Bethlehem was an experience in itself. The cowardice of the Israeli government really hit home as we were forced to travel in a bullet-proof bus while the Arabs could walk freely wherever they wanted. We had to wait in our bus, like caged animals, for a soldier to get on and an armed jeep to escort us through the town. We waited for more than an hour.
The whole thing amounted to a first-hand encounter with the bureaucratic stupidity of the Sharon regime. Moving us around with greater speed and convenience could have easily been accomplished. Why not have one bus go in under escort, drop off its load behind the barricaded walls, and then pick up a new load for its safe return back? But that, of course, would make too much sense. Instead, a bus is escorted in to drop off its load, is escorted back empty, and only when it has safely returned to Israel proper (which, mind you, is only a half-mile away) is another empty bus escorted in to pick up a new load.
We finally arrived at Kever Rachel and I saw the paroches that once draped over the tomb of Yosef haTzaddik, Rachel’s son. Before we gave Joseph’s Tomb to the PLO, we were able to sneak out its blood-stained and torn paroches from his kever. Once more the coat of Yosef was stained and torn. It was as if we hadn’t learned our lesson the first time. Rachel mevakah al banehah – Rachel cries on behalf of her children. Could that statement ever have been more true? She cries for the torn paroches of her son Yosef and for the innocent blood spilled at his tomb as well as at her own.
The question of WHY? resounded yet again. There must be a thread tying the past to the present.
We were then off to Hebron, passing through the tunnel that allows Jews to travel without being shot at from the Arab villages above. I saw the bullet holes in the shul in Gilo, where my friend?s mother lives. They too have to live behind bulletproof windows and doors. There is no need for a Jerusalem zoo, I thought to myself, if we are the ones living in cages.
We passed by the neighborhoods in the Gush and Yesha. Efrat on the left, Elazar on the right. We finally approached Hebron and came to a place that had trailers built on top of each other. We were told that this was the Admot Yishai neighborhood. Neighborhood? It was seven trailers stacked along and above each other. This was the place the whole world knows as Tel Romeida – the cause, according to international opinion, of the troubles and travails that plague Israel.
We entered the house of Bracha Ben-Yitzchak. She lives in a trailer with her husband and thirteen children. These children are not radicals. The Ben-Yitzchaks are not revolutionists or trouble-makers. They are a family just trying to live in a city they love. Outside the trailer, the children are playing blocks, ping-pong, and going on the slide or the swings.
Settlers? Rioters? Inciters? Just a regular family trying to live in peace! The world says they do not belong there, but if Israel were to remove them, would the bombing stop? They belong right where they are. I look up at the kitchen ceiling and see the holes from the bullets that daily come whizzing over their heads as they sit down to eat dinner as a family. They even joke about it among themselves as to which trailer has the HOLEiest kitchen.
