The other side

Nothing's wrong

Canadian teenager with gun, Tel Aviv, taking part in a Birthright Israel tour

Jericho. Mount of Temptation. Forty days for Jesus on these rocks. Today, I'm riding the cable car. Me and Khaled, Jamilah and Abdullah, our guide. Last sun shreds the black sky as we descend. Jamilah and Khaled steal a kiss.

Rockets are falling. Jamilah's mother calls. She is crying. Come home, come home.

We stop at the checkpoint outside Jericho, going into Israel. Khaled is driving, I'm with Abdullah in the back. A soldier looms into the window. Khaled winds it down and hands over his blue ID. The soldier takes it, looking slowly into the car. 'Where are you all from?'

'Yafo - she's English.' Abudullah takes my passport and gives it to the soldier, who pages through.

Silence. We sit there. Jamilah straightens her hair.

'Get out of the car.' The soldier points to a lay-by. 'Over there.'

Everyone gets out except me. I can't move the seat forwards. I'm trying to get out and another soldier with dark brown eyes, about 19, looks in. 'Where are you from?'

'London.' I'm still trying to move the seat. 

'Do it.' The soldier indicates to Abdullah.

I get out. We stand. Soldiers pace around the car and look inside. There are five of them, armed.

'What's in there? Open the back,' one of them says to Khaled, as if to a dog. He's nervous, Khaled, I can tell from the way he's trying to open the boot, small by the soldier's bulked-up green. It opens, then falls back shut - Khaled fetches a stick to make it stay. 'What - you've come to hit me?' the soldier sneers. 

Abdullah is pacing. His chest expands as if about to explode. 

'Look relaxed,' Jamilah says. 

'Come this way,' a tall blond soldier tells me. Shit. I go.

'What are you doing here?' he says in English.

'I'm doing a photography project in Jaffa and she - I motion to Jamilah - is my student.'

'She's your student?'

'Yes.'

The blond is translating for the brown-eyed soldier, who seems to be his superior. 'She's the teacher. They're doing a project in Yafo,' he says.

'Yes,' I hurry on, 'photography - we're doing a project.' 

'And everything's OK? You're all right?'

'Fine, fine.'

The soldier looks at me for a moment, then over at the others by the car.

'Nothing's wrong? Are you sure?'

'I'm fine.'

'OK. You can go.' He hands me my passport. 'Sorry... Sorry for the questions,' he says.

We refuse to be enemies

Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies, the placard reads. 

An anti-war march, Saturday, through the streets of Tel Aviv. Pro-war shouters collect like flies along the side of the route - the Magav keeps them surrounded, but sometimes they're a nose-distance away, fist-thrashing and enraged. We move from Rabin Square along Ibn Gvirol to the Cinemateque, Arab and Jewish Israelis, side-by-side. Stop the killing. We want a different future for our peoples - a future of peace, we chant.

Sometimes an Arab teenager has to be restrained by friends as the mob on the sidelines provokes, with a Death to the Arabs! or Your mother is a whore! Hadash party stewards stand between the groups, trying to keep them apart.

By the Cinemateque square, crowds of pro-war demonstrators are baying to be let in. But the Magav won't allow them near us. They're not even letting the residents through - 'I have to go, I live there,' argues a woman in a black winter coat.

Two teenage girls who've been sitting on the Cinemateque steps suddenly burst into a chant: It's our country! It's our country! Somehow, they managed to slip through. Within seconds, a group of Arab boys confronts them, only feet away. Police hustle the girls, modesty protected by skirts over trousers, out of the square.

It's dark. It's getting late. People are standing around, and a crowd wrapped in Israeli flags has gathered at the top of the street. It feels ugly but the police hold them at bay.

'What's going to happen now?' I ask Uri. 'Oh probably a few beatings and then everyone will go home,' he says.

We walk through the side streets, away from the march. Men are running towards it, shouting, leaping and waving Israeli flags. Uri zips up his jacket, covering the Hadash logo on his vest. A bald-headed guy in a white T-shirt comes at us, punching the air. 'We have only one country!' he shouts. 

* Watch the march here - as filmed by Lisa

Nobody says a thing

On the bus it’s not like usual, no one talks. They’re all just staring straight ahead. 

In a seat by the aisle, a black woman with a headscarf wound to her scalp. Fine features, a long, religious skirt. Opposite, a blue-blonde Russian girl looking out of the window with empty eyes. Her rose wool dress, the one she chose this morning, outlines her thighs. Music plays – the driver’s – but nobody says a thing.

‘Shelach–is that yours?’

A crushed chocolate milk carton rolls past my foot. I look up. Is that yours? – an old man, maybe 60, wants to know. His brown, furrowed face buries exhausted granite eyes.

Everyone’s waiting. Nobody says a thing.

He has a kippa, the man – it’s black – he’s almost crouching in his seat. Who, he wants to know, has dumped their carton on the floor? His shelach? hovers, then drops like rock into a pool.

My eyes meet his, I just look back. Nobody says a thing.

Protest in Tel Aviv

Enough! War Crimes, reads the placard. Arab and Jewish Israelis protest the Gaza bombings, Saturday, outside the Ministry of Defence, Tel Aviv. Right, veteran Jewish activist, Yakov Manor.

Palestinian Israelis protest.

Yasam, police special patrol unit, and demonstrators.

Capitalist government will not bring security: Trotskyite group Ma'avak Sotzialisti – ‘Socialist Struggle’

Lift the siege on Gaza, reads the placard, centre. Right, in Hebrew: The Israeli government is guilty of war crimes. Arabic, foreground: Stop the bloodshed. Gaza won't bow down.

Enough of the massacre on Gaza (placard, right): members of Marxist party Da’am. The sign in the background says: Solidarity with the families of Sderot, Ashkelon and Gaza.

Too much death

We are in Tel Aviv and it’s late. Jabali takes me to this ace burger place where they do really good meat. We’ve just been in Shesek drinking vodka and listening to grubby soul.

‘Which burger do you want?’ the waitress asks. I just want the quickest one. I want the one that’s ready now. It’s been about eight hours and food is on my mind.

As we wait for the burger to fry, the big man at our side – this bar is full only of men – starts to talk. And I want to take his picture so I do.

‘The other day,’ he says, ‘a woman half your size came in here and ordered the maximum burger. She put it all away. I don’t know where. And her man – he was bigger than you – had only the small. You know what I said? I told him, it’s clear who wears the trousers in your house.’

My burger arrives. Raphael, for that is the man’s name, wants to see the pictures that I took.

‘That’s not good. I could do better with my phone,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

‘I’m a photographer,’ I say. ‘Working in Jaffa with Sadaka Reut.’

He looks blank.

‘It’s an Arab-Jewish partnership.’

The waitress snakes her eyes.

‘A what?’

‘A-rab Jew-ish partnership.’ I spell it out.

It’s like the moment when someone says ‘I’m gay’ at the family Christmas in front of all the aunts.

But then Raphael circles one huge arm, stands in front of his chair and shouts, ‘I believe in that! That is good! You know what – this land doesn’t belong to anybody just because God says. Not this one. Not that one. We all come from our mother's womb.’

We are listening.

‘This land belongs to all of us. I’ve seen too much death already!’ he shouts.

Tel Aviv, August 2007

Graffiti on Levontin

They can do yoga too

At Yoga in Gan Haheshmal I tell a funky dark classmate who’s sitting on the sofa next to me that I went to Bethlehem yesterday.

‘They’re totally trapped there. They can’t do anything, go anywhere,’ I say.

He listens. He has square glasses. The kind that are ugly, but ironically so, like a reference to a 60s newscaster or something.

‘I mean it’s so sad,’ I blunder on. ‘Two places so close together but so far apart, so utterly different.’ Struggling to translate Bethlehem to Tel Aviv, I settle, rather inadeqately, on: ‘We’re here today doing yoga – it seems ridiculous when you think of what they’re going through.’

The centre has perfect blue and lilac cushions and music playing softly so we can relax after class. Cookies and tea are served.

My classmate thinks for a minute. He must be imagining the life of people in Bethlehem. Empathy after the deep spirituality of of our class.

'They can do yoga too,' he says.

What kind of a name is Leila?

Coming back to Israel, the first thing I notice is the beautiful Israeli women - welcoming us at the check-in, serving drinks on the plane. The uncalculated warmth of their smiles, their ease. I also notice the eyes of the man who security checks me at Zone P, Heathrow, for El Al. They are a deep black. I left tired of such eyes; I return grateful.

He questions me closely, for rather too long. Was it necessary, exactly, to establish where I live in London, where I grew up, and the fact that I will be staying alone in my flat in Jaffa?

Something inside me switches on. But it is tempered this time with patience born of rest. Frustration, I imagine, will build again soon.

Last time I left Israel, they detained me for a full luggage and body search at Tel Aviv. Why? Because I have an Arab name and because I was tired and feisty, wound up by my struggle to assimilate the pain of Israeli society, mostly unspoken, but lapping constantly at its edge.

So this is how it went:

‘What kind of a name is Leila?’ (young Israeli security woman to me)

‘It’s Arabic.’

‘Why do you have a name like that?’

I refrain from answering, oh, because I’m a terrorist. In fact, I simply refrain from answering at all, so she repeats the question: why do you have an Arabic name?

‘Why do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stares at me.

‘Because,’ I say, ‘my mother gave it to me.’

Of course I am pulled aside. The senior guy comes along, takes all my documents: how long have I been here? Why? Etc. ‘Segal is a Jewish name,’ I point out. Whatever. Luggage taken apart, body searched and an escort to the plane.

‘What’s your reason for searching me?’ I ask the senior guy.

‘I don’t need a reason,’ he sneers.

Stupid and pointless of me not to play along. But an Arab does not get that choice: she’s a suspect no matter what.

It should take more than an Arab name to make a suspect. More, much more, than the stupidly obvious to raise suspicion. But we're not really talking suspicion here – it’s just another example of the casual contempt and disrespect many Jewish Israelis feel free to throw the Arabs’ way.

Know hope

Last night and today in Tel Aviv, thunderstorms with torrential rain: wet leaves, wet feet in blue sneakers, gunmetal sky. For a while now I've been looking at the graffitti - here are some pictures from between the rain:

Rehov Ahad ha'Am: The wall must fall

Be a good dissident

Create beautiful children - with the words 'an Arab' scratched out

Find your place in limbo

Am Yisrael Hai: the words in blue say: People of Israel, live. The red addition changes the meaning to The People of Israel are soldiers

 

Kahane was right

 

Know hope

 

The bubble

As Ido and I walk home from the cinema, through the same streets we saw filled with broken glass and bodies on the screen, I look at the teenagers sitting around for their Friday night fun: girls dressed up, boys handsome, bright and young, and I feel sad. How have they lived and grown here, in this sealed pressure cooker? How have they found any shred of happiness and peace within? And I know that Ido, too, grew here, became who he is in this cauldron.

I will always be different; I grew up in peace.

The Bubble – Ha'Bua, is the name of the film we saw. They say that Tel Avivis live in a bubble – to survive, you shut the conflict out of your mind. And some of us, depending on where we live, can do this pretty well. But living in Ha’Bua also means that while you feel safe, you really aren’t. Never are. Never can be. Only the illusion keeps life on its tracks.

We’ve reached Jaffa now, and finally there are Arabs, sitting with their families in laid-back groups, making barbecues on grassy banks above the shore. Women wade from the sea, fully dressed.

Ido is worried he shouldn’t have taken me to see this film so soon after my arrival. He asks if it was too much, showing as it did Tel Aviv ‘normality’ fragment and blow apart, with the eventual death of both main characters, Palestinian and Jew, in a suicide bomb.

But the film’s not too much at all. No – I needed to see Ha’Bua, to feel this kind of shock. So far, life here has been just as we saw at the start of the film: apparently conflict-free. Weird. I can’t see the conflict, though I’m closer than ever before. In London I was feeling it – seeing it, reading it, hearing it – all the time.

When I get home, I read about how a 12-year-old Jewish girl was kicked unconscious on a London bus, her attackers first asking whether she was a Jew. ‘I'm fully English,’ was her reply.

My heart weeps for us all – for the Palestinian father who sat silent with the loss of his child, ‘reassured’ by his son-in-law that she was a martyr, that revenge would come; for the gay man whose love for an Israeli could not stop him returning to Tel Aviv, his place of shelter, to kill with a suicide bomb; for the Jewish mother who held a reconciliation party at her school to which no one, neither Arab nor Jew, would come.

We are the brutality and suffering that is all around. If I am to live here, that reality must be in my present too.

The bubble (NY Times)

Screams ignored as girl, 12, is attacked