Living With The Fear

The fight against
terrorism occurs
as much in the mind
as in the street.

JANE SIEGEL MEDVED

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

erusalem — We were driving back
from a five-day vacation in Eilat when
we started to hear the first of the news.
Two people had been killed in a stabbing
spree through Tel Aviv's Cannel market.
One of them was a father of four, the oth-
er a new immigrant on his first day of
work.
We hush up the children and try to lis-
ten to the radio, without letting them un-
derstand what's going on. I start to be
very aware that soon the road will turn
past Jericho; that we will be driving by
sprawling Arab villages, that even
though we had made the decision weeks
ago, we have not yet put plastic shield-

Jane Siegel Medved is a writer living in
Jerusalem.

Anger and frustration: High school students demonstrating at a Jerusalem school where a Palestinian stabbed and wounded five students and the principal.

ing on the windows of our car.
Less than four hours ago, I had been
sitting on a terrace in Eilat, drinking
espresso and watching the palm trees
sway. The Princess Hotel had opened
only two months ago and was already
the rage of the country. It was truly a
world class resort complete with spa,
gourmet restaurants, five swimming
pools and European service.
After five days there I felt that I be-

longed to the Israel of the sun-drenched
Mediterranean, and not the war-torn
Middle East.
I was proud to be an Israeli. We had
given back Sinai, we had lost Taba, but
we had moved on, built something even
better; taken a pile of rocks in a dead-end
canyon that no one had even bothered to
look at before and created Israel's fore-
moA luxury resort. At that moment it all
seemed possible; this tiny country, only

slightly larger than the state of New Jer-
sey. We can recoup our losses, I thought. co
We can pull it off.
That night, back in Jerusalem, an 11-
year-old girl, injured when a barrage of
rocks sent the family's car off the road,
dies in the hospital. The next morning a cc
0_
Jewish motorist making a wrong turn
into the village of Rafiah is murdered by
a mob of over 100 Arab residents.
Pictures in the press that somehow