The promised land
Halpern, Jake
THE LAST WORD THE PROMISED LAND Jake Halpern Our bus has inch-thick, tinted, bullet-proof windows, which make our journey through the West Bank both quiet and dim. We take a...
...I am here to interview Wilder, but first we embark on a walking tour of Hebron's scattered Jewish neighborhoods...
...Pulling into the old town square in Hebron, I sense that we have arrived at the front line...
...When I visit the Jewish half of the shrine, I am drawn into one of its inner chambers by the sound of crying and howling...
...Commonweal 30 September 24,1999...
...This partition was installed in 1994, after an Israeli named Baruch Goldstein, dressed in his military uniform, entered the mosque and opened fire on Muslims at prayer, killing twenty-nine...
...Our guide is David Wilder, a fortyish former American who is the spokesman for the embattled Jewish community in Hebron...
...The shrine was built above the "Cave of Machpelah" where Abraham the Patriarch is buried...
...God is punishing us," she tells me...
...Over the centuries there has been an ongoing feud over who should control the tomb and the shrine that sits above it...
...He reiterates that the situation in Hebron is messy, but that the Jews of Hebron are committed to peaceful coexistence with the Arab population...
...Abraham is revered as the forefather of both the Jewish and the Muslim peoples, and both hold his tomb sacred...
...Natshe, a well dressed man with a few combed-back white hairs, tells me that there will never be peace in Hebron until the Jewish settlers leave...
...She is quite "lucky" to be here, she says, because space is so scarce...
...There are a hundred thousand Arabs here in Hebron, and just five hundred Jews," he tells me, and then pauses, as if this were all that need be said...
...When I ask her what the best-case scenario for the future is, she answers, "the coming of the Messiah," and then laughs...
...Being a secular Jew, I stick to the back of the tour, unsure whether I am comfortable or even welcome...
...The streets of Hebron have an eerie and ubiquitous tension about them, as if at any moment trouble might erupt...
...This pledge spells out the dilemma most clearly to me when I sit in the office of Mustafa Natshe, the mayor of Palestinian Hebron...
...There are men in white turbans—members of the Muslim group, Hamas—standing poised on street corners, religious Jews walking past, holsters and pistols on their belts, nineteen-year-old Israeli soldiers operating roadblocks, and masses of seemingly unperturbed Palestinians busy shopping at a market protected by a stone-proof mesh canopy...
...Currently the shrine is divided evenly into a synagogue and a mosque...
...Though the teen-ager is Orthodox himself, he seems more shocked than I am, and when we leave the tomb he exclaims, "I never knew Jews prayed like that...
...Wilder himself moved to Hebron only this year (from Kiryat Arba) when a rabbi was murdered and one of the community's few apartments opened up...
...Jake Halpern, a graduate of Yak, is a research reporter at the New Republic...
...By "they," he means the Israeli government...
...Upon discovering that I am Jewish, she reveals that the turmoil in Hebron is really the result of Jews not being observant enough...
...David Wilder, on the other hand, strikes me as surprisingly practical...
...The place is infused with a strange mix of religious fundamentalism and Wild West gunslinging...
...I find it so refreshing to come here," she says...
...As our tour group—flanked by Israeli soldiers and receiving curious looks from Palestinians and settlers alike—walks along a trash-littered street, the tomb of Abraham again comes into view...
...They won't let us build," Wilder tells me...
...We want peace, but we're not leaving," he says...
...Today most of the tensions in Hebron revolve around this tomb...
...In fact, I have not been in Hebron long before I meet my first American settler, Sarah Niskin...
...We take a tunnel beneath the Palestinian-controlled city of Bethlehem to avoid stone throwers or other trouble, and stop briefly in the walled-in Jewish enclave of Kiryat Arba...
...What's worse, according to him, is that most of the settlers are immigrants from the United States...
...The highlight of our tour—and the centerpiece of Hebron—is the enormous shrine that sits above the town's square...
...I have not noticed, but I am walking next to Haiya...
...A thin, soft-spoken man with a graying beard, he looks thoroughly tired...
...A native of Florida, she graduated from high school two years ago and now lives in Hebron...
...After making my way through the second metal detector, I enter a small room where I see a man praying before an open Torah in an emotional outpouring, spitting and trembling...
...I stand here at the very epicenter of Hebron's intensity, gaping at this man with another tour member, a teen-ager...
...We're here to stay...
...She introduces herself as "Rose," a Canadian from Montreal, but quickly insists that I call her by her Hebrew name, "Haiya...
...Over the last thousand years it has served as a temple, a mosque, a church, and a monastery...
...I have caught the ride to Hebron on a tour bus with an entourage of American Orthodox Jews who are making a religious pilgrimage...
...On the street outside the tomb, as I wait for the other members of the tour to finish their prayers, I talk with our other guide, a woman who lives in Jerusalem but likes to come to Hebron on weekends...
Vol. 126 • September 1999 • No. 16
