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Freedom of occupation By Photos by Yuval Tebol , By Uri Blau Tags: West Bank, Illegal outposts  On the table in the mobile home of Hagit and Amihai Carlebach, in the illegal West Bank outpost of Mitzpeh Lachish, amid the remains of the vegetarian Sabbath-eve meal, are an empty bottle of red wine, empty beer cans and a bottle and a half of arak that was laced with raspberry syrup and drunk in shot glasses. Around the table are the Carlebachs; Shmuel Friedman, a friend serving in the Haredi Battalion of the Nahal Brigade; Yael Bilia, a neighbor, and her boyfriend; and a soldier from the Lavie Battalion, which is in charge of rotecting the outpost. The Carlebachs' trailer is at the edge of the outpost, which is not fenced. Only a few hundred meters separate it from the first houses in the Palestinian village of Beit Awa. Some of the mobile homes are surrounded by concrete barries, erected after the terrorist attack on the nearby settlement of Negohot on Erev Rosh Hashanah 2003, in which Eyal Yeberbaum and Shaked Avraham, a seven-month-old infant, were murdered. There is no fence around Hagit and Amihai's trailer, but their blood alcohol level is high, like their mood. Somewhere in the room are a rifle and a pistol, but for now, atop this lovely quiet hill, with everyone's stomach full and Hagit handing out books of Hebrew folk songs, it's easy for everyone to want nothing more than to go on drinking and singing. The first song, "You" by Uri Assaf, is chosen by Yael Bilia, 22, who moved here four months ago. She was evacuated from her home in the Gush Katif settlement of Netzer Hazani, in the Gaza Strip, during the disengagement. Gush Katif is where she met Hagit and Shmuel, who are from Neveh Dekalim. When they get to the line "The waves of the sea destroyed your home," Friedman bursts into tears, possibly lubricated by alcohol. He remains distraught until he goes to sleep. "The expulsion from home still hurts so much and doesn't go away," he says the next morning. Advertisement Bilia's eyes are also red. While trying to calm Friedman, she recalls a deceased relative who was reinterred inside the Green Line after the disengagement. Hagit tries to cheer everyone up and go on singing, but Amihai urges her to let their guests vent. "It's healthy," he says. Two hours later, Hagit also breaks down. "It's something delicate that people are still living with," Amihai explains. "These people don't have a home now. The families split up, which split up the community, too. Much time has passed, but people are still living in Nitzan [a community established by the state for evacuees], not in a real home." Nevertheless, none of those present is even considering the possibility of avoiding another trauma by leaving the illegal settlement. Legal proceedings against Mitzpeh Lachish have already made its evacuation possible. Personal truth Hagit, 22, came here three years ago. Amihai joined her a year later, two months before their wedding. She was born in Neveh Dekalim to parents who were veteran settlers in Gush Katif. Amihai was raised in a religious moshav, Masuot Yitzhak, near Kiryat Malachi. "My home was very rightwing but it wasn't political, like Hagit's. We didn't have arguments about politics," Amihai relates. They both left home at an early age and wandered around before settling on Mitzpeh Lachish. Along the way Amihai stopped wearing a kippa and Hagit replaced her skirt with jeans. They married eight months after being introduced by a mutual friend. Hagit enrolled in a religious boarding school for girls in Petah Tikva in ninth grade, and graduated from a similar institution at a moshav near Ben-Gurion International Airport. Afterward, she says, "There was a year of chaos. I searched for myself and went through crises with myself and with my family. A confused time, you know." The confusion ended when she arrived at the religious seminary in Negohot, where she combined studies with national service in the development town of Kiryat Gat. Then came the summer of the disengagement, in 2005, most of which she spent in the settlement of Kfar Yam. She went to the beach in the day and demonstrated at the Kissufim checkpoint at night. After the evacuation her family moved to a hotel in Jerusalem and then to Moshav Nov, in the Golan Heights. Hagit returned to school for a few months, and when a place became available in Mitzpeh Lachish she moved in. She now works in nearby Moshav Amatzia in an afterschool program for young children. She began to forsake religion, she says, when she was 16. "It was a process of trying out things, of examining yourself as to whether things are right or not. It's not enough what you were told and educated. It was hard for my parents, but at some point they got used to it. I am the only one in the family who has given up religion. My older brother went through something similar, but then he returned again. All in all, I treat life as an adventure. It's dangerous, but also fun and interesting. The bottom line is that everyone searches for guidance. I'm very much into finding your 'personal truth.'" In the end the search led you from Gush Katif to a different settlement. There was no real revolution in your life. "I left and I had enough of running wild. I don't think I am in the same place that I was. I think I broke out, and that my direction today is a lot more open." Amihai began his wanderings even earlier. "I left home in seventh grade. I transferred to a school in Jerusalem and was there until eighth grade, and then I moved to a yeshiva in Kfar Etzion [in the West Bank]. I wandered around and hiked a lot, I was barely at the yeshiva but they almost always took me back. At one stage I was enrolled but hardly ever showed up, only here and there, to study the things that really interested me. It was very hard for me to sit on my ass. I was frenzied, hyperactive. "In 11th grade," he continues, "I went to live in the Maaleh Rehavam outpost, near Tekoa, [south of Bethlehem], a beautiful place. Someone I worked for in carpentry established the outpost, and I lived there almost half a year. The main core was four or five bachelors. I was younger then and had more passion." Did you wear a kippa then? "I was on and off then. I have an older brother and sister who are secular, but what I did isn't so much their influence, because I was away from home a lot. I took in most of these things from my surroundings. It's mainly a question of a person within himself. What he absorbs and what he feels." After leaving Maaleh Rehavam, he did a year of public service as a guide at the Golan Field School, through the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. He enlisted in the Nahal Brigade and is completing his military service now. Amihai refuses to expand on this, saying only that he saw combat duty in the territories and did not fight in the Second Lebanon War. The booster "We have to know that in a settlement in which there is no master plan and no directorate, in a settlement that was not exactly established according to the law and also has no clear boundaries, life itself is also liable to be conducted without law, without clear boundaries and without an orderly master plan. For some youngsters, the boundaries of the question about what air and what smoke one is permitted to take into the lungs and which drinks are permitted and in what quantities, are about as clear as the boundaries of the outpost they set up." From an article in the settler journal Nekuda by Rabbi Yaakov Medan, one of the heads of Har Etzion Yeshiva in the settlement of Alon Shvut. "The ongoing, gross, institutionalized violation of the law that is being perpetrated by the institutions themselves is undermining the rule of law," attorney Talia Sasson wrote in her famous report detailing the method by which more than 100 illegal outposts were established in the West Bank. The thousands of words written since then about the report, the petitions to the High Court of Justice and the promises made to senior United States officials regarding their evacuation have changed almost nothing. Most of the outposts mentioned in the 2005 report continue to flourish and grow. Since the report was issued there have been a few changes to Mitzpeh Lachish, which was established near the settlement of Negohot, south of Hebron and an hour's drive from Tel Aviv. Even though the government undertook a year ago to dismantle the outpost, in response to a High Court of Justice petition submitted by Peace Now, it still stands. The current population is 20 - two families, each with five children; two married couples; one unmarried man and one unmarried woman. Despite the sharp decline in population (the population was 50 at the time of Sasson's report), construction is underway or completed of a scenic lookout, a playground, a small soccer field and a military guardpost. Everyone has running water and electricity. The weekend I was there, the only people who stayed for Shabbat were the Carlebachs, Bilia and one of the families. Four soldiers guarded 10 settlers and their guests. "Who is Talia Sasson and what is this report of hers?" Hagit Carlebach demands. She is not being sarcastic. "Anyway," she says, "Mitzpeh Lachish is the name Peace Now gave to this place. We call it The Booster, after a water pump that used to be here." The couple pays less than NIS 400 a month for the trailer, which was imported from the U.S. several years ago and once housed immigrants from Ethiopia before becoming one of hundreds of illegal mobile homes dotting the West Bank. The door leads directly into the kitchen, equipped with an oven and gas burners. The living room next to the kitchen is flanked by two bedrooms, one containing a television, the other, an Internet-equipped computer. There are books, paintings by Hagit and a poster of Aboriginal art, but no airconditioner. Their salaries (from Hagit's work with children and Amihai's army service) are sufficient for all their needs. They have an old Subaru Justy. "We live excellently," Amihai says. "How many expenses do we have, anyway? We eat fresh food, lots of vegetables, and buy in the Kiryat Gat market. Our major expense is for the car and fuel. We live differently from people in Tel Aviv and we spend less than we make. We also manage to save, and we aren't cheapskates." What do the other residents do? Hagit: "There is some farming, but most people work in education in Kiryat Gat and the region." Do you pay for electricity, water, property taxes? "To the Mount Hebron Regional Council." How did the trailers get here? "They belong to the settlement. In terms of everything - mail, utilities - we're a neighborhood of Negohot." Don't you find it odd that a place the state defines as illegal is connected to water and electricity and has proper roads? Amihai: "That's why I doubt that it's illegal. Look, the state authorized Bezeq [the telecommunications company] to connect here." It's all temporary A visit to Mitzpeh Lachish, which is not considered extremist and has never made the headlines, reveals some of the motives driving the residents of the outposts, the so-called "hilltop youth." There is less talk here about Greater Israel than about organic farming, planning the next meal and choosing a name for the latest addition to the livestock, a newborn kid. (It was named Bob, for Bob Marley.) There is something disturbing about the fact that those who are creating facts on the ground, those who have been keeping U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice busy for years and are influencing the future of the entire region, are often a group of free-floating young people who simply dreamed about a place where they could live in total freedom. The territories across the Green Line turned out to be the perfect place for them to realize that dream. The right-wing ideology sometimes looks like a well-fitting cover for psychological needs. The Carlebachs try to live in harmony with nature. Amihai, who says he is a vegan, voted for the Greens. Hagit: "We grow vegetables, eat only free-range eggs and almost the only milk here comes from the goats." Because they see no difference between living in the territories or, say, the Negev, they have nothing to say about the paradox inherent in the fact that their "green" lives are being conducted on occupied territory and that their goat has more freedom of movement than many Palestinians. "Large parts of the Land of Israel were conquered in one period or another," Amihai says. "My home is not built on an abandoned [Arab] village, and at one stage we had even less freedom of movement than the Palestinians, because we could not use certain roads. I don't understand what the paradox is between our way of life and the place we are living in." How important was it for you to live across the Green Line? Amihai: "It's not that I said, 'This is an illegal outpost, so I will come to live here.' People live in a place because they like it and like its atmosphere. Everyone here has his reasons. There are some with less of an ideological thing. I think our neighbors [who did not want to be interviewed] are very ideological, but I did not use an ideological gauge to check where they stand in relation to me." How did you end up here, of all places? Did you look elsewhere? "We looked at moshavim around Kiryat Malachi and Kiryat Gat. We found an apartment in one moshav and spent a night there, but we didn't feel good there, so we left." What attracts you to this place? "The fact that everything is open and I can plant trees here and raise goats and chickens, make a garden, plant vegetables. It's a place that I feel is mine, and I feel comfortable here. I didn't feel that way in other places." An outside observer senses a dissonance between the fact that you are sitting here next to a village that is termed hostile, in occupied territory, with a watchtower adjacent. "You feel a lot more free here than in supposedly safe places. You don't feel threatened. In Tel Aviv there is a security guard at the entrance to every place. Here I feel really good, and I assume that it's mainly because of the effect of my close surroundings." You could feel the same thing in many places in the Negev or the Galilee. "Maybe that will also happen one day, but maybe we will stay here until the day we die. I moved around throughout my childhood, and maybe this is the place I will settle in." It doesn't bother you to live in a place that is temporary almost by definition? "Everything in life is temporary. Even if you have a wonderful home in North Tel Aviv, it can be temporary. Suddenly, heaven forbid, war will break out, or the sea level will rise or your house will burn down. You have lost everything. Here it is maybe a little more temporary and in other places people only think it is a little safer." You are ignoring the fact that you are living in an illegal settlement, in a place for which a struggle is being waged. "That's correct, because that is not part of my discourse. I didn't feel that I was in a struggle at Maaleh Rehavam, either. I had a terrific time there - I planted things and helped build things. It's a feeling of pioneering. There is something very pleasant and satisfying in the fact that you are the one who planted the trees and built the path." And you couldn't do that somewhere else? "Maybe. Maybe I didn't look enough. But I don't think that in the Negev you will find the same general atmosphere that exists here, the same type of people that live around me. The people here do what they want and what they love - very nice, warm people. It's fun to be with them and talk to them. We have very good relations with the neighbors. The homes are very open. If you need something, you go into a house and just take it." Are you what's known as "hilltop youth"? "Maybe I was once and maybe I am again now. That's what people used to say about me, when I wandered around like a dropout. But I think it's just a term someone made up, because there really is no such thing. When people say 'hilltop youth' I think they mean all kinds of radical kids who walk around with big kippas and bits of beard and who are just looking for ways to harass Arabs. That's the image. Most of the young people I know who live on hilltops are guys who just want to live in quiet places, till the soil and keep their distance from all the disgusting stuff that goes on in the city." But you are ignoring the fact that it's important for them to be in the territories. "Because there is no other place like them. I was on farms in the Galilee, and there are no places like these. There is hardly anywhere else in the country where you can come and live with all the people like in a type of commune." Hagit: "And that does mean living in reality in terms of your values and ideology." Is it important for you that it be here? Hagit: "Yes. Look, it would be very comfortable for me to find some ranch in Australia and settle there and not care about the whole mess here. We are very much drawn to that. On the other hand, I cannot evade the fact that we are Jews. We were screwed." What does it mean to be a Jew? "It's how I want to raise my children, by which values, and where." Do you want to raise your children in an outpost? "Yes, this is a superb place. I grew up with mortar shells and I was afraid of them, and other children are afraid of monsters. Besides that, it seems to me that children are afraid of terrorists throughout the country. And anyway, who can guarantee that another place will be safer and better? In Israel it doesn't matter where you live." No violence "In southern Mount Hebron you are exposed powerfully to wonderful scenes of ancient times... Slowly, slowly, while herding sheep, I understood that the greatest hardship that befell the Jewish people is being sedentary. The heavier it became, the more we were subjected to local anger, and materialism destroyed everything good. That is why it is so important to be in motion, to move, to move in the wake of the sheep, to breathe air, to be exposed a little to the wind, to the rain, very purifying things... Across Mount Hebron there are broad state areas, but we are on the roads, whereas the flocks of the Arabs have seized control of the areas. This is a long war, not a one-day affair. We have to preserve strength. Every manifestation of violence is a manifestation of weakness. Sometimes the Arab shepherds would brandish sticks, grab my shirt. With all my strength I made an effort not to get into a situation in which the force of hands would be the deciding factor. I would simply implement the power of prayer, even during the struggle. That was something new for them, and God be blessed, it worked." From an interview to Nekuda by Yair Har Sinai, who was murdered in July 2001. A few months ago, Amihai relates, they collected furniture from an apartment in Tel Aviv. "My mother was there and told the contractor, 'Our children are the true pioneers.'" That, he says, was the only time his family referred to his living on an outpost. The subject is also out of bounds in Hagit's family; as far as they are concerned, Mitzpeh Lachish is part of Israel, just like Tel Aviv. Is there any authority or figure from whom you draw strength, inspiration? Amihai: "We carve our own way, but there are people for whose path I have a very high regard. For example, Yair Har Sinai, who grew up in the cooperative settlement movement and saw the crisis in Israeli agriculture: the farms that are falling apart, the sons who no longer work in the fields, and the whole tie to farming that has been destroyed. He became an extreme vegan and urged a return to nature; he was against the use of force and weapons and walked around unarmed. Even in cases of friction with local shepherds he didn't attack and would always extricate himself, but in the end he was murdered." Have you ever talked with Palestinians? "Yes, both as a soldier at checkpoints, and in Gush Etzion [the settlement bloc south of Bethlehem], when I was hiking, I talked to fellahin about farming and things." You don't really see the Arabs here, only from above. "Yes, sometimes we see shepherds, or people working a field." But they don't come here. Hagit: "No, absolutely not. That is the difference between us and my brother's generation, which went on a yearly hike in Gaza, and my parents, who did their shopping in Khan Yunis. I wish I could go down to the market here in Beit Awa. I'm sure it's cheaper than in Kiryat Gat." Do you have a problem with Arabs in principle? "At the moment they're our enemies. There is nothing to be done. When a nation fights you, it's hard to smooth things over and say: 'This is my enemy, but his child is not.' That is the source of our whole entanglement with ourselves." Do you know that an order has been issued authorizing your evacuation from here? Hagit: "I want justice, and I see that in the village opposite a new house goes up every month. Let the state answer this question: Why are there new homes on every hilltop that was empty when I got to Negohot? If the approach was that there is room here for Jews, everything here would be legal. The law here is irrelevant, because it stems from a conception. If the conception were to change, the law would change, too. The moment the prime minister's conception of Gush Katif was that the place is not needed, it instantaneously became illegal. It's all politics. I think I am defending and contributing to the state, and the fact that I am here protects the people who live in [Moshav] Shekef, in Lachish. I think things could suddenly be reversed, the conception will be different and it will be decided that it's important for Jews to be here." What will you do if they come to evacuate you? "We'll cry, what can we do. People are aware it could happen." Will there be violence, will you resist? Amichai: "In practice, I don't know what will happen, but I will not take any violent measures. I don't know if others will, but I don't think so. We know that violence doesn't help, but it can improve your feeling. Because if you feel that you did nothing when your home was destroyed, you can feel a bit down afterward." Did you ever plant a tree that will take years before it bears fruit? "Do you know the tale of Honi Ha'ma'agel (Honi the circle-maker) and the carob tree? Honi was walking along one day, when he saw someone planting a carob tree. Honi asked him, 'How many years will it take before this tree gives fruit?' The man replied, 'Seventy years.' Honi asked, 'Are you sure you will live seventy years and be able to eat from the fruit of the tree?' He replied, 'I found the world filled with carob trees, and as my forefathers planted them for me, so I will plant for my sons and my sons' sons.' Trees have a connection with eternity. That is our existence in the world. Even if we leave, the trees will remain here."W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Deadly shelling B'Tselem slams IDF decision not to indict troops over errant strike that left 21 civilians dead. Reaching boiling point Gaza residents are told to boil drinking water as purifying chlorine runs out.   1.   An IDF soldier protects the `illegal` outpost 06:47  |  newageblues 23/02/08   2.   Pawns in Israels game 09:23  |  Natallie Durson 23/02/08

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