Settlers

I've met Palestinians, peace activists, orthodox Jews and people from the UN. The remaining group that I wanted to talk to was the Jewish settler movement. It was quite tricky to set up a meeting, and involved a couple of cancellations, but I was determined to talk to the people at the forefront of the conflict, and yesterday I was finally able to do so. My guide for the day was Bruce Brill, a journalist and former US intelligence operative who moved to Israel in the 70s, and helped found one of the settlements here.



Bruce

From Jerusalem we took the Hebron road, turning off after 20 minutes or so to pass through a checkpoint, then down some winding roads that turned to gravel tracks, and eventually we rumbled to a stop outside the house of Drori, a settler who founded an "outpost". To get around political requirements imposed by the US government to prevent Israel from building more settlements in the West Bank, Israel instead builds "outposts" with little infrastructure, which are later converted into full blown settlements. While the government publically condemns such construction, Drori told us proudly that not long ago he had 12 members of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) standing on his porch congratulating his efforts, and that recently he successfully sued the government for 20,000 shekels, because they had privately told him to build the settlement and then later publically deemed it illegal. I asked him what the purpose of building the settlements was, and he stated unequivocally that the aim of building the settlements was to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. I asked why and he replied that if the Palestinians are allowed to build a state, they will destroy Israel and the Jewish people. He pointed out that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed before the first settlements were ever built, and was committed to the destruction of Israel (the PLO later renounced this position).



Haifa Gardens

I was only able to ask those two questions in the hour that we spoke, because the rest of the time I couldn't get a word in edgeways, as I was lectured about human rights violations committed by other countries in the region, and his views on the history of the conflict. This happens a lot in Israel, partly because some ignorant foreigners make aggressive statements without knowing what they're talking about, so the working assumption of many right wingers is that anyone who disagrees with them is ignorant of the region's history. In my experience the other reason that someone will talk constantly in a political discussion is because they are afraid that they are wrong, and want to minimize the chances of that becoming evident. In contrast, if a person's position is correct, he or she should have no fear of being asked questions about it. As we left I thanked Drori for talking to us, but suggested to him gently that the next time someone comes to ask him about politics he should talk about his own situation instead of everyone else's, and he smiled sheepishly and nodded. Even so, he did make a couple of good points, one being that European media tend to characterize settlers as "lunatics with M-16s who eat Palestinian children for breakfast", as he put it. Another point was that there was little security around the settlement, something I had noticed driving up to it. The implication is that the local Arab population is not upset enough to resort to violence in order to evict the settlers.



Jaffa Market

The shelves of Drori's dilapidated bungalow were overflowing with books. He spoke with a stammer that became so severe when he got excited that it sometimes took a full 60 seconds to finish a sentence. He received a couple of phone calls during our conversation from someone he was supposed to meet (we arrived late) but brushed him off, evidently desperate to convince me of his political position that he could see I was having trouble accepting, and frustrated at his stammering inability to speak his position clearly. A visiting friend of his from a collective farm in Israel was perched on the arm of a couch and gently chided him when he said anything too outrageous. The impression I got was of a shy, lonely man who has finally found a cause for which his society lionises him.



Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Next we drove up the hill to the neighbouring settlement where Bruce lives, to visit Sigal, a mother of four grown children, with a collection of chihuahua puppies to give away. She told us of the wonderful relations between Arabs and Jews in the area, relating the story of how a builder who was doing some work on her house had hurt his finger. He went to seventy different Arab doctors who told him they would need to amputate the finger. When she found out she called a Jewish doctor she knew and his finger was saved. These kind of paternalistic exaggerations are familiar to me from my own family's experience in Zimbabwe. My grandparents would tell similar stories of the happiness of their workers and their gratefulness when my grandmother would extract something stuck in an errant child's ear with tweezers. In reality of course there was always a simmering resentment under the surface, and it wasn't long before my grandparents were expelled from Zimbabwe by force.



Natural Reserve, Galilee

Finally we visited Eduardo, an Italian immigrant who subjected us to a similar barrage of defensiveness as Drori had, and it took half an hour before he finally paused long enough for me to get a question into the flood of denials and obfuscation. Both he and Bruce seemed genuinely surprised when I told them of the situation in which Eid's Bedouin village found itself, and Eduardo quickly returned the conversation to the more comfortable territory of the assault on Israel by the European media, and the tyranny of the surrounding countries.



Monastery, Latrun

On the way back to Jerusalem I expressed my frustration to Bruce. I had been very persistent in trying to come to the settlements to hear the other point of view, and found that settlers were interested in talking about absolutely anything, as long as it didn't have to do with their own role in the conflict. He didn't really seem to register what I was saying, but asked me to read a couple of articles he's written and let him know what I thought. When I got back to Jerusalem I read one which suggests that the solution to peace in the Middle East is to find a homeland for the Palestinians in Iraq. Even if he'd suggested Belgium this idea would be ridiculous.

I came away with the feeling that while settlers in relatively uncontroversial areas like the one I visited are still normal, friendly, loving people, the situation into which they have inserted themselves has caused each person to construct a personal fantasy bubble, from which he looks out at a misunderstanding world, and from which to shield himself from the quiet but unceasing criticisms of his own, long ignored conscience. The only way to defend a rhetorical glass house is to desperately throw stones at any who come to look through its hopelessly transparent walls, and build mirrors on all sides that reflect the wrong doing of the neighbours instead of his own.