I recently received an email from an American friend asking how things are going in this section of the West Bank, with all the mayhem that has erupted in Hevron. I have only been able to follow the events piecemeal, and printed accounts of the situation offer different, often conflicting facts and viewpoints. What is indisputable is that the situation is quite serious, even viewed from multiple angles. Based on what the Cap’n and I are able to piece together from several sources, this is a very basic sketch of what is happening, followed by an analysis from several viewpoints:
A building in Hevron allegedly underwent a sale. The seller was a Palestinian Arab and the buyer a group of Jews (with money from an American investor). The price was $1 million (far above the actual worth of the house). The Jews who transacted the sale claim to possess a signed sales agreement, a video of the transaction, and an audio tape of the Arab seller describing the sale in Arabic. The Arab seller claims the sale didn’t happen. In March 2007, a group of Jews moved into the building, according to some reports before the sale had been completed (before the keys had been transferred from the Arab to the Jews). The Arab filed a request to have the Jews removed from the property on grounds of "fresh trespass" (within 30 days of squatting), which was followed by the government’s issue of an eviction order. The Jews responded by appealing the eviction order, halting the eviction process. Israeli authorities have called into question the authenticity of the sales receipts and the contested sale has been languishing in court for the past 20 months. In the meantime, the Israeli government recently dispatched the IDF to evict the Jews who had moved into the house. The scene has politicians wringing their hands, some Jews jubilant, other Jews angry and frustrated, and the Arabs cheering.
Legally, this case is extremely complicated. Because Hevron is in a heavily militarized zone, purchase of property there (at least by Jews) is subject to the approval the Ministry of Defense, which claims the right to monitor carefully any expansion of Jewish settlement in Yosh (Yehuda and Shomron, or Judea and Samaria). In purchasing the building, the buyers did not seek approval from then-Minister of Defense Amir Peretz. This may have been for several reasons: Peretz was a known bungler who was completely out of his depth in this position and had already proved his incompetence in the Second Lebanon War; his party, Kadima, had engineered and orchestrated the forcible eviction of Jews from Gaza, refusing to follow through on resettling the Jewish refugees from that debacle or protect the Jews from Sderot, Ashkelon, and southern Israel from almost daily rocket attacks following the withdrawal; and the general mistrust of the Kadima government by settlers both because of the government’s treatment of Israelis affected by the pullout and because the primary job of the IDF and the police SHOULD be to protect Jews and uphold the rule of law (despite frequent glaring lapses in this area). It is clear that in one way or another, Jews did not follow the set legal procedure for purchasing the property, and as such, it can be difficult to sympathize with them, whatever their justified animosity toward the government. But the history of the land on which the building stands goes back to before the Arab massacre of Jews in Hevron in 1929, when it was owned by Jews. We are accustomed to hearing Arabs lobby to return to land and homes that they claim once belonged to them in Israel proper. Here we see Jews with an equally valid (if not superior) claim attempting to reclaim land that was Jewish-owned and—not only illegally but violently—seized from them. (Some of the Jews who transacted the sale are descendants of survivors of the massacre.) And the Arab’s story too is suspect in some ways. While there seems to be ample evidence that he sold the building, his denial of having done so (even if he’s walking around with a $1 million check in his pocket) is understandable: the Palestinian Authority long ago issued a death warrant for any Palestinian who sells property to a Jew. Stories of Arabs claiming to have been unfairly evicted from their homes in Jerusalem, for example, are often publicity fronts for legal sales of property to Jews, with the eviction stories concocted or agreed to by Israeli authorities to protect the lives of the Arab sellers. The main cost to the Israelis for this sort of front is bad publicity. Is that what has happened with Beit Hashalom? Perhaps. The High Court in Israel ruled that the eviction of Jews from the building was legal, but will this be a temporary condition, or a permanent one? Will the court handling the ownership issue end up ruling in favor of the Arab seller? Will he walk with the money AND the property? Or will the court system (which tends to be left-wing and activist here) rule that the documentation provided by the Jews is authentic and transfer ownership of the building to them? It is difficult to predict.
Politically, these events seem to be happening at a crucial time. For the Jews who claim to have purchased Beit Hashalom, this is a chance to make a statement about the Jewish right to purchase property and live in Hevron, one of Judaism’s holiest places (the Tomb of the Patriarchs—burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah—is located just down the road from this building, and Ruth and Jesse are also buried in Hevron). From the perspective of most Jews who choose to live in Yosh, the government has been talking out of both sides of its mouth for too long. When the Labor government under Levi Eshkol succeeded in seizing this land from Jordan in the Six Day War, it hoped to save this land (in escrow, so to speak) in order to trade it for peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors. The Council of Three No’s, as the Khartoum Conference of Arab nations became called (which issued the response: no recognition, no negotiation, no peace), made clear that the Israeli government’s hopes would not be realized anytime soon. Over time, that same Labor government issued permits for Jewish settlement of this land, encouraged it with financial incentives, and even settled some new immigrants in these places. Since the Oslo Accords, however, the government has been singing a different tune, looking for ways to trade land for peace with an Arab population no less hostile (and in some ways much more violent) than the neighboring Arab countries. In the current political climate, the yearning for peace with the Arabs has led to a feeling of hostility throughout much of Israeli society toward "settlers." Our homes and towns, enabled and encouraged by the government for decades, are now blamed for delaying peace. The lessons of Gaza (i.e. that creating Judenrein space for Arabs in which to live and govern themselves does not result in peace) have not been learned by the government and much of Israeli society, and blame and hatred of settlers has become a welcome point of common interest between Israeli society and the Arabs with whom they so desperately want peace. Settlers are able to recognize that this nefarious pseudo-alliance will also not bring peace. They feel isolated, persecuted, and held to stricter legal standards than non-settlers. Trust of the government has been eroded by Gaza, large-scale release of terrorists from prisons, dismantling of roadblocks, and the promise to turn over more sections of Yosh to Palestinian security services. The stand-off at Beit Hashalom may in some way be perceived by the Jews participating in it as a test of the government’s commitment to protecting the rights of settlers to buy (or restore, in their eyes) property to Jews. And the government, in its turn, may be using this situation to fan the flames of settler-hatred in the rest of Israel, to attempt to shore up weak relations with the lame-duck government of Mahmoud Abbas, and to establish itself in the eyes of the world as willing to pay any price (including ham-fisted treatment of Israeli citizens) for peace.
Spiritually, these are dark times for Israel. Even someone who doesn’t give a hoot about who owns Beit Hashalom can’t help but be alarmed at the sight of Jews hauling other Jews out of the place where they live. It brings back memories of Gaza, which left much of the nation with an undeniable feeling of post-traumatic stress which still has not dissipated. It illustrates what many perceive to be the failure of secular Zionism in its dramatic portrayal of Jews as disconnected from the land given to the Jews in the Torah, and the sense many seem to have of Israel as just another country. Jews demonstrating against the government who yell "Nazis!" at the IDF and police may seem overly dramatic and harsh, but in their eyes, a government that forcibly hauls its citizens from their (arguably) rightfully purchased property is a government that is here to serve questionable interests and a political agenda, not its citizenry. At the funeral for the Rabbi and Rabbanit Holtzberg (the Chabad couple murdered in Mumbai), the Rabbanit’s father attributed the evil that brought about their murders to the division and strife that seems to be coming to a head in the Jewish world. My Shabbat afternoon study group has been working its way through the book of the prophet Daniel. This book is full of dreams and visions of the Geulah, the redemption, and the many obstacles that must come to pass before the Geulah is complete. Scholars have given numerous opinions about the various kingdoms, oppressors, and disasters that are due to take place between the time of Daniel’s visions and the final Geulah. Rome and its destruction of Judea frequently comes up as one of the unquestionable obstacles. Yesterday, our teacher compared the behavior of the Jews during the siege of Jerusalem to what we see happening in Israeli society today. In besieged Jerusalem there were Jews who wanted to rebel, Jews who wanted to negotiate, and Jews who wanted to continue on as a Roman protectorate, and as they found themselves penned up in the walled city, their tensions reached a breaking point until they were actually murdering each other. It must have delighted the Romans to see the Jews doing their work for them, as it has clearly delighted the Arabs who have cheered on the demonstrations, joined in the fray with relish, and praised the IDF’s withdrawal of Jews from Beit Hashalom, calling for similar such withdrawals to take place all over the West Bank.
My friend asked how Efratniks are feeling seeing all this going on. I speak for myself and the Cap’n, but also for many others we know in Efrat when I answer, "Sick at heart."
Shimshonit 
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