Death as a Way of Life

Expulsion of the Cave Dwellers

December 1999

On November 16, 1999, the Israeli Army evacuated 750 Palestinian villagers whose families had been living in mountainside caves near Hebron in the West Bank since the 1830s. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in March 2000 that the cave dwellers could return to their homes pending a final determination in the case. In July 2001, the Israeli Army raided the caves and expelled hundreds of people again. The struggle between the state of Israel and the cave dwellers currently awaits a final court decision. Israeli and international peace and human rights organizations mounted a massive campaign in support of the cave dwellers.

“I was born here in this cave,” said Mahmoud Hamamdeh, “and here my father was born and here my seven children were born. Give me a three-story house? Don’t want it. Give me a hotel? Don’t want it. Only here. And what has happened?”

What happened is that, three weeks ago, several dozen army armored personnel carriers and jeeps showed up. The soldiers surrounded the village of al-Mufkara on the southern flank of Mt. Hebron, cordoned off the field containing Hamamdeh’s cave and the caves of other families, as well as some tents and corrugated metal shacks, and ordered the people to leave the homes they’d been living in for decades.

Afterward the soldiers went into the caves, piled up mattresses, woolen blankets, buckets, and sacks of barley, and scuffled with frightened children and with women screaming in panic. Our soldiers opened the plywood door of the adjacent cave, where the sheep and the chickens were kept, and shooed out the livestock. They knew that their owners would run after the sheep, to keep them from getting lost in the desert, and so they did.

After a commotion that lasted for a while, the commander could report that the mission had been accomplished, or use some other sterile phrase of that sort. The cave dwellers’ belongings were impounded, and they were told, in accordance with regulations, and in absolutely clear language, that they could receive their personal effects only by paying a certain sum of money, a hundred or so dollars — that’s all.

Then the soldiers returned to the caves, just to take one last look, because they’d never ever seen anything like them. They scouted out the crevices and were astounded at how human beings could, in the final month of the twentieth century, live in moldy, dark caves, between damp stone walls, on a ground covered with ash and goat turds. Afterward, all our soldiers returned safely to their base.

There are two explanations for this action. When the residents of Ma’on Farm, a squatters’ site set up by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, were evacuated by the army, the settlers were promised “balance.” That is, action would be taken to harm the Palestinians as well. So they shouldn’t be too pleased, those Arabs. Another explanation: the army needs the field as yet another firing range for military training. (In May 1999, land belonging to sixty-nine villages in the West Bank was similarly categorized as a “closed military zone,” and no one was permitted to enter.)

In the three intervening weeks, the inhabitants of al-Mufkara have been wandering around their village befuddled, forbidden to enter. They’ve found a partial refuge in the adjacent village of Tweineh, which is no more than a gaggle of houses and some lean-tos. But Tweineh can’t take in all the refugees from the caves — almost 250 human beings — and the parched fields can’t feed the additional flocks. And there is already tension between the guests and the hosts. Says Hamamdeh: “At night, when it’s cold, they take us into their homes, but during the day they tell us to go far away.”

I stand there, at the entrance to a cave, I see and I hear, and I can’t really grasp it. What is happening here? How can it be that we, each and every citizen of Israel, are signed on to this? We fund it with our taxes, and carry it out through the sons and daughters we send to serve in the army. What is the connection between the army we knew and the institution that commits such an act against defenseless people?

There is no argument that if the country is in a war of survival, it is permitted to use all means necessary to protect itself.

But now? From our position of strength? Israel, the great military power, against those people out there in the fields, in the caves? How low can you go, and how cruel can you get?

Last Friday, in bone-chilling cold, on the main road at the edge of Tweineh, a woman sat next to a pile of mattresses. At her side, clinging to her, were several children, toddlers among them, wearing thin clothes. When she saw our little delegation, her eyes showed no zest of life or any interest. Later, without much hope, she urged one of the children to cough loudly, to elicit our pity. The boy, about nine years old, looked at us, shrugged his shoulders, and stubbornly remained silent.

At that moment he had more self-respect than I could find for myself as an Israeli.

If I could directly address Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, I would say to him, Sir, I want to believe that you didn’t know exactly what was taking place there. That you had no idea how one signature of yours on a document would be translated into reality and affect individuals. I have no doubt that, had you witnessed what I saw there, in the field, in the caves, you would have canceled the decree and ordered that these people be immediately reinstated in their homes.

There is a struggle over territory, true, and we are in the midst of negotiations over borders, absolutely. But beyond this there is the matter of the boundary that a man makes for himself, the final boundary beyond which a person and an entire people lose their self-respect, and in the end their identity as well. There are deeds that an army — especially one that once bore the banner of “purity of arms”—does not do. Because in performing them, it ceases to defend the nation whose agent it is and begins to act counter to that nation’s most profound interests.

Mr Prime Minister, I’ll say it in the simplest possible terms: It is not fair to bully these helpless people. These are not the values that you, sir, were raised on, and it is not the education you passed on to generations of soldiers. This is not what we reflected upon when, years ago, we studied the prophet Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s ewe lamb that the rich man stole.

It is not too late. That is, it is definitely late. Because three weeks like these, being outside in the cold, humiliated, will not be erased from the memory of the refugees. But something can still be repaired. Today. Right now. You don’t need to ponder over it too long. There’s no need to consult various advisors. This is something that a person recognizes from within, from the deepest place inside. If you give the order to restore these people to their homes, no one will consider it as surrender to Palestinian pressure. On the contrary, they will see it as an act of loyalty to your fundamental values and those of the nation you lead. Sometimes a little repair, even Tikkun like this — in the midst of the moral chaos in which Israel finds itself today — can remind its citizens of what they once were, and what they hope someday to become, when this passes, this storm that sends our compasses awry.