"Where are we going?" I asked Arik, as we drove out of Jerusalem in his beat up Subaru, with three other volunteers: an older gentleman and a newlywed couple.
This year's olive harvest. 'A settler thrust his camera in my face. My pulse raced. I continued picking, hoping my face looked calm.'
Photo: AP
I was beginning the New Year of 5769 with a practical mitzva: serving as a "human shield" between Palestinian families, trying to harvest their olive trees in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers, trying to prevent them. My old friend, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights, had invited me to come with him - to help in a small grove of trees in the southern West Bank. I hadn't asked for details; scores of volunteers were being assigned daily to olive groves throughout the West Bank - depending on the readiness of Palestinian owners, the weather and the permission of the Israeli Civil Administration. I was happy to be a foot-soldier, and help out wherever I was needed.
"We'll be in Hebron," answered Arik, driving slowly past the Beit Jala checkpoint.
Hebron?! Why hadn't I asked before? A year ago I had visited the old city of Hebron, home of the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs, burial site of Abraham - the Father claimed by Judaism and Islam. For weeks after, I was haunted by images of humiliation. The Arab bazaar shuttered; Israeli combat soldiers patrolling its eerie, silent streets. Hebrew graffiti, signed with a Star of David - "Policeman, Soldier: I hate you; Death to Traitors" - scrawled on a rusted door. Two Palestinian girls with book bags hurrying to school, heads down under a barrage of foul language from Jewish pupils outside Beit Hadassah. I wondered if I could still get out of the car and go back to Jerusalem.
"We are going to help the Jabari family," Arik continued, as we drove through the rocky hills. "They only have a few olive trees, but their land is next to the fence of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. Only once in the last seven years have they been able to harvest their olives. In other years, the settlers kept them from reaching their trees and took their olives. We are opening the harvest there, so that doesn't happen." As we drove deeper into the Hebron hills, my dread mixed with the joy of a bright, crisp fall day. The clean greens and browns were stunning. The yoreh, first rain, had poured down just two days before, washing the dusty trees and ancient rock terraces after a dry summer, and signaling the start of the olive harvest.
Into my head popped the new jingle of the West Bank settlers' media campaign to convince secular Israelis of their own historic connection to the land of the Bible: "Judea and Samaria - the story of every Jew." Just yesterday in synagogue we had read Genesis 22, about Abraham walking over these Judean hills with his son Isaac, on his way to carry out the divine command: "Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering." Yes, guilt, sacrifice and incomprehensible requests from God were part of every Jew's story. Especially in these hills.
"We want to go in quickly, harvest the olives and leave," Arik continued, as we reached the yellow security gate of Kiryat Arba. "We have informed the Civil Administration of our plans. Under a 2006 High Court order, the police are required to allow the harvest and protect the Palestinians. They don't have to let us help, however. If any settlers come to disturb us, don't interact with them; just keep working. Our goal is to help the Jabaris harvest their olives."
Seeing an Israeli car driven by a bearded rabbi in a knitted kippa, the security guard raised the gate and waved us through. Leaving the biblical landscape behind, we entered a land of well-maintained streets and trim parks, landscaped in the style of any successful development town in Israel. Arik phoned his contact person from the Palestinian-Jewish organization, Ta'ayush.
"They and the Anarchists will be working with us today as well," Arik informed us.
My dread returned. The Rabbis and Ta'ayush were committed to non-violent discipline; but the Anarchists, young Israeli Jews, known for their weekly confrontations with the Border Police, as they protested the route of the separation barrier, might not bow their heads in the face of provocations. I thought of my two teenage boys still sleeping at home, and hoped they would not be getting a call this afternoon to come visit their 52-year-old mother in the hospital.
We passed out of another security gate, bumped over potholes on the main Palestinian road and turned up a steep dirt path into the Jabaris driveway. We were in Hebron.
THE TA'AYUSH leader gave a quick briefing among the brambles outside the Jabari home. Don't answer to provocation, take the phone number of our lawyer's contact person, watch the kids - they'll try to steal the olives. I wanted to ask more questions: what if the police don't protect us, what if there's a mob, how far from here to a hospital? But the group was off - 20 scruffy activists, a few members of the Jabari family, a TV news film crew, and a couple of Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida - tramping along a run-down stone terrace toward our goal. Six lone olive trees squeezed between the fence of Givat Ha'avot, a Jewish settlement in Hebron, on the hill to our left and the main road to Kiryat Arba on our right. A crow cawing broke the pre-Shabbat quiet of Friday, as we spread worn burlap bags next to a brick path under the trees and began to pick.
In moments, five settlers - women and men - materialized along the path and sauntered over to the trees. One of the Palestinians, a settler and a couple of anarchists whipped out cameras and began filming. Not long ago, the Israeli organization B'tselem had begun providing cameras to Palestinians - to document human rights abuses around their homes in the West Bank. Now the settlers were answering in kind, turning the battle of olives into a battle of narratives. How many anarchists does it take to harvest olives, I thought? Two to pick, and three to document the experience for the BBC.
