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June 2008
Remembering the sea at Gaza.
“If you go to Gaza, I would like to give them a message,” Herzl Itzhaki told me this morning. “We love them like human beings. … That there aren’t just Israelis who want to fight them.”
It was a lack of communication that has deepened the divide between the two sides, he said.
Few Israelis within range of Gaza-made rockets hold out much hope that a fragile truce between the Israeli army and the militant group, Hamas, will last.
(Hours after my visit, a rocket launched from Gaza landed harmlessly in an industrial zone. It was the fifth rocket fired since Hamas agreed to the truce. Israel has responded by barring goods from entering the impoverished and isolated coastal strip.)
Herzl, who is 70, lives in the working class city of Sderot, which has been the frequent target of rocket fire from Gaza over the past eight years. Twelve people have been killed there.
The ceasefire isn’t popular in Sderot because ceasefires haven’t worked in the past, but the alternatives seem worse.
“I’m willing to take more Qassams,” Herzl’s wife, Rachel, 65, said, referring to the Arabic name for the rockets. “As long as they don’t send in soldiers to get killed.”
Herzl recalled the years after 1967, when Israelis would go the beach in Gaza and eat at seafood restaurants. Gazans would come to Sderot to sell fruit and vegetables or to work.
In the 1970s, Herzl and Rachel befriended two brothers from Gaza. They could only remember the name of one, Said.
The brothers brought them two chickens, which the Israeli couple named after the brothers. Herzl and Rachel visited Gaza and brought them pillows, a wallet for a grandmother, a doll for a daughter.
They lost touch 15 years ago.
“I would really like to find them and make contact with them,” Herzl said. “I personally don’t hate them.”
Herzl and Rachel, who immigrated to Israel from Iran and have lived in Sderot since 1955, when the city was founded, own a small store downtown that sells stuffed animals, electronic keyboards, blankets and beauty products, among other items. Business is so bad they don’t run the air conditioner unless a customer walks in. Thousands of Sderot residents have moved away, including their three children.
The husband and wife said they’ll never leave, partly because they couldn’t sell their house, but mostly because they couldn’t imagine living anyplace else.
They said they don’t expect a lasting ceasefire until Israeli and Hamas leaders meet, which they have never done. (Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and Israel refuses to negotiate directly with Hamas.)
“Both sides have to put an effort into it,” Herzl said.
Could he imagine returning to the beach in Gaza someday?
The thought seemed so outlandish, he laughed for a long time, and then answered: “Those days are over.”
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A new symbol for Jerusalem?
In a city of landmarks, one more will be dedicated tonight.
The Bridge of Strings, a 387-foot-high suspension bridge for a new light rail line over a highway intersection at the Western entrance to Jerusalem, has been met mostly with criticism.
Suspended by 66 cables that are meant to evoke David’s Harp, the soaring white structure that perhaps more closely resembles a sail, contrasts sharply with the low-rise stone city.
The Jerusalem municipality hopes the bridge will become a symbol for the city, but Israelis have questioned the need for another symbol. (Jerusalem’s religious symbols are well known.)
“When people try to force a symbol on the public, there’s a risk that the monument will turn into a farce,” Micha Broth, an Israeli urban planner at Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. “It reminds me of totalitarian regimes that attempted to create many symbols and force their monuments.”
It’s also been criticized for its cost — $73 million, more than three times its budget. The bridge’s designer is acclaimed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
The light rail line that the bridge will carry won’t be ready for another two years, but the city will inaugurate the bridge in a ceremony Wednesday night attended by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The event, which will cost nearly $600,000 and include fireworks, singers and acrobats, has also drawn criticism for its cost in a city that ranks as Israel’s poorest.
Finally, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers urged the inauguration to be canceled when news emerged that a Palestinian subcontractor for the project employed workers during the Jewish Sabbath, when observant Jews do not work.
“The municipality was stunned to discover this week that a subcontractor from East Jerusalem … carried out surfacing work at the bridge’s plaza before the end of Shabbat (Sabbath)” the city said in a statement.
The subcontractor was fired.
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A settlement by any other name.
The rest of the world considers Ramat Shlomo a settlement. Condoleezza Rice labeled it so last week on her sixth trip to Jerusalem.
“Look it’s a problem, and it’s a problem that we’re going to address with the Israelis,” she told reporters, referring to newly announced plans to add 1,300 apartments in Ramat Shlomo. “This is obviously a road map obligation that is not being met,” she continued, referring to Israel’s pledge to freeze settlement expansion.
Most Israelis consider Ramat Shlomo to be a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem. Its 20,000 residents, all of whom are ultra-Orthodox, do not call themselves settlers, Ezra Berger, executive director of the Ramat Shlomo community council, told me on Tuesday.
Families average seven to eight children he said, and residents have been forced to subdivide homes to accommodate the growing families. Where to put them all?
“It bothered us a lot,” Berger said of Rice’s comments. “We feel it’s a mistaken view. She was misled because we’re actually a part of Jerusalem.”
Ramat Shlomo was built in 1996 on land annexed by Israel and incorporated as part of Jerusalem after the 1967 war. The annexation has not been recognized by the international community.
Ramat Shlomo looks like Jerusalem. Apartment buildings are made of white “Jerusalem stone” and trees shade well-kept sidewalks. Furthermost homes are roughly 200 yards from the Palestinian village of Shuafat, which was also annexed as part of Jerusalem.
Palestinians consider continued Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be an obstacle to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Much of the world considers Jewish settlements there to be a violation of international law.
“It’s always good to complain,” Berger said of Palestinian objections to the expansion. “(But) I don’t feel it’s a real problem because we’re not going to be expanding toward the Arabs.”
Construction plans will go forward, he said. The first new homes will be available in two years.
Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, returned home with no progress to report in the negotiations.
In a telling sign of how seriously Israelis view her peace mission — President Bush is pushing for a breakthrough before the end of his term — the two largest Israeli newspapers did not cover her visit.
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E-mailing New Rome.
When I walked through the anteroom and into the office of the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, it was as I had imagined: richly colored Persian carpets, walls paneled with dark wood and bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes. From a desk cluttered with stacks of papers at the far end of the room, he walked toward me and I froze.
What was it I was supposed to call him?
“Hello, His Holiness. — Your Holiness,” I said. He smiled, extended his hand and gave me a hearty shake.
He first offered coffee, which I accepted. Turkish or Espresso?
For a brief moment, I considered which might be preferable in this beleaguered redoubt of Greek Christianity in the capital of Muslim Turkey.
Perhaps His Holiness eschews anything called Turkish.
Espresso, I said. In truth, that’s what I wanted.
I was there last week for a story on Coca Cola’s new CEO who is Turkish and Muslim but struck up a friendship with His Holiness.
If only more Turkish politicians were as neutral and humanistic as my profile subject, His Holiness said.
Conversation turned to the future of Turkey’s ethnic Greek citizens. He put their numbers, somewhat optimistically, at “four or five thousand.” Even so, I figured the largest concentration must be working for him in his office compound, adjacent the Church of St. George, which was damaged in a bomb attack in 1997.
He seemed lonely.
Who would replace his Holiness, who is 68, if Turkish law requires the patriarch to be a Turkish citizen?
“We have sent a message requesting a change to this law, but have not received a response,” he said.
He was quick to assert his own Turkish credentials. “I served in the Turkish army,” he explained.
He lamented that his title, the Archbishop of Constantinople, rankled some Turks since the city long ago was renamed after the Ottomans conquered it. “It’s just a title,” he said, and in any case, it would never be changed.
He gave me his new book, “Encountering The Mystery; Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today.” I asked him to inscribe it, which he did.
As I left, he offered me a chocolate and asked if I could send him a copy of my article once it is published.
“Of course,” I told him, and suggested he might prefer I e-mail it.
He turned toward a bookcase. “One moment,” he said, and flipped through a book, finally stopping at a page with a Web site address. Pointing to it, he asked, “Is this the e-mail address?” No, that’s not the one, I said.
There was one monk who knew the e-mail address, he told me, and on my way out, we would see if he was in his room. He was not.
“I don’t know much about technology,” he explained, a little embarrassed.
I Googled His Holiness and found his e-mail address, so I’ll e-mail the article first and wait for a response.
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Burying a Jerusalem grande dame.
The American Colony Hotel is one of Jerusalem’s oldest and finest. But it is best known for not taking sides in a city that, despite its reunification more than 40 years ago, is still very divided.
The hotel is a favorite of diplomats and foreign correspondents, and has been the site of secret meetings between Israelis and Palestinians over the years.
The longtime owner, who lived in an apartment at the hotel and was well known to guests for her sharp wit, died last week. Valentine Vester, who was 96, was laid to rest today on Mount Scopus next to the grave of her husband, Horatio Vester, who died in 1985.
The British couple moved to Jerusalem in 1963 after Horatio inherited the hotel, a former Ottoman pasha’s palace that was purchased by his grandparents in 1896 as a hostel for pilgrims.
The hotel is situated just a block from the seam between East and West, and Val Vester was famous for her neutrality.
The attendees at her burial were evidence of that: there were Jewish skullcaps beside Muslim head scarves.
Eulogies recalled her fondness for Yorkshire tea and a good laugh. She was also remembered as an “influential and talented gardener.”
She transformed the hotel grounds to a proper British garden. There is no better place in Jerusalem to enjoy a gin and tonic — her favorite — on a summer evening.
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If you can’t join ‘em …
If you can’t beat ‘em, the saying goes, join ‘em.
In Turkey this week, the opposite seems to be true: If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.
Displeasure over the lengthy process to join the European Union has turned Turkish public opinion against membership in the EU, and attitudes have soured toward Europe in general.
So, it is no surprise that Turks have taken great pleasure in their national team’s performance in Euro 2008, a quadrennial soccer tournament unfolding this month.
After succumbing to Portugal, the Turkish side came from behind to defeat host Switzerland and the Czech Republic to advance to a quarterfinal match today against Croatia.
“For Turks, beating Europe at the club level or the national level is a matter of pride,” sports columnist Gurtay Kipcak told me. “You underestimate us? What do you have to say now?”
Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Turkey’s success, and the participation of ethnic Turks on European teams, “proof of inseparability of the Turkish and European people,” according to the Turkish Daily News.
He went on to describe the Turkish team as “the sine qua non, the color, the glow, the success of the European Cup.”
Erdogan has traveled to Vienna for today’s game, along with much of official Ankara.
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Khirbet al-lawz was a Palestinian village.
Today, Khirbet al-lawz is a ruin of toppled stone walls overgrown with carob and almond trees.
Abu Ghazi Shakla was born there, and he returned the other day with his son, Ghazi Shakla, and about 30 Israelis, mostly Jews, who erected signs that read, in Arabic, Hebrew and English: “Khirbet al-lawz was a Palestinian village,” and the date its occupants became refugees: June 7, 1948.
The hillside village, once home to 450 people, located outside Jerusalem, is one of more than 400 Palestinian villages that Israel destroyed during and after the 1948 war.
The Israeli group, Zochrot — remembering, in Hebrew — has erected signs marking 25 former Palestinian villages in Israel in an effort to weave together the Palestinian and Israeli narratives of 1948 — the birth of the modern state of Israel and the birth of Palestinian refugee population.
Most of those signs have later been removed anonymously, organizers said.
Abu Ghazi, who is 73 or 74 years old, picked his way through the tumbled stones and found the home where he was born. The group erected a sign that said: “Hassan ‘Ata Allah’s home.” Hassan was Abu Ghazi’s father.
Most of the families from Khirbet al-lawz, which means ruin of almonds in Arabic, live in the West Bank or Jordan. Abu Ghazi lives in a refugee camp in the West Bank and his son married a Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship. They live nearby and visit the village ruins — public land designated with hiking trails — with their seven children about every month.
“We sit and drink coffee and eat seeds,” Ghazi said. “Three weeks ago, I smoked nargileh here,” referring to the flavored tobacco water pipe. “They don’t want us to remember anything here, so they destroyed everything.”
“One day we will return. This is our land. We must return,” Ghazi told me, repeating a mantra that has become so often repeated — and not fulfilled — over 60 years it is by now hackneyed and nearly stripped of meaning.
Abu Ghazi was mostly silent during the tour of his former home. One of the organizers of the outing held a microphone to his face and asked him if he thought he would ever return.
Hunched with age, standing where the front door had been, his eyes were fixed straight ahead, without seeming to focus.
“Inshallah,” he said, barely audible. God willing.
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Hebrew spoken here.
A new bill before the Knesset would designate Hebrew as the primary official language of Israel, and Arabic, English and Russian as secondary official languages.
“There are too many people challenging the very idea of the legitimacy of Israel being a Jewish state,” Yuli Edelstein, a member of the Knesset, said by telephone Thursday. “So, it’s important to make a statement that Hebrew is the official language.”
Arabic shares equal status with Hebrew as an official language of Israel, a holdover from a 1922 law enacted during the British Mandate of Palestine.
Often, English is a de-facto third official language. All three appear on Israeli currency and street signs. And in many parts of the country, Russian is widely used, as 20 percent of Israelis speak Russian as a first language.
Edelstein, of the conservative Likud party, as well as three others, from a spectrum of center-right parties, introduced the legislation last month. They are awaiting a government response and then will schedule a preliminary reading.
Official signs, ceremonies, public documents and announcements would be in Hebrew only, with the exception of areas where more than half the population speaks one of the secondary languages, in which case the secondary language would also be used.
Critics of the bill say it would further marginalize Israel’s Arab minority. Some 1.45 million, or roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population, are Arab, although most speak Hebrew fluently.
And what about those visitors who rely on Latin transliterations to navigate Israel’s roads?
“I can promise you that the authors of this legislation will make sure no one gets lost,” Edelstein said.
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A Jewish holiday, mortar-free …
Kfar Aza was mostly empty during the normally festive holiday of Shavuot.
Busloads of kibbutzniks fled the threat of mortar fire from the nearby Gaza Strip — resident Jimmy Kedoshim was killed by a strike last month — and spent Sunday night and Monday as guests of two kibbutzim far from Gaza.
“For us it was really relaxing,” said Shontal Kaner, “to see our children happy and free, without worrying if they go outside.”
Kaner, who has lived at Kfar Aza for 26 years, took a three and half-hour bus ride with about 65 others from the kibbutz to Degania Alef, just south of the Sea of Galilee.
Shavuot marks the day the Torah was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.
Among secular Israelis, Shavuot is a celebration of the first grain harvest. Families prepare vegetarian feasts, which typically include dairy foods, such as cheesecakes and blintzes.
“They opened their hearts to us,” Kaner said of their kibbutz brethren. It was the second year Degania Alef has hosted residents of Kfar Aza. “We don’t want this tradition. We want to invite them to our kibbutz someday.”
She spoke during a farewell gathering of singing traditional Israeli songs, before they left for their embattled home.
“We are afraid,” she said. “We don’t want to live by the noise of the missiles.” Her son’s bar mitzvah celebration last week was interrupted by a mortar blast, she said. No one was hurt.
“We want peace. Peace is the most important thing,” she said. “I want to continue my life as before.”
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Middle East peace park: an oxymoron?
But for the past 60 years, the confluence of the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers has been an emblem of conflict.
In 1948, fighters from nearby kibbutzim repelled Arab forces, and since then the river has been a boundary between wary neighbors. In 1997, three years after Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty, a Jordanian soldier shot and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting the area known as nahareim in Hebrew and naharain in Arabic — two rivers.
A group of Jordanians and Israelis is hoping to rehabilitate the area through a bold concept in the Middle East: a bi-national peace park.
Under a plan that could start taking shape as early as next year, the area on both sides of the rivers — part agricultural, part closed military area — would become open to people, passport-free, entering from Israel and Jordan.
The archeological sites and other structures would be refurbished — including an early 20th-century hydroelectric dam as a visitors’ center — and a wetlands would be restored to attract migratory birds and bird-watchers.
“It’s absolutely critical to the peace process,” said Luis Moreno, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. “This project doesn’t have a downside, at least I can’t see a downside.”
The Jordan River Peace Park would cost $14 million over 25 years. Proponents will be seeking official approval from the two countries in the coming months.
Regional leaders from both sides have signed onto the plan, and were present at a recent meeting in Jerusalem to discuss the initiative — except for Ali Hussein Ali Alagi, mayor of the Jordanian village, Muaz bin Jabal. He was denied an entry visa by Israeli authorities.
Further proof, participants said, of the need for a peace park.
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Pulling weeds from Schindler’s grave.
When Yaakov Broder, 52, was a boy in Haifa, the man who saved his father, Mordechai, 87, came to visit every year.
The man’s name was Oskar Schindler, made famous, posthumously, by the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie, Schindler’s List. The German industrialist is credited with saving 1,200 Polish and Czech Jews by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories during World War II.
Broder came to view Schindler as a grandfather he never had. His grandparents were all killed in the Holocaust before he was born.
The other day, Broder visited the grave and was surprised at the weeds that had grown up around it. “I was shocked by the way it was kept,” he said by phone today.
Broder contacted Israeli media, which widely reported two days ago that the gravesite was unkempt.
Today, a cemetery caretaker was pulling weeds from adjacent graves, having already tidied the Schindler grave, careful to keep the stones visitors had placed on top — a Jewish tradition that is extended to Schindler even though he was Christian.
“We cleaned it,” the man said in Arabic, “because of all of the visitors coming to see it.”
I was the lone visitor to the cemetery for 20 minutes on Wednesday morning.
Tourists and ultra-orthodox Jewish men hurried past the cemetery entrance on their way through Zion Gate, into the Old City.
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Where’s the dollar menu?
The Economist magazine publishes an annual Big Mac Index. In its most recent index, last July, Iceland’s Big Mac was most expensive at $7.61. China’s was least expensive at $1.45.
Israel didn’t make the list (we’re not sure why, as they’ve been serving the Big Mac here since 1993), but if it is included this year, it might find itself offering one of the costliest Big Macs.
A Big Mac in Israel costs 16 shekels, or $4.88, using today’s exchange rate of 3.28 New Israeli Shekels per U.S. Dollar.
If you compare that with last year’s Big Mac index, Israel would rank fifth most expensive.
As the value of the dollar continues to plummet here, the Israeli Big Mac rises. On Friday, the dollar hit an 11-year low against the shekel. (It has reversed course ever so slightly since then.)
Since the beginning of the year, the shekel has gained 15 percent against the dollar, thanks to a robust Israeli economy and the dollar’s worldwide slump.
A Big Mac extra value meal — without the cheese at kosher McDonald’s locations — runs you $9.45.
The other day, I stopped at a McDonald’s and ordered a nine-piece chicken nugget extra value meal. That set me back $14.39.
An extra hot mustard sauce?
That’ll be another 15 cents.