Chapter Thirty-Seven
Further timely, sensitive stuff. ed
Know more/Know less.
More about Israel/Palestinians, as in
the pains and prospects of earlier peace efforts.
Plus links to further drama of the
Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1989.
______________________________
“In this topsy-turvy world,
it isn’t easy to right yourself
when you’re faced with what’s left.”
Vvmnnnnnnnnvzlopfff…vvmnnnnnnnnnnnvzlopffff…An orange coveralled city worker stood at the control panel of a new white vacuum flusher truck, his partner guiding a huge coiled hose and nozzle that sucked sand and sediment out of nearby Bay Street sewers and drains. The monster rig’s blower noise damped our walking conversation; its proactive maintenance drew me back further into liquefaction before the current overflow of facts.
“Whoa, easy Doc,” I said in earnest, though welcoming the hard-earned anger. “We’re just discussing, right? Schoolin’ days, like you said, a seminar give and take, chopping it up. Don’t throw the baby out…”
“Well, I must admit red flags do go up when you began maligning Israelis…”
“Hey, did I say anything about Israelis in general? Nossiree. So don’t go putting words in my mouth, okay,” I replied, rattled by the commotion, as was Marina serenity up and down the block. “I’m only saying, it’s not the folks, just some of their strokes sometimes—wronger policy-wise, like that…”
“Say again?” Reese Paulen looked me all over—cupping his ears once we neared the roaring sanitation truck. “And ‘wronger’? What does that even mean?”
“Aww, nothing, what the hell do I know?” My voice raised, what with the sewer truck going into overdrive to dredge up deeper line traps of landfill residue. “Point is, two perceived wrongs don’t make a right. But two misperceived rights can make for a long, drawn-out wrong.”
“Stop circling the tree and hike your leg, Herbert. Say what’s on your self-styled Maimonides mind—by all means, guide the perplexed here.”
Yeesh, what was on my mind…or minds. I had to admit, I was back to rummaging around the mental attic some, poking through the crawlspace a little bit more. Brainscape, mindspace—whatever they called it, there was no getting around the cranial beast, still no getting my head around that. Anyway, I couldn’t stop this indelible imagery, the multidimensional cubist refraction generated for all to see, in vivid 32-bit hex color. It may help explain my persistent drift in and out of retro mode. Drilling down, through the landfill, mud and sludge to solid bedrock. Now and then, I think about it—then and now…
Yet after, aftershocks, tremblors all over again, back to Marina Quake ’89—reminded that this very ground, dedicated to San Francisco’s rebirth in the wake of the 1906 earthquake was torn asunder by the next biggest bang to come along. Still, here and thereabouts, I dreaded, as I headed here to this very day… (More E/Q ‘89)
“No circling, Nothing earth shattering, believe me,” my head now retroactively spinning like the sewer truck’s vacuum turbines, alarmed as I was by roiling replay. “Say, maybe we really should just split instead and be headed back up to higher ground…” Got so I wondered was it him talking to me, or me talking to him, or us? Was he grilling me or me grilling he…or him, or us? And what did this all have to do with the price of a good schmeer anyhow? “You’re the one who brought it all up in the first place…“
“Nonsense…wouldn’t hear of it,” Paulen replied, with a nod toward proceeding further out Bay Street. “Not when we are actually getting somewhere here.”
“Seriously, the wind is picking up, and it gets to be pretty much wide open from here.” Besides, you’re all but calling me David Duke because you think I’m not totally drinking your doctrinal Kool-Aid.”
“No need to go flipping your kaffiyeh. Let’s just hang in there a bit, for sake of some further illuminating exchange—as you said, chopping things up,” he urged, fiddling with, repositioning his ear set like some talking head on CNN.
“OK,” I sighed, mindful once again of the deal at hand, gripping on my newspaper, feeling for that envelope, still snugly interleaved. Flashpoint, dial back some… compartMENTALize, remember?! “I’ll see you through to the Palace grounds, that’s it…”
“Now, now—I meant nothing by those comments—they simply came in the heat of our revealing give and take,” Doc replied, grabbing me firmly by the elbow. “Honestly, you seem to be misinferring the implications of my inference. That’s not necessarily what I was implying in the slightest.”
“What-ever,” I said, mildly exasperated, no more status quo ante here, yet relenting just the same—while recognizing a mental Post-it note that I had finally hit a rawer, mother nerve. “ All I was wondering was, like, how does that unfettered settlement stuff lead to settling things over there? It just seems overlooking, giving in to settler extremism may not be the best road map to final status negotiations, that’s all.”
“Or two-state illusion,” Paulen eased off some himself, back from the didactic brink. “Most of which Tel Aviv signed onto long ago, I might add, beginning with Sharon’s vow to take down some of those settlements himself. In any case, he reaped little or no reciprocal measures from the Palestinians, only more accusations and claims of Geneva violations—not to mention ghastly violence.”
With that, I again found myself drifting in and out of eras: Most ominous then, however, were the City’s full-scale Winnebago-sized heavy rescue units, for these P.D. and F.D. vans led to even higher, more excruciating drama on these very streets…(E/Q ’89…)
“Well, Tel Aviv must have signed with disappearing ink, since settlements still expanded,” I snapped to—now scratching, arching my back. “I mean, why do they need to be moving in so fast and furiously, getting so aggressive about it? What’s with land grabbing Palestinian homes under the guise of no proper building permits—or settlers tormenting, attacking basically innocent Palestinians. Crippling their growth with a crazy-quilt of buildings, trailers, shacks and hilltop security encampments. All ostensibly to mollify Shas and the rest of the Haredim.”
“Hmph, because the teerrorists are hiding among them, Herbert,” Doc cried, looking me up and down with scalpel eyes. “Besides, Israeli authorities have been clamping down on more willful settlers just as hard as on the Palestinians—even so far as tear gassing ultra hardliners out of Biblical buildings in Hebron and Meir Kahane’s Kfar Tapuah. Moreover at Hebron, once the hallowed Kingdom’s of Judah’s first capital that Jews had lived in for three millennia, before being driven out by Arabs in the Tarpat pogrom. Besides, Israelis are moving toward building up, not outward on their god-given ground—limiting sprawl, enabling a good many Palestinian construction workers to feed their families!”
“Yeah, until Oz Unit commandos come along, echoes of Lydda…”
“I happen to be more familiar with Amos Oz, thank you very much,” Paulen said. “Moreover, some Area C settlers have even been seeking buy-outs to move out of your West Bank altogether. Most will not be bought off, however, for where else are they going to go? Judea and Samaria are home. They’re certainly not going to allow being banished anymore. Jews may know when to leave a place, but they surely know to stay put there.”
“Nevertheless, isn’t this ’67 green-line jumping another reason Israel is catching so much global heat these days? Like Washington scolding how ‘unhelpful’ settlement activity can be to the peace process, since Oslo at any rate?”
“Peace process? Whose peace process?!“ Paulen glanced about at the immaculate, bushy Spanish-style homes and two-flats, now fresh eggshell white to vibrant pastels, lining Bay Street on either side. “But it’s not as though Israel’s government isn’t responsive. Just consider all the news footage of mounted Israeli police removing settlers from unauthorized outposts like Beit El and Amona…”
“Then again, how about what’s been going on in Hebron?” I countered, my duplex mind crossfiring like an optical peripheral scanner. “Jewish settlers seizing Palestinian homes or demolishing them altogether? Where’s the peace and harmony in that?”
“Israeli authorities are forcibly evicting hard-liners in Hebron, as well,” Doc huffed, as we slipped between plastic tricycles and Radio Flyer wagons scattered about the lawn-trimmed sidewalk. “Even though Hebron is a different story entirely.”
“They’re illegal settlers on the West Bank, right? Mostly on the government dole. So, what the hell’s the difference with that…”
“Hmph, the difference is Hebron has special resonance for the Jewish people, especially when it comes to Torah scholars. Namely Kiryat Arba—burial place of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, as per the Book of Joshua. Jews were Hebronians for 1,800 years before rioting Arabs annihilated them in 1929. So now, many of the settlers feel they are reclaiming their divine rightful Jewish land.”
“But the Palestinians’ Muslim Cemetery and Ibrahimi Mosque,” I said, bent on straddling my chronic ping-pong turbulence. “The sidelockers and righteous kippots can’t erase that…when all they really want is the land.”
“Well, many of the ultra-Orthodox settlers do believe they are doing God’s work, regaining ordained control of the entire biblical tribal land, from which Jews were for so long exiled—rights and religion, arm in arm—that it’s their religious duty, more than to the state of Israel itself.”
“Yeah? Tell it to the Christians and Muslims—especially Palestinian protesters slinging those stones at the Bil’in wall, who need permits into their holy places in Jerusalem. Hell, I’ve read where some undercover Mossad agents are even tossing rocks to rile up Palestinian kids so Israeli soldiers can fire back with rubber bullets and sound guns.”
“Downright nonsense! I take your dubious accusations with grain of salt, and can only further consider the source,” he bellowed, that sewer rooter truck rumbling by, aiming for another muck clogged manhole up at Broderick Street. “In the final analysis, our enduring lesson is, ‘never surrender, never again!’ To some, settler reclamation is no less sacred in these thorny times.”
“Though does your sacred reclamation mean blessing West Bank roadway shakedowns, or blind eyeing outlaw outposts beyond the ’67 borders. I mean, while Israel’s holding tight on the purse strings…”
“Look, Israel has been doing its part to ameliorate that situation, even while terrorists blow up fuel trucks, or lay in backpack explosives filled with nails and ball bearings. Those twisted terrorist animals who would rather kill than build. IDF and police forces have been quietly easing up on offensive operations of late. You see, not all Israelis can be painted with such a broad, biased brush. ”
Still, here and thereabouts I dreaded and headed to this day on shaky Marina ground, like walking barefoot on a waterbed, mindful of Richard’s past failings, whether he was genuinely up to the task, myself fixing to looky-loo like crazy for Her—praying for a clean, clear escape, bracing for a rescue operation, fearing a recovery mission of last resort. No, not again—christ, what that had wrought…get on outta…enough with the earthquake already…STOP it!!!
“Hey, no fair—I’m not talking about all Israelis. Am only talking about the settlements,” I quickly shied away from all sorts of longshots and shortfalls past, now that we reached the Broderick corner, again within view of that tapering Pacific Heights smokescreen. “This whole occupation ad infinitum scenario.”
“Ah yes, so it’s bad news, not bad Jews, is it?! Keep telling yourself that,” Paulen was plainly irritated by the city sewer truck, which was already snaking a mid-intersection fire cistern with its gargantuan caterpillar yellow hose. “And how convenient, your preoccupation with the so-called ‘occupation’. Need I remind you the settlements do happen to help provide a security buffer. Hmph, as if a sudden terror attack anywhere in the country wouldn’t vindicate their defensive measures overnight.”
“Terror from without…or tear apart from within?”
“That’s merely one ousider’s misinformed opinion, now isn’t it…”
Vvmnnnnnnnnnnvzlopfff…vvmnnnnnnnnnnvzlopfff…
Care for more?
Chapter Thirty-Eight. Even deeper into the Is/Pal
weeds, remedies are still whacked by bitter
regional realities. Yet issues are largely defined,
toward an array of potential resolutions amid the
current Marina calm. But to what end?