LIFE IN ISRAEL
The Intifida's
New Rules
Of The Road
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The uprising is forcing settlers
and travelers in the territories to
take extra precautions before
setting out on the mad
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ABRAHAM RABINOVICH
Special to the Jewish News
erusalem — Instinctive-
ly, the driver slips his
hand from the wheel
and releases his seat belt
without easing his foot from
the gas pedal. If it is not too
hot, he rolls the window most
of the way up. If he has a gun,
he touches it to make sure it's
there.
There is no longer any clear-
cut physical demarcation sep-
arating Israel proper from the
territories. For a long time
after the Six Day War, barbed
wire and concrete roadblocks
left by the Israeli army in
1967 indicated the Green
Line. lbday, even the infre-
quent visitor knows when the
virtually seamless line has
been crossed.
A traveler on the roads of
the West Bank is struck by
the tranquil Biblical land-
scape and a vague, pervading
sense of menace. Arab youths
on village streets, or standing
at a bend on a country road,
study a car with yellow Is-
raeli plates from the moment
it heaves into view until it
passes out of sight. They need
not make threatening move-
ments, nor even look overtly
j
34
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1988
hostile. Rocks scattered at in-'
tersections tell their own tale.
For the 60,000 Israelis liv-
ing beyond the Green Line
and the thousands of others
who pass through the ter-
ritories each day, the intifada
has given birth to a new
highway culture.
"I've drilled my family on
what to do if we get hit by a
petrol bomb," said Pinhas
Bar-Haim, secretary of the
small settlement of Nekudot,
a few kilometers from Beth-
lehem.
"I carry a small fire ex-
tinguisher in the car now," he
said. "I think most people do.
People here travel in convoys
now — at least two cars."
Since the uprising began
almost a year ago, he has also
stopped wearing his seat belt.
Only after crossing into Israel
does Bar-Haim buckle up.
The memory of a woman
burned to death when she
was trapped by her seat belt
in a pre-uprising petrol bomb
attack, has led drivers in the
territories to shun the safety
mechanisms.
Settlers in the most iso-
lated parts of the West Bank
where there is little Israeli
traffic and a significant Arab
presence now shun evening
travel to avoid destructive
Arab chicanery.
"People here don't go out
after 9:00, 9:30 at night," said
Mordechai Alexander, a resi-
dent of Ma'aleh Amos, one of
the most isolated settlements
in the area. The Arabs cut the
heads off heavy duty galvan-
ized nails and drive them in-
to the road making travel
hazardous. At night, he said,
it's impossible to see the
black nails in the black
asphalt.
Now, when they do go out,
Alexander said settlers notify
the army and carry two-way
radios. "Before the intifada,
we never did."
Travelers never know where
they might encounter trouble.
A resident advised a visitor
on his way from the Tekoa
settlement to Efrat, on the
main Hebron-Jerusalem road,
to be sure to turn right at the
first intersection. The Arabs,
he said, often take down the
road sign there.
"If you just follow the road
straight on instead of turning
right," he warned, "you'll end
up in the Arab village of Se'ir.
You don't want to go there."
Twice in recent months
Israeli vehicles had driven in-
to Se'ir and been swallowed
up in the maw of the intifada.
The mobs that had closed in
on them had permitted the
drivers to walk out, but their
vehicles had been burned.
Even the right turn is no
guarantee of safe passage.
Between the intersection and
Efrat, a 10-minute drive, the
road passes beneath high
banks from which petrol
bombs and stones are
dropped on passing vehicles.
Still, for all the hundreds of
petrol bombs hurled and the
hundreds of car windows and
windshields smashed by
rocks since the start of the
uprising, there have been no
Israeli fatalities.
But the nature of the bat-
tle for the roads has changed
in the past few months. "At
the beginning of the intifada,
there were mass demonstra-
tions and they would some-
times even block the main
roads for half an hour or
more," said Yisrael Baruchi,
head of security at the Etzion
Bloc of Jewish settlements
near Hebron.
"We don't get the mass
demonstrations any more," he
said, adding that the army
has increased its presence in
the area. "But more cars are
hit by stones now." In the
past, cars would stand clear
until the army opened the
road. Now the roads are open