Looking for a hilltop

I am a settler, the daughter of settlers. My husband (or "partner" or "other half" or whatever you call it) is also of that ilk. A settler. And with the precepts of our forefathers in mind, and our genetic makeup, we are looking for a plot of land, a home. We are searching for a new place, one that is young and where religious and secular people live side by side ("mixed"). A place whose future has not yet been set, and if possible, not in the heart of the Arab population. What can I do - I don't want to dispossess Arabs of their lands.

In short, we are looking for a hilltop.

Not in the topographic sense, of course. Sometimes a hilltop is really a valley. But a "hilltop" in the settlements is an outpost, an extension of an existing community, a recent extension that usually consists of two families and a single person with a dog in windswept prefabricated homes. It's a place where you can never find a pair of socks where you hung them, only one of the socks. Always. And one belonging to the neighbors.

Amos Oz was right in his book "In the Land of Israel" when he described the settlements as a foreign implant. Our courageous forefathers, who were pathfinders and revolutionaries, also made a number of mistakes when they set up the settlement enterprise. Of course, I'm not talking about the settlements themselves but rather their character. In the best case, the houses are covered with Jerusalem stone. In the earlier settlements, they are coated with soft spray paint and have red-tiled roofs as if we were in Switzerland with its heavy snow. Moreover, a house in the South Hebron Hills resembles one in northern Samaria. There is no connection to the land, and there is hardly any agriculture.

We came, we conquered, we settled.

The new generation now has time for luxuries. They can think about settlements that are greener, more ecological and more agricultural. They can cover the prefabricated homes with local stones and look back at the mother settlement with a bit of arrogance. To those readers who are not settlers I would like to clarify a widespread error: There is hardly any connection between hilltops and the hilltop youth. The latter largely come from Petah Tikva or Ra'anana and they are motivated by defiance against the bourgeois generation of the religious Zionists. Sometimes, out of this rebellion, they even do things that should not be done. The hilltops are a place where regular people settle, with a different agenda - simple Zionism, raising children and finding the sock that blew away in the wind.

One of these hilltops had a special attraction for us. It has a mixed population, an excellent location, is close to civilization but not too close, without any Arab villages nearby. A young community, with young people who have a dream, and all the intrigues of any small community.

"There are three vacant prefabricated homes. Choose," we were told. I turned white. "But, but," I stammered. "I have already lived in a prefabricated home. Is there no exemption? Can you understand - I'm a musician and the acoustics in a prefabricated home are simply awful, and the doctor has forbidden it, and besides," I said, pulling out the doomsday weapon, "besides, I'm spoiled."

"It's as I said," the secretary continued, smiling. "There are three prefabricated homes. Choose one. I suggest the one belonging to Foxman; it hardly leaks at all."

Great. What a headache. It turns out that it's impossible to be a real right-winger without implementing the ideology using your place of residence as well. And it turns out that, like many other young couples in Israel, we can't let ourselves live in one of the economically established settlements where there is asphalt instead of mud. It's simply too expensive. So it turns out that we are moving to a hilltop. Soon. Maybe in the summer.