Mike Huckabee recently made a virulently anti-Zionist remark — and the Jews who accompanied him on his tour of East Jerusalem cheered.

“It concerns me when there are some in the United States who would want to tell Israel that it cannot allow people to live in their own country, wherever they want,” declared the once and future Republican presidential candidate and current Fox News pundit. The statement came after he visited a Jewish settlement, Shimon Ha-Tzaddik, in the middle of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

For years, Israeli settler organizations have been moving Jewish families into Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, most prominently in Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud and Silwan. In many cases, the organizations have been buying up Arab property, often in legally questionable ways. In others, they have asserted claims to houses that Jews once owned, but which were occupied by Palestinian families after Israel’s War of Independence left East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule.

The latest hotspot in Sheikh Jarrah is of this second kind. . . .

Read the rest in The Forward–Comment there or here.

It’s a hot afternoon and I’m still feeling heavy from overeating on Shabbat. So should I go to my Sunday night masters swim group or stay home and watch Binyamin Netanyahu’s much-heralded policy address? Which will get my pulse up higher?

I think I’ll go for the swim. By all accounts, Netanyahu will surprise no one. He’ll try to square President Obama’s circle by declaring how important the Israel-U.S. relationship is, while at the same time refusing to accept America’s lead in setting Israel on course toward serious negotiations over an accommodation with the Palestinians and the Arab world.

Netanyahu will follow the lead of his mentor, Menachem Begin, in insisting that Israel’s settlements in the territories have no connection to negotiations with the Arabs. President Jimmy Carter thought he had gotten Begin’s consent to a settlement freeze until the ultimate fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was determined; Begin insisted that he’d agreed only to a three-month freeze. Netanyahu might offer a similar sop, but he will refuse to desist from expanding Israel’s civilian presence in the occupied territories on the grounds that handing the territories over to the Palestinian Authority would render Israel vulnerable attack.

Netanyahu and his supporters don’t seem to grasp what nearly everyone outside Israel—including Israel’s best friends—sees as a logical lacuna.

Say he’s right. Let’s accept the premises that the Palestinian Authority is weak and divided, that Hamas is irremediably hostile to Israel’s existence, and that Palestinian militants will seize the first opportunity to launch missiles and suicide terrorists against Israel from any territory that comes under Palestinian sovereignty.

If that’s the case—and these premises are not unreasonable deductions from the available evidence, even if I question their accuracy—then Israel needs to maintain military control over the West Bank.

But the adjective is crucial here—Israel’s right to defend itself could be invoked to justify continued military occupation of the Palestinian territories. But security needs in no way justify civilian occupation. Indeed, the presence of Israeli civilians in the West Bank actually hampers the IDF’s ability to deploy itself in the most effective way to defend Israel. Huge amounts of manpower, money, and energy are now diverted to defending the Israeli civilians who live in settlements deliberately scattered all over the territories.

The only justification for Israeli civilian settlements is to assert an Israeli claim to the territory. In other words, the presence of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is, in and of itself, a rejection of a two-state solution to the conflict.

Netanyahu can constructively ambiguate himself to his heart’s content tonight, but none of it will convince anyone unless he recognizes this fundamental contradiction in his doctrine. His contortions might get his heart beating fast, but they won’t do much to mine. So I’m going swimming. If Bibi says something surprising, come let me know. I’ll be doing my laps at the pool. But I won’t be holding my breath.

I went to a rally against Jewish settler violence at shul yesterday.

Kehilat Yedidya is one of only a handful of Orthodox synagogues whose members can make a statement like that. And perhaps the only one in which opposition to the gathering came from the left rather than the right. My friend Daniel Avitzour stood at the door handing out leaflets protesting that some of the speakers themselves live in settlements. Settler violence, he claims, is a direct consequence of the entire settlement project, which thumbs its nose at the law and makes Palestinian life nearly unlivable.

I agree with Daniel’s analysis, but not with his decision to boycott the gathering. As I write in the Forward today, last week’s attacks by settler youth on Arabs, on soldiers, and on policemen are not an aberration—they are simply one more link in chain of violence and lawlessness that stretches back to the beginning of the settlement project. And the young people who threw the stones and burned Palestinian property are not “weeds,” as the religious Zionist leadership maintained. These young men and women are the products of a nationalist-religious educational system that has made Greater Israel a value so sacred that any law, government, or person that does not serve it may be violated, attacked, and even murdered.

If there is to be any hope of success in the battle this perversion of Judaism, we must accept all the allies we can find—including, and even in particular those religious Jews from the core of the religious Zionist community who were shocked by last week’s violence in Hebron. The violence may not really be anything new, but it has brought some settlers and their advocates face to face with the fact in their garden the weeds have long since run rampant and are quickly choking off whatever flowers might ever have grown there.

Yagil Levy, an excellent analyst, has a very good, and very frightening explanation, via Ha’aretz:

The bias of the army is naturally in favor of the settlers, over the Palestinians. This bias was strengthened by the deployment of the military force in three circles. The first circle is regional defense, reserve units, made up of settlers, that participate in the settlements’ daily defense. In this context, the army entrusted the settlers with weapons as reserve soldiers, and the result was the growth of armed militias in the territories…

The second circle is composed of the six policing battalions that regularly serve in the territories and are united in the framework of the Kfir Brigade…a significant percentage of the soldiers in the policing battalions are graduates of yeshivas whose ideological bias is clear, and who are subject to external rabbinical influence…

In Levy’s description, the IDF units responsible for dealing with the settlements are steadily becoming rogue forces. It’s a development that makes withdrawal more difficult – and yet reemphasizes how important withdrawal is to Israel’s future.

So Ha’aretz has joined the gaggle of left-wingers who want to punish Nir Barkat. Barkat supports the construction of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which is incompatible with cutting a deal with the Palestinians creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. So a vote for Barkat is a vote against peace.

Now, we here at South Jerusalem think building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem is an awful thing to do. We advocate a two-state solution and we have noted time and again that when Israel builds for Jews on occupied land it often does so on land stolen from Palestinians or obtained under dubious circumstances. So, like Ha’aretz, we’re disappointed and disturbed that Barkat has jumped on the settler bandwagon.

But the Ha’aretz editorial neglects to note that Porush advocates building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as well, as he says here (in Hebrew), on his campaign website. Of course, Porush wants the neighborhoods to provide housing for his ultra-Orthodox community, while Barkat wants them to be designated for students and the religious Zionist community.

So why is Ha’aretz eager to punish Barkat and not Porush?

One friend of mine suggested that, despite their identical positions, Barkat is more likely to keep his promise because he’s the kind of guy who gets things done. But Porush, an experienced and businesslike politician, is no less efficient than Barkat is.

Of course, in the end Jewish construction in East Jerusalem has to be approved by the national government. But even within the limited influence that the Jerusalem city government has over the issue, Barkat is less likely to be able to push his Greater Jerusalem agenda.

If Porush wins, he will form a city council coalition consisting of the Haredi parties and the hypernationalist and religious parties of the right. Barkat, who will be eager to reduce Haredi influence in the city, will almost certainly have to include the left-wing Meretz party in his coalition. The Meretz city council members will be an effective block against Barkat’s East Jerusalem initiative.

We’d all feel better if there were a viable mayoral candidate who opposed Jewish encroachment in Arab Jerusalem. But faced with two candidates with identically unpalatable positions, it becomes, for the purposes of choosing a mayor, a non-issue. Barkat is–and all the leftists supporting Porush agree on this–a superior candidate for mayor on every other count.

So the obvious solution for the Jerusalem left-winger aghast at Barkat’s interest in moving Jews into East Jerusalem is to vote for Barkat anyway–and to cast a vote for the Meretz slate in the city council election.

The Israeli Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating the settlements of Gush Katif in Gaza – the settlements evacuated by the Israeli goverment in 2005. The stamp shows an orange ribbon, originally the symbol of the furious protest movement against the withdrawal. Today the ribbon is the icon of those who have never forgiven the state for evacuating settlements from occupied territory. Below the images of greenhouses and the little kids happily jumping rope is the biblical verse, “And they shall no more plucked up out of their land…” (Amos 9:15), which in context can be read as a promise that no more settlements will be evacuated. Since the current government is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, based on the premise that at least those settlements beyond the West Bank fence could be evacuated, this promise stands in contradiction to official policy. The settlements beyond the fence are the hotbed of the orange-ribbon movement, of the people who on one level or another question the legitimacy of the government that issued this stamp. At the bottom of the stamp is a list of the evacuated settlements, including Shirat Yam, one of the “outposts” established without government permission. In short, this is a commemorative dedicated not only to the government’s mistake of establishing settlements in Gaza, but also to a movement that deligitimizes the government for its willingness to think, on alternative Tuesdays, about a potentially rational approach to ending the anti-democratic regime in the West Bank.

What’s next? A U.S. commemorative stamp for the KKK?

Superficially, this looks like a poorly considered commercial effort, predicated on the idea that the orange-ribbon crowd will buy lots of stamps, some to collect, some to mail their letters.

More subtly, it’s evidence that governments are not monolithic. They are arenas of contention and infighting. Even at the top, the Olmert government talks of potential withdrawal while continuing to build in the settlements. Lower down, the bureaucracy is full of officials dedicated to the orange ribbon – officials who help build illegal outposts, who make sure that demolition orders against illegally built homes in settlements are never demolished, who even issue stamps meant to rally the hardline forces against giving up one more house. The postal service serves the outer edge of madness, and now has issued a stamp for letters to that destination.

Related posts:

Parallels for the Occupation? Colonialism, More or Less

The Extremists of Your Own City Come First

At a Settlement, a Battle Over Both Law and Judaism

My article on the first settlement in occupied territories, and the obsolescence of settlement as a value, appears today in Ha’aretz. The original Hebrew is here, and the English translation is here. (No, now that you ask, that’s not my English.)

Also in South Jerusalem on settlement:

Israeli Right Supports Right of Return

At a Settlement, a Battle Over Both Law and Judaism

Journey to Hebron: Nightmares and Hope

Road to Annexation: The Paper Trail

Lies, Damn Lies, and Supreme Court briefs

One of the bizarre ironies of Israeli politics is revealed once more in a response by NGO Monitor* to Nicholas Kristof’s recent column on Hebron and the price of occupation.

Kristof wrote of the particular burden imposed on Palestinians – and on Israel itself – by maintaining Jewish settlers inside Hebron:

The security system that Israel is steadily establishing is nowhere more stifling than here in Hebron, the largest city in the southern part of the West Bank. In the heart of a city with 160,000 Palestinians, Israel maintains a Jewish settlement with 800 people. To protect them, the Israeli military has established a massive system of guard posts, checkpoints and road closures since 2001.

For anyone who has visited Hebron with open eyes, Kristof’s description will appear accurate, even understated. (My own account of a recent trip to that town is here.)

However, NGO Monitor was not happy. NGO Monitor is an Israeli group that claims to promote “critical debate and accountability of Human Rights NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict.” In practice, that means a stream of criticism against B’Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other such organizations.

On the NGO Monitor website one can find a letter from the group’s executive director, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, to the New York Times attacking Kristof. Ostensibly, Steinberg’s complaint is that Kristof extols B’Tselem and Machsom Watch. But his real complaint appears to be that Kristof failed to give the proper context in describing Hebron, apparently because he gullibly listened to human-rights groups:

Kristof repeats the simplistic statements of these NGOs regarding Hebron – a city of immense religious and historical importance to the Jewish people – without mentioning the impact of the 1929 massacre and expulsion of the entire Jewish community. A limited return to this historic city was only possible after 1967.

Attacking journalists for not giving context is a favored tactic of rightwing groups. A superb American correspondent who was here in the 1990s once explained to me how the attack-dog group CAMERA would really want him to begin every news article: “Fifty years ago, Israel arose from the ashes of the Holocaust. Yesterday in Gaza…” The missing context is always supposed to show that Israel is 100% in the right.

But look at the context Steinberg wants: Jews have a historical tie to Hebron, and the settlers are reviving a Jewish community that existed there before Israeli independence. The refugees have a right to return.

Never mind that the actual settlers in Hebron are not descendants of Jews who left the city, and that many of those descendants actively oppose the settlers’ presence. The mother of dovish ex-Knesset member Avrum Burg was from Hebron, for instance. The settlers who arrived in 1968 were led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who was looking for a way to assert Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank and exploited the fact that Jews had once lived in the town. Previously he’d wanted to join the settlers at Kfar Etzion, who claimed the right to settle at that spot because a kibbutz had stood there until it fell to Arab forces the day before Israel declared independence. (There, at least, the settlers were children of the fallen kibbutz.)

So the long-running status of Kfar Etzion and nearby settlements as “consensus settlements” – accepted by much of the center-left – is also based on the right of return of pre-1948 refugees. People who fled or were driven from their homes in the conflict between Arabs and Jews must be able to go back, and if they can’t return, or their descendants aren’t interested, others should go in their place.

I submit that this is not only sloppy thinking, but dangerous thinking. It is self-destructive for Israelis to validate the idea that everyone who lost homes in 1948 should return, because that means affirming the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to Israel proper. There lies the end of Israel. Using return as justification for settlement is a strategic assault on the state of Israel.

Of course, Steinberg et al don’t see it that way, because they can’t imagine the comparison. Why should the same right apply to both Jews and Palestinians? Why should moral reasoning be reciprocal?

Just as an experiment, let’s imagine that Kristof or someone else at the Times wrote about, say, a Palestinian from the West Bank stabbing a Jew in Jaffa. Let’s say that in covering this imagined incident, the columnist or reporter included context: “Palestinians feel a deep historical tie to Jaffa, a city known as the ‘Bride of Palestine’ before 1948. Many refugees who left at the time of Israeli independence assert their right to return.”

In that case, what letter would Steinberg write to the editor?

For the Israeli right, the right of return is sacred, and the danger of that position is invisible.

*Corrected text. The original incorrectly said “NGO Watch.”

In your last post, Haim, you mention the soldier who is outraged by Machsom Watch volunteers at checkpoints in the West Bank. Much as I understand him, I think he’s got it backwards.

You said:

…he feels that the observers simply don’t understand the pressures the soldiers face and are too quick to accuse them of mistreating Palestinians. This kid is gentle and empathetic, not a macho guy out to vent his frustrations on Arabs. I admire Machsom Watch’s work and think it’s essential for keeping our soldiers to moral standards. But even these well-meaning people often fail to comprehend soldiers’ dilemmas.

For readers unfamiliar with the group, Machsom Watch is an organization of Israeli women who volunteer to report on what is happening at the multiple checkpoints (Hebrew: mahsom) that the army has put up in the West Bank. Most of the checkpoints date from the second intifada. Some divide Israel from the West Bank, so they restrict Palestinian travel into Israel. Others are along the security fence/wall route as it winds through the West Bank, and others are simply along West Bank roads, restricting Palestinian travel from one area to another.

If the checkpoints were only on the Green Line, their purpose would clearly be guaranteeing the security of the Israeli population. When they are elsewhere – when you have to pass through the Hawara checkpoint to get from Nablus to Ramallah – the picture is murkier. Checkpoints can make it harder for members of terror groups to move around, communicate, or reach a point where they could more easily get into Israel (where the fence hasn’t been built yet). But a major purpose is to protect Israeli settlements and Israelis traveling on West Bank roads – most of whom are settlers. That is, to protect Israeli civilians who live in occupied territory, the movement of Palestinian civilians is drastically restricted.

As a journalist, I’ve been out several times with Machsom Watch teams north of Jerusalem. Mostly, they observe and report. The hope is that the very fact that someone is watching and known to be watching will push the army to treat those passing through the checkpoints better. Sometimes I’ve seen women speak to commanders, or phone them, to argue about treatment of the people passing through – or not getting through. Some of the volunteers are grandmothers.

I can understand that a soldier feels that these women just don’t get the pressures they are under. But the problem is that a large portion of the soldiers, especially the young ones doing their regular army service, don’t understand the pressures that civilians are under. It’s not only that they don’t grasp how important it can be for someone to get to work on time, or to get to the hospital where her husband is being treated, or to get to the hospital herself in order to give birth, or that they don’t quite realize what it means to a child to see his father humuliated.

The deeper problem is that the soldier has been sent to carry out a military task – but the assignment defines the daily life of Palestinian civilians – working, shopping, visiting family, giving birth – as a military problem.

Since Palestinian civilians are a military problem, any objections they have to their treatment is also a military problem. But the Machsom Watch women are Israeli civilians. They have to be treated as civilians. They violate the terms of the drama, which calls for two kinds of actors: soldiers and Palestinians. They don’t “belong” there, they don’t fit the script. The soldiers don’t understand them, or the pressures on the Palestinian civilians, because the soldiers have been sent to act in a military drama.

I stress: My careful reading of history is that the occupation was not originally an Israeli choice. Israel’s strategic purpose in going to war in 1967 was to defend itself. Certainly, Jordan could have stayed out of the war. Once Israel took the West Bank, it had the right to hold the land pending a diplomatic solution. In the interim, the Israeli military became the ruling power, forced and obligated to balance civilian needs with Israeli security concerns.

But the decision to establish settlements fundamentally changed the dynamic. In itself, settling Israeli citizens in the West Bank violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory – as the Israeli officials who initiated settlement knew. They’d been told, in September 1967, by the government’s top authority on international law:

“…civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Moreover, protecting the settlers significantly increased the burden on the IDF – and the burden that the IDF imposed on Palestinian civilians. And it made it much harder for Israel to reach a peace agreement that would end the condition of occupation. The settlements were there to make it more difficult.

Did Israel’s leaders in 1967 lack information when they made that decision? Actually, my reading of the documentary record is that they were well aware of the potential consequences of permanent occupation. Secret reports prepared by the highest level of security and diplomatic officials in the summer of 1967 contained the warnings.

An individual soldier at a checkpoint is being called to carry out two tasks – to defend Israel, and to defend the consequences of settlement, a crime under international law. Rarely can the soldier distinguish between the two tasks. As you’ve argued, he does lack information. Arguably, the defense of his country would collapse if every soldier started drawing his own lines. So the most he can is to try to do the job as humanely as possible. Yet perhaps he will do it more humanely if an Israeli grandmother arrives and reminds him that these are normal people he’s dealing with. He should point his outrage at the politicians who have mixed his legitimate and necessary role of defending his country with the role of defending illegitimate, illegal settlements.

Perhaps the Machsom Watch women haven’t gotten this message across. But it’s hardly their responsibility alone. Everyone of us who can write or protest or simply vote should be trying to convey that message. Clearly, we haven’t yet succeeded.

Dov, the guy who owns the hole-in-the-wall computer lab, explained to Elliott and me that the operating system was only in English; he didn’t have Arabic Windows. As for service, he said, that would be no problem, "as long as he brings it here."

Unfortunately, Muhammad Abu Arkub, to whom we were delivering the computer, has about as much chance as getting a permit to enter Jerusalem for a computer repair as he does of getting back his wife’s gold. Dov wasn’t being snide. He’s the old-fashioned gruff kind of guy who curses about everything and then puts in twice the work fixing your computer that he planned and charges no more, and would be embarrassed if you mentioned it. But the village of Wadi al-Shajneh, in the South Hebron Hills, is beyond where he does service calls. He was surprised when Elliott explained why we were buying the computer. "And you with a kipah ," he said. Not that he objected to what we were doing.

Elliott read about Muhammad in a Ha’aretz article by Gideon Levy, a few days after we went to Hebron to give a washing machine to Ghassan Burqan. If you read my previous post (Journey to Hebron: Nightmares and Hope ), you’ll remember that Ghassan had bought his own washing machine and was carrying it to his home in the Israeli-controlled side of Hebron when he was stopped by Border Police, beat up and arrested. The machine disappeared. In memory of our late friend Gerald Cromer, Elliott decided we should bring Ghassan a replacement.

Muhammad’s home was searched by soldiers who arrived at midnight. They said they were looking for weapons. The search lasted two hours. Muhammad, his wife Lubna, their two small daughters, and Muhammad’s younger brother Rami were all kept under guard in Rami’s home – a single-room shack built onto the side of Muhammad’s house. When the search was over, and the family rushed back into the main house, they found their computer and television smashed. And, they say, the jewelry box where Lubna kept her gold was gone.

Rami ran to where the soldiers’ jeeps were parked, sat down in one, and demanded the gold. Normally a Palestinian could expect arrest for such behavior. Instead, the soldiers pushed him out and left. I measure that as oblique, partial evidence confirming a theft took place: Arresting Rami might have required explaining the incident to higher-ups, and Rami would told why he jumped it in the jeep.

A gift of gold, from groom to bride, is part of Palestinian wedding customs. It’s not just for beauty; it’s a financial asset for emergencies. Muhammad, 24, had given Lubna 200 grams of gold, 7 ounces, over $6,000 at today’s prices.

According to Levy, the B’Tselem human rights organization has testimony of a dozen or so similar incidents in the area in recent months. I want to be careful: A complaint isn’t proof. (Muhammad filed a complaint with the Israeli police in Hebron. Unfortunately, there’s very little chance that the investigation will lead anywhere and that he’ll ever get answers.) If these reports are true, a small number of soldiers are exploiting the opportunies for corruption provided by the occupation, which has created a realm of "ein din ve’ein dayan," as Talmudic texts say: No judge and no justice. Give young men guns and power to search homes to stop terror attacks, and have a "justice" system that ignores abuses, because the abuses are against people who lack the vote and are therefore transparent politically – and you will get abuses. The answer, ultimately, is to end occupation.

After the search: The remains of Muhammad’s computer

With the ultimate not scheduled soon, Elliot suggested that we replace Muhammad’s computer. We had donations left over for the washing machine from my friends at Kehillat Yedidya, our progressive Orthodox congregation. The gold was beyond our means, but we could do what we could, with the thought after all that were Gerald around, he would have done it. Yehiel, who works for Rabbis for Human Rights, drove again: Three men with graying beards and skullcaps, driving south, out on Highway 60, on a hot June morning, past the roadblocks, past the red tile roofs of Efrat stretched out in suburban comfort over the terraced hills between the Palestinian villages. The road looped east past Kiryat Arba and Hebron. At junctions near Palestinian villages stood tall pillboxes: cylinders of grey concrete with gun slits at the top, like chess pieces placed on the board of the south Hebron Hills, to show that player with the grey pieces controls the board.

At one checkpoint near the settlement of Otniel, we picked up Musa, the B’Tselem field worker. Then we turned into the Palestinian town of Dura. Muhammad has a barber shop there. The main street is well kept; new stores and apartment buildings have been built recently. A truck with Palestinian plates and the word "Spring" in Hebrew on the side – the name of a soft-drink brand – was delivering to local grocery stores: Musa says the town is relatively prosperous, so the amount of gold that a young man buys his bride is known to be large there, and in the neighboring villages, like Wadi al-Shajneh.

Muhammad’s house is a small one on a dirt road. He invited us to sit in Rami’s shack: a bed on one wall, pillows around the others on the floor for guests. On one wall Rami had taped a photo of himself and some cut-out pictures of beautiful women, clothed but provocative: A bachelor’s room. On the small stereo he had a disc that appeared to be Islamicist speeches. The room was a small village museum to the infinite contradictions of the human soul. Yakut, Muhammad’s three-year-old daughter, danced around the room looking at us. She had curls, and tiny stud earings.

Muhammad and his daughter with Musa and the new computer

This was the difference between Wadi al-Shajneh and Hebron: In Hebron, a three-year-old Palestinian had to be told that the bearded men who’d come in the house were not settlers, that one need not fear them. In the village, the child was unafraid, despite the night of the search. Musa said that Otniel is a quiet settlement. The settlers of Hebron and Kiryat Arba are known as violent, and the ones from the outpost of Havat Maon are "criminals." On Highway 60, settler drivers sometimes try to run Palestinians off the road. But inside Wadi al-Shajneh a three-year-old had not yet learned to hate or fear. This a reason for hope: A generation of Jews and Palestinians might be born who could live without fearing each other.

Elliott had brought a bracelet for Lubna, Muhammad’s wife. He didn’t say where or how he got it. Muhammad took it to her. She appeared at the door, dressed full length in black, wearing a head scarf and a beautiful smile, and thanked us and vanished. The three strangers sit with the master of the house, and the woman is in the tent, Elliott said. And from here, I asked, do we go to take the measure of Sodom, and what should we report?

Muhammad said that before the Israeli search in his house, he’d been called in several times by the Palestinian security services for questioning. On the Israeli side this is called effective cooperation. On the Palestinian side the word to be used would be "collaboration" and it cracks the legitimacy of Abu Mazen’s regime.

I am glad about any bombs found before they find their way to Jerusalem or Beersheba. But security measures, especially harsh ones, without the hope of a political solution – without the hope of the occupation ending – are like healing the skin over a deep wound. Beneath the healing, the abcess festers and the poison spreads.

The destroyed computer and TV were still in the yard. The computer had been pulled from its case; the fan hung out to one side. The TV was a black frame with no screen. Mute relics, unable to provide testimony to anything but force and speed.

Elliott explained to Musa and Muhammad what the technical papers in Hebrew said. Muhammad would have to get an Arabic operating system, he said. He said we’d brought this as mitzvah. Muhammad, who’d once worked in construction inside Israel, before the second intifada, didn’t remember that Hebrew word till Elliott said that "Allah wants…" and then Muhammad shook his head "yes."

Then we shook hands, and waved to Yakut, and drove back through hillsides, terraced with vineyards and olive groves, the twice-loved hills waiting for human beings to stop fighting over them like two angry young men who think the way to show love is jealousy and fists.