Behind the Grey Line, Part One

Last weekend I went on a trip to a kibbutz near the Dead Sea with some other program participants. My roommate's host family had invited anyone who wanted to make the journey to Kibbutz Beit Haarava for the weekend, with a great Purim party Friday night (I will write about Purim soon, but this is more interesting, I promise).

It took two buses to get to Beit Haarava--one from Ramla to Jerusalem and one from Jerusalem to Beit Haarava. Y (I'm using initials for privacy reasons), our host for the weekend, had sleeping bags and an empty house at the kibbutz available for us. He was incredibly welcoming--offered us snacks and home-brewed beer, and later drove us the 5 kilometers off of the kibbutz to the restaurant. Chatting with Y, he mentioned that we were in a settlement. A settlement. I'd crossed the Grey Line, and the barrier, without realizing it, because buses don't have to stop. I have extemely strong feelings about settlements, and none of them supportive. (For a rough concept of how I feel, see this article by Thomas Friedman.) Now here I was partying in Israeli-occupied Palestine. How's that for neutrality?

Beit Haarava is at the very north of the Dead Sea, near the King Abdullah Hussein/Alleny Bridge Crossing into Jordan. First settled in the late 1930s, Beit Haarava was abandoned in 1948 as too remote and difficult to protect. In 1967, the Grey Line was delineated around the West Bank, with Beit Haarava well within the Palestinian territory. In the 1980s, Nahal (a paramilitary and agricultural brigade) re-established the kibbutz as an outpost, and handed over to civilians in 1996. And then in 2000, the kibbutz was moved to its current location because of growth. Beit Haarava is one of the last remaining strongly socialist kibbutzim. Members give their salaries to the kibbutz, and in exchange everything that they need--food, clothing, education, healthcare, everything.

My assumption was that everyone living east of the Grey Line was a total nutjob--a super rightwinger who believed that the messiah would only come if Jews occupied all of biblical Israel. I learned that I was deeply wrong.

Y and his family moved to Beit Haarava 5 years ago, because the government offered considerable financial assistance--rent, salary, etc in exchange for them living on the kibbutz for four years. After those four years, Y and his wife had to make a decision--they had two twin boys, then age 2 1/2--and they wanted to live near Jerusalem, but not in the city, because they didn't want their children raised in a frightening and brutally capitalistic environment (I'm paraphrasing, but this is close to exactly what he said), so inside the city was not going to work (Plus, Jerusalem is very expensive). Living to the east, south, or north would require living amongst the aforementioned rightwingers, which was also not ideal. To the west of Jerusalem the social climate was more appealing, but because everyone who is not a rightwinger and wants to live near Jerusalem lives there, it's exorbitantly expensive. So Y and his family decided to join the kibbutz. They are now members, and his wife is pregnant yet again. Y is not a crazy rightwinger, he's quite liberal, and his wife is a social worker in Jerusalem. So there goes my stereotyped view of the West Bank.

That evening I decided to stay in because I was still processing the fact that I had unintentionally violated my own ethics and crossed into Israeli-controlled West Bank. This turned out to be for the best, because I found out that Sallie Moore, the luminous and wonderful woman who 'raised' (her term) my sister and I, passed away that afternoon (March 12th) at the age of 90. As some of you (namely Adrienne and my family) will remember, Sallie had a remarkably strong character and her compassion for others, love of reading, and low bullshit tolerance had a profound effect on both my childhood and my own personality.

(I will post more about the next day in Beit Haarava in a bit.)