The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  “Who knows, perhaps you’ve got a Shin Bet security service informer among you,” Natan Eliav muttered, which got Othniel thinking, Perhaps we do—it wouldn’t have surprised him. But who? Maybe that new guy, Gavriel’s brother? He glanced over at Gavriel, who was working beside him, and wondered if he should say anything. You never know. In any event, Natan continued, the defense minister won’t allow it to be moved. In fact, he added, the defense minister’s antisettlement intervention means that the new abode will be staying in the settlement for quite some time, so perhaps it would be a good idea to go through the waiting list and invite a new family to set up home there.

  Othniel knew precisely in which drawer at home the waiting list could be found. Rachel, his wife, headed the settlement’s Absorption Committee, together with Hilik Yisraeli. He decided to wait a few days, and if the defense minister remained adamant about withholding a transportation permit, they’d move a family in. He went outside to help Gavriel with the crates.

  MK Tsur eventually got back to him. “The order has something to do with the separation fence,” he told Othniel.

  “What!” Othniel replied. Surveyors and architects and military officers and various other officials related to the fence had indeed been wandering around the area. But they had been doing so for years, and no one paid them any attention. “I thought they weren’t building the fence in this area.”

  “I don’t know if they really are going to build it, but apparently they’ve decided to do something about it there,” the MK said. “And based on what I was told, it is supposed to run through the olive groves of your neighbors from Kharmish.”

  “So what’s that got to do with us?” Othniel questioned.

  “Well, the area that falls under the seizure order issued by the IDF for the purpose of building the fence and for the security zone on either side of it includes a portion of your land.”

  “But how is that possible?” Othniel cried out. “Since when have they been building the fence through Israeli settlements? Haven’t they heard of democracy and basic human rights over there in Jerusalem?”

  “You’re right,” the parliamentarian replied, “it is unusual. The land they are appropriating this time is again private Palestinian land, but it seems you have settled on part of it. There’s another problem, too. Your settlement doesn’t appear on any map.”

  “What are you talking about?” Othniel responded, knowing all too well, like Tsur, that this was indeed the case, and thankfully so. It would be better if the maps weren’t updated and for the air force to refrain from any aerial photography. It spared everyone headaches. Years of experience in the settlement enterprise had taught them this.

  “Besides,” Tsur continued, “the lefties are making noise with the Defense Ministry. They want to know why the fence is being built through an olive grove belonging to Arabs when right next to it sits an illegal settlement that has continued to expand, with a playground, new trailers, and the like. The defense minister wants to look good, so he’s telling them that the outpost, too, will be evacuated, and he’s sent you the demarcation order. Are you with me?”

  Othniel’s one hand held the phone up against his ear. His other hand rested on his forehead. He tried to think. Who had told them about the playground? And what new trailers? Only one had arrived, and mistakenly, at that.

  “Anyway, Shabbat shalom, my friend. I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. We’ll take care of it next week. Hang in there. Give my regards to the lefties,” Tsur said, and laughed.

  “What lefties?”

  “Haven’t you heard? The lefties are staging a demonstration this afternoon in your Arab village.”

  Othniel closed his eyes and rubbed them. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with before the Sabbath, he thought. “But . . . What are they demonstrating about?” he asked. “They got what they wanted, didn’t they? The order’s been issued.”

  “God only knows! Against the fence. Against the outpost. In support of the Arabs’ olives. There’s no shortage of things for the lefties to demonstrate about in Judea and Samaria on a Friday afternoon, is there? Trust them to find something. Okay, my friend, today’s a short one. Shabbat shalom.”

  The Demonstration

  The tip, the point, the bulge. What was it about them that excited him so much? His eyes were always drawn to them. He knew it was impolite, but he wasn’t the one who made the decision, his eyes did, and they always went there, before anywhere else. And the best days were those last days of the winter, when the caress of the morning sun created a sweet illusion that suggested dressing in short, thin clothing, before the sun remembered that the spring had yet to arrive and disappeared behind the clouds, and a sudden chill set in.

  What he liked most was that there was no barrier, nothing in the way, and that they were right there, just beneath the thin cotton. That was a far more beautiful image than bare breasts, which left nothing to the imagination; they could be too thin, too big, too small, asymmetrical, saggy, eggplant-shaped. Bare breasts could look exactly like the things they are—fatty milk glands, and fatty milk glands did nothing for him. Titties, too. Titties was a word for teenagers. But breasts—breasts was a man’s word. And when they were right there, hidden minimally under a thin layer of worn silk or cotton, that was what really got his blood pumping.

  And that’s what Roni could see, freely bouncing up and down under a shirt bearing the slogan THE OCCUPATION WEAKENS US—large and juicy, and at their center, poking against the fabric, erect, fleshy nipples of volume and experience, the nipples of someone who knows they are there and how to leverage them.

  When he left San Francisco two days earlier, with no intention of ever going back, thin, revealing clothes were a distant memory. And after arriving in Israel, and heading east from Ben Gurion Airport, he figured that such sights, which, with the coming of the spring, would sprout up and flourish in Tel Aviv, would be lacking at the settlement where he was headed. Less than twenty-four hours later, however, he was standing, arms folded across his chest, in the large olive grove of an Arab village adjacent to his brother’s outpost, facing dozens of demonstrators brandishing signs that read DOWN WITH THE SEPARATION FENCE and SETTLERS GO HOME—OUTPOST OUTLAWS, with his deviant eyes unable to budge from that one protestor’s magnificent chest, until he forced them to do so and his gaze drifted up to her pleasant, somewhat porcine face, and to the placards, and then across to a group of residents from the village. And he couldn’t help but notice the eyes of one of them fixed precisely at the right height, their lines of sight intersected—Up with promiscuity! Down with the separation bra! End the occupation of the breasts!—and, like sharers of a secret, their mouths curled upward into smiles of mutual appreciation. There are some things that transcend politics and justice.

  Roni’s gaze wandered on, aiming higher and farther afield, and then stopped suddenly in its tracks in surprise: Herodium! And he became aware of the perfect roundness of the hilltop in the distance, how it surged forth sensually from the body of the flat desert, light in color and so inviting—a breast! A breast in the middle of the desert! I’ve come to the right place, Roni thought, and looked around at the hilltops, at their soft curves, their gentle contours, and their feathery, after-the-rain covering. A few days from now, Nir would tell him that Yosef Ben Matityahu or Titus Flavius Josephus himself had written of the Herodium that it looked just like the breast of a woman.

  The leader of the demonstration, a thin, spectacled young man with a prominent, square jaw, bellowed slogans into a megaphone: “Cease construction of the fence! End the theft of Palestinian land! Stop the government-supported expansion of the outposts! No more settlers!” He was standing at the forefront of a small group of youths wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the left-wing Meretz party, a handful of anarchists, a number of silver-haired individuals from the old generation of the Peace Now movement, and the attractive protestor. Across from them were a number of folks Roni recognized, among them Gabi. Roni appro
ached him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Great action, brother!”

  “I’m pleased you’re enjoying yourself,” Gabi said, and smiled, and then went on to explain why so few of the outpost’s residents had bothered to show up. It’s Friday, the women are baking cakes for the Sabbath and are cooking meals for the coming twenty-four hours; the boys and girls are helping in the kitchen or looking after their younger siblings; and the men are returning from errands in Jerusalem.

  “Who’s that orange one?” Roni asked, gesturing with his eyebrows in the direction of one of the woman settlers, who was wearing an orange head scarf.

  “Ah, yes, that’s Neta Hirschson, she wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Gabi responded.

  The woman marched purposefully toward the demonstrators, fixed them with a stare, and began shouting: “You should be ashamed of yourselves! Enemies of Israel! It’s all over; your rule has ended! You had your chance and you failed! You had Peres, you had Rabin, you had Oslo. And you’re still shooting your mouths off ? What chutzpah! After the things you did to this country, you should be ashamed to show your faces here!”

  Someone answered her, “Land thieves! Criminals! You’re stealing the budgets of the development towns and the poor! You’re wasting the soldiers’ time! You’re shaming us around the world, the country is sick of you!”

  And Neta responded, “Lunatics! No one gives a shit about you! So much self-hatred! Look at you, groveling at the feet of the Arab enemy! You have no God, you have no future! Get out of here, you won’t achieve a damn thing!”

  And the other one, “You’re contemptible. Here you are, living at our expense, on our taxes and our blood, with our children in the army to protect you, and yet you’re still complaining? Take a look at yourself, teaching your kids to be bullies and to hate! What happened to ‘All Jews bear responsibility for one another’? What happened to ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’? Enough with the hatred! Down with the fence!”

  And it was on that precise point that Neta refrained from differing with the protestor. She had already heard from Othniel and Hilik that the planned fence would encroach on the settlement’s land. Besides, the entire idea of the fence, which created a border and, for all intents and purposes, created a Palestinian state in the Land of Israel, was contemptible to the core.

  “Yes, down with the fence,” Neta yelled.

  “Stop the barrier from running through here,” the left-wing demonstrator shouted back.

  “Stop the barrier from running through here,” the settler cried out. And for one brief moment, the two united, like two ends meeting to form a circle, but the harmony was soon shattered when a soldier approached the demonstrator and was greeted loudly with “What’s your name, you piece of shit? Don’t you dare touch me!”

  Neta watched the protestor walk away, still mumbling “You’ll stop at nothing” and “Go back to where you came from” in a lowered voice, perhaps to herself. She then glanced at her watch and quickly headed toward home; she had a booking with a client from Ma’aleh Hermesh A. who needed an urgent pre-Sabbath manicure and pedicure.

  Aside from the incident involving Neta and her rival, the demonstration passed quietly. The soldiers who had been deployed from the outpost remained idle. And when it was over, Roni kept track of the attractive demonstrator. He saw her approach the Palestinian who had been eyeing her earlier. Son of a bitch. The two exchanged words. Roni moved closer. The woman handed over some money to the Palestinian and received a large metal container in return. Someone else, also in an End the Occupation shirt, produced some cash in exchange for another container. Roni edged nearer. The braless woman looked at him and he responded in kind.

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she blurted out, and walked off. The Palestinian’s eyes followed her for a few seconds, and then he turned to Roni and winked.

  “What’s all this?” Roni asked, gesturing toward the Arab’s wares.

  “Olive oil, dirt cheap,” the Palestinian said.

  “How much is dirt cheap?”

  “Eighteen liters, three hundreds of shekels.”

  Roni did the math in his head—a little over fifteen shekels a liter, less than four dollars. Cheap indeed. “Two-fifty and it’s a deal?”

  The Palestinian smiled. “No, three hundreds of shekels. Dirt cheap,” he said.

  The two men looked at each other. Roni fixed his stare, hoping the Arab would break. He recalled a business school lecture from his time in New York. The professor had said that all commercial negotiations—whether they be haggling in a marketplace or merger talks between two giant conglomerates—were a duel in which body language played a decisive role. The Arab stared back at him, refusing to back down.

  “What’s your name?” Roni asked, wrinkling an eyebrow in the direction of the olive farmer.

  “Musa Ibrahim,” replied Musa Ibrahim, a well-built man with a white mustache and white hair that started far back on his scalp, in stark contrast to his tanned skin.

  “Pleased to meet you. Roni Kupper,” said Roni Kupper, extending a hand. Musa shook it. “So, you say there’s a chance I can get you down to two-fifty?” Roni inquired.

  “Did I say there was?” Musa smiled.

  Roni took out his wallet, which he had found one day in the snow in New York, and opened it. “Well, look at that, bro, I’m spending my very last shekel on your oil,” he said, counting out a total of exactly 292 shekels in notes and coins, shrugging apologetically. Musa snatched angrily at the handful, and Roni hoisted the tin container onto his shoulder and turned around.

  The Sabbath

  The Sabbath settled on the hilltop like a shawl on hair, pleasing and soft.

  The soldiers went off to rest. The left-wingers were gone. And the distributor Moran’s pickup truck was already on its way westward carrying crates of asparagus, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and arugula, as well as cartons of yogurt and goat-milk cheese—all bearing the label Gitit Farms, named after the Assis family’s firstborn daughter, and Moran’s address in the Sharon region of the country.

  Gabi, with the help of the slightly built Yakir Assis, gathered up a large piece of canvas that read STOP THE EXPANSION OF OUTPOSTS UNDER GOVERNMENT PROTECTION—they’d use it to help fence off Othniel’s fields, which were already demarcated by stretches of canvas bearing the slogans END THE OCCUPATION AND TWO STATES FOR TWO NATIONS, in response to a long length of canvas glorifying Rabbi Nachman of Breslov that the Arabs of Kharmish used during olive-harvesting time.

  The Sabbath settled on the hilltop like a veil on the shoulders of a bride, quiet and airy.

  Roni made his way to his brother’s home, the eighteen-liter jerry can of olive oil digging deep into his shoulder. The air filled with the smell of meals being prepared. He could hear the rustling of pages of weekend newspapers being turned. A young girl slept soundly in a hammock in one of the yards. The dogs, Condoleezza and Beilin, gnawed on bones. A dusty sedan, laden with bags and children, unloaded a visiting family that had arrived from God knows where to spend the Sabbath on the hilltop.

  Final pre-Sabbath preparations were under way in Gabi’s home: his cell phone was switched off, the Sabbath hotplate was switched on, light switches were flipped up or down, toilet paper was torn into measured lengths, for the twenty-four hours ahead. The Sabbath dropped down like a generator that had crashed. The outpost’s generator crashed, and came back to life just minutes before the deadline. A siren heralding the Sabbath was barely heard coming from distant urban neighborhoods. The Sabbath came down like a setting sun, to the accompaniment of soft gusts of wind.

  “What’s that?”

  “Olive oil, man. Eighteen liters for two-ninety shekels, a great deal,” Roni responded. “It’s on me, my brother, use as much as you need. There’s enough here for months.”

  “I thought you were broke. And suddenly now you’re spending three hundred on oil?”

  Roni plucked a cigarette from the sky-blue box. “I had just the right amount,” he said.r />
  Gabi looked at him, astonished. “Are you telling me you spent your last three hundred on olive oil? What are you going to do now?”

  Roni bent over to reach into his sock and retrieved a purple banknote. “They weren’t my last,” he said. “Look, I have another fifty. And some dollars, too. I’m going to need a little help in the meantime.”

  “I don’t get you. Do you expect me to fork over money? All I earn, I spend on my home and food. And why buy from the Arabs? We have excellent olive oil here, made by Jewish hands. I have some in the kitchen.”

  Roni went into the kitchen. He opened several cupboards before he found the bottle, which still bore its price tag. He did the math in his head again, and his eyes widened. “Dude! It’s almost twice the price!”

  “And right before Sabbath, no less,” Gabi continued. “You appear out of nowhere, without forewarning, you won’t tell me what has happened, and say you’ll be staying. I said you were welcome, but now all of a sudden, you’re asking for money . . . Didn’t you make millions in America? Where did that go?”

  Roni smoked in silence and looked out toward the olive groves of Kharmish. His brain kept doing math.

  “And I’d rather you didn’t smoke inside. Certainly not on the Sabbath.” Gabi went to his bedroom to take his white Sabbath clothes out of the closet.

  Roni stubbed out his cigarette and called after him, “There we go, it’s out.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  Gabi returned to the living room, buttoning his shirt. “No, I’m pleased you’re here. But what happened?”

  The brothers exchanged a long stare. Neither backed down. Roni’s face finally broke into a smile. “Nothing, I’ve already told you,” he said. “I simply need some space, that’s all.” But the smile had faded, and the stare went on.

  “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, Roni?” Gabi asked, the doubt in his eyes deepening. “Will anyone come looking for you?”