Every family has it’s dynamics. You know what I mean, that uncle that seems a little ‘off’ and the cousin that is rebellious and even a little mean. Maybe you might even be a little intimidated by a particular relative, or ashamed of one. You know what it’s like.
Even before we came to Israel, we had been starting to hear about “the cousins”. These cousins turn their speakers way up and bother the neighbors, they are intimidating and they don’t want certain family members even setting foot in their territory. Once we arrived we learned that the way these cousins drive can be really scary, that they really don’t take good care of their belongings and they don’t seem to be too concerned with being on time or honest. These things we had heard before, but now we were able to experience it for ourselves.
What I have come to really appreciate is the perspective of our friends toward their cousins. When we experienced our first full day here, our friends would smile and say, “Oh yes, it’s ‘the cousins’ again” and led out a tired sigh. It’s got to be annoying to have your cousins screaming at you across the valley all the time – every day. Particularly when just days before we came there needed to be a strong military presence in order to protect our friends from their wild cousins.
What kind of mixed up family is this?? This is the family of Abraham – Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The Jewish population in Israel referrs to their antagonist neighbors as “the cousins” simply because they are. The leaders of the various communities that we’ve met and the Rabbis that we’ve heard have all shared the same thing – the Arabs are not an evil people, they are necessary in the world and wanted by HaShem. “They may be wild, but they are not evil – they are our cousins.”
Olive Trees
When the Ottoman Turks ruled over this land there was a law that said if you plant a tree then you’ve staked your claim in that land and it is now yours. The Arabs have a love of olive trees so they plant them all over. When Israel took over the mountains of Israel after The Six Day War they did not, for some strange reason, annex the territory and agreed to recognize the Turkish laws for the Arabs in the area (they thought this was very generous and would help bring peace between the Arabs and Israel). What this means is that wherever there are olive trees planted, the Arabs feel it is proof of their claim on the land even when they have no proof who planted the trees or when. Many Jews have also planted olive groves and this leads to long legal battles at harvest time every year. Take a look at the above photo (“driving” photos are hard to get) and see all the olive trees on the hillsides. Because Arabs don’t drink wine they do not have any use for grape vines or other fruit bearing trees, so you know that where there are vineyards that this is Jewish land. Next time you run across a fund raiser for Israel, take note as to what they are asking you to do – help plant olive trees or to help plant vineyards.
Plow but never plant
As we drive around Judea and Samaria we’ve noticed a lot of beautifully plowed plots but we don’t see any crops, just a lot of turned up soil. The Jewish communities tend to be on the mountain tops and the Arabs are the only ones we’ve seen living in the valleys where the prime farmland is (we haven’t been everywhere, just along the main highways and through various communities). The photos below you will see the area near Elon Moreh where HaShem made the covenant with Abraham regarding the Promised Land, you see The Mount of Blessing and The Mount of Cursing, you see the town of Shechem where Abraham lived and where Jacob purchased land to graze his flocks. In this valley you can see a lot of plowed plots but no crops. You see this same thing everywhere as you drive along the highway. But this area near Shechem (what the Arabs call Nabulus) was once one of the places that grew an abundance of grain – this was “the breadbasket” of Israel. Now this land sits idle. The constant plowing is not good for the soil (think of the dirty thirties and the dust storms) and the only thing that has been planted in the below photos are olive groves, which you now understand the significance of a little better. There is no intention of planting these fields with anything, at least that is what it seems since there haven’t been any crops here for years.
Warning Signs
At the entrance to every Palestinian community there stands this big red sign. Their communities are not fenced like the Jewish communities are and many Palestinians don’t even live in communities like these but they live in single dwellings “in the middle of nowhere”. They can do this because there is nobody who is trying to destroy them if they live outside of a guarded and fenced community. Jewish communities do not have signs like these and in fact, many Arabs walk from their homes to the Jewish communities to find work every day as laborers or whatever they can find. At the end of every day you can see a line of Palestinian Arabs filing out of town and heading back to their own communities. There’s quite a striking difference between the Palestinian and Jewish towns here with regard to who is allowed to enter and who is not. But they’re not really great workers. At one vineyard in particular the owner relies on Arab workers. The day our group came to help harvest for him the Arab workers hid a large rock in with the grapes they had picked that day so that when the grapes were poured into the crusher the rock would damage the crusher and the owner would think that we did it and not have us back to work for him again. This vineyard owner has had to deal with his harvest being damaged, his machinery being destroyed and vineyards being burnt down by these Arab workers for many years, but who else can he find to work in his fields? You cannot support a family on seasonal farm work, not in Israel and not in the USA. But you do need to have trusted employees, no matter what your industry is. The laborers who help build the homes in the Jewish communities are often Arabs too, and they seemed to regularly decide not to work on whatever day they choose and for whatever reason they choose. We’ve noticed the building in the community we stayed in start and stop for no apparent reason – maybe the wind blew or the sun was out or maybe someone wanted to go take a nap instead. These houses are taking a very long time to come together. It’s interesting that they come to the Jewish communities looking for work and yet they have a reputation for not showing up, doing poor quality work and damaging the projects they work on. Even in Ramallah we often hear construction going on, but it rarely lasts a full work day – usually just a few hours and then it stops. The Jewish work force in this area is slim because most adults commute into Jerusalem or other towns outside of Judea and Samaria to support their families. Here the Jewish business owner is willing to extend a helping hand toward his cousin, even if he gets bitten a few times here and there. On a side note, a few members of our group drove past a particular Arab village and stopped to take some photos because this was a Biblically significant area and they wanted to take photos of themselves in the area. They weren’t there long when they heard Arabs screaming at them and noticed that there was a group of men running at them – fast. So they all jumped into the van and sped away as an Arab taxi chased them. They had not entered a community with a sign, they were just stopped on the side of the road and the village was a little way off. But they were not in a Jewish controlled area and not being Arabs they were unwelcome to even take a few photographs. They quickly learned that this was a seriously foolish thing to do and none of our group has done this since (I’m not so sure any of the rest of us would have done this before anyway).
Fires
While we were touring in Itamar, the hilltop community above Shechm (Nabulus) where the Fogel family lived, we noticed heavy black smoke for the first time. When we asked what was going on, the spokesman of the town told us that where the smoke is coming from is where there is a beautiful large spring. The Palestinians had been burning all sorts of trash there for over a year trying to destroy the water source. The Israeli Government was petitioned to find a way to put a stop to the burning and they promised to have the burning stopped by June of 2011 with IDF help. We saw the burning in late October of 2011. Since then we’ve noted several other similar fires far outside of any communities (which means that Jewish people 
aren’t likely to be there and if they were, they’d be quiet about it). There are several photos of fires and heavy black smoke in the hills but we’ll just share one or two. One morning we awoke to find thick black smoke pouring from Ramallah, this was the first time we had seen smoke from a town. That day as we drove from here to there we noticed a lot of fires all over the place. Even on the road we take to get to the main highway there were smaller roadside fires and no trace of humans. These fires weren’t being maintained and they didn’t seem to be for any purpose other than mischief.
“Poor” communities
Another common misconception about the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria is that they are poor and they are forced to live in substandard housing and even in refugee camps. The photos below are all from various PA towns along Highway 60 – you know, those towns with the big red signs. These don’t look like poor communities to me. This past winter when the guys were here, they were taken to a look-out spot to see Shechm (Nabulus) and from that spot you can clearly see a nice upscale town with what looks like a ghetto off to the side. What they were shown was that this ghetto was where the PA forces certain people to live and that this is where the world media is brought to get the photos for their stories. Just like in Gaza where the wealth blows your mind but the ghettos are all you ever see or hear about.
"Ghetto" inside Nabulus (ancient Shechm)
But there are plenty of other towns that look totally run down. Arabs live here too, but the reason they live in these particular houses is that if a dwelling is unfinished then Israel can’t collect tax on it. So many Arabs choose to live in unfinished buildings almost for free. It has shocked me to see clothes lines tied inside many of these buildings, whole floors devoted just to clothes lines, and even hot water tanks on the roofs of these buildings. Buildings that are unfinished like these are don’t tend to last too long either, and the construction isn’t all that great to begin with, so many are crumbling in certain places as well. All to thumb their noses at Israel so they don’t have to pay the taxes. The irony there is that the Palestinian Authority collects quite a bit of money from Israel’s tax system and it’s a good part of their operating budget, but they do get a lot of money from other Arab countries and from the USA as well. (NASA built a beautiful huge soccer stadium in Ramallah a bit ago, we could see it from where we were staying. I don’t think that NASA has contributed to, or
Click on the photo to see the HUGE estate of a Nabulus business owner that overlooks Nabulus
built, anything in any Jewish communities.) Just before we came to Israel I read an article where the PA was upset because Israel had frozen their tax allotment. As you drive through Awara (a PA town that the highway passes through) it’s incredible to note how many high end and incredibly expensive vehicles are there. It seems that every other car is a Mercedes while the others are also equally as expensive. I’ve seen a few Jewish Mercedes cars too, but only in Jerusalem. (Arabs have green license plates and Jews have yellow ones, as a general rule, so you can tell whose cars these are) The most common cars I see here in Jewish communities are cars like the Kia or the occasional Toyota. Israel
Nabulus mansion close-up
doesn’t have the same makes and models that the USA has so there are many unfamiliar emblems here. I can count on one hand the number of trucks I’ve seen in the 5+ weeks I’ve been here. Most Jewish families have several children that they squeeze into their tiny cars, if they have one at all. Hitchhiking is very common here, even mothers with children in tow. Amazing. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that the Arab communities here are far from poor. They may look like run down communities but when you stop to look at their clothes, their vehicles and the vast quantity of things they throw out you quickly realize that they are certainly not “poor”. Any Palestinian that is truly poor is made so and kept so by their own leaders.
Speaking of Awara
Suicide Bomber Sign
Awara is the only Arab town that I have been through, that I am aware of. It’s dirty, messy and they have these strange signs on the road. Awara is the ancient hometown of Sanballat who wanted to put a stop to the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Up on the poles for the street lights, along with the signs for various shops, are signs with photographs on them. When we asked what they were we learned that these are photos of suicide bombers and Awara was probably their hometown. The Arab culture is one that glorifies death, not life. And death is not
Another bomber sign
something that comes rarely either. One day I was outside when I heard a terrified woman screaming in Ramallah (with all these rocks, the sound from far away is very clear, plus Ramallah is very close). My first thought was that a mother had just witnessed her child being murdered, it was a blood curdling and mournful sound. I’ve never heard such a terrible sound. Then as soon as I heard the scream I heard several men yelling over her and then silence. No crying, no sirens, no nothing. All of this took place in the span of maybe 3 seconds at the most. It sent chills down my spine to think of the possibilities of what might have just happened. I’ve never felt unsafe or afraid for myself or my children in Samaria or Judea, but I have felt fearful for some of The Cousins while we’ve been here. Men black and blue with casts and slings waking down the road have reminded me of stories of the Arab men who willingly work for Jews and how they are sometimes beaten terribly because they are considered “traitors”.
Transportation
Between 1987 and 1993 the Palestinians terrorized Israel in the First Intafada and later, a Second Intafada took place between 2000 and 2006 (though they said they’d quit in 2005). During this time the Palestinians fired on passing automobiles and school busses, they detonated bombs in busy places, they damaged property and made all sorts of mischief in order to terrorize the Jewish population in all of Israel, but primarily in Judea and Samaria. Because of this there are various necessary modifications that have been made for the sake of transportation. For example, the street lights along the major roads illuminate the roads but there is a second light that shines backward as well, lighting the hills where terrorists can (and did) hide in order to shoot at passing motorists. Now if someone is up there, the can be spotted much easier. The school busses are bulletproof in order to protect the children on their way to school as well as the mass transit busses. On the road into Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem, there are huge walls along the side of the road because these are areas where traffic often moves slowly and the travelers were sitting targets for men with guns. There are guard towers in stragetic locations as well because the roads are long and winding where if someone finds a “good spot” they can fire upon a vehicle for quite a long time without having to move. The checkpoints and security gates are all necessary parts of keeping Judea and Samaria safe – not only keeping the Jewish people and foreigners safe but keeping the Palestinians safe (There are two different groups vying for power, Hamas in Gaza and the PA in Judea & Samaria. The two are not friends.). Many lives were lost or damaged for these precautions to be made on such a large scale. I know there are many more that I am unaware of, but these are things anyone can see as they travel from here to there.
While it’s easy at times to get very frustrated with the Palestinian Arabs, it’s encouraging to hear the Jewish perspective and find peace with it. We have heard several mayors, Rabbis, community spokesmen and other community members all say the same thing: “The Arabs are welcome to stay here in Israel!! We only ask that they be nice to others and be good citizens, no more killing us or destroying our property, no more terrorism and hatred. We don’t want them to become Jews, they can be whatever they want as long as they are good neighbors.” Many of them have even told us stories of Palestinians who don’t just acknowledge the longstanding history of the Jewish people in this land, but they *know* it to be true. Even still, some insist on telling the Jewish people that they do not belong in this land and deserve to be pushed to their death in the sea. It boggles my mind to think of how a person can say “Yes, this is the home of your ancestors but you don’t belong here anymore, in fact, you don’t belong anywhere.” (remember that in Middle Eastern tradition, the home of the ancestors belongs to the descendants) What boggles my mind the most is that the Jewish people hear this, experience this opinion and still respond with patience, peace and acceptance. The Jewish people continue to have faith in humanity even when the world only wants to hear the mixed up stories of the Palestinians and doesn’t bother to check out the facts, but chooses to consider the Jewish people as the antagonists (and there are times where some Jews are antagonists, that’s true. But the number of Jewish antagonists compared to Arab antagonists is a small fraction.). Yes our Jewish friends get frustrated and discouraged at times, but their resilliance and hope astounds me, their ability to see the best in everyone who is created in the image of HaShem is quite an inspiration for me.
A Spiritual Fist-In-The-Face
Here in Psagot, we are surrounded on 3 sides by the city of Ramallah. This is one of the prime cities of “The Cousins” and the headquarters for the Palestinian Authority. Before the sun even begins to rise, their speakers blare long and mournful sounds issuing their challenge before HaShem. Their call to prayer begins with “Allah is greater”. Greater than Whom? Greater than the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. Then they proceed to blast curses upon the people, the land and the G-d of Israel no less than 5 times a day. So at 4:00 am, the day begins with “in your face” declarations from The Cousins. It might not be so bad to ignore to their curses and antagonist prayers, but they sound like a soundtrack to a television nightmare. Listening to this is rather… eerie. I don’t know how long the prayer goes but it seems to take forever before it stops. We know that in the Bible people have been instructed to “speak to the mountains” and “say to the hills” and we know that there is tremendous power in spoken word. Can you imagine the daily spiritual warfare that is taking place in this land just through these daily “prayers”?
So next time you’re at a family event and that annoying and frustrating cousin walks into the room, remember that at least your cousin isn’t quite like these Cousins and do your best to see your own cousin in a positive light. After all, every human is made in the image of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Your family relations aren’t nearly as tense as these are here. 
** edited to add the following video **
