In Grief, Israeli Family Questions Army Aid to Settlers December 18, 2002 By IAN FISHER NY Times
HADERA, Israel, Dec. 17 - She refused to cry. But there was no masking the rage that Yaffa Yaacoby aimed at the four young men, one bearing a submachine gun, who came to her house today to pay their respects to her dead daughter. "Tell me," she asked the men, all members of a small settlement near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, "is it worth it - the cave, the holy places - for my daughter and the other people who died? I speak from my heart. Look at me. I am only 40 years old. Today and every day after this, I have to wake up and face the fact that I buried my daughter. "Do you realize there isn't a piece of land worth these lives?" Settlers vehemently dispute this view, saying that the West Bank is both their biblical birthright and a buffer of security against Arab states. They argue that settlements are an investment in holding on to that land, and therefore that an army presence is necessary and justified. Today, in grief, this central argument in Israeli society played itself out in a living room here as the Yaacoby family sat shiva in mourning for their oldest daughter, Keren, 19, killed last Thursday with a fellow soldier while guarding the contentious Jewish settlement. Keren, shot by Palestinian gunmen, was the first woman in Israel's Army to die in combat since fighting broke out anew in September 2000. But her death has received intense news media coverage here, primarily because her family has been outspoken in asking why, exactly, Israeli soldiers like their daughter are guarding the settlement of only 450 religious and well-armed Jews, perched dangerously amid some 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron. Many left-leaning Israelis argue that all the Jewish settlements dotted around the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip are a block to an ultimate peace settlement, as well as an unnecessary danger to the Israeli soldiers who guard them. The settlements, they argue, also stand as a daily provocation to the Palestinians. The four settlers tried today to contest such opinions. They sought to convince Keren's family, over graciously offered cups of coffee, of their point of view. They explained that they see themselves as serving the interests of the Jewish people by expanding Israel's reach, in their case astride the cave they believe Abraham bought to entomb himself and his family. "This is the land of Israel," one said. Keren's father, Yigal, 46, snapped back. "So are the Euphrates and the Tigris," he said, referring to rivers that flow through modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. "Go live there." The feelings of Israelis about the settlements are complex, and no less so for this family, whose members say they do not oppose all settlements. But they are adamantly against the Israeli Army guarding the isolated Hebron settlement, where last month 12 Israeli soldiers, border police officers and security guards were killed in an ambush only yards from where Keren and her colleague, Maor Chalfon, died. Settlers have often reacted to the deaths of soldiers who guard them by demanding further restrictions on Palestinians or by expanding their settlements to memorialize the dead. But in this case, the Yaacoby family might prove to be an obstacle. Mr. Yaacoby is the local chairman of the Shinui political party, which has gained popularity in recent years with its opposition to special legal privileges, like exemption from military service, for religious Israelis, many of them settlers. "I feel they sacrificed my daughter on the altar of the fanatic Jews in Hebron," Mr. Yaacoby said. "I feel the army must go out of Hebron and leave the settlers to protect themselves. It may be the Holy Land, but it's a very dangerous land." Since the 12 people died last month, tensions in Hebron have been running at a high pitch. The settlers have erected new buildings on the site of that attack, and the government is also planning to raze a dozen or more Palestinian houses to build a protected walkway from there to the larger Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba, less than half a mile away. It was near there, in a curve in the road, that Keren Yaacoby was pulling guard duty with her friend, Mr. Chalfon, in a concrete bunker near a row of Palestinian houses on Thursday night. Just after 8 p.m., the two stepped out of the bunker, according to the military, and shots rained down from the top floor of a nearby building. Mr. Chalfon died on the way to the hospital. Ms. Yaacoby died from bullet wounds to her neck. The Israeli military believes that there were two gunmen. Both escaped. Today, the Yaacoby family sat shiva in their house - in which by tradition pictures and mirrors were removed from the white walls - both celebrating Keren's short life and puzzling over it a little, too. The oldest of three girls, she grew up in a house where, the family members said, they allowed her independence and the freedom to make her own decisions. She was a good student, learning Arabic in high school. She worked in a local coffee shop and saved enough money to go to Greece last year for eight days, just before she began her mandatory military service. Family photos showed a pretty young woman, dark with curly hair and a big smile, dressed in jeans. After she died, the family developed a roll of film that showed her in a way they had not seen her: in her green uniform, holding a rifle, with black combat paint on her face. It is something of mystery to them why she embraced a job with a combat unit so readily. After basic training, she was assigned to the military police in Hebron and apparently found satisfaction in the tension and tight camaraderie of one of the military's more dangerous assignments - keeping the militants of both sides apart. "This is the time she tasted what it is to be a fighter," her father speculated. "It is like a drug. When you taste it, you can't stop." Erit David, 45, her homeroom teacher for fifth and sixth grade, said her willingness to tackle such a tough assignment "surprised me very much too." "I knew her both socially and in school," he said. "She had everything she needed. She never had to fight for it." But she was, by her family's account, dedicated and even-handed. She often worked for a month straight, coming home last month only after her worried mother threatened to go get her (and so by chance was home when the other 12 died last month). A while back, she came home with bruises on her hand and arm - inflicted by Jewish settlers, she said, as she helped break up a scuffle between Jews and Palestinians. Her mother said she prevented settlers from attacking Palestinian houses. "I once asked her, `How do you treat the Arabs?' " Mrs. Yaacoby said. "She said, `What kind of question is that? What do you think? They are people like all of us.' " But that does not make her any less angry, not only with the settlers but with the Palestinians who shot her daughter as well. "Those murderers," she said. "They didn't come out to fight. They came out to murder her. And it won't break us."
