3rd July, 2004
During my patrol shift, I visited one of the key guarding spots. It looks like an army tent with a chair inside of it - it is located right beyond the backyard of Hazan's family. I don't know why there is a guarding post here... Maybe since there are no other places other than this one from which you could inspect the south-western part of Adora.
The view from here reveals a deep valley, below the hill on which the settlement is located (settlements are all located on hills, surrounded by fence, overlooking Palestinian villages). In the valley below, there is a camp of either Bedouins or Palestinians, living in caves or outside, beneath a tin roof, covered by a century-old clothing. Sheep, donkeys and chicken are scattered around the camp. A few kids, a religiously dressed woman and some old men are what keeping this camp from looking completely abandoned.
No more than 300 feet away is where I stand, beyond the fence. Behind me there's a totally contradicting view - dozens of rich villas with pretty green gardens, cars, toys are scattered in the yard.
Not long ago, one of the settlers gave me and the other soldier from my shift, a bottle of soft lemonade and a snack. "Give it to them. They need it more than me." - I thought to myself and looked at the camp again. The other soldier, Ido, would disagree with me. "I hate them. All of them. Give me one reason to like them." He says. Unfortunately, he's far not alone with that opinion. Hatred is within the souls of many people here and I can't understand them, nor can I convince them that hatred is wrong. If only these settlers aided their poor Palestinians neighbours, if only soldiers gave break to the shepherds who walk their sheep 300 ft away from the fence, surrounding the settlement - maybe then, only maybe, things would've been at least slightly different.
How would they react to sudden kindness? If a settler went down there and gave them some food and drinks, put the differences aside and drank tea with them, would they meet him with stones or would they try to solve the matters in a diplomatic way? Or maybe their ideologies are so contradicting, that there can be no relationship between the two?
There were 2 guards standing at the entrance gate to Adora. Less than a year in the army, they were already so "poisoned" - "Egoz" - the elite unit of Golani's infatry corps. A car stopped on the road, 200 ft away from the gate. These 2 soldiers sprang to the gates, with their guns pointing at the man in the car, one of them shouted: "Why did you stop here? The guy from the car was talking on the cellphone. He went out of the car when suddenly one of the soldiers screamed: "DID I TELL YOU TO TALK ON THE PHONE?! PUT IT DOWN NOW!!!" still pointing their guns at the man. Then they told him to drive further, that he isn't allowed to stop here on the road. He was an Israeli Arab.
The commander of these two has heard the story and approved it. Not once had he shown his hatred towards Arabs, saying that all the Palestinian villages around the settlements should be dismantled and evacuated due to the dangers they impose on the settlers.
I've been right-winged once, but my opinion has changed the more I discovered about Israel and the Palestinians. I started looking at what WE (the Israelis) did wrong, instead of pointing the index finger at the "enemy" and blaming them for everything. I asked myself why they hate us, why they kill Israelis and who you define as "they". Of course Palestinians are wrong too, but we can't change them, we can't force them to change. Maybe if both sides judged themselves first and corrected their own mistakes, peace could be more achievable.
Some soldiers aren't humane as the army strives to be, the same goes for some of the settlers. All of this, is a source of hatred that was born from this tragical conflict, planting seeds for more and more hatred in this blood-stained land that eventually belongs to none. It belongs to the nature. It's just a piece of land - if there's peace it can be visited by anyone, it's a land where you could build your own home when your nation is at peace. One day it belonged to the Canaans, then to the Jews, then to the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, the British. Can you really secure the land for thousands of years to come? It's not worth our lives, especially when all you wanna do is LIVE in this land.
I'm in peace with all of this world, I hate no one. I love this world and all the people in it and all I wanna do is to live peacefully and happily with my Angel!! Is that too much to ask?
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