Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.

by Mark Thomas

  The protest is being held at the edge of the settlement block by the side of a roundabout, which doesn’t seem the ideal place to speak truth unto power, unless the power you are fighting is the roundabout. Equally odd is the theme of the protest; that of demanding tough action on Palestinians who throw stones AND for the end to Barack Obama’s settlement freeze on building in the West Bank. Thus, one issue is very local and the other international; the causes seem ill matched, like CND demonstrating to ban nuclear weapons and airguns. It is dark save for the flashing blue police lights, and about a hundred people have gathered, buttoned up against the cold, waving banners at the passing traffic. The slogans declare, ‘Barack Hussein Obama: No, you can’t!’ and ‘Don’t tread on me’, though my favourite is, ‘Stop the Obama Intifada’, an attention-grabbing phrase that links the US president with violent uprising and suicide bombings. To be fair, this is rhetoric and no one in the crowd genuinely thinks the president of the United States is wearing a Semtex belt, of that I am – fairly – certain.

  On a patch of gravel next to the roundabout and just by the petrol station, a neat line of white plastic chairs has been laid out for the guest speakers. It creates a formal area for the speakers ‘platform’, but this is more by way of an affectation as the event is basically a bunch of wing nuts shouting in a parking lot. The adults listen to the speakers while the settler youth hang back in the road, periodically being moved on by the police. Walking among the protestors there are a few mutterings around me, and I pick out the word goyim, ‘non-Jew’ and, while I chat to one settler, some of the youth on the road shout, ‘Speak in Hebrew, this is Eretz Israel!’ but they are reprimanded quickly and there are certainly friendly faces here. Watching all this are the police, who have made it clear this is supposed to be a static demonstration with no marching.

  As the other speeches finish, Nadia Matar addresses the crowd. In her sixties protest-singer hat and scarf, she certainly looks the part of a rabble-rouser. The crowd hold her dearly, too: settlers I spoke to talked of her as ‘brilliant and courageous’, and of how, ‘Israel needs leaders like her’. She is not tall, but stands defiantly in the light of the blue flashing lights and demands that the crowd ignore the police and march. The settler youth do not need any encouragement; they slip the leash, surge into the road and set off from the roundabout. The crowd follow Nadia as she briskly sets off after them, waving her flag and singing. The police seem wrong-footed and scurry to herd those nearest back onto the pavement. The bulk of the marching settlers have spread across the road, though, while the youth at the forefront are running, screaming and shouting. Downhill they go, in the centre of a road into on-coming traffic, while Nadia calmly sings behind them.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about the kids?’ I ask as she stomps after them.

  ‘No. Among them is the future prime minister of Israel.’

  Soldiers belatedly give chase but it is a lacklustre effort as kids from the back of the march have run forward and overtaken the squaddies to join the mini-mob bellowing into the path of Israeli drivers. Many of these drivers simply turn tail and drive off in the opposite direction at the sight of the kids looming from the darkness, obviously unaware they are fleeing from a future prime minister. Eventually the soldiers catch up with the kids up and herd them back.

  Watching the Woman in Green lead a bunch of children charging down the middle of an unlit road in the middle of the night into on-coming traffic, it occurs to me that here is a woman who is her own metaphor.

  Nadia Matar says good night to some final stragglers and starts folding plastic chairs to load them onto a van.

  ‘Would now be a good time to talk?’ I ask.

  ‘OK, sure,’ she says, and we sail past the highpoint of our relationship without either of us noticing. ‘I don’t know how biased this will be. English media men I’m always wary of, because Britain is turning into a Muslim country. They are talking very soon of having a Muslim prime minister …’

  Actually I would love Britain to have a Muslim prime minister just so I could say to her, ‘It’s great – you should try it here,’ but her words pour out in a cascade and there is little chance of me catching her as she lurches onwards. In fact, to get a feel of the sheer torrent of her words, try reading out loud what she says next in twenty seconds. Take a breath and … go!

  ‘The real war is not about settlements, the real war is a war of Islam against the Judeo-Christian civilisations … We are on the front line defending you in London … When I am here, I am working for you and I don’t really care if you like that or not because I know God is on our side. I don’t need your support but you should know if, God forbid, something happens to Israel e.g. the Palestinian state is created, the next step is the destruction of Israel. The next step is the Islamisation of London. Your wife will not be allowed to go out with her … her … things over her head …’

  Listening to her is like riding the rapids of half-baked halftruths, untruths and an improvised stream of (barely) consciousness. This is not dialogue or a conversation, this is gestalt therapy without the therapy. At one point, Phil says to her, ‘I don’t want to censor you but could you make your answers just a little shorter?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and then repeats what she has just said but twice as quickly. More out of luck than judgement, I manage to speak as she draws breath: ‘Tell me about the Barrier,’ I say, as I shift into a more comfortable position from which to be spoken at.

  ‘It’s called the Separation Wall and it’s to separate Jews from their homeland.’

  ‘Are you worried it’s a border?’

  ‘Of course. That was my next sentence,’ she says admonishingly. ‘A border for the creation of the Palestinian state.’

  ‘You’re opposed to a Palestinian state?’

  ‘Of course I am opposed to a Palestinian state, in the same way you would be opposed if you had to give half of London away to Al-Qaeda.’

  For the first time this trip, I am speechless. After a moment I ask, ‘In Beit Sahour, you want settlement there, don’t you?’

  ‘I want to keep that hill – Shdema – in Jewish hands. We go back there to make sure the army doesn’t leave and we hope one day it will become a Jewish community, yes.’

  ‘Some people will see you and say this woman is just using religion as an excuse to steal land …’

  ‘Oh, and let’s talk about the Muslims using religion to butcher Jews, what about that? Muslims using religion to beat their wives and to cut off the arms of those that steal.’

  ‘The question is not about them, it’s about you.’

  ‘The question is always about us!’

  Nadia Matar is a taker of land and liberties, but not responsibility. Her constant avoidance leaves only room for bluntness: ‘Let’s just admit what you are. You are a squatter, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. Squatters are those Arabs who came to Sheikh Jarrah,’ and in a gasp she heads off once more to talk how the Jewish population fled Jerusalem’s Old City during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, ‘after they butchered the Jews and expelled them, they (the Arabs) took over our homes. They are the squatters. You are turning all of history around. But you can’t do this. Therefore, there is not really a point in discussing this. You have been brainwashed. You have been brainwashed!’

  ‘I get the impression you don’t much like Arabs.’

  ‘I don’t like journalists who don’t learn history and who come and are biased either because they don’t know or they don’t listen … We have such a tiny little piece of land, why don’t you want us to be here? Why don’t you allow us to be in our homeland? Why do you want to kick us out of our homeland? Where do you want us to go? My grandparents were told in Germany, “Dirty Jew, go to Palestine. That’s where the Jews belong.” Now I am in the land of Israel.’

  ‘I’m not trying to kick you out.’

  ‘This land belongs to me. I came back home and you tell me, “Dirty Jew, go,” – where?’

  ‘I didn’t call you
a dirty Jew.’

  ‘Not you personally … the world.’

  According to the Woman in Green, it would appear the UN wants Jews back in Auschwitz, Palestine is under Arab occupation, and that, ‘everything is topsy-turvy. We are the owners of this place. Imagine if you own a house and somebody comes and kicks you out of your house and then tells you that have no right to go back to your house.’

  Imagine indeed …

  Everyone has gone now, save a couple of cops and a huddled helper folding up the last banners in the dark and the cold. Nadia turns from me and sets about picking up the plastic chairs again. Oddly, she cuts a sad figure loading the chairs into her van in an empty lay-by on the side of a roundabout and I instinctively say, ‘Can I help you stack the chairs?’

  ‘No, no thank you,’ she says, without looking up.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, we’re fine.’

  For many reasons we do not part as friends, not least because Nadia Matar makes it difficult to like her. I think she veers from fantasist to pub bore and back again; in Britain she might be a member of the English Defence League shouting from behind police cordons at plans to build a mosque in Stoke or wherever. But no matter how isolated she looks, Nadia will probably set up her settlement at Beit Sahour, the place she calls Shdema. The army is escorting settlers in already and, once settled, the army will set up buffer zones and watchtowers to protect her religious squatters and future prime ministers. She is being allowed to create ‘facts on the ground’, because no one, in Israel at least, will stop her.

  chapter 21

  ALL SMOKE AND NO MIRRORS

  ‘What’s that!’

  ‘Hummer! …’

  ‘… a Hummer?’

  It’s two o’ clock in the morning and the house where we are staying, which was raided last night, is woken again. Phil and I are instantly alert to the loud banging and whirring noise.

  ‘… Get a torch …’

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  ‘… Hide the recordings …’

  ‘… Check first …’

  ‘… it’s the back room …’

  ‘… both of us …’

  BANG! BANG!

  ‘… torch! …’

  ‘… you …’

  ‘… OK, OK …’

  BANG! BANG!

  Together we push into the back room holding the torch out, and a figure ghosts into the glare.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘… Mousa? …’

  ‘… What the …’

  BANG! BANG!

  ‘Sorry,’ says Mousa, standing next to a clanking twin-tub washing machine juddering against the wall. ‘It is too late for the final spin?’

  The torch beam falls to the floor.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ I hiss groggily.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ says Phil.

  ‘Mark?’ says Mousa, the house’s owner.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry …’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘… but now you really should put some clothes on.’

  It is the final stage of the ramble, and we’ve four days to cover seventy kilometres. This distance passes through settler country and, frankly, I just want the walk over with. I feel like I’m halfway through a Salman Rushdie novel: all I want is to get to the end and say I’ve done it.

  Morning brings nothing but weirdness. The main street in the village of Beit Ummar is full of boys and hardly anyone else; none of them seem older than fourteen, but they swagger and huddle, shouting, waving and whistling for others to join them in the middle of the road. They do, too, and the numbers swell quickly. Soon the main drag is full of anxious bravado and recklessness. The shopkeeper distractedly serves me then returns to the task of locking down the metal shutters.

  ‘The Israelis want our holy sites, so this is a day of rage,’ says an old man.

  The kids are marching to the watchtower at the entrance of the village. As Phil leaves the shop they spot his camera and surround him, miming for him to photograph them, pulling at his arm. A small crowd tugs at his jacket urging him to come with them; they are about to stone the Israeli army, so obviously they want a memento of the occasion.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m not going to do that.’

  A wail goes up from the group. One boy slumps, another tuts, and the day of rage starts with a sulk.

  We meet today’s translator, Yunes, and cram into a taxi just as the army start to tear-gas the other end of the village.

  Yunes has a round and mischievous face, and, ‘You must not say anything bad about Saddam Hussein,’ he proclaims, as he slides into the taxi next to me.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,’ I reply wearily. ‘Saddam defied America. Saddam supported the Palestinians. Saddam fired a missile at Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  ‘No,’ says Yunes in mock outrage. ‘It is because Saddam Hussein is my friend.’

  At this, the taxi driver turns around smiling, offers his hand and says, ‘I am Saddam Hussein.’

  ‘See!’ grins Yunes.

  I shake Saddam Hussein’s hand and say, ‘You’re looking well, considering.’

  ‘Hello, sir,’ he says.

  ‘… and I am sorry for being presumptive, Yunes.’

  ‘Do not apologise. You were right in everything you said about Saddam Hussein. He did defy America and did support the Palestinians …’

  ‘Much more importantly, do you know the directions?’ Phil interrupts, diplomatically as ever.

  ‘No. But Saddam Hussein does.’

  Actually Saddam Hussein doesn’t. He gets confused, confuses everyone else, drives onto a dirt track in the middle of nowhere, declares, ‘We are here,’ and then, once we are out of the taxi, clears off before anyone can argue. This leaves us three kilometres south of our intended start point.

  ‘Does it matter?’ asks Yunes. ‘Can’t we start the walk here?’

  ‘With him it does,’ groans Phil.

  ‘We are going to have to go back on ourselves,’ I say, looking at the map. ‘We have to go three kilometres north, then we’ll turn round, walk back to here and go on, south.’

  ‘Do we have to do that?’ says Yunes.

  ‘Yes. Yes, we do,’ I splutter, ‘because if we don’t, I will have only walked along most of the Wall. Which is not the same as walking all of the Wall.’

  To which a nearly straight-faced Yunes replies, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  Over the next two minutes I calmly explain the ethos of the walk; our agreed modus operandi. I swear once or twice and point out that if the Saddam Hussein had the same sense of direction as his taxi-driving namesake, then he probably invaded Kuwait by accident and was actually aiming for Yemen. I stomp off along our path pissed off, surly, and determined to enjoy the walk.

  ‘I don’t like the Wall being on our left,’ says Phil, after some minutes. We are walking north and the Barrier is normally on our right. ‘Left is Israel, right is the West Bank. It’s like sleeping on the wrong side of the bed.’

  What is even odder, however, is the hill in the distance. It sticks out partly because the other hills are green and this one is grey, but mainly because it is on fire. True, this vista is full of fields of barley and bright red poppies, even almond trees and, true, they are all beautiful, but none of it holds our interest quite like the smoke pouring from the mountain. The sight eclipses the entire landscape and is unavoidable from any view, as the wind draws up the rising grey lines of smoke and pulls them into a cloud, then blows the foul reek through the olive groves.

  ‘What is it?’ All three of us stop and stare at the hideous, seething mountain.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s not on the map.’

  ‘I have no idea what it is,’ says Yunes, ‘I have never been this way before.’

  We turn and stare at him and defensively he adds, ‘I’m a translator, not a guide.’

  Shaking his head, Phil says, ‘It’s a dump! Bloody Saddam Hussein. He’s dropped us in the middl
e of a rubbish dump.’ The lane takes us directly to the top of the mountain of burning plastic, rubber and rubbish. The smoke is so sickening we have to leave the path, and descend instead across terraces and rocks to the foothills of the smouldering mound. On its lower slopes two children, no older than ten, are just starting to clamber up the steep, ashen sides. The surface is dappled with a grey and black pallor, and there’s only a thin crust on which they scramble. Smoke rises from holes in the cliff-face of the burnt debris, looking like volcanic vents flashing glimpses of the fires below the surface. The grey tendrils of smoke are pulled like twine from within the sides of the mound, twirling and knotting upwards, and still the children climb, keeping upright on the mass burning beneath them, walking around the flames and smoke. One has a small pickaxe and a gardening glove. He scavenges, prodding and pulling at clumps of ash and rubble as small fires pop up around him. He tugs at unseen rewards and moves ever upwards. The younger boy follows, carrying the long-dead carcass of a computer on his shoulder, and keeping carefully to the path of the older lad before he, too, disappears over the ridge and into the cloud of smoke.

  ‘This is hellish,’ says Phil, and it is. None of us were quite prepared for this.

  Escaping the burning hill as quickly as we can, we cross a valley of barley fields, and trudge up the other side to arrive atop a new hill. Here, set back from the path, is a patch of ground charred black with scorch-marks and thick crusts of withered plastics. Computer frames and shards of broken glass decorate its surface. Sitting to one side on a rock is a man with soot smudges over his face and black overalls tied round his waist, calmly smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Salam.’

  ‘Salam.’

  Yunes quickly explains who we are and where we are from, and we all shake hands. Yunes joins the man in a cigarette and asks about the smoking mountain. The fellow sits hunched and crossed-legged, draws on the cigarette and nods, ‘People burn things that contain scrap metal, like cables for their copper, and they come here to do it in secret.’

  ‘Why up here?’

  ‘It is very close to the Wall and far from Palestinian National Authority eyes. It is not allowed to burn things here.’ He’s thin and dirty and although content to talk, he appears a little distracted.