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Shopping For Peace

VacatIone

West Bank Arabs suddenly find an influx
of Israeli shoppers looking for good bargains.

Jerusalem
ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent

s

ack in the 1970s, one could
move to Jerusalem and find
Sephardi neighbors — many
of whom were fluent in
Arabic — buying fruit and vegetables
in the cheap Arab market of the Old
City. Ambitious Israeli parents
stocked up on English school books
in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
To escape the chill hilltop winter,
Jerusalemites drove down to tropical
Jericho for Shabbat lunch.
And in the early 1980s, hundreds of
Jews trekked to the entrance of
Bethlehem to buy groceries, lamb
chops, cane furniture and garden plants
from Arab shops. At the weekends, it
was hard to find a parking space.
All that changed when the
Palestinian uprising, the Intifada,
broke out in 1987. Most Israelis
stayed inside the pre-1967 (Green
Line) border. De facto, Jerusalem was
redivided. The Old City became a
no-go area. Settlers and reporters
reinforced their car windows against
stones and molotov cocktails.
Now, as peace is zigzagging into
the national consciousness, Israelis
have started streaming back. The
other weekend, my wife and I drove
east through an early-autumn heat-
wave on Route No. 5, the new high-
way that links the Tel Aviv coast to
Ariel and other Samarian settlements.
We crossed the Green Line at an
Israeli army checkpoint just before
Elkana, a township of red-roofed
commuter villas built on land con-
quered from Jordan in 1967.
For the next mile and a half we
inched forward in a jam of cars and
vans sporting yellow Israeli license
plates, all with one aim and one desti-
nation: bargains galore in a straggling,
improvised market on a couple of
gritty acres under Palestinian
Authority rule and Israeli security
supervision. As we climbed toward
the Arab village of Masquah, families
trundled back with tables and cup-
boards strapped to their roof racks.
Roadside vendors hawked farm pro-
duce and plastic cigarette lighters.

In the market, every foot of parking
was taken, but we finally squeezed into
a spot. The shop signs were all in
Hebrew Some, pitching for the immi-
grant trade, added Russian subtitles.
You could buy hubble-bubble pipes and
gaudy oriental carpets, but the serious
customers were looking for the practical
rather than the exotic. Tax-free shop-
ping, Israel's national sport, was in.
Furniture stores offered upholstered,
three-seat sofas, copied from
Scandinavian catalogs, for 1,200 shekelS
(about $300) in cash money, less than
half the price in Tel Aviv or Holon. You
could choose your fabric and pick up
your order the following week. The
sofas, elegant dining chairs and tables
are made by carpenters in Nablus, the
biggest West Bank Arab city, where
wages are low, tax evasion is an art and
no one pays social security.
Other traders offered cut-price bed-
ding and Levi jeans, bathroom fittings,
bird cages and barbecues, sports shoes
and deodorants. There were plant pots
(some embossed with the menorah),
carved stone garden furniture, wrought-
iron tables, basketware and power tools.
Plastic garden chairs, kibbutz-made,
were selling for 20 shekels, compared
with 35 shekels in Israel. A tray of 30
large, brown, free-range eggs was going
for 10 shekels. Israeli supermarkets
charge 8 shekels a dozen.
A building-supply merchant had
ceramic floor tiles, the same Spanish
imports we laid last month in our
spare bedroom, for 40 shekels a
square meter. In town, we paid 85
shekels.
Everyone spoke Hebrew. Israeli sol-
diers mounted a discreet guard, but
the shoppers were unarmed. There
was a relaxed, holiday atmosphere.
No pushing and shoving. Families
munched kebabs and fries in a restau-
rant, hummus in pita at a kiosk.
I spotted one car with a Likud stick-
er, but no one was talking politics.
Ehud Barak aspires to separate the
two peoples. "We're here, they're
there," as he puts it. But in the
Masquah marketplace, Middle East
economic man is voting with his
pocket book. Jews want to buy, Arabs
want to sell. Long live peace. E

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