An Opinion of a "Settler"

From Harriet Sherwood's review of Israeli opinion:

Israelis: Portrait of a people in tense times

Talk of an existential threat to Israel from the Iranian nuclear programme echoed around Washington last week. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, described the world's failure to prevent the Holocaust and Barack Obama spoke of the country's sovereign right to defend its people. But what is the nature of the state that has become central to global diplomacy? Harriet Sherwood listens to Israelis across this diverse nation

Someone I know:

THE SETTLER

NAME: Natalie Hershkowitz
AGE: 49
OCCUPATION: settlement secretary
LIVES: Barkan
FAMILY: married, six children
RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: 'connected to God' but not traditionally observant

Natalie Hershkowitz moved from Tel Aviv to Barkan 15 years ago because she needed a big house to raise her family in and wanted to live in a "good community". "The fact that it was across the Green Line [in the West Bank] was a benefit. We come from the right side of the political map, so it was our duty to come here. It was the right thing to do according to our beliefs," she says.

But the distance – 25 minutes in the car – from Tel Aviv, and the "quality of the air", helped the decision to move from the city in which she was born and raised. The price of land and property in West Bank settlements was cheap then, she says; now Barkan – which was founded in 1981 – "is very exclusive".

She describes it as a "village" not a settlement – "although we are not ashamed of the word settlement. But the connotation today of 'settler' is someone who came to conquer a foreign land. This is our land. We are not colonialists. God gave us this land."

Natalie and her husband, Itzhak, say they have a strong connection to and belief in God, but are not conventionally observant Jews. "We go to the synagogue regularly but not every week. We celebrate holy days. We don't keep a kosher kitchen, but we don't eat ham or oysters."

Barkan is a mainly secular settlement. "It's very important to say that," says Natalie, "because people think once you cross the Green Line everyone is a religious fanatic. People don't know that a third of the [Jewish] population across the Green Line is secular."

The essence of being Israeli, she says, is "to be here on the biblical land of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]". The Palestinians who were born on the land should have the right to live there, "but to live in peace with us. They can't make us disappear, we can't make them disappear." She points out that 3,000 Palestinians – or "local Arabs" – work in the settlement's industrial zone. "We are working together, living together. It's impossible to divide us."

She believes a separate Palestinian state is not possible "even if the whole world recognises one. You can never draw a border because it's all too mixed up now. This land has to be one Israeli Jewish state, but with an Arab minority with human rights. This is meant to be ours, we were here before. I don't want to drive them away, but I want to live with them in peace."

She includes Iran among the most important issues facing Israel, but says "it's not only our problem, it's a problem of the whole western world".

The settlement movement is getting stronger," she says. "This situation will be for ever. No politician will ever be able to make a peace [with the Palestinians] without leaving us here."

^