Meeting Settlers

My first week at the Hebrew University was difficult. Few people spoke with me as I do not belong to the Jewish communities that they belong to. Fewer people spoke to me when my ties to the West Bank became known.

Many times during the breaks between my classes I would sit alone in the hallways and keep to myself. My solitude attracted one of the girls in my course who sought me out because she was also in the periphery of the group. She was observant in her Judaism and wore long skirts and a head-covering. While she could tell immediately I was not observant, my loose clothing and long-sleeves may have led her to believe that I was at least conservative. She had not heard about the time I had spent in the West Bank, though it did not take long for it to become apparent and I thought that was the end of it. We disagreed with each other on almost every point and it seemed that she no longer wanted to associate with me. But after a few days, she was once more smiling at me and seeking me out as I waited alone for our lectures.

I knew that she planned to immigrate to Israel (make 'Aliyah') and I knew that she was currently in the process of finding a community to live in as she wished to live in an observant community somewhere in the country. What I did not realise straight away was that effectively this meant that she was planning on moving into one of the settlements.

Today, our final lecturer did not appear, so after 45 minutes we decided to leave. During this time, this girl and I spoke.

I have met and spoken with settlers before. At the end of last year I even visited a settler in his settlement. It was not an experience I enjoyed but one that I took because there was an opportunity to do so. The man that I met was kind and hospitable towards us. At first I was challenged by him because he was so different from what I thought a settler would be (he spoke Arabic and lamented his inability to make friends with his Palestinian neighbours). But then he showed us an article that he had written offering a 'solution' to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians: he suggested that the Palestinians are all moved to Iraq. His 'reasoning': Iraq needed help to rebuild and the Palestinians could easily fill that role. He thus fulfilled the 'settler stereotype' I carried in my mind.

But this time it was different. The girl from my class, M., was an Australian and my age. She spoke and looked just like my old housemate in Sydney. The only difference between us was her headscarf and her skirt. Even her name is very close to mine.

She described to me the reasons that she wanted to move into one of the settlements: her love of the landscape and her love of the communities there. She said that if she could find a community and environment like the ones in the settlements within Israel ('within the fence,' as she put it), she would move there immediately, but there isn't such a place. She said that she understood the international law arguments about how settlements are illegal, but why shouldn't she move to the place that she loves when it's there available to her?

Her description of her love of the landscape and the feel of the environment struck a chord with me, because I also held this love. I love the rolling hill tops that are throughout the West Bank; I love the olive trees and the rock and the desert. When I go to Ramallah and walk around the outskirts, away the hectic central streets, all the stress and tension leaves me and I'm filled with love for my environment. This place is intoxicating, it sinks into the skin. But the thing that separated this girl and me is that when I dream of living here, I see myself living in a Palestinian environement, speaking Arabic in the streets. She imagines herself in a rural observant Jewish environment, a gated community, speaking Hebrew with her neighbours. And I know that there are many people in the world you share dreams like both of ours - Palestinian refugees dreaming of returning to their family's land, and Jews of the Diaspora dreaming of living in their holy land.

Both these dreams take place in the same land, but they are separated by check points, razor wire, watch towers and soldiers. Can they ever be reconciled?