Maze of Terror: a Settler's Diary
Fear and faith in a West Bank settlement
And when the curfew of the Arab towns is lifted what will life be like? Hamas is [making] threats. They will dress up as settlers--knitted yarmulkes, ritual fringes; they will send Hebrew-speaking Arabs to do terrorist acts; they will set explosives by the roadside; they will pack trucks with explosives and drive them into a bus.
Soldiers are camped out on the grass by our bedroom window, doing 24-hour guard duty. Their radio static and communications enter into my dreams.
People go to Baruch's grave a lot. It is near the bank and shopping center--a temporary grave surrounded by police barricades.
I saw his wife the other day holding her 2-year-old daughter. I told her I was surprised to see her back in action. She said, "Do I have a choice?"
Often during the day, more often at night, we hear the muezzin [a crier who summons Muslims to prayer five times daily] in the mosque reciting verses from the Koran on loudspeakers. Suddenly the muezzin's voice rises in pitch, and we hear "Itbach el Yehud!" ("Kill the Jews!"). The tirade goes on, perhaps 15 minutes or more, then the muezzin falls into verses from the Koran again.
The prevalent feeling here, or the one most often expressed, is that Baruch was an angel dressed as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a doctor. As his mother said, "I can bear Baruch's death when I realize that the righteous have a mission and they cannot look right or left to accomplish it."
Before Baruch did what he did, there was a terrible atmosphere--a dreadful darkness seemed to hover--confusion, illness. Irena, a bioenergy healer, meditated that something should come to stop this. She believes Baruch was that force.
Others believe we will have a great civil war, then will come the war of Gog and Magog as predicted in the cabala [an occult philosophy based on a mystical interpretation of the Scriptures]. Many say all this is written in the cabala, that there will be rains and hail on the day the righteous are buried. And so there were when Baruch was buried. And they say after the war of Gog and Magog, the Messiah will come.
"Maybe he'll come for Kiryat Arba?" a woman shopping in the store said.
"Maybe I'm the Messiah?" the shopkeeper said to her.
"Don't forget me, then," the customer said. "Wasn't I always good to you?"
On the way to the swimming pool, my girls begged me that by their next birthday they should be out of Kiryat Arba. Their present should be a party in a new home. "What kind of place is this Kiryat Arba? I swear, Mom," Miriam said. "Once I leave, I'll never set foot here again."
"Maybe not," Estie said. "It might belong to the Arabs by then." MARCH 15, 1994. Suddenly I heard thousands of Arabs marching. Going outside, I saw a mob of Arabs in the valley two streets away. Army jeeps came racing down the streets by my house to strengthen their position. the streets by my house to strengthen their position.
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