Praying for three boys

On the surface, life carries on in Gush Etzion.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Thousands of people are praying at the Western Wall and in their homes and cars, at work and at play, for the kidnapped boys to be returned safely. (photo credit: Courtesy)
Thousands of people are praying at the Western Wall and in their homes and cars, at work and at play, for the kidnapped boys to be returned safely.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
At first glance, the Gilo junction in Jerusalem by the Tunnel Road, which leads to the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, seemed little different this past Monday than it did any other day. Yet a closer look and a few conversations with some of the youths waiting there for a lift, told another story.
Days after the kidnapping of three yeshiva students and despite attempts to go on with business as usual, nothing was quite the same. As the press has noted, both adults and young students have continued to hitch rides at all the junctions on the roads inside the Gush Etzion region. For many observers, this is as close as it gets to tempting fate, but for the residents of the region and the students of the various yeshivot, it is the most common and natural way to get around – first, because public transportation is rare and not so efficient, and second, because the people here refuse to be intimidated, arguing that for them, this is home, and at home, one is not supposed to be afraid.
“Even the Arabs who live here hitch rides among themselves,” remarks a 17-year-old yeshiva student waiting for a lift to take him back home to Alon Shvut from Jerusalem.
In fact, what really bothers a lot of Gush Etzion residents is that some media – mostly foreign press – have used the places they live as a pretext to explain the kidnapping of three of their comrades – Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, Eyal Yifrach, 19, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16. Two of them live inside the Green Line, but that doesn’t make much difference to one of the students waiting at the Gilo junction.
“The fact that two of them are not settlers doesn’t really matter,” the student says. “They study inside the Gush, so they are not against settlements in Israel, but it bothers us that the press immediately looked for explanations, perhaps even excuses, in the fact that they are all settlers – so what should we understand from that? That settlers’ lives are less important?” Yael Mishany’s son studies at the Mekor Haim Yeshiva High School near Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, the same school that the three kidnapped teens attended. Until recently, she and her family lived in Efrat.
“The reaction from the yeshiva’s administration was perfect,” she says.
“By Friday at 10 a.m., all the parents were personally informed about what had happened, and it was clear to us, the parents, that what our sons needed most now was attention and closeness, nothing else – certainly not any criticism about the habit of hitchhiking.”
Regarding how the school is handling the situation, Mishali says the key word has been “business as usual”: The students who were supposed to be home for Shabbat came home as scheduled, while those who were supposed to spend Shabbat in the North went ahead without any change of plans.
“We know that in the press and in the public discourse, there is a lot of talking about this hitchhiking issue,” she adds, “but for us it is a normal, daily thing. For a while, when our son was younger, we didn’t allow him to do it, but now he is 17 years old. There are limits to what you can ask a young adult to do or not do. Soon he will be a soldier – how can we forbid him to hitch rides inside the region? And anyway, in this particular case, we know that [the abducted boys] were just waiting at a bus station there, so it seems that they were forced into the car of the kidnappers, which is completely different.”
It’s not just students who hitch rides in Gush Etzion. Dori Haneman teaches in the region and lives in the Psagot settlement, north of Jerusalem.
He says he hitchhikes back and forth because public transportation is infrequent and inefficient. He notes that there are some rules – like engaging in a small conversation to check who is in the stopping car – but he doesn’t believe that this practice will disappear.
As for the atmosphere among Gush Etzion residents and students, things seem a little more complicated.
“Officially, things are as usual,” says Eliaz Cohen, a social worker and director of the community center in Alon Shvut. “But of course, nothing is as usual – three boys have been kid-very strong and have a strong faith in God and the power of prayer, our hearts are heavy, and we are all very concerned. The lack of information about their situation is unbearable, and while we all look at the families to get the strength necessary, we are all busy with one, and only one, issue – the fate of Gil-Ad, Naftali and Eyal – and it affects us all here.”
The whole region is full of military traffic and soldiers, and the talk at the bus stops is focused on this single topic.
According to Cohen, who lives in Kibbutz Kfar Etzion and is active in a peace initiative between settlers and Arab residents in the region, there is a lot of anger over the declarations of political leaders and the media.
The feeling, he says, is that, as in so many other circumstances, “the victims are transformed into the main ones responsible for what happened, and it hurts a lot. Columns in the press [declaring] that we are responsible and that it was the result of the political freeze [in peace negotiations] – that’s nonsense, of course.
Also, many people thought that the situation here was calm [before] and all of a sudden worsened because of the government – nonsense again.
We always face danger here, and everywhere else in Israel. That’s how it has been the whole time; that’s our daily life here.”
The director of the Makor Haim Yeshiva – which was originally established in Jerusalem and later moved to its current location – is Rabbi Dov Zinger, who lives in the northern Samaria settlement of Shiloh; the school’s president is Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, and among its founders were late rabbis Menachem Froman and Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (known as Rav Shagar), both from Tekoa.
The administration of the yeshiva – which takes a “neo-hassidic” approach to learning and has a high-level curriculum in both Jewish and general studies – declined to give an interview, but told this reporter that the most important thing at the moment was to strengthen the students who were worried about their missing schoolmates.
Everyone this reporter interviewed shared the same confidence in the army’s and the government’s dedication to doing everything possible to bring back the missing boys. It is unusual to hear criticism of the IDF in Gush Etzion.
And while the army and the security forces are doing their part, adds Cohen, he and his partners in peace-promoting groups – including Arab residents, both Muslim and Christian – have been trying to organize interfaith prayer sessions for the well-being of Shaer, Yifrach and Fraenkel.
Asked to sum up the situation in Gush Etzion in these difficult days of anxiety and uncertainty, Cohen answered that the most important thing was to see how this special region and its people reacted.
“I can say that despite these dramatic situation, the Gush and its residents, both Jewish and Arab, have succeeded to remain sane in this insane situation. We are deep believers, we pray, but we remain human and we are very cautious not to let anyone spoil that special atmosphere that exists between us and our Arab neighbors.
Perhaps that is the most important message we would like to convey to all the citizens of Israel.”