We stand on a promontory gazing at the bleached beauty of the Judean Desert. We could be looking at hills on the moon with a few human outcroppings: just down and to the left is the village of Anatot, birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah. Eleven miles to the west we see Jerusalem, with the Mount of Olives -- where tens of thousands of Jewish graves were desecrated during the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem (1948-1967) -- standing guard; we see Ramallah, seat of the “Palestinian government,” twelve miles to the northwest; Jericho, eighteen miles to the east; and not far beyond it, Jordan. At night, the lights of Amman are visible, twinkling. Below us, a sheer drop, is Wadi Kelt, a great fissure in the summer-barren hills that fills and floods with the winter rains to tinge the desert landscape green.
Across the wadi is Mitzpeh Hagit, an “illegal outpost “named for a daughter of Kfar Adumim murdered by a Bedouin terrorist as she hiked in the crevice ten years ago. “This is a response of settlers to terror murders,” says our host, one of the original eighteen settlers of Kfar Adumim. “We don’t rush out to seek revenge by murdering in return. We respond to it and honor the murdered by establishing outposts in their names.” It doesn’t look like much. How many live there, I want to know. He shrugs. Not enough. But behind us Kfar Adumim bustles with life.
This is the history of Israel, taking desert and bringing it back to life. The Arabs in the region have never done that. Israel should get it over with and annex all the land, and go on from there.
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