WE'LL BOMB THOSE BASTARDS'
Gerda Cohen finds out
how Palestinian violence affects Israeli voters
Western Galilee A RAVISHING sea is flicked by small waves, ultramarine on the horizon, azure inshore. The air is so clinging with humid- ity that it is like breathing warm tears. A few late bathers ruffle the air; Finnish officers with granulated faces, from the UN in Lebanon, and some very old Ger- man settlers with a mat of white frizz on their mahogany shoulders. Down here, open to the sea and the bleached dunes of ochre grit, is the cemet- ery. No one comes here except for funer- als. It has the stark, explosed glare of all Jewish cemeteries, open to this exquisite foaming of azure water over the limestone shallows and up to the dunes. There are no flowers in the cemetery except for plastic tulips, but the shore has sea holly, and white dune lilies, piercing the damp warmth with their strange, heavy perfume.
Yesterday was the funeral of a young sergeant blown up by a car bomb. Hizbol- lah, the Party of God, sent a suicide bomber to blow up army vehicles in Lebanon, 'as a present for Mohammed's birthday and a gift for the Palestine upris- ing'. The dead young man came from Acre, a few miles away, but mourning is general.
Or is it mourning? 'We'll bomb those bastards to hell,' said Cohen the De- licatessen, dabbing his moist eye-brows
with a rag used to mop the counter, 'death is too nice for them.' His wife, immensely corpulent, stood weeping silently, weeping melted butter. Her fat old hands slid over the cheese in a paroxysm of grief. But Cohen the Delicatessen had an almost smug look. 'You'll see, tomorrow or the day after, the army will knock shit out of them. A gift for the intifada, indeed!'
That is what people cannot stand: the gloating. Arab politicos and partisans of God gloating over their dead and muti- lated. So the Hizbollah bomb, a gift for the uprising, has immediately become a gift for the right wing. 'It's a timely reminder,' said Eliezer the Bike, normally a peaceable little man. 'It's a timely reminder. We don't make peace with terrorists — not with them in Lebanon and not with them in the PLO.'
Eliezer the Bike has a heavy Hungarian accent even after 40 years here. Behind his workshop stretches an amazing graveyard of bicycles: great rusted roadsters brought by the first settlers from Berlin, ample ruined saddles on springs like dusty cobras, ponderous tyres collapsing under an orange tree whose twigs are hung with spare parts scavenged from the bicycles of a Rumanian immigration. Eliezer at once recognised the veteran I rode on. 'But of course! use Deutsch's bicycle. Have you come for some air?' Mrs Deutsch's hand- pumpe rusted up completely about five years ago. Since then, it has been necessary to ride across town for some air. 'What is the point of buying a new handpumpe?' scoffed Mrs Deutsch. 'I will be dead soon.'
But she has taken up oil painting, at the age of 73 or 74, and dashes off Expression- ist views of Galilee, those hills whose blue-veined melancholy hangs above the shore. Many of her friends lie in the cemetery. Others have succumbed to the grotesque revenges of extreme age. Mrs Reich, who divided the world into those who read Thomas Mann and those who did not, had recently taken to the bottle. But saddest of all — the children. Instead of rejoicing in Zion, they had flocked back to exile. Mary lived in Germany. 'I can understand,' said Mrs Deutsch. Her own son had left. 'I love the Englischgarten in Munich. So orderly! So green! You also would love the bicycle paths.' She taunted me, quite often, for complaining about her corroded machine. 'What do you mean, without brakes? There is eM riicktritt, is there not?'
Her entire family perished in Auschwitz. But that is never mentioned. One knows about it, that is all. A kind of mournful sterility marked her generation and the hotch-potch of refugee Jews who popu- lated Galilee. By contrast, the Arabs re- joice in fecundity. Their fecundity is so abounding that 600,000 Arabs are citizens of Israel, most of them living in Galilee. Large villages crown the foothills, hand- some and confident, their villas emul- sioned puce or gamboge.
`Yes, we could sway the vote, us Arabs; who should I vote for? Rabin? I should rather put him under a railway train!' A great rumble of laughter from Mr Tauki the Supermarket, who speaks an eloquent, rotund Hebrew and seems to sprout vigor- ous black hair from every unexpected joint: his fingers look like a hair-brush; the wings of his nose bristle in wiry vigour; only his head is bald. 'I have relatives in Goldhurst Terrace, NW6, do you know it?' Mr Touki was entertaining in his villa next to the supermarket. Beyond his cool veran- dah is the blue stretch of Galilee, over the door a mat of 'The Last Supper' worked in purple and green plush thread. 'Of course you know "The Last Supper", it is famous.'
Mr Touki is Greek Orthodox, and his little shrivelled wife Catholic. The Christ- ian Arabs have dwindled to a mere 10 per cent, due to the greater fecundity of the Muslims. Mr Touki's village had the tiniest church imaginable, a white-washed little vault surmounted by a rusty cross. The mosque soared into a pale blue sky, its crescent aloft. 'Yes, there will be a Palesti- nian state,' remarked Mr Touki without fervour. Privately, Israeli Arabs despise the West Bankers as backward. In public, they support their brethren. 'What do you expect? Mr Touki asked rhetorically. 'We should turn the back?' and he launched into a harangue about the iniquity of local politicians, Jew and Arab alike, while his dark hairy knuckles swept through the air like hearth-brushes.
At the end of the day, the Arab vote is lost among a dozen ineffectual parties; but they do vote. So the Palestinians regard the Israeli Arabs as traitors. 'Who knows what they are thinking,' remarks Cohen the Delicatessen, polishing his counter in we- ary disgust. 'One thing I do know for sure, their hearts are not bleeding for that dead boy in the cemetery.' Down at the shore in the cooling afternoon, the sea has turned a
strange, exhausted yellow. Lebanon looks like a huge bruise on the horizon. 'Never trust an Arab,' says Cohen the De- licatessen, 'never trust an Arab.'
He and his fat weepy wife will vote for Tehiya, a right-wing party dedicated to holding on to every inch of greater Israel and expelling any Arab who disagrees. It is headed by Mrs Beulah Cohen, a popular figure. 'Yes, the car bomb was a tragedy, an unspeakable outrage,' she said when we met on the street in Jerusalem, 'but we hope, we hope it will direct our voters.'
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