Earlier I had read an inflammatory leaflet against withdrawal...
...I love this earth, this sand, this sun...
...There are many in Israel today who look upon the demise of Yamit as a necessary and even worthwhile price to pay for the purchase of peace with Egypt...
...A pause...
...During Camp David was the second time...
...There was a pause...
...It's very depressing...
...All we know is that we have before us the Camp David agreement...
...One of them had on a Superman polo shirt...
...Yes, he knew smoking was not healthy...
...Or was it all merely a dramatic display of angry determination staged for the media by those who had sworn not to yield the city and the settlements...
...Do you think that the Arabs can now utilize this as a precedent for further negotiations with the Israelis by claiming that if withdrawal from Yamit was possible, then why is withdrawal from other areas settled by Israelis also not possible...
...The opposite is true...
...There was much tension, he said...
...It's ridiculous...
...I'm sure they will...
...Come home with me...
...The sultry air of the greenhouse was matched by the heat of her anger...
...Each time someone else is in charge of compensation...
...Everyone should do the maximum...
...A crowd of media people lounged near the low cinder-block wall outside the one-story stucco building that housed the committee representing the storekeepers and factory owners of Yamit, the ones quarreling with the government for additional compensation...
...It would be a tragedy of the greatest magnitude, far greater than the loss of a little piece of territory or even the displacement of the people, if the Gush Emunim efforts were to lead to a kind of confrontation that broke that implicit understanding which has formed one of the bases for consensus in modern Israel...
...We don't know...
...There are no simple answers...
...The religious and the political...
...On the other side of the road, the settlements are receiving their fourth payment...
...between us, the coffee table, the length of carpet...
...The same kind of thing is happening now in Judaea and Samaria...
...They appeared to be in their twenties and were led by a young woman with glasses...
...almost always a pause, it seemed to me, whenever that looming darkness had to be confronted...
...Outside I noticed the new Oldsmobile and the license plates...
...He turned away sadly...
...Down the road from Yamit was a restaurant...
...For a long moment she contemplated with sadness the interior of the greenhouse, the fruit, the plants, the fructifying earth...
...The wife wants to do this, the husband wants to do that...
...We were standing just outside the door to the restaurant...
...He brought coffee and biscuits, and put a record into the stereo...
...Everything we worked for—don't we deserve some compensation for these things...
...People begin to talk about him differently: 'Let him either get well or die.' That's how everyone is now talking about us...
...Sixteen deaths by accident...
...Many of them became wealthy on the produce they raised...
...But I don't consider it a peace...
...A door is burned here and there, nothing more...
...The plants in the garden drooped...
...I want to leave now...
...Yes...
...My friends from the city used to visit me...
...There are precedents for compensation...
...Camp David came just as we were beginning to feel we were a city, not just a village...
...He spoke very softly, his Hebrew marking him clearly to be of Indian origin...
...One of the shopkeepers...
...We go to the synagogue, we pray, we recite psalms, we go to the best doctor...
...An army lookout post along the shore off in the distance...
...But we don't believe it won't affect the peace...
...She said, with a mixture of incredulity and anger, "In a Friday night newspaper story...
...We're not demonstrating anymore...
...The sea wind cold...
...Did anybody ask him...
...Tomorrow the Egyptians will get everything, and they will join the Syrians...
...Are you at all religious...
...I am told that the Egyptians are to make some kind of payment to the Israelis for the city...
...you went by foot along the streets or you rode a bicycle...
...We began to build a city here...
...existence: never is settled land to be voluntarily relinquished...
...We must wake up...
...they ask, and respond in Israeli fashion, "God has the answers...
...If it does, I have no doubt that Israel has to keep its commitments and vacate the territory by April twenty-sixth...
...Early the next morning Israel Broadcasting announced that another house had been burned in Yamit during the night...
...I envision people with Uzzis on the rooftops...
...The Camp David agreement is not the end of the matter...
...What will you do when April comes...
...It was an hour before noon...
...He said, "Look, I can't relate to them seriously...
...But so is the Land of Israel...
...lawns and gardens yielded as a marvel by the sandy earth...
...Apparently they had all come down to attend a wedding in one of the newly established religious settlements...
...I don't want to be here for the end...
...I saw television camera crews...
...I went inside and found myself in a room that was a small makeshift museum...
...And again there will be trouble...
...It may get out of it the moment there are fifty thousand settlers here...
...Along both sides of the path grass grew from the sandy soil...
...Seven hundred families had lived here once...
...There had been no religious settlements in the Yamit area, she said, until the signing of the peace treaty...
...What we spent on gasoline...
...Senators, military people, philanthropists, tourists, very important people...
...We hope that peace will truly come out of this and that the wars will come to an end...
...I hope I'm wrong, that's for sure...
...In the excitement of getting peace with Sadat, they lost a sense of perspective...
...At the edge of the city stood the monument...
...This is how Yamit will look in a year...
...But very frankly I think the real reason was that he acted on impulse...
...They were never like that before...
...I don't know...
...This would be a terrible error—if we come to a fight among Jews before we have tried every possible way to resolve the problem...
...Then Begin backtracked and said he really didn't mean this area...
...Suddenly we're regarded with disgust...
...I really think so...
...She led me to greenhouses that had been built, she said, by her late husband...
...No...
...It was an error...
...He took a deep breath...
...And this was after he came here and said that if they talk about returning Yamit and the settlements he would pack his bags and go home...
...It makes the house black...
...They thought half of the Sinai...
...Yamit, I have been told, was in large measure the idea of Moshe Dayan...
...The house, the shed, the turkey coop...
...I took her to be in her thirties...
...We should have established ourselves here earlier...
...I planted it years ago...
...the place had been nothing but sand...
...They treat us like animals...
...You get so much per square meter...
...Here we have a problem...
...People have to leave their houses...
...The whole settlement program, I felt, was developed not as a result of a national consensus but grew out of a bid for political power that was exercised not by any preconceived political conception but mostly by forces that were let loose shortly after the Six-Day War...
...There were good people here...
...Moist hot air redolent of fertilizer and plant life poured from the opening she made as she lifted a flap in the plastic skin of a greenhouse...
...That's right...
...I told the boy I was a visitor to Israel and could not sign...
...She was waiting for word from the government assessor...
...It was all sand, very bright in the sunlight, and sand it would now remain...
...No cars traversed the residential sections of the city...
...Everywhere was the clean cool feeling of newness: new streets, new homes, new plants, new flowers, new trees...
...A young, dark-bearded man was talking to them in a low, intense voice that conveyed clearly the convictions scaffolding his words...
...They were blond and very muscular...
...He opened this restaurant, built it himself with the help of an architect...
...Against whom was the city preparing to defend itself...
...A man like me who came so early to this city—what goes on inside such a person...
...Three or four days after Sadat came to Jerusalem...
...They go through the houses and measure them," she said...
...I'm very pessimistic about the future of this country...
...We were a ball in a political game...
...We have brought Torah to the new settlements in the desert...
...High overhead, a jet tunneled smoothly through the blue sky...
...I left her waiting on the flagstone path for the government assessor who was to come and place the final value upon her life in Sadot...
...I used to go out on guard duty at two in the morning...
...But that would be such a drastic step for him to take that I wouldn't want to predict it...
...The other one was killed in a car crash...
...how much is not clear...
...It's very hard...
...I thought Sadat was unbelievable...
...There were underground cities there...
...There have been eighty-six divorces in this area since Camp David...
...The problem with Dayan was that he had these whims, these unpredictable moments...
...And now the religious aspect," he said...
...The road led quickly to a parking area...
...It was very sad, yes...
...God gave us the borders...
...On top of the pillars were parts of blasted Israeli tanks and armored vehicles: gun barrels, segments of engines, twisted scraps of metal, iron bars bent into agonizing shapes— a silent and chilling walk through a strange desert graveyard...
...I said to them, 'Where were you three years ago...
...Dark-skinned, vivacious eyes, lovely...
...Suddenly Begin goes to Camp David and gives back all of the Sinai...
...Yamit, built one mile inside the international boundary of the Sinai Peninsula, will become an Egyptian city...
...I gazed through the car windows at a bleak and unkempt terrain...
...1 tend to think that we made a mistake at Camp David in that we gave up that area too easily...
...I asked, finally, "Do you think that there will be a confrontation in Yamit...
...I saw row upon row of dense green leaves and fruit-bearing plants...
...She seemed nervous, agitated...
...We worked under artillery fire nearly all the time...
...They're trying to save Yehuda and Shomron...
...My losing my farm is very, very unimportant when you talk about peace in Israel...
...We have only about one hundred days left...
...We talked for a while about American anti-Semitism...
...From the speakers came the strumming of a guitar and the soft voice of a female vocalist singing in Hebrew...
...Children played untroubled by traffic...
...I will stop smoking...
...Then, "We don't want civil war...
...A new neighborhood was to have come up here...
...They're afraid to go to arbitration...
...It was all very tense...
...I'll give you a cup of coffee...
...Then I got into the car and went away, carrying back with me the ordeal of Yamit...
...And if I knew...
...Three years...
...Gray-blue clouds thickened the sky now and concealed the sun and a wind blew in from the sea...
...Three years of exhausting negotiations...
...But most of the people here don't want to leave...
...Build a city to block the southern approaches to the Gaza Strip...
...The Egyptians had promised to care for it, to let the parents of the dead come to it once a year without visas...
...You see it in the schools especially...
...The one day in Yamit had clearly not been enough...
...But there were administrative difficulties...
...We don't think the army will raise a weapon against anyone...
...Nothing helped...
...Ideologists, dreamers, adventurers—they built the settlements, at the urging of the government, to complete the encirclement of the Gaza Strip, to live independent lives away from the cities, and, as some put it, to "do Zionism...
...He raised his eyes to the ceiling...
...She had come down from her new home in Mevasseret Zion, she said, and was waiting for the government assessor...
...You're not here for me...
...I worked with tractors here in Yamit when they first started to build it...
...the preparatory underground work had been completed...
...Obviously he could annex Judaea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip...
...I asked, "Who's burning the houses in Yamit...
...He stopped, gave me a weary look...
...We went to Jerusalem...
...The next morning I returned to Yamit...
...Yes, she said wistfully, Yamit had been like a flower in one's house...
...1 said to the government, 'Listen, if you were really sympathetic, really fair, you would settle with me about my store...
...The government advertised incessantly: Pioneer the south...
...It isn't the lack of expertise...
...White-winged birds wheeling overhead...
...We're something disgusting...
...Are they being burned by outsiders or by Yamit people...
...There were brief introductions, a hug for the child...
...How will I teach my little daughter to be careful of automobiles...
...I had hummous and fish and chips...
...My wife is a nursery school teacher...
...Their effort here is not to save the Yamit region...
...But we have to be ready to do everything...
...But he doesn't get well, and he doesn't die...
...She raised turkeys, tomatoes, mangoes...
...What will I make a living from...
...I heard his voice, the clipped tones: "This is a complicated problem, not a normal one...
...This is very sad," he said, returning to Yamit...
...We were once the glory of the people of Israel...
...Why would Dayan have agreed to the Yamit withdrawal when Yamit was originally his idea...
...But there was no choice...
...In the early days her husband had worked in the new settlements, doing odd jobs...
...The bunkers were monumental...
...I compare it to a family that has in its home, God forbid, a sick child...
...Housing allowances were offered, generous business loans...
...Who would ever have thought there would be quorums for prayer in such desolate places...
...There was a pause, a moment of uncertainty...
...I worked on a tractor and helped to build the bunkers on the Canal...
...Everything is beautiful here...
...But some are military families...
...We've lived since the beginning in a world of rumors," she said, her voice high and breaking...
...He wore a white shirt and was dark-skinned...
...She answered without hesitation...
...We entered a living room furnished with easy chairs, a carpet, a sofa, a reclinen I saw an expensive stereo, a television set, a telephone, a crammed bookcase, art prints, posters, a decorative wall hanging made of rope...
...We've lived two and a half years just in a world of rumors...
...We the undersigned," read the petition in Hebrew, "call upon the government of Israel to retain the Yamit region in the hands of Israel...
...A few minutes later I stood on the deserted beach of Yamit...
...I asked, "Why did you wait until after the peace treaty to establish religious settlements here...
...All her four children had been born here...
...These are not ordinary borders...
...A soldier sat on a chair near the gate with an M-16 in his hands...
...Nearby was a house that belonged to a religious youth movement...
...The city of Gaza was a disheartening Mediterranean throwback of unpaved roads, shanties, incompleted buildings, dust, dirt, street sewage, strewn garbage, donkey carts, broken-down cars, trucks stripped of side panels and dashboards to prevent smuggling as they hauled Gaza Strip produce across the Allenby Bridge to Jordan and then returned to Israel...
...This is what I get for all the years...
...We were once the glory of the People of Israel...
...Or even those who are setting the fires...
...I walked past tall cement pillars...
...We concentrated more on Yehuda and Shomron...
...they just won't get any compensation...
...They called us 'The Movement for Excessive Compensation.' We're a committee of storekeepers and small businessmen...
...We decided that if we're returning this city—do we care how it will look...
...lemon trees...
...It paused for a moment, then turned and drove off: nothing here worth seeing...
...I worked there for six years...
...I'm positive that's tension...
...All our lives are changed...
...They mocked us...
...They had cameras and proceeded to take pictures...
...I just hope and pray that there is no confrontation...
...They listened attentively, silently, to this petite young woman who spoke in the clear and humorless voice of one in certain possession of towering truths...
...the man said in a resonant voice...
...Huge, pale, concrete, it rose from the sand like a shout—a sign against the desert sky of remembered Israeli dead...
...He wore jeans and work shoes and a long-sleeved, light-blue polo shirt...
...A group of children played in a small traffic-free square...
...A lone palm tree near the caf...
...We're through demonstrating...
...Opening courtesies, polite words, a shift to English, an exchange of names, and an immediate recognition I found deeply pleasing in that remote world...
...I circled the square, saw that some of the shops looked empty, came back onto the road, walked past tennis courts and basketball courts and the partially built culture center, whose construction had been halted by the peace treaty, and came to the edge of the city...
...They all sat there looking at him in silence...
...The group of men and women she had spoken to earlier now sat in the sun near the road that led to one of the sections of Yamit that would never be built...
...About forty families were starting a new settlement in an area about half an hour from Sadot, she said...
...Eleven years ago...
...His most recent novel is The Book of Lights...
...The friction—it's ridiculous...
...I asked a friend, Rabbi Jack Cohen, director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at the Hebrew University, for his reactions to the Yamit situation...
...He introduced me to a wiry man of slightly more than average height, with dark-skinned triangular features, an aquiline nose, a shock of dark woolly hair, a dark-brush mustache, and keen shining dark eyes...
...There is a peace agreement, but it wants to get out of it...
...I saw few adults...
...I think it's a total waste...
...He had been opposed initially to the establishment of Yamit, he said, when it was first proposed by Moshe Dayan...
...The government has done nothing...
...Now all of Israel was sad...
...Single-story beige-colored homes...
...We went up to Jerusalem so many times to talk to them...
...A boy stood in the doorway with a long sheet of paper, a petition against the return of the Sinai...
...Who do I know in the new place...
...To finish with Sadat at Camp David, to give up this area—that they were able to do...
...He heard they were building a city here and wanted to be in on it...
...But we don't know what we'll do to make a living...
...There were many names, many—and their ages were noted as well, and they were all so young...
...We moved an enormous dune to fill it...
...How does he react to the religious ones who are here now and say you should not leave...
...We have to influence the government to delay this entire process...
...They sat squinting in its brightness, listening, their faces raised...
...My business I bought...
...We don't know what the army will do...
...She and her husband had been among the first settlers in Sadot, she said...
...he asked...
...I lived in Rehovot and felt myself choking there...
...Their father was helping build the new Israeli air base in the Negev...
...In the silence flies buzzed and another jet flew swiftly and serenely across the face of the blue sky...
...But I still think if he had had a much clearer head...
...When you came to live here, you knew it was a new land, with new possibilities, young people...
...Here and there a new home looked empty, deserted...
...The entrance gate was crowded with traffic...
...They are bewildered, and very angry...
...One mile...
...Where are you going from Yamit...
...There were very few empty lines left on the petition...
...Abruptly, a crowd of about forty men and women came through the open door of the room...
...The December morning was warm and bright, the sky cloudless and greenish blue...
...My husband is more religious than I am...
...Again to Beersheba, to the hospital...
...I'm tired...
...We made a left turn at the junction where the roads led to the Gaza Strip, the Canal, the Mediterranean, and Sadot, then went along the one mile stretch of highway to the international boundary...
...Later, accompanied by his daughter, he walked with me to the end of the flagstone path...
...We cannot know what the Holy One, blessed be He, has decided with regard to this region...
...Look, I don't live here now, so I don't know what I would do...
...Chicago-born, she now lived in Jerusalem...
...A short, stockily built man stood near a tree not far from the wall, looking unhappy...
...I married and came to Yamit after the 1973 war...
...Very conflicted...
...I don't need you now...
...Why did Dayan one bright morning in Zurich decide to announce to the world that Israel was helping'the Ethiopian rebel government that had taken power—and thereby closed off that whole business, because once it was announced they had to throw Israel out...
...And they find it utterly impossible to believe that men like Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, and Arik Sharon could not have bargained harder with Sadat and held on to that one mile strip of land, thereby saving Yamit and the settlements...
...The same thing here...
...What do we do...
...They responded openly, cheerfully...
...And, they claim, it would never have materialized without the return of the Yamit region: the area containing the city and the nearby agricultural settlements...
...We shook hands...
...We will not throw grenades, and we will not use the weapons we have...
...Eight different government negotiators came and went...
...One week before he went to Camp David...
...frontation...
...We sat for a long moment in silence...
...We used to go to Beersheba for milk—a long drive...
...I asked, after a long moment of silence, "How do you think this matter will end...
...Everyone should be able to complain, to express his hurt pride...
...His wife entered...
...He went on, in that same low, intense voice...
...I asked...
...Can you blame them...
...This is part of biblical Israel...
...What happened at Camp David...
...We want a just compensation...
...How much?' The newspapers are so unfair...
...I don't expect it to happen...
...That evening there was a knock on the door of the apartment where I was staying...
...He appeared to be in his mid-thirties...
...We entered the Gaza Strip...
...Her name was Atara Carl...
...I'll tell you about Yamit...
...I earned this compensation...
...He thought it had to do with the normal unwillingness of Israeli governments to come to grips with highly unpleasant problems...
...The Yamit people want more money than the government is offering...
...Probably they would not leave when the Egyptians came...
...The government said it would cost too much, it was cheaper to pay everyone off...
...It is in our power to do this...
...No one would listen...
...You know, I can no longer today tell anyone I live in Yamit...
...They tried to convince my daughter to tell me not to move...
...They left...
...After three years of frustrating effort, you also would burn a house...
...The sun was warm...
...I think there's going to be another war...
...We're giving it back to people who were once our worst enemy...
...I hope there will be peace...
...Will you be here until the last minute...
...Now it has arrived...
...I promise...
...Pale streaks of sunlight breaking through dense gray clouds and illuminating patches of whitish sand...
...We stood there in the sunlight, talking...
...I talked to his wife, a short, dark-skinned, harried woman in her twenties, who ran the restaurant, prepared the food, and carried an infant on her hip...
...I didn't ask the government to give and give and give...
...Unless Arik Sharon has something up his sleeve to prevent the confrontation, or Menachem Begin has something up his sleeve, then I think there will be a confrontation...
...I had the impression that she had at first mistaken me for someone else...
...They are still there...
...The city grew beneath the endless desert sun, a wondrous miracle of engineering and tenacity— an exquisite city, a city for the next century of Israeli life, all its conduits and cables and electric lines underground, the sky free of power poles save those, slender and elegant, needed to light the night, its residential areas free of traffic, a fountain in the broad square that was its business center, all of it a dazzling marvel of loveliness in this trackless desert...
...A bizarre twist of history...
...Across the road Bedouin children played in the sand near a tent attached to a shanty with a corrugated tin roof...
...His voice was thick with passion...
...How do you react when it's pointed out that the religious parties in the government voted for the peace treaty...
...Law and order has to be maintained for any civil society to survive...
...And they still don't have a final agreement...
...I don't think that's the problem...
...A woman emerged from one of the homes and asked in Hebrew if she could help me...
...I felt that this was another in a series of moves for which we would eventually have to pay should it be necessary, under any circumstances, to fall back...
...Professor Daniel Elazar of the department of political science at Bar Ilan University and the Jerusalem Institute for Federalism said to me, "The thought of leaving the area—in terms of what we've invested in it and what it means to the people who live there, and in a larger sense its strategic importance—is very painful indeed, especially since I think it was an unnecessary concession on our part...
...I think Begin very much realizes his mistake...
...We have no choice...
...The vocalist sang liltingly from the stereo, an indifferent counterpoint to his angry words...
...I hope very much that it doesn't come to a violent conflict among the settlers and those who have recently come there and the army...
...There will definitely be a confrontation...
...The owner was off on reserve duty...
...I read in the newspapers that the Yamit people want more money or they will not leave...
...She was from Beersheba, her husand was from Petach Tikva...
...I remember standing a long time on that desolate beach and staring out at the sea...
...We want what's coming to us...
...Then a number of religious settlements had sprung up as an act of defiance against the coming withdrawal...
...Yes, fifty thousand...
...I tell someone I live in Yamit, and the reaction is, Oh...
...We sat there and he talked about his years in Yamit...
...These Arabs are different from those of Hebron and Jerusalem...
...It's about ninety days before we have to leave...
...People bring him flowers in the hospital...
...I asked him, "What do you think of the Gush Emunim people who began to settle here after the peace treaty...
...Twenty families had occupied a motel in Yamit, she said...
...We bought an apartment in Kfar Saba...
...After we burned two houses, the Defense Minister came here the next day and talked to us...
...Like this...
...Few thought the city would ever become viable...
...About ten families were giving it up and moving into cities...
...Who could have conceived of this...
...She thought that what the Gush Emunim people were doing here was ridiculous...
...And this they're not able...
...She was originally from Los Angeles...
...A large black dog loped languidly alongside a garden...
...We blocked the roads here...
...There will not be any peace between us and the nations until the nations recognize the greatness of the People of Israel...
...Perhaps this is what was missing...
...In these settlements, where you're so close to the sea, you never know what's going to come out of the water...
...A committee had announced that the city was ready for a siege...
...He was smoking because of the situation here...
...Now we will have to leave it all...
...I wished he was our prime minister...
...Two hundred new families have arrived here in the past few months...
...There are still three months left...
...And apparently they did, apparently Dayan did, and it was backed by Begin...
...We've been through enough traumas these past two years...
...There is no more simple solution than to bring an army unit there and clean out the area...
...She paused, squinting in the sunlight...
...It was an error...
...They won't pay what it's worth today...
...I went down the stairs...
...Everyone has his own views...
...Their people, not bound by peace treaties or borders, had since time immemorial been one with this ocean of sand...
...The government is clearing me out of here, and the government is deciding how much I'm supposed to receive in compensation...
...I listened to her describe to them how in Judaea and Samaria some of their people had occupied empty homes in defiance of the government and had successfully established settlements...
...The city came to life in 1971, faltered briefly after the 1973 war, then, beginning with 1974, experienced a resurgence...
...Yes, she said, they had come when "The people don't want to leave here, but they don't know what to do...
...They would pass us from one bureaucrat to another...
...Pinned to the walls were maps of the Sinai Peninsula and the Yamit region, and photos and news stories about the city...
...Families are breaking up...
...Lovely villas stood closed and empty...
...He would talk about the political situation first...
...Then he went on, his voice low, quavering...
...They were very successful in Sadot...
...The Israeli army, when it would come to clear the area in about one hundred days...
...Look how they live," my driver said...
...If they can succeed in holding on to this place without it affecting the peace, he doesn't object...
...I left them there and went back through the city to my car and driver...
...Who would ever have thought that in Yamit there would be five prayer quorums and three yeshivot...
...They put a tire inside and burn it...
...But if I did know...
...These were members of Gush Emunim, Bloc of the Faithful, the militant religious nationalists, whose people had settled in areas of Judaea and Samaria against the wishes of the government and had remained to create their own reality in the captured territories...
...Here and there sand had begun to drift across the perimeter road...
...The square, spacious, studded with trees and plants, lined with new shops, was thronged with people sauntering about in festive fashion, eating ice cream, wheeling babies in strollers, enjoying the sun and the air—holiday visitors (this was the Chanukah vacation period) bidding farewell to Yamit...
...You wait until the problems become unbearable, and then finally you must do something...
...There were sounds behind me...
...I'm not an educated man...
...On the other hand, I am still a firm supporter of the peace agreement with Egypt...
...Three attempts at suicide...
...A man emerged from the crowd and spoke into his ear and they moved off together...
...The barbed wire looked obscene against the blue sky...
...The chances of confrontation probably have been reduced somewhat by Begin's action to extend Israeli law to the Golan...
...We need patience...
...No one thought they would last," she said...
...I had heard that one or two empty homes had been burned by unknown arsonists, but I did not see them...
...What's clear is that by ignoring the issue now, this government is acting as if it had something up its sleeve...
...They sat very still in the early afternoon sunlight, silent, looking at him...
...The smooth and gliding ease with which they made their way through the planet, spreading the Pax Americana...
...Maybe He wanted Torah to come to this region...
...He was ambitious, energetic...
...Suddenly the cameras are here, it makes the news outside the country...
...I hope a sensible man will make himself heard in the government and a staff will be sent down here to talk to us...
...I asked, "How were you informed about the withdrawal...
...He was waiting for the committee meeting to end, he said...
...She herself had lived in the nearby settlement of Atzmona for half a year...
...I don't know...
...Professor Stephen Goldstein of the law school of the Hebrew University said to me, "I'm torn...
...I came to the top and gazed out at the vast desert and the sea in the distance and the sunlight struggling through the clouds—and there was Yamit, a compact green and beige oasis a little more than a square mile in size, about the same size as the Old City of Jerusalem: an urban Isaac soon to be sacrificed on the altar of peace...
...There were none before...
...People sitting in caf?s in Tel Aviv don't understand what's happening here...
...But I'm just assuming...
...He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply...
...He said that Yamit was a complicated and painful issue and one talked about it with a very heavy heart...
...Can you believe they live this way...
...This is a kind of demonstration of his credibility when he says that he doesn't intend to give up anything else...
...If we think that this is the truth, if we have no doubts about the true borders of the Land of Israel, and if we believe that Camp David does not bind our hands—then, forward...
...He was of Yemenite descent, and proud of it...
...She turned away...
...I am also sad...
...Arik Sharon had made a speech the day before on Yamit...
...Have a safe trip back to America...
...Did I want a cigarette...
...I think the peace treaty is Munich Pact number two and Begin will go down in history as Chamberlain number two...
...He would stop smoking when he and his family were settled in their new home in Pardesiya...
...The tree outside the door...
...Beyond these borders there isn't the sanctity of the Land...
...If, God forbid, we see a few days before the end that we have not succeeded, it means it did not work for some reason...
...For the future of the Jewish people in this area, it seems to me that we have to think very seriously before it's too late about the price we are going to have to pay even if we gain the territories that some of our political leaders and certain elements of the population are trying to secure...
...The government has the responsibility to protect my interests here...
...If it doesn't, then we're in for a bad time...
...I don't have the strength for this anymore...
...The government decided to compensate me for my business in accordance with what a builder would today get for it from a blueprint...
...Papers and orange rinds and broken glass strewn across the sand...
...I'm letting my garden die...
...I walked with him through a residential area of flagstone paths and palm trees and garden apartments...
...We need one million signatures and the readiness of the people to come here...
...How many do you need...
...What will the army do...
...I still am hopeful that it will be the start of a general peace process, and I am still willing to accept the giving up of Yamit and the surrounding area as part of the process...
...The restaurant down the road was crowded with tourists...
...We will try to avoid a conThese are not ordinary borders...
...It's not very bright...
...There's a problem here, a human problem...
...She had helped establish Atzmona in 1979...
...The beach house, with its outdoor caf?, rotting...
...It was a very long climb...
...Who cares...
...They thought I was crazy to be here...
...I walked along a path smoothly paved in pink and gray flagstones...
...They have three months to pay off hundreds of families...
...Is there much anti-Semitism in America...
...We have to move...
...My house I bought...
...I tried to be a good citizen...
...The youths came down out of the monument and I hailed them...
...He was from the Jewish Agency and had helped set up the nearby new agricultural area where some of the settlement families were moving, just across the new border...
...The compensation the government is giving them is not bad...
...For the first time in my life I understood what it was like to be on the receiving end of empire...
...That would necessarily lead to a rise in tensions...
...But the government should stand against all pressures and calumnies and try to resolve the situation quietly as best it can...
...We do not know what has influence on high...
...We wanted to build a successful city...
...There are about five hundred families still in Yamit...
...Inside the monument at the foot of a circular staircase were huge wall plaques with the names of the dead...
...That was the first time...
...They did a little dance together as they walked...
...This will not lead to civil war...
...The anger was made apparent to me soon after I arrived in Sadot, an agricultural settlement located about a five-minute drive east of Yamit...
...American southwest...
...Can you imagine how it must feel to know that you have invested years of your life to build a city for the Egyptians...
...It's for shit, it's for supershit...
...And now—Jews expelling Jews for the sake of peace...
...Beyond the sliding glass doors of the living room were a covered patio and a garden...
...he asked...
...I used to walk the streets there, and hated it...
...Pink and beige stucco ranch houses stood near the path...
...If he did that, I think there would be no confrontation...
...But—it hurts...
...Given the minor border adjustment that was required for this, it was a precipitous action on the part of our negotiators to have conceded the Yamit region even before the negotiations began...
...This is the way you get the government to notiee you...
...We don't know what has been decreed...
...In the town square was a fountain jetting water...
...She took them through the room to a large wall map of the region...
...And he pointed out that by a curious twist of irony, people today tended to regard the British mandate borders—the recognized international boundaries—as encompassing historic Eretz Yisrael, whereas in truth the ancient historic borders indeed included the Yamit region...
...It was beginning to wear a deserted look...
...I spoke to her some minutes later in the warm afternoon sunlight outside...
...Another pause...
...The streets teemed with people wholly indifferent to the traffic...
...In 1975 we were only sixteen families...
...Tension was very high...
...The last I saw of him he was walking back up the flagstone path, holding his daughter's hand...
...We know there were always divisions among religious Jews...
...Perhaps the child took ill so that we would grow stronger in our faith...
...It seemed a long, depressing ride...
...Tension was very high...
...His equipment was no good...
...I tell people it's like you got a knife in the back from the government and a slap in the face from the country...
...Begin came here and said that...
...Let the government talk to me in a decent way...
...I entered Sadot on an early afternoon in the last week of December, the air warm, the blue sky patched here and there with clouds...
...People blow up...
...I don't know, I wish it were over already...
...She was blond and trim and tanned, and wore jeans and a flannel shirt...
...He isn't against them...
...It was on the way to becoming an exotic mix of Palm Springs indolence and overheated Zionist pioneering—the frenetic yet exquisite quality of its engineering, the endless sun, the long white-sand beach, the intoxicating desert air, the ease of the city's life rhythms, the money that flowed in from developing businesses, light industry, and tourists astonished by the splendors they beheld—when the Camp David accord was reached in late 1978 and the peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979...
...The Sinai war of 1956, the 1967 war, the 1973 war, the first efforts at construction, early pioneers on camels, various stages in the construction, biblical and rabbinic citations about the sanctity of the land, newspaper accounts about those who opposed the withdrawal...
...He himself had come to Israel from Karachi thirty years before...
...Seventeen families lived there now, raising crops, studying Torah, guarding the land...
...Then she continued, softly, agitatedly...
...She stopped and left a lengthy pause...
...They were still there...
...I listened to their voices...
...The farmers are receiving a lot of money...
...Nice town, Yamit, nice monument...
...Waves and white breakers rolling onto the sand...
...I needed a place where I could be a person...
...If they decided to give this area up, they should have had at least some respect for the people who came here to make their lives here...
...I have no stomach for this anymore...
...I think that everything Sadat did was designed in a certain way to lower the Israelis in the eyes of the Arab world...
...Have we the right to say that God has decreed that the child should die...
...He lived with his wife and little daughter in a ground-floor apartment along the northern rim of the area...
...I think one of the great things that has happened in Israel since the State was established was a firm commitment on the part of all parties not to fall into the trap of the period of the latter years of the Second Temple when Jews engaged in civil war...
...In self-assured and authoritative tones, she explained the history of the area to the group...
...I wish you and your family well in your new home...
...Yamit is like a tall handsome man everyone once admired...
...We all grew up here...
...Through the arched windows of the restaurant I could see the Bedouin children playing across the road near the tents and shanties that were their desert homes...
...At the head of the page were quotes from the Bible about the sanctity of the Land...
...On the roof of the building were sandbags...
...We have to influence the government to delay this entire process...
...Though I wouldn't want to rule it out either...
...The response came quickly...
...Let me tell you what I hope will happen...
...He drank from his cup, inhaled deeply on the cigarette, and leaned forward in the recliner, his dark features taut with passion...
...When I asked him what exactly it was the residents of Yamit wanted, he said, "Look, I fought in the Six-Day War...
...We want it to end...
...The point they're making is that until March thirty-first, Yamit is open, and anyone who wants to move there can move there...
...I saw my driver waving to me, the same captain of paratroops who had brought me here two days before...
...He did so many things in his life which were like that...
...Out of this vile and desolate earth, a number of Israelis, with water and toil, built these gardens of settlements...
...The Yamit area is a mass of confusion," he said...
...And Prime Minister Begin had informed the President of Egypt that Israel would withdraw from the Sinai on the date set by the treaty...
...I saw the blackened walls of burned houses, smelled the acrid odor of charred tires...
...Then we burned a house—after agonizing discussions among ourselves...
...There's a strong psychological dimension here that comes into play...
...Also there are undoubtedly psychological reasons...
...It is the oldest of the post-1967 settlements in this area, built, along with Yamit and the other settlements, for the purpose of straddling the ancient Via Maris, the sea road, the only path available to armies through this section of Sinai sand...
...It really psyches you out...
...Everyone believed they would wither and die in weeks...
...For the dwellers of Yamit and the half dozen or so nearby agricultural settlements—indeed, for many people throughout Israel—April will be forever among the crudest of months...
...Economically he was well off, but inside himself it was another matter...
...Because the way they treated us is unbelievable...
...You can't trust these people...
...These are the things that eat at me...
...I don't care anymore how the Egyptians will receive this area...
...Nothing else worked...
...Terrorists were at the height of their activity...
...We've assiduously avoided that...
...I was a person here...
...What this is doing to us as a group is terrible...
...The people don't want to leave here, but they don't know what to do...
...Slender, dark hair, dark features, a broad and beautiful mouth...
...Later that afternoon, back ori the road, I felt an annoying sense of incompleteness...
...Lives have been ruined...
...You mean there's no precedent in Israel for this kind of withdrawal, and therefore no sure way for the government to handle the situation...
...The early courtesies had been preceded by a flash of disappointment and annoyance...
...There are religious people...
...The house where you're now sitting was a vast hole and this side of the city was a deep gully...
...The men were bearded and the women wore kerchiefs...
...It hurt the heart...
...Those who are afraid of confrontation and bloodshed should know that those of us who are here would never raise a hand against a solider...
...She had no idea what would happen to her greenhouses...
...A generator, an irregular water supply...
...I asked, "How do you react to the Gush Emunim people who are moving into the area...
...A faint heat shimmer rose from the expanse of the sand beyond the road...
...The more people who will be here, the more the government will decide not to abandon the area...
...They won't pay—" His loud and tremulous voice broke off as the front door opened and a child bounded into the house...
...There were no sidewalks here, nothing...
...Those who are leaving feel they're giving up more than mere material gains, and those in the government who have to compensate them aren't especially eager to do the dirty deed that would recognize or concretize the fact of withdrawal...
...Her children were very upset by the move...
...He succeeded in Egypt to some extent...
...At my table sat a woman who, it turned out, had emigrated to Israel from Poland after spending much of the Second World War fighting in a partisan unit against the Germans...
...An enormous amount of blood has been shed in this country...
...From all over the world people were brought here by the government to show what we could do with the desert...
...Somewhere in the city Gush Emunim people were meeting, planning, studying, praying...
...You're here for Yehuda and Shom-ron.' I think these religious people are very frightening...
...You don't know...
...Good citizens...
...I'm disturbed about having to uproot a community that has somewhat established itself...
...I saw the Oldsmobile come off the road onto the beach area...
...Yamit was an idea that started with Dayan...
...I sat across from him on the sofa...
...Look out the window...
...There were two aspects to this situation, he was saying...
...How can I explain to a government bureaucrat today why it hurts me to leave this place, why I believe I deserve for those years more than normal compensation...
...They killed my best friends...
...They're playing children's games...
...Here she never had to worry about automobiles...
...The rest of the Arab world has such blinders that they missed an opportunity, which is why he had such contempt for them...
...Three husky youths came up the stairway and looked out at the city and the desert...
...We'll talk about Yamit...
...He started by selling the workers cold drinks, bread, and eggs...
...The residents of Yamit, the broadcast went on, were continuing to dig in...
...No one thought the whole Sinai would be given back...
...We've received nothing yet...
...Perhaps God wanted to awaken the People of Israel to express a desire for this place...
...As I crossed a street a solitary dog walked quickly past me...
...To try to pull people out of places where they have invested some of the best years of their lives is an inhuman act...
...My husband died in a skin-diving accident...
...On the other hand, one always has a hope, which is utterly irrational in terms of what we want from a peace with Egypt—a sneaking hope that maybe it would make a difference without violence, that maybe something would happen at the last moment...
...It's the psychological barrier plus the usual inclination of Israeli governments to delay taking on very difficult problems...
...I was nobody there...
...Do Zionism...
...It is schizophrenic...
...I struck up a conversation...
...He was a handsome, stocky man in his late forties or early fifties, a captain in the paratroop reserves...
...On the day they signed the treaty we realized it wouldn't work, and we established our settlements to fulfill the commandment, 'And you shall dwell in it.' " "Why did you wait until the peace treaty to fulfill the commandment...
...We were given up twice...
...Israel, they assert, is trading an overly opulent and exaggeratedly romanticized piece of captured real estate for the future lives of those of her sons who would one day have fought another war with Egypt had the peace treaty not materialized...
...Others, however, regard the return as an intolerable act of tragic proportions, as a deed that violates one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel has based its very Chaim Potok is the author o/The Chosen, The Promise, My Name is Asher Lev, In the Beginning, and Wanderings...
...But it's not everything...
...You want to know about Yamit...
...The People of Israel is precious to us...
...Children played near a bicycle...
...Thank you...
...This settlement had no deaths and no divorces until the past two years, when it had two deaths and six divorces...
...You're from America...
...I fought in the Yom Kippur War...
...Zealous religionists and nationalist secularists had become allies in this eleventh-hour quest...
...I'm sure he had his rationalizations for it: peace with Egypt is worth any price, you have to be flexible and change your mind, and so on...
...Suddenly we're regarded with disgust...
Vol. 7 • March 1982 • No. 3
