Israel's New 'Experiment in Peace'
SAMUELS, GERTRUDE
ON THE BORDER WITH LEBANON Israel's New 'Experiment in Peace' BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS DOVEV A high security fence?0 miles long, electronically controlled, backed up by heavy rolls of...
...Spenser asked whether she would stay on to serve as a liasion with the Arab sick and injured...
...Asking in Arabic and French when the doctors would arrive, they crowded around the polite "enemy" soldiers, who carried rifles on their shoulders and pistols on their belts...
...All Lebanese—Christian or Moslem—seeking medical help will get it "without exception," the IDF has declared...
...Second, this is an important job because it's the opening of communications between us and the Arabs...
...The woman said she did not fear reprisals in her village of Rmaish because the Maronite Christians now had armed guards around their towns, and some were reportedly escorting people to the first-aid stations...
...Israelis close to the border have seen such armed men, thought to be deserters from the Lebanese Army and Christian volunteers wearing crosses...
...At the moment, there are no threats...
...Some weeks ago she brought two nephews and a niece to be treated by the Israelis...
...Construction laborers oppose the hiring of Lebanese in the Kiryat Shmona and Hatzor regions, where there is widespread unemployment...
...On the day I visited the border, 53 Arabs came to the fence seeking jobs: 28 men were transported by bus to work in the forests on land reclamation...
...I've been here several times, and the doctor says my baby needs an operation for a hernia...
...She had been accidentally wounded in the leg by a shot from her brother's gun...
...Following similar incidents, "Operation Fence" was openly initiated at Metulla, Israel's northernmost settlement, a pretty village and spa favored by tourists that once had friendly relations with neighboring Arab villages...
...The doctors called to reserve duty whom I met here in Dovev needed no interpreter...
...The daily contact between Lebanese and Israelis is leading to the beginnings of other mutually beneficial relations, too...
...Her cheeks were flushed but her voice was steady as she stepped forward to say, half in Arabic and half in English, that she did not share the mother's confidence...
...After all, the Lebanese have not always been enemies: Settlers of the Upper Galilee remember the old days, before the fence was built, when visits across the border to the homes of friends were commonplace...
...What Lebanese doctor should I go to...
...During this past summer over 7,000 people came to the West Bank, while 25,000 crossed the other way to visit Arab countries...
...At first Eva hesitated, "not over the money, which wasn't important to me, but how my village would react...
...The child she was clutching tightly stared up at her wide-eyed...
...The most common ailments the Israelis have been treating are grippe, scabs, eye and throat problems, diarrhea, and various skin diseases...
...That's not courageous...
...His colleague, Dr...
...Security at the time was a high priority, but Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Defense, introduced what he called an "experiment in peace...
...All the villagers crossing over want Israeli goods: Their own stores are cleaned out...
...One group, expected to work on land reclamation, failed to show up, apparently fearing reactions at home...
...She patted the head of the 7-year-old blond, blue-eyed boy who held on to her black skirt, then went into the tent to join the waiting line...
...Later, in the torrid sunshine, Arab youngsters began appearing on donkeys and tractors...
...Impressed with her training...
...They would sell or distribute the water in their villages...
...Well, I came anyway, as you see," she went on ruefully, "because I feel ill...
...I have to help...
...ON THE BORDER WITH LEBANON Israel's New 'Experiment in Peace' BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS DOVEV A high security fence?0 miles long, electronically controlled, backed up by heavy rolls of barbed-wire—parallels Israel's Upper Galilee border with Lebanon, now in its 18th month of civil war...
...People understand," the woman continued...
...After so many years of Arab propaganda that we are an evil people, they can see for themselves what we are really like...
...Such is the paradoxical picture of "Operation Fence," Israel's experiment in relations between enemies...
...They continue to come not only from Jordan, but also from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria—carrying permits allowing a few weeks' to a few months' stay...
...My heart is sick...
...The youngsters pulled over to the bank of iron water taps erected by the Israelis and filled their containers...
...the Albert Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia...
...Spenser observed: "This is one of the many opportunities we have to create some goodwill...
...and Lebanese Christians tell reporters that this is mostly found in the Moslem communities—both work and trade in Israel are helping them to get on with life...
...Officials caution that one should not be misled into believing these "openings" will necessarily bring peace nearer...
...Ironically, her father, a soldier, knew nothing of his daughter's plan to cross the border...
...An Israeli Army doctor provided first aid and transported the girl to the government hospital in Safed, where the bullet was removed and the leg saved...
...It's not safe for us...
...More than 100 of the wounded or ill have been sent from the first-aid clinics to government hospitals in Haifa, Nahariya and Safed for operations or in-patient care...
...In fact, that's why I brought another child with me today, to take to the hospital...
...Eva (not her real name), 23, fluent in French and Arabic, saw the medical facilities in her home town shut down by the war...
...want to boast of having "dual nationality...
...When Defense Miniter Shimon Peres announced last January that Israel was prepared to admit some Lebanese refugees for medical treatment, 15-year-old Helen Salim from Kafr Kala's, a Christian village north of Metulla, arrived at the border groaning in pain...
...The workers said they were not afraid of reprisals by the terrorists, and agreed to be filmed by television crews...
...and Mt...
...Metulla and Kibbutz Gonen in the Upper Galilee, as well as in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, favored continuing the program...
...They were trained abroad as well as in Israel, and they genuinely seem to care about the people seeking them out at the border...
...Maybe this border will be closed again...
...I've been to a Lebanese doctor and he told me my heart is sound, I shouldn't worry...
...Even so, this opportunity makes them realize that we are . . . people...
...Then I decided I can't refuse to help my people...
...no one even believes good will is about to replace hatred...
...They had learned that the doctor on duty was an ophthalmologist...
...For some, this was a third or fourth trip...
...Villagers say that most doctors and specialists are either in Beirut, commandeered by the military, or have left the country...
...Not all Israelis are happy about this spinoff from "Operation Fence...
...But here in Dovev—and further up the line in Metulla—one suddenly comes upon a cut in the fence...
...Throughout the early morning more patients arrived—on foot, in farm carts, in a couple of small cars...
...As she posed for pictures with the doctors, she told me, "Since I was a child, we always at home were taught that the Israelis were good for us...
...and they use their Israeli pounds to buy food, clothes, cleaning materials, cooking gas, and especially canned goods...
...For many months Israeli medics, responding to calls for help, quietly crossed the fence to adminfirst first aid in apple orchards and tobacco fields...
...At most, it is hoped the effort will have some effect on the "depth" of venom and propaganda that has separated these neighbors...
...There are none left in my village...
...The interaction at the border has been heralded as an extension of the "Open Bridges Policy," begun on the West Bank shortly after the Six Day War of 1967...
...They came to rejoin families and friends, to work, eventually to visit Israel as ordinary tourists...
...Within the month, villagers were jamming the facility, and the IDF opened another station at Dovev in the central sector of the border...
...three women were hired as seamstresses for a textile factory in Kiryat Shmona...
...At least 20 babies have been born to Lebanese mothers in these hospitals?sabras" (native-born) who may one day (who knows...
...An intense, frail woman—the 37-year-old mother of 10 children —explained why she had come as an Iraqi-born Israeli sergeant translated...
...Tomi Spenser, 49, father of four, two of them in the IDF, agreed...
...Snaking around lovely, mountainous scenery and green, tobacco-growing valleys, the manmade barrier seems to say, "Keep out...
...On the Lebanese side, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have pitched a large tent that serves as a reception center and kind of waiting room...
...Now 38, he has also "seen a lot of Army medical service" during Israel's wars...
...The doctor is sending us to the government hospital in Safed today, and I can stay with my baby, he said, for the first two days," she added with something like awe...
...But for those willing to brave the wrath of their fellows...
...In fact, her own village began to support her, "especially since there's no medicines there—it's all going to the military...
...Lebanese farmers working in a tobacco field 100 yards away still paused to stare somewhat incredulously at the by now familiar scene...
...Recently Peres announced that the medical facilities on the border would be expanded further, and more permanent structures may be built to care for Arab patients now beginning to come from as far away as Beirut...
...Since the program began four months ago, some 3,500 sick and wounded southern Lebanese have received medical help at the two field clinics from Israeli doctors called up by the Army for onemonth tours of reserve duty...
...But he was less inclined to talk politics than to describe the vital assistance given by a daring young nurse-volunteer from Lebanon...
...Union officials say they will reject any plan to provide jobs for Lebanese in the building trades...
...They eagerly asked questions about clinic hours, seemingly unconcerned that they were addressing armed soldiers...
...I have relatives in the Army, and I haven't heard from them...
...those with large families were bringing an elderly parent or children for treatment...
...A bearded, genial type whose English retains an accent acquired during the 10 years he practiced in Scotland, Dr...
...The policy was so successful (it continued even during the Yom Kippur War of 1973) that the Jordanians replaced the demolished Damya Bridge on the Nablus-Amman Road...
...I am a schoolteacher, and I'm frightened that anyone should know I'm here...
...No one is sanguine enough to expect this will bring peace soon...
...Opposite it, on the Israeli side, stands a barracks-type first-aid clinic, that seems to say to the sick, the maimed and the hungry, "Come in...
...We can help them, and we want to...
...To help alleviate the desperate water shortage caused by the fighting in Lebanon, the Israelis have drawn pipes through the fence from their own water supply...
...Some Lebanese seem to be having second thoughts as well...
...We sat in the shade of some pear trees as he leaned forward and spoke, a short man, crisp, to the point: "First, these are our patients, and I'm a physician...
...But I do worry...
...nor that a Haifa relative visited Helen in the hospital...
...Still, most Israelis I talked to in Dovev...
...Joseph Greenblat, a second-generation Israeli on the staff of the hospital in Petah Tikva, has served in the Montefiore Hospital in New York City...
...So I decided I had to get another opinion, this Israeli doctor's opinion...
...The slender, white-coated nurse, moved among the Arab patients and newcomers, quietly reassuring the mothers, talking to the people in their own language, following the doctors' instructions as she handled the children...
...22 men went to the Dubek Tobacco Center in Safed where a dozen Lebanese were already employed...
...I have short breath, and get very tired...
...At 6:30 one recent morning, a crowd of Arab visitors was already waiting in the reception tent outside this frontier village...
...They receive the same pay as Israelis, and Chaim Bar-Ilan, manager of the Dubek factory, told the Jerusalem Post that the Lebanese were skilled and get along well in their work situations...
...They have all been taken by the Army...
...Sinai-Cedars of Lebanon in Los Angeles...
...I think this is the tangible way...
...Listening to the exchange nearby was a pretty young woman with moist brown eyes, shoulder-length black hair, dressed in a simple shirtwaist, skirt and sandals...
...She would be paid 1,500 Israeli pounds ($200) a month...
...The absence of peace, they said, should not rule out amity and cooperation between neighbors...
...Many were from the Maronite Christian town of Rmaish...
...Medical services have virtually collapsed in Lebanon...
...The Israelis replaced the old Allenby Bridge that crossed the Jordan River 20 miles from Jericho, which had been blown up by retreating Arab forces...
...I feel nervous...
...And, like figures in a newsreel played in reverse, Arabs by the tens of thousands were permitted to cross back from the Hashemite Kingdom to the Israeli-administered territory...
...The day after the clinic opened in June, a dozen Lebanese Christians showed up seeking treatment for eye diseases...
Vol. 59 • September 1976 • No. 19
