Neve Shalom
“We are a thorn in their throat.”
—Mahmoud Darwish
By 1974, Ruth and Raymonda were a well-known pair, racing around Israel and the West Bank, usually in Raymonda’s sleek new Citroën SM. The two were an odd couple: Ruth didn’t care about style, while for Raymonda it was always important, both out of the natural pride of a francophone and because she was determined to defy the occupiers as a beautiful woman. “I should never wear mustard yellow,” she once found herself musing, approaching a company of soldiers. “Next time I’ll put on the brandy-colored blazer. Much better.” Without fail, she always attracted the amorous, curious eyes of men.
The most public event they did together, with lots of snapping cameras, was a tree planting in the “Peace Forest” of Neve Shalom, the Arab-Jewish village founded by the Jewish-born Dominican monk, Bruno Hussar.
This wasn’t a simple photo op: for Raymonda, the setting alone made it dangerous. Neve Shalom is close to the “Canada Forest,” which spreads a gentle carpet of pine needles over the ruins of three villages depopulated on Dayan’s order in 1967.52 Abu Nidal and ilk frequently turned their guns on Palestinians engaging in “dialogue” with Israelis. Raymonda had to be cautious.
Bruno, a friend of Father Michel’s, was a remarkable man. Having converted to Catholicism for philosophical reasons in the 1930s—as an engineering student in France he had been studying the nature of human evil—he fled France after the Nazis began rounding up Jews. He founded Neve Shalom in 1950, as a place where members of the three Abrahamic religions could live together, as a testimony of what was possible. The message resonated deeply with Raymonda and Ruth.
At the ceremony, the two friends took their shovels and were ready to start digging a hole for trees when Raymonda spotted an Israeli flag flapping white and blue in the wind. If she were to be shown in an Israeli newspaper, with the Star of David in the background, it could spell trouble.
She dashed over to the back seat of the Citroën and pulled out a long green and red Palestinian flag she and her daughters had made out of scraps of cloth. She draped the illegal flag, an act punishable by a year in prison, over her shoulders like Superman’s cape.
“Raymonda, take that thing off!” Ruth banged her shovel into the dust.
“Why?”
“Because trees aren’t politics, for heaven’s sake.” Ruth merely wanted to plant the saplings, smile for the cameras, and call it a day.
Raymonda gripped the flag tighter around her shoulders. Yeah, she was thinking. That’s convenient for you to be above politics. No one’s going to shoot you down for being a collaborator. To keep from shouting, Raymonda hummed to herself a Janis Joplin song she heard on Abi’s Peace Radio: “Somethin’ came along, grabbed a hold of me, honey, and it felt just like a ball and chain.”
“Everything is politics here, Ruth,” she finally told her, refusing to back down. “Trees, rainclouds, pantyhose, everything.” Their eyes locked, and Raymonda wondered if their friendship would end—over a symbol. She saw a smile forming on Ruth’s face. “OK, Raymonda, hang your pantyhose on a flagpole.”
“I have a better idea, Ruth. You plant a tree under your flag, and I’ll plant one under mine.” It was a sort of impromptu two-state solution, even though Raymonda’s real dream was for everyone to live in the same state, as equals.
Ruth was willing to go along, but the other Israelis now chimed in with indignation and catcalls. Even a few pinecones were tossed in Raymonda’s direction. The level of the hostility rose to such a pitch that the organizers, people of good will hoping for peace and not a lynch mob, called off the event.