My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (41 page)

For eighteen years the Zionist commune of Hulda and the Palestinian village of Hulda lived side by side. The utopia-building pioneers and the tradition-bound villagers were good neighbors. But when hostilities erupted after the 1947 UN partition plan, things changed. On March 31, 1948, Arabs attacked a Hulda convoy wending its way to a besieged Jerusalem, killing twenty-two passengers. Ben Gurion decided enough was enough. Six weeks before declaring the establishment of the State of Israel, its would-be founder decided that the Jews must go on the offensive and conquer the Arab villages along the road to Jerusalem. On April 6, 1948, just after 2:00
A.M
., the soldiers of the first-ever Zionist battalion left Kibbutz Hulda, crossed the Herzl forest, and attacked the Arab village of Hulda. By 4:00
A.M
. the village was conquered. Its inhabitants fled, and within weeks its houses were demolished and its fields were pillaged. Much of the land of the Palestinian village of Hulda was transferred to the kibbutz.

Forty-five years later, I traveled with Palestinian refugees through Israel. In April 1993, as the secretive peace process was under way in Norway, I brought Jamal Munheir back to Hulda. I had been looking for the Hulda refugee throughout the West Bank and finally found him. The seventy-year-old Palestinian remembered his village as if he had just left it. He never suspected anything, he told me. How could he have suspected? Throughout the years he watched his Jewish neighbors, first with suspicion, then with wonder, and then with admiration. He saw them arrive as pale and poor Jews from Russia and saw them grow stronger and take root and turn their olive grove into a piece of paradise. They learned to grow wheat, tend sheep, and press olives for oil. And from his broad field, which bordered on theirs, he sensed that his
new neighbors were decent and hardworking. Although their ways were peculiar and their women were half-naked and they had a communal arrangement that did not allow a man to own his own property, they had devotion. Although they were not God-fearing, they were respectful. The kibbutzniks stood by courteously and patiently as the Palestinian girls drew water from the deep old well that the village shared with the commune. And they would visit the village guesthouse, the
madaffa
, and they invited the villagers to visit their own communal dining hall. They bought vegetables from the villagers and supplied them with medicine and medical assistance. Jamal did business with his neighbors, too. And at night he would sit with the Arabic-speaking field guard, Aharon. Aharon would tell Jamal the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Jamal would tell Aharon ancient stories of demons. They would sit silently by the fire, sipping strong black coffee from small cups and listening to the distant sounds from surrounding villages, where jackals were howling into the great night.

But then, in April 1948, a Jewish army positioned a mortar by the deep old well and began to bombard the village. And the Jewish soldiers came up the path the girls used to walk with earthenware jugs of water balanced on their heads. And there was machine gun fire all over the village. Jamal Munheir took his old mother and put her on a camel and escaped with his family to Dayr Muhaysin. And when Dayr Muhaysin was attacked, on the very next day, he escaped with his mother and family to Abu Shusha. And two weeks later he watched from Abu Shusha as bulldozers razed his family’s homes in Hulda. He watched as a vast cloud of white dust rose over the village he was born in and his father was born in and his grandfather was born in.

A month later, the Jews reached Abu Shusha, and Jamal Munheir escaped to Al Qubab. From Al Qubab he escaped to Ein Ariq, and from Ein Ariq to Yatta, from Yatta to Amman, and then back to Yatta. To this day he is a penniless refugee in the West Bank village of Yatta, on the outskirts of Hebron.

But during all those wanderings and during all those years, Jamal told me, he never forgot Hulda. So when I drove him in my car over the dirt road to Hulda in the spring of 1993, he smiled a wide child’s smile and murmured: Hulda, Hulda. Nothing in the world like the soil of Hulda. He took me to the site where the threshing floor for the grain
harvest had been, to the pile of rubble that was once his aunt’s house, to the pile of rubble that was once his uncle’s house, and to the pile of rubble that was once his own house. He told me he didn’t know how to say what’s in his heart. Only God knows. Only Allah himself. For there is no place in the world but this place. There isn’t and there won’t be any other place. This is Jamal Munheir’s one and only place in the world.

From the ruins of the village we drove to the Herzl forest, and I parked by the Herzl House. As we sat under the old pine trees, a gentle wind rose and caressed our faces. All around us was the forest’s silence. Jamal raised his hand and pointed to the sea of land in front of us and said, “This is my plot. This is my land. These are the hundreds of dunams of the Munheir family.”

“You were a rich man,” I said. Immediately, I realized I have made a terrible mistake. Jamal erupted, “My heart burns when I come here. I go crazy when I come here. We were respected people. Englishmen and Jews and Arabs listened to us. Our words carried weight. But today, who are we, what are we? Beggars. No one listens to us. No one respects us. We, who owned all this land, don’t even have one grain of wheat. Only a UNRWA refugee certificate.”

He went silent. Under the old pine trees the only sound was that of my small tape recorder recording the silence. Until Jamal turned to me again, crying, saying that from the beginning of time his forefathers lived here and died here and were buried here. They plowed this plot of land for hundreds of years. From this old well they drew water for generations. Until the Jews came to Hulda and wiped out the Munheir family. Until the Jews conquered and pillaged Hulda. “Where is Rasheed?” Jamal cried. “And where is Mahmoud, and where are all the village people? Where is our Hulda?”

Of all the houses in the village of Hulda, only the
madaffa
guesthouse remains. Small and charming, it still stands at the top of the southern hill, commanding breathtaking scenery. Its black basalt stones are solid, its roof flat, its windows arched. Today, it is used as a sculptor’s workshop and is surrounded by a sculpture garden. As I approach the building, nearly twenty years after I was here with Jamal Munheir, the sound of sirens breaks the quiet. It is spring again—and it is Israel’s Memorial
Day. The sirens engulfing me are the sirens of memory. So I stand at attention facing the
madaffa
. In the howling sirens, I see the vanished village of Hulda.

In the two decades that have passed since Jamal Munheir led me through his Hulda, the remains of the village were obliterated. Nothing is left now but the
madaffa
, carob trees, a few hedgerows of prickly pear cactus, the remaining wall of a house, another wall, a pile of rubble. The Palestinian village of Hulda was succeeded by the Israeli kibbutz of Mishmar David. In recent years Mishmar David fell on hard times and ceased to be a kibbutz. So now the kibbutz that succeeded the village is gone, too. It is being replaced by an upper-middle-class community of Israel’s new bourgeoisie. A giant bulldozer razes one of the kibbutz’s old egalitarian homes. Arab workmen build villas for Jews on what used to be an Arab village, on what used to be Jamal Munheir’s home and land.

This time I am on my own, but I make the exact same journey I made with Jamal years ago. I drive to the Herzl forest and park by the Herzl House and walk among the old pine trees. There is the same silence here, the same gentle wind.

First I walk up the external stairs of the colonial Herzl House to the second-story porch. I look out at the forest and think of the solace that the forest was to have been for the Jews. Then I go on to the statue commemorating a well-known guard who fell here while defending the forest and the house in 1929. Then I go out of the forest and walk down the path that separated the Hulda commune’s olive tree grove from Jamal Munheir’s wheat fields. It is one of the most beautiful paths in the Plain of Judea. On each side of it is a sad row of tall palm trees marching into the horizon. The wind is soft, the skies are a constable blue. The silhouettes of the Hulda kibbutz are to my left, the silhouette of the vanished Arab Hulda to my right.

Hulda is part of my own biography. As a child I came to this forest on winter weekends to forage for mushrooms. As an adolescent I rode my bike here with my friends, looking for adventure. As a soldier on leave I brought girlfriends here in my father’s car. Later, as a peace activist, I came to Hulda in my red VW Beetle in order to drive Amos Oz to Peace Now demonstrations. But since my visit here with Jamal Munheir in the spring of 1993, Hulda has changed for me. My homeland has changed for me. Peace has changed, too. I realize now why Israel’s
peaceniks live against occupation. I understand now what brilliant use we WASPs make of the conflict’s present in order to protect ourselves from the unbearable implications of the conflict’s past. For we must protect ourselves from our past and our deeds and from Jamal Munheir. We concentrate on the occupation so that we can justify to ourselves the magnificent vineyard that stands in the midst of Hulda like some proof of wrongdoing.

Planted in 1999, the Hulda vineyard is now one of the largest in the country. Six different varieties of grapes grow here, including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sauvignon Blanc. The vineyard is well tended and thriving, and at the end of every row blooms a bush of pink roses.

Rows 1 through 190 of the vineyard are Hulda West. Here, between the kibbutz and the path, stood the Zionist olive grove. Rows 191 through 285 are Hulda East. Here, between the path and the well, lay Jamal Munheir’s wheat field. Good earth, bad earth. Earth shifting under our feet.

I go down to the wadi. The deep water well is now blocked up. I find the square pool into which the well water was drawn. I walk up the path the Palestinian girls used to walk with earthenware jugs on their heads. I walk up the path that the Israeli soldiers climbed, under the cover of the three-inch shells that the mortar positioned by the well shot at the village. I stand once again atop the village hill, scanning the Hulda Valley. Two miles away is the yellow summit of Tel Gezer by which Herbert Bentwich settled nearly a century ago. A mile and a half away are the gray ruins of Abu Shusha, where in 1940, Yosef Weitz came to the conclusion that in order to survive, Zionism would have to cleanse the land of its native Arab inhabitants. And here is the kibbutz of Hulda rising forth from the fields. The Herzl forest, the Herzl House, the well. The Hulda vineyard. The two rows of sad palm trees marching into the horizon.

It’s Hulda, stupid. Not Ofra, but Hulda, I tell myself. Ofra was a mistake, an aberration, insanity. But in principle, Ofra may have a solution. Hulda is the crux of the matter. Hulda is what the conflict is really about. And Hulda has no solution. Hulda is our fate.

Our side is clear. Kibbutz Hulda’s intentions were not malevolent. It
did not wish to dominate. It did not seek to exploit or dispossess or supplant. All the Hulda pioneers wanted was to form an intimate community. Their dream was to gather a family of forty or fifty free individuals who would work the land in partnership and equality and commune with nature and thereby prove that it was possible to cure the disease inflicted on the Jewish people by Diaspora life. They sought to offer a way out of modern man’s crisis of alienation and subjugation to the machine and plant in the soil of Hulda a new beginning of harmony and justice and peace.

Could we
not
have come to Hulda? And then, when war came, could we
not
have fought for our lives in Hulda? Could we
not
have sent our soldiers to conquer the neighboring Arab village of Hulda? Could we
not
have taken the village’s houses and fields? Could we
not
have hardened our hearts and treated our neighbors brutally and brought calamity upon them?

Their side, too, is clear. Could they
not
have protested our penetration into their valley? Could they
not
have attacked and burned and destroyed our colonial agricultural farm? And then, a generation later, could they have prevented the brutal attack on the Hulda convoy that was part of an inevitable war? And after their catastrophe could they
not
have hated us for conquering their village and taking their fields and sending them into exile? And can this hatred ever be overcome? Can the Palestinians be expected to give up the demand to see justice done for the village of Hulda? Can anyone expect the children and grandchildren of Jamal Munheir ever to accept the fact that we build houses on their ruined homes and grow six varieties of grapes in their pillaged fields?

What is needed to make peace between the two peoples of this land is probably more than humans can summon. They will not give up their demand for what they see as justice. We shall not give up our life. Arab Hulda and Jewish Hulda cannot really see each other and recognize each other and make peace. Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, Ze’ev Sternhell, Menachem Brinker, Avishai Margalit, and Amos Oz put up a courageous fight against the folly of the occupation and did all they could do to bring about peace. But at the end of the day, they could not look Jamal Munheir in the eye. They could not see Hulda as it is. For the most benign reasons, their promise of peace was false.

The one Israeli leader who saw with cruel clarity what I now see in Hulda was Moshe Dayan. In 1956, at the funeral of the young security officer Roy Rotenberg, who fell patrolling the Israeli-Gaza border, Israel’s then chief of staff said the most sincere words ever spoken about the conflict: