"So I understand that today there is no right of return," Jalal said suddenly. It took a few seconds of oppressive silence in the car before laughter broke out.
It happened a few kilometers south of Cabri Junction, at the entrance to Moshav Amka. We were asked to wait on the side, three or four meters after the checkpoint next to the yellow gate. There is no more natural than this these days. I presented a press card, it was taken for a few moments, and in the meantime I rolled over a conversation with a member of the alert squad. Smiling man, with friendly eyes. "It's not a security issue," he explained.
"Such a visit is better coordinated with the moshav's secretariat, or with the council's spokesperson," someone said. They gave me the necessary numbers, and asked me to contact me and get permission to walk around, take pictures. In order to "soak up the atmosphere" you also need permission from public relations. And all this time in the car, the echoes of explosions from the border only illustrate the absurdity. The story of the framework is security-related, the hardships along the way are from the field of spokesmanship.
Journalist Jalal Bana, Photo: Eitan Orkivi
We didn't insist. So we will not be able to enter the moshav this time, and there will be no right of return today. Fifteen minutes earlier, we were standing somewhere in the village of Yassif looking north. Yanuh-Jat, antennas on the northern border, maybe some piece of the settlement altogether. and the rooftops of Amka's houses. "My family actually came from there," Jalal said. "I want to see," I replied.
From what was once Amqa, Jalal's family moved to Kfar Danun, and from there to Kfar Yasif. I don't see a sentiment of great trauma in talking about these transitions, on the contrary. Kfar Yassif is home, not temporary, and not for the time being. The echoes of the explosions are also louder in our conversation than the echoes of the history of the conflict.
Only one thing: building houses in Moshav Amka built on the ruins of the ancient village - it was difficult for Dad. He was a contractor, a builder. Hence the surname, Bana. His name was Nayef, and he built all over the area. Among Arabs and Jews, without much resentment. He also built his house up one of the hills in Kfar Yassif with both hands. This two-story building is surprising and charming in its simplicity and modesty. Jalal had only recently finished renovating the staircase, and they were wrapped in light marble stone and decorated with colorful vegetation. It's fun to sit on them for a cup of coffee and look out over the houses of the village opposite, Abu Snan.
Amka, I allow myself to judge, is not an overly sensitive "memory district" in the Bana dynasty. The joke is at the expense of political hypersensitivity. Kfar Yassif, on the other hand, returned to being home after several years of exile by the family in Acre.
I ask him if the feeling you get during the visit is accurate, as if the village has preserved a deep taste of yesteryear, despite the momentum of development and construction and the brand chains on the main street. His answer is "yes." It's enough to roll the name of Violet Khoury, the legendary head of the council, the first and only one to head an Arab council, to feel on your cheek a warm breeze of the '70s. Rakah saw her as a sworn enemy, and Al HaMishmar of those days marked her positions as "right-wing."
"We're going through the Violet Center now," Jalal tells me. He doesn't know of a square or a street or a school named after the head of this council. There is no need to perpetuate what is already perceived here as eternal. The commercial complex was built in her name by her sons, who did well themselves, each in his field. So much for local history. Although not entirely: in the local elections, only one candidate from the Shehadeh family will run for mayor. But who cares about politics now, especially local politics?
* * *
His name pops up in Israel Hayom once a week. Jalal Bana. Journalist, media person, publicist. As in the Guardian of the Walls riots, "I insist that we talk on the phone every few days," he writes to me when the fire starts to ignite. Don't let the tension in the air undermine the delicate fabric of friendship that has been forged between colleagues and, later, their families. We met Yasmin, his wife, and Nabila, his mother, when they lived in Acre. We celebrated the birth of their son, Yanel, in Kfar Yassif a little less than two years ago.
"Like house arrest", Kfar Yassif, photo: Eitan Orkivi
"We are under a kind of house arrest," he wrote to me a week after the war began. "We don't go out much. Yanel is not in kindergarten. We're home. They make an arrangement here, an arrangement there." The ground floor serves as a kind of protected space. There are no safe rooms in the village, no protected areas. There was a thought of placing a shield in the yard of the house. There are those who offer these for sale. The echoes of the explosions do not stop all day, as do the noises of various aircraft. The activity is felt. One of the reports talks about a direct hit to the bear. The next day we learn that it was a fatal hit. We heard it well even when we were tucked away in the living room, behind the closed door.
The main thing is that despite the wall of consciousness, the experience is the same. Within the family unit, Jews and Arabs, the same existential fear, the same helplessness, the huddling in homes, the physical urge to protect the children. Talk over their heads about the situation, and silence each other "because they understand everything." But fairness requires admitting: in our collective imagination, the larger tribe, the Arabs have no seat around the fire of togetherness. There's even some optical illusion that they feel free from anxiety, and that it doesn't concern them – beyond making a living, the cold shoulder on the street, the bad word on social media.
That's definitely not true, and I testify that I saw him pupil constriction in Jasmine's eyes, the same swallowing of saliva, the same whitening of cheeks – every time the bad guys blew up the northern sky. Even in the village of Yasif, and I'm betting that even in nearby Abu Snan, the doors are locked these days.
In Kfar Yassif, the doors are locked
Actually, there is one door waiting for us open.
* * *
It happened on 14 October. An anti-tank missile hit a building in a hanging moshav. Several were wounded, including one critically, who later died of his wounds. The rumors spread about foreign workers employed in agriculture. Only those who really tried hard later discovered that they were construction workers at all. And these, even when they fall off the scaffolding, remain transparent.
These transparent ones have a name, and one of them is Mahmoud Bana. Jalal's paternal uncle. He's a builder too. He was wounded, and his two sons, who were with him at the scene, were also injured.
He lives, so to speak, on one of the hills opposite, within the village. The house of measurement he built for him and his children is new and impressive, stable and sturdy like a builder's shoulder. And we enter through the expansive and inviting terrace. He's waiting for us in the living room, lying on a couch that has become a bed, covered with a soft blanket. When I introduce myself, he rises and suddenly takes on the image of his last name and 70 years. "Ask anyone here who Mahmoud Bana is," he smiles and sips coffee. And the conversation begins to roll quickly.
Reality felt in the village, photo: Eitan Orkivi
Restore? Not much what. He passed through one of the family's construction sites. Came to visit, to check if anything was needed. There was a conversation with a building inspector. The son went to get something from the car, and then the anti-tank missile hit. The son was wounded, but escaped certain death. Another worker who was present did not survive. An alarm was not sounded, and at first it was not at all clear what it was. A matter of a second or two.
One of his sons was killed a few years ago in a work accident, and although this is what current affairs broadcasters like to call a "state plague" and furrow eyebrows, this blow was never really considered a national tragedy. But it is precisely the missile injury, in the early days of the war, that is a very national business. And yet, even from this sad togetherness, they feel excluded, not part of the collective. Apart from the welfare representative on the council, phones were not raised, volunteers did not knock on the door, packages were not sent. He doesn't complain about deprivation, in any way. But he does ask about shared destiny.
I swore in them that I was right not to make him a symbol of "the other," nor a victim. And in truth, even when he is wounded, the man does not leave an impression of misery. It feels like he's just waiting to get back in the car and race between construction sites. On the way back to Jalal's house, only photos of the only candidate Shehadeh betray the location. You have to be an experienced topographer to understand when you are in Kfar Yassif and when in Abu Snan. There were a few times Jalal told me, like a child, now you're standing foot here - foot there.
* * *
"We're neither here nor there," Jasmine told me. With sparkling eyes, she talked about classes in Jewish society and culture at the college where she teaches, and is in her first year of doctoral studies in education. I hummed in my heart, "You can come to an understanding, she approaches him excited."
All the while, I notice Jalal making phone calls above the coffee machine. "Nothing", "It will be fine", "The main thing is that the family is whole and healthy", "Hold on". These are conversations with customers who inform him that the relationship will resume after the war. They cancel contracts, and he comforts them. Without giving away numbers, menstrual cycles were cut by 80 percent. But what hurts him more is that he can't go on the air and be interviewed – neither in Hebrew nor in Arabic. There is no tolerance for a complex position. "You can't express simple human empathy for either side without being considered a traitor to the other side."
He doesn't feel silenced, and like Mahmoud, his uncle, he won't be portrayed as a victim. He does think that highlighting any arrest or hearing to anyone who published a post that is considered incitement, or a "like" to one, only intensifies the phenomenon and provokes a backlash. His concern is a silencing effect that amplifies extremist voices on the fringes. More precisely, it only heightens the sense that these voices are far more numerous and common than they are. But even this he finds it difficult to express in the media, so that he will not be considered as legitimizing the dissemination of incitement. The constant suspect. Never a patriot enough.
* * *
The echoes of the explosions continue to fill the living room, but at this point they are already white noise. Interceptions, explosions, hits, what does it matter. The sea is the same sea, the boom is the same boom. We didn't hear any sirens, but in the afternoon there were warnings about a red color not far away, in Acre.
This sudden calmness is like a little routine. And what do Israelis routinely talk about? About abroad. On investing in property in another country, in places where owning an apartment grants residency, and even a path to naturalization. "It's great for Yanel," I doubt-recommend, "I'll do it for my son, too, he's eligible for a foreign passport." This whole conversation follows a serious discussion about love of homeland, building the country and sharing destiny.
"What's more Israeli than issuing a foreign passport?" Jalal asks jokingly, but he scores a stamp. People who line up in front of the German or Romanian consulate, and who join a studio buying group in Athens or Lisbon, give each other lectures on patriotism. "What's the connection?" I pretend. "To tell you I'm not interested in myself?" he replies.
It is precisely around this bonfire that the Bana family also has a place. In the end, we'll all be together on the plane to another country, laughing as the bitter meaning slips down our throats. "But only after we win," I say. You mean "together we will win," Jalal replies. Together, certainly together.
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