Fear and faith in a West Bank settlement Roughly 115,000 Jews live in 124 settlements in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of June 1967. For some, it is a dream come true, this life in the ancient land of Judea and Samaria. For others, it is a place where housing is relatively inexpensive or where jobs are available. For still others, the West Bank is a life of contradiction -- of community and isolation, of joy and heartache, of security and fear.
It is all these things and more for June Leavitt, who grew up on Long Island, N.Y., attended the University of Wisconsin and moved to Israel 15 years ago. A writer, she has published one novel, finished a second and is completing a third. She and her husband and their five children live in Kiryat Arba, the West Bank settlement adjacent to Hebron, where Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at prayer on February 25. Her diary begins nearly 18 months ago. The following excerpts reveal one view of life in a land of promise and peril.
OCT. 24, 1992. My mind ran over my life here in Kiryat Arba. Living in the "occupied territories," my two boys travel every day to Jerusalem, passing through hostile Arab villages on the way. My husband, Frank, travels in the opposite direction to Beersheba, where he teaches philosophy and coordinates a program in ethics for medical students, also passing through Arab cities. Daughter Estie travels twice a week to Jerusalem for ballet lessons. Joshua once a week for a program for gifted children.
And every trip, I worry until each one is home. Why do I worry?
Memories. My husband had his jaw and eye socket smashed with a large stone 3 1/2 years ago as he traveled. He lost consciousness and control of the car. A hitchhiker he had picked up managed to stop the car, but I will never forget that phone call.
"Mrs. Leavitt?" "Yes." "Your husband was injured near Bethlehem." "Injured?" "Yes. A rock. He's in the hospital. Can you please come?"
P.S. I didn't mention the gulf war, or Estie's Rocky Mountain spotted fever brought here by way of Kuwait, or maintaining a house with five children and a quarrelsome but loving husband.
Nor did I mention Israeli society. The sun shines three fourths of the year. People are outgoing. Noisy. Unreflective. Uncontemplative. Can a Jew be a light to the world here? Or does a Jew need the quiet and isolation of the so-called exile to be this light?
I am often asked, since the establishment of the State of Israel, how can a Jew live with himself if he lives in "exile"?
I add, how can a Jew of good faith, and higher sensibilities, live in this noisy, bureaucrat-ridden, problem-ridden, crowded, concrete, socialistic, outgoing, extroverted, communally minded, radio-ridden, television-ridden, fast, unthinking, dangerous, violent country?
OCT. 25, 1992. As I delved for the first time in a month into the writing ... (of my novel) I heard gunfire. The chop-chop of helicopters filled the sky; the sound of the military police ordering a curfew; the sound of Arabs defying it, rejoicing. Something had happened.
An Israeli soldier was shot and killed at the Cave of the Fathers. Another soldier was injured. This latest murder has brought out the brave Yeshiva boys who are now hollering and throwing stones at Arab traffic.
OCT. 26, 1992. In response to the deteriorating defense situation here in Hebron, the local council called a general strike, closing the schools. So I suppose after the prayers at the Cave of the Fathers, all the children will be on the streets celebrating this vacation.
What is wrong with Israel? The education system is struck every time one group or another wants to make a point. This in addition to the four months of Jewish holiday that close the schools and the half-day of learning every day. This is the people of the book? This is to be the light unto the nations?
This doesn't mean I'm not sad about each Israeli killed; I am.
Yes, life in Kiryat Arba and the territories has become a maze of terror. Soldiers are being shot and killed. We always know something happened when we hear the border police calling for a "curfew." Then the sirens. And the stones smashing against the buses.
With the wailing, beating winds on the lonely hilltops, there is such a sense of being forsaken, as if you are in a maze of terror. Dear God, please give me strength and show me everything will always be all right. Living in the valley of death is hard on the psyche.
DEC. 13, 1992. An Israeli border police officer was kidnapped.
DEC. 15, 1992. The police officer was found murdered by terrorists.
DEC. 16, 1992. Another man has disappeared. Only his car was found.
DEC. 17, 1992. This man, too, was found dead. A flash flood washed him away with the boulders.
FEB. 26, 1993. I no sooner thank God than I wonder if there is one. Wednesday afternoon at 3:30, Estie's best friend, Hava Waxberg, was in a terrible car accident when she was riding home from Jerusalem with her mother and brother. Her mother says Arabs threw stones, or she thought they did. There was a boom, and she rolled off the road. Hava was thrown from the back window, which had disintegrated, and the wheel of the car went into her head.
Hava is 11 years old. After 36 hours in the hospital, where she was kept alive by life-support systems, she died at 2:45 a.m.
My children have gone into trauma. After a day and a half of prayer in school and at home, this child, a beautiful, intelligent, talented girl who loved to dance and studied with my daughter, the only daughter of immigrant parents from Mexico, the leader of the class and the most popular girl in school, died before she had a chance to do very much in the world.
I was with her parents for five hours in the hospital, holding the mother and giving her hope. I also was allowed in to visit Hava, who was in a coma. I told her she would be late to ballet, that she overshadowed everyone in her class, even my own daughter, but no matter. She should come back to life and do it again.
FEB. 27, 1993. We went to Hava's funeral in Jerusalem yesterday and took all our children. This intimacy with death, the death of someone their own age, has shaken them to their foundations. We sat after the funeral from 1:30 to 10 at night, talking, crying, drifting off, each one into our own contemplations.
MARCH 1, 1993. Israel is wearing away my powers yet I am unable to move. My husband loves Israel, and my children are Israeli. And I won't leave them. Also, it is seen as a "bad thing" to think badly of Israel. So I think and feel things I feel bad about. If it isn't enough that I see Israel wearing me away, and I can't do anything about it, I also can't talk about it without hearing "Everything is from God. Can you run away from God like Jonah tried to do? God runs the show here. Your life is not your own."
If that's not enough ... there's the problem that I do believe in the Bible. "Now when the spies were sent out to spy on Israel, and they spoke badly about this country saying, `It's a land that eats its inhabitants,' their punishment was to die and not enter the land with the Jews."
The feeling here, aside from the trauma of Hava's sudden death, is anger against the Arabs. No one I know dares be angry at God. Yet if God does run the show here, as the people here believe, then he is using the Arabs to kill the Jews.
MARCH 2, 1993. Bitterness causes illness. Yes, I am bitter. This land quakes. Yesterday, an Arab went on a rampage in Tel Aviv, killing several people and injuring eight others, two critically. Can you "walk the street" without feeling the ground crumbling beneath your feet, without knowing how you will go home, on your feet or in a hearse?
I am not alone. My neighbor Miriam Goldstein, the wife of Baruch Goldstein, told me this morning
