The Nesimi family of Ma'aleh Ephraim, on the border of the Jordan Valley and the Samarian Hills, should be celebrating the arrival of a new child but, instead, the atmosphere in their modest house is one of melancholy. "It's like we're living in a cage," says the grandmother, Shuli, bringing a tray laden with tea, biscuits and dates for the only guests the household has received for some time.
The settlement of Ofra with the outskirts of Ramallah in the background.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
The two-month-old baby boy makes the third generation of the family living in their home, and the second to be born and raised there.
Shuli's youngest son is in the army and the eldest lives 40 km. away in Jerusalem. His car sits in their driveway after it was stoned by Arabs nearby. "They don't come here much anymore," says Shuli, who stopped traveling since she finished working as a guide for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. "Nobody comes to visit us, everyone is scared to come here."
Her husband, Yonatan, shares her grim mood. "We're dead people, like the living dead," he says.
The family hopes the new arrival will be the last to grow up in their community. "I would like to raise my children here, with the help of God, but the problem is that the reality just doesn't allow it," explains the new mother, Revital, who believes that 80 percent of her neighbors would move if given the choice. "We want to leave, we just don't have the ability to do so."
Fear of terror attacks and deteriorating economic circumstances are the main triggers driving the Nesimis out of the place they have called home for over two decades. Originally from Ashdod, in 1986 the Nesimis swapped the sand of the Mediterranean beach for that of the desert. And it's not hard to see why. "Look what a beautiful view we have here!" beams their son-in-law Izzy, stretching his arm toward the breathtaking landscape surrounding the house. Taking in the scenery from the balcony, it's hard to disagree. Located on the outermost street of the settlement, their house is separated from the lunar topography of the desert only by the multicolored plastic slides in the adjacent children's playground, the last outpost before the metal fence surrounding the community. No more than a few meters from the Nesimis' doorstep, the desert sands begin, stretching all the way to Jordan.
Like thousands of other Israelis, the Nesimis were lured to the West Bank by the promise of a high quality of life, the chance to own the type of home they couldn't dream of in the crowded center of the country and the opportunity to become latter-day pioneers. Ma'aleh Ephraim sits on the edge of the eastern Samarian slopes, where the green hills abruptly transform into the golden sand of Mount Sartaba, a literal realization of the Zionist ideal of "making the desert bloom."
"The conditions were very good for us and for the children, too, so we came here. The atmosphere was warm, it was great for the children and the schools were on another level," Yonatan remembers fondly.
But now the family, and many others like them, is itching to leave their home after their dream turned sour.
SINCE 1967, more than 250,000 Israelis have made their home in the West Bank, possibly the most hotly-contested real estate on earth. The kidney-shaped territory that Israel captured from Jordan in the Six Day War is saturated with Jewish religious and historical significance and remains at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many settlers pledge to fight tooth and nail before being parted from the land.
Breaking the stereotype of the radical settler are an increasingly vocal number of families in certain communities who want to leave voluntarily, driven by motives ranging from personal security to wholesale political U-turns. Bound together in wanting out of the West Bank, they are campaigning for government assistance to enable them to move out of their homes, which in some settlements have plummeted in value. But their potential lifeline, a law compensating those who voluntarily evacuate, is now facing an uncertain fate, with a new right-wing government and the most liberal US administration Washington has seen for years.
Founded in 1978, predominantly secular Ma'aleh Ephraim now has a population of around 1,400 and forms the urban center for nearby Jordan Valley moshavim such as Masua, Petzael and Argaman, which are home to fewer than 200 people each. Although the view from Ma'aleh Ephraim has remained relatively unspoiled over the last three decades, the attitudes of some of its residents have undergone a transformation. According to the Nesimis, around 80 percent of the settlement's founders have left in the last few years and Revital is confident that a similar proportion of the current population would leave if they had the means to do so.
"Believe me, at the beginning it was amazing here, but recently it feels like a prison," says Shuli, who was forced to hold her new grandson's brit mila in Yavne, not far from their former home in Ashdod. "No one would come, everyone was scared, so I took responsibility and arranged it outside."
Problems began during the second intifada and traveling on the roads has become dangerous - stone-throwing, shootings and firebombs - ever since. "We would go anywhere we wanted and come home at 3 a.m., we didn't have any problems. Until then it was a good life," says Yonatan, who escaped an ambush by Palestinian terrorists near Ariel in 2000. "It didn't come suddenly. There were some events that happened and after a few, you think that it probably won't happen to you. But when it happens again and again, maybe at some stage it will catch up with you."
"When it starts to get dark, we don't go out of the house," says Izzy, whose words suddenly take on a more tangible meaning as rain clouds rapidly threaten to obscure what is left of the day's sunlight, forcing us to cut short the interview. On the way out, a set of lonely blue-and-white plastic banners hung from the porch rustle in the desert wind, bearing the plea, "Don't leave Israelis outside the fence."
