A Traveler in Israel

...one simply had to be patient and await his arrival...

...But in keeping with a plan to create a belt of protective settlements devised by General Yigal Allon and adopted by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's Cabinet, they were offered an unoccupied hilltop Army camp on the outskirts of the city...

...One afternoon, at a café not far from the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of Machpela, a mixed group gathered to talk...

...Israelis can't quite fathom why, with rare restricted exception, their daily battle against terrorists has not qualified for designation as a part of the Administration's global war against terrorism...

...Negotiations can take a long time...

...To which the settler leader said, "If the land is holy for both of us, we should be working together on ecology, we should be protecting it...

...In the meantime, we have to coexist...

...evoking thoughts of the Nazis calling their victims murderers...

...It presumes the participating adversaries have one objective: to resolve their grievances in a spirit of forgiveness and avoid the alternative of never-ending vengeance...

...The Mayor of Kiryat Arba expressed interest...

...The military administration ejected them...

...They made it clear, however, that they could not go further without receiving local rabbinical approval...

...say to the Israeli people that if their government abandons the policy of force and oppression...

...so did the leader of the city's settler movement...

...His first task was to determine whether the settlers in Hebron would accept the sulcha concept...

...Almost as disconcerting to Israelis is the way Sharon has been painted the villain by the press, the European Union, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and intermittently Secretary of State Colin L. Powell...

...In the end, of course, President Bush seemed to hastily disengage...

...Neither camp is happy with the situation...

...Let's also work on building up all the holy places in Hebron...

...Deeply religious, like the dominant Arab Muslims, they were apparently welcomed and for centuries thereafter lived without major incident...

...Around the same time, a few more small settlements were allowed to open in the city...

...Thus they find perplexing, not to mention galling, Arafat's reascendancy—his being awarded international brownie points for talking peace while waging a war he claims is beyond his control...

...Abdullah, in presenting a watered-down version of an already watery proposal, told a poorly attended Arab League meeting, "I would...

...wants to oust Iraq's Saddam Hussein and views Israel as a stumbling block...

...A decade later, his forays into northern Israel helped trigger the Six-Day War...

...Something of a wanderer prior to the signing of the September 1993 Oslo Agreement, he marched triumphantly into Gaza 10 months afterward and now conducts a whole orchestra of terrorist organizations from Ramallah...

...At the dawn of the 16th century, Jews seeking refuge from inquisitions in Europe established the Jewish Quarter of Hebron...

...Myron Kolatch...

...No other patrons came in during a two-hour conversation, which concluded with Halevi telling us: "What you are witnessing is the prelude to war...

...And why, they wonder, did Washington rush to embrace Saudi Arabia's less than reliable Crown Prince Abdullah when he dusted off the fantasy his ailing half brother King Fahd failed to sell as a peace plan 20 years ago...

...A Traveler in Israel Hebron is the only place in the world where Muslims and Jews pray in the same sanctuary—located at the burial site purchased by their mutual patriarch Abraham when his wife Sarah died, and called respectively the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Cave of Machpela...

...If the Mahdi comes, it belongs to the Muslims...

...Even in Hebron there was life after rejection...

...Many still fail to comprehend that what the George W. Bush Administration does and what it deems proper for others to do are very separate matters...

...Then came the second intifada...

...The result was an effort to initiate a sulcha...

...Or, indeed, that at the moment the U.S...

...At an impressively attended public meeting in Beit Jala, for example, Arabs and Jews respectfully presented their complaints...

...The journalist replied, "If the Messiah comes, it belongs to the Jews...

...Going to the heart of a key dispute, the Jewish settler movement leader asked an Arab journalist sitting opposite him, "Who did God give the land to...

...Most disturbing are the contradictory signals coming from the United States...

...Nevertheless, it is noted, his government's reactions to the rising toll of terrorism have been remarkably measured, often to the point of ineffectiveness...

...Smaller private encounters were held in many other towns...

...Once an agreement is reached, a festive meal sponsored by both sides marks the accomplishment...

...A little over a decade later, the Levingers and a limited number of settlers were permitted to move back to the old Jewish Quarter in town and begin restoring some of its deteriorated structures...

...Writing in Newsweek, Henry Kissinger, the father of Middie East shuttle diplomacy, observed that the plan "would undermine the security of Israel and ultimately the stability of the region...

...All are within the 20 per cent of the municipality that remained under Israel's control following the January 1997 redeployment of the other 80 per cent to the Palestinian Authority...

...Some Israelis tend to forget he has been preparing all his life for this climactic role...

...In 1936 the British mandatory government evacuated the relatively few Jews still trying to revive the community, ostensibly to protect them from a new assault...

...But the distinction would make no difference in August 1929...

...Variously translated from the Arabic as a "truce" or "reconciliation," this traditional Muslim procedure in fact demands the first to achieve the second...

...Reputedly a Frantz Fanon devotee, Arafat cut his terrorist teeth in his native Egypt as a member of the fedayeen...

...We learned about the events above during dinner one recent evening at a restaurant on Emek Refaim Street, in southern Jerusalem's elegant German Colony district, when we asked our hosts what they thought the solution was to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat's carefully coordinated war of attrition against Israel...

...What was needed, they felt, was an approach that demonstrated an appreciation of Muslim culture and could inspire the sort of trust required to build a stable long-term relationship...

...King Hussein's Black September campaign of 1970 sent him packing to Lebanon, where he wreaked havoc until Sharon routed him in 1982...

...A modern Orthodox Jew, he was hardly given to appeasement but felt strongly that a way must be found for Arabs and Jews to live together amicably and productively...

...One comes away from Israel keenly aware that the people are anxious and depressed, and determined...

...For an independent group of Muslims, Christians and Jews in Israel calling themselves the Friendship Society, Hebron's history confirmed a conviction that "land for peace," while a fine slogan, would not fare well when applied to conflict resolution...

...That became Kiryat Arba, a large (population 6,000) impressive complex of multistory stone buildings...

...If Jesus comes, it belongs to the Christians...

...When Annan repeatedly denounces "Israel's use of disproportionate lethal force, especially in civilian populated areas," the disbelief is palpable...

...In 1968, operating from Jordan, he attempted to get a rebellion going in the West Bank that was foiled by Israel, then began turning his unappreciated attention toward the Hashemite Kingdom...

...In the case of Hebron, therefore, the idea was shot down—although not without setting off a mild ripple effect...

...In two weeks of traveling around the country and putting the same question to almost everyone we met, we discovered it is common today for Israelis to recall some hopeful sign from the past because they are confounded by the present and uncertain about the future...

...As the Torah tells it, the city in the Judean hills is also where the scouts sent by Moses to survey the Promised Land made their first stop after exploring the Negev, and where King David was born and reigned for seven years before he led the Israelites to Jerusalem...

...It is understood that the Prime Minister's personal history inevitably makes him a lightning rod...

...Except for the naïve minorities on the fringes, who urged wiping the Palestinians off the map or sitting down with Arafat and coming to his terms, no one had a real answer...

...In part, this may be attributable to a philosophy that would oppose the Zionist enterprise: Restoring the Kingdom of Israel, they believed, was the Messiah's job...

...in 195 7 he moved on to Syria, where his Fatah organization was formed, financed, trained, and armed...

...That approval never materialized...

...Arabs whipped into a violent frenzy by the Mufti of Jerusalem —who told them the Zionists planned to seize the Al Aksa Mosque—went on a rampage that included hacking some 60odd people to death in the Jewish Quarter and wounding at least another 50...

...Much of the spadework for the envisioned sitlcha was done by a retired former head of Israel's Criminal Identification Division...

...Eight months after the June 1967 Six-Day War, with the West Bank now in Israel's hands, a band of far-Right, ultra-Orthodox Jews led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger attempted somewhat surreptitiously to return to Hebron...

...For a brief period after Arafat ratcheted up the intifada, replacing the stone throwers with suicide bombers who targeted Bat Mitzvah parties, discos and shopping malls, Israelis thought the post-9/11 world would recognize their predicament...

...The day before we left Jerusalem, we had lunch with Yossi Klein Halevi, the astute author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, in a normally busy Italian restaurant...