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  CONTENTS

  Cast of Characters · Settlement Map

  The Fields / Prologue

  Three Came at Noon

  The Convoy · The Ceremony

  The Tour · The Brothers · The Night

  The Morning · The Demonstration

  The Sabbath

  Brain Short-Circuit

  The Beetles · The Diving Board

  The Falcon · The Jaw

  The Butterflies · The Cow

  The Orienteering · The Boot Camp

  The Future

  Hot Days

  The Order · The Cabin · The Oil

  The Trailer · The Bulldozers

  The Birth · The Explanation · The Suspect

  The Doubts · The Riot

  The Mixed Grill · The Backlash

  The Article · The Island · The Campaign

  The Summer Camp · The Meeting

  The Heat · The Stray · The Word

  The Handyman · The Shed · The Attack

  The Japanese · The Sting · The Soul

  The Vomiting · The Departed · The Decision

  Feeding on Carrion

  The Takeoff · The Landing · The Fund

  The Bar · The Drinkers

  The Assistant · The Surprise · The Analyst

  The Dinner · The Return

  The Wallet · The Ages · The Ladder

  The Bus · The Light · The Crash

  Back to Basics

  The Ninja · The Sponge

  The Foot-Dragging · The Recognition

  The Marranos · The Informer

  The Responses · The Kindergarten Teacher

  The Skullcap · The Pregnancy · The Outage

  The Operation · The Party · The Gunfire

  The End

  About Assaf Gavron

  For Hila, Gali, and Maya

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Othniel Assis  Veteran settler and founder of Ma’aleh Hermesh C. On his farm he grows vegetables and makes cheese. Husband of Rachel and father of Gitit, Yakir, Dvora, Hananiya, Emunah, and Shuv-el.

  Gavriel Nehushtan (Gabi Kupper) Grew up on a kibbutz with his brother, Roni. After a religious awakening he moves to Ma’aleh Hermesh C.

  Roni Kupper Gabi’s elder brother. After years of living in the United States, he arrives at Ma’aleh Hermesh C. penniless.

  Hilik Yisraeli One of the first settlers of Ma’aleh Hermesh C., and Othniel’s right-hand man. Husband of Nehama and father of Boaz, Shneor, and Yemima-Me’ara.

  Captain Omer Levkovich The IDF section commander with oversight of Ma’aleh Hermesh C.

  Neta Hirschson Feisty right-wing patriot and cosmetician. Married to Jean-Marc and hoping to expand the family.

  Nir Rivlin Studying to become a chef. Husband of Shaulit and father of Amalia, Tchelet, and Zvuli.

  Yoni A young IDF soldier permanently stationed in Ma’aleh Hermesh C.

  Shaulit Rivlin Teacher and wife (and childhood sweetheart) of Nir.

  Rachel Assis Wife of Othniel and the first lady of the settlement. Head of the local nursery/kindergarten.

  Gitit Assis Teenage daughter of Rachel and Othniel.

  Yakir Assis Othniel’s eldest son. Manages the online orders of vegetables and cheese for his father. Second Life enthusiast.

  Jenia Freud Russian-born math teacher. Wife of Elazar and mother of Nefesh.

  Jeff McKinley Washington Post correspondent in Jerusalem.

  Jehu Ma’aleh Hermesh C.’s young loner. Mostly seen on his horse, Killer.

  Musa Ibrahim Resident of neighboring Arab village, Kharmish. Roni approaches him about a business venture. Father of Nimer.

  Uzi Shimoni Veteran settler who founded Ma’aleh Hermesh C. with Othniel, but left after a falling-out.

  Josh Levin Brooklyn-born settler. Shares a trailer with Jehu. The settlement’s de facto English translator.

  The Gotliebs Nachum, Raya, Tehila (Tili), and Shimshon (Shimi): a new family who moved from an established settlement to this new and remote settlement.

  Anna Gabi’s classmate from a neighboring kibbutz, who reappears later to claim a major role in his life.

  Dad Yossi and Mom Gila Gabi and Roni’s adoptive parents on the kibbutz.

  Uncle Yaron Roni and Gabi’s uncle, a war veteran who lives in a kibbutz in the Golan Heights.

  Eyal A kid in the kibbutz, three years younger than Gabi, with whom he has a violent encounter.

  Yotam and Ofir Gabi’s friends from the kibbutz.

  Ariel A friend of Roni’s from his Tel Aviv days. He always has a new business idea.

  Giora IDF’s head of Central Command and the most senior commander in the West Bank. An old friend of Othniel’s.

  Meshulam Avneri Gabi’s boss in Florida at the Jewish National Fund.

  Idan Lowenhof A former IDF commando who becomes Roni’s Wall Street mentor in New York.

  PROLOGUE

  THE FIELDS

  In the beginning were the fields.

  Back then, Othniel Assis was living in Ma’aleh Hermesh, merrily raising a goat and growing arugula and cherry tomatoes in his backyard. The goat was for his kids, the arugula and tomatoes for his wife Rachel’s salads. And Othniel saw that it was good, and he tired of his job as a bookkeeper, and he found himself a small plot of land within the bounds of the settlement, on which to expand his crops. As fate would have it, however, the field bordered the vineyards of another settler whose grapes produced boutique wines that were sold to Tel Aviv’s Golden Apple restaurant and other fine-dining establishments, including, the vintner claimed, several in the Dordogne region of France, and in Paris, too. And the vintner turned up his nose, declaring that he had received a permit from the regional council to plant additional vineyards on the very plot of land that had caught Othniel’s fancy. The soil, he insisted, along with the cold winters and temperate summer nights, had imbued his grapes with an outstanding quality, a unique terroir, which produced a full-bodied wine with a nutty aroma.

  And so it came to pass that Othniel deferred to the vintner and went out hiking through the surrounding land, for he deeply loved his country, and deeply loved solitude, and deeply loved to pray, and deeply loved to walk. Having left his job, he allowed his beard and hair to grow long, and wore only blue work clothes. He hiked through riverbeds and ravines, and across neighboring hilltops, until he came upon a wide-open plain, which wasn’t particularly rocky, and wasn’t already occupied by the olive trees of the neighboring Arab village of Kharmish. “Here,” he said, “I will stake out my fields.”

  Othniel experimented—cucumbers and tomatoes, parsley and cilantro, zucchini and eggplant, radishes, and even lettuce. The crops wilted under the hot summer sun and froze stiff in the winter’s chill, and also fell victim to mice and desert tortoises. But Othniel persevered, and finally decided on asparagus in the field and mushrooms in a greenhouse—and, of course, the arugula and cherry tomatoes, which Rachel, his wife, and Gitit and Dvora, his daughters, snacked on like they were peanuts.

  He duly requested council approval for his farming enterprise, and asked permission to bring a shipping container to the site to serve as both office and warehouse. Because the local military administration required governmental approval for all such plans, barring those that fell under British Mandate–era legislation, Othniel Assis asserted, “Sure, they’re Mandate Era; whatever you say, my Jewish brethren,” and promptly received his permits, with the political e
chelon none the wiser.

  Othniel relocated his lone goat to the field, and took out a small loan to purchase five more, which he turned to milking, collecting their fine produce in small pitchers and taking it home to conduct various experiments in churning and cheese-making with Rachel’s help. And Othniel dared to dream, and he said to himself, There’ll come a day when I will establish a small modern dairy here, and I’ll plant vineyards, too, and the winery I set up will surpass that of my former neighbor, and I’ll show him what’s what, him and his Dordogne!

  The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division required Othniel’s signature for a twenty-kilowatt power generator, and he then requested a permit for a guard hut, following an incident with the neighboring Ishmaelites, who had plundered the fruits of his labor. Armed with his Desert Eagle Mark VII pistol, Othniel stood guard now and then, but for the most part the hut remained empty. After all, his harvest had been raided just that one time, after which he rounded up some guys from the settlement, drove into the center of Kharmish, fired some shots in the air, and issued a stern warning to any villager who dared to do the same again.

  One member of the posse was Uzi Shimoni, an imposing Jew with a beard to match, and a deep-seated devotion to the Land of Israel. Years earlier, he had studied with Othniel at the same yeshiva high school in Jerusalem, before Othniel left his religious studies in favor of full and active military service in an elite combat unit. Shimoni appealed to Othniel’s heart, and urged him to establish a formal settlement on his land. Othniel, however, was reluctant, because his permit pertained only to a farming enterprise and a guard hut.

  “Don’t you worry,” said Shimoni.

  “But where will you get the money for homes and construction and transport?” Othniel asked.

  “I’ve organized a donation from a good Miami Jew,” replied Shimoni.

  At the time, Othniel was planning to build a permanent home in Ma’aleh Hermesh but had run into a seemingly endless web of red tape with the council engineer, a troublesome neighbor, and a corrupt real estate attorney.

  “Screw them all,” he finally said to Rachel. He’d had his fill of the exhausting bureaucracy, the sleepy, complacent bourgeoisie of Ma’aleh Hermesh, and the daily walk to and from his plot of land, a mile in each direction.

  He loved the hilltop, the winds, the ancient landscape; and he longed for the pioneering spirit of his youth—the sorties into Hebron and Kiryat Arba, the visits down south to Yamit before the Sinai town’s dramatic evacuation, the Sabbaths spent in settlements reeling from the barrage of Arab terror during the first intifada, the stormy protests against the Oslo Accords, when he and his fellow demonstrators faced off against club-wielding riot police and water cannons.

  Othniel gave in to the urgings of Uzi Shimoni, who had somehow gotten his hands on a pair of twenty-two-square-meter trailers, one of which Othniel, with the help of an expert welder, connected to the office-warehouse container and the guard hut and turned into a home for his family. The Shimonis settled in the second trailer. The two men went off together to the Registrar of Non-Profit Organizations in Jerusalem to set up an NPO, naming it the Hermesh Cooperative Farming Association.

  Next came the clearing of an access road to the hilltop. Giora, the brigade commander of the sector, and a friend of Othniel from his military days, claimed to have been unaware of the newly cleared route, which ran, invisible from the main road, from Ma’aleh Hermesh B., down through the deep, dry riverbed, and up the hill. Soon afterward, however, following a call to a friend in the National Infrastructures Ministry, the Public Works Department erected safety guardrails along the dangerously steep makeshift road.

  The brigade commander told later of receiving a call on his two-way radio one cold winter night with a report of five new twenty-two-square-meter prefab trailers that had been set up on the land adjacent to the Assis farm. He arrived on the scene to find several trucks and trailers at the site. The settlers, he said, blocked his command car from approaching. The head of the regional council turned up, things got heated, and the brigade commander, who came under a barrage of abuse, called the Civil Administration for advice on how to proceed. The new trailers, he was told, were there without a permit. However, their removal, too, required authorization, which they didn’t have. And thus the soldiers loaded the settlers onto the military vehicles and drove them away—with the records of the army and Defense Ministry duly noting that the outpost had been evacuated. The settlers returned the very next day, and the brigade commander turned his attention to more pressing matters.

  Thus the outpost took hold.

  * * *

  The five trailers were leased from the state-owned Amidar housing company, with the Housing Ministry’s approval forthcoming, thanks to the regional council head’s ties with the deputy minister. Despite the biting cold, mosquitoes abounded, and the prefab structures themselves were somewhat dilapidated. But the settlers fitted nets to the windows, attached wooden doors to the makeshift homes, used a digger to carve out access roads, and paved pathways. One of the structures was set aside as a synagogue (a recently refurnished Jerusalem synagogue had donated its old items, including an ark in good condition, and one of the men turned up with a Torah scroll, without saying where it had come from). At night, after working long, hard days, they stood guard, because the Arabs from the neighboring village were keeping a watchful eye on them. The water and electricity supply remained erratic, but the residents made do with a rusty, leaking water tanker and oil lamps. A mountain hyena occasionally plundered food and items of clothes, and rock rabbits and rats liked to visit, too.

  Two of the families left within the first few weeks, but the Assises and Shimonis stuck it out, while the third survivor was Hilik Yisraeli, a political science student in his late twenties whose scraggy face was adorned with thin-framed glasses and a mustache. Seeking to satisfy his pioneering spirit and belief in the redemption of the Land of Israel, Hilik, who grew up in Ma’aleh Hermesh but had tired of its gentrification, moved into one of the prefab trailers with his wife and two toddler sons.

  But where there are two Jews, there are three opinions, and where there are three Jews, well, God help us. Hilik questioned Shimoni about the promised donation from the wealthy Miami Jew, as Shimoni appeared to be pumping sums of money into construction and infrastructure, but precisely how much, and who got what and why, remained unclear. Uzi Shimoni, in turn, went straight to Othniel to complain about “that cheeky kid I invited here and who now has the balls to ask me questions.” Othniel nodded in agreement, but after returning home and discussing the matter with Rachel, he realized that the young man had a point, and he went back to Shimoni to get some answers. How much money did they have? Could they get a more powerful generator? What about erecting a security fence and setting up lighting for nighttime? “Everything is under control” and “Stop worrying,” Shimoni grumbled in response. Othniel promptly began to worry.

  And then, speaking to them through his car window one day, Shimoni informed Othniel and Hilik that two new families would be moving into the vacated trailers within the next few days.

  “What families?” a surprised Hilik responded. “And who decided to take them in, based on what criteria?”

  “Listen up, kid,” Shimoni said, glaring at the young man and stroking his thick beard. “Any more of those questions and you’ll find yourself out on your ass.”

  From that moment on, Othniel and Hilik formed a united front. When they tried to delve deeper into the money-from-Miami story, the evidence provoked their strong suspicion that Shimoni was dipping his fingers into the NPO’s coffers. Othniel was livid. He had run into a fair amount of corruption in his lifetime, but stealing from the settlement enterprise took the cake. Was nothing sacred these days? He didn’t confront Shimoni directly, choosing instead to pull some strings of his own. Shimoni was well connected, but Othniel also was acquainted with council officials, and he had close ties with its head and with the secretary of Ma’aleh
Hermesh. Little by little, Shimoni found himself excluded from the circles of influence.

  One morning, Othniel was making his way up to the outpost in his Renault Express. Shimoni’s dog was lying in the middle of the road, scratching himself behind the ear.

  “What the hell! Why him? What did he do wrong?” Shimoni yelled as he and the rest of his family came rushing out their home at the sound of the animal’s anguished cries.

  “He jumped in front of the car. I couldn’t brake in time,” Othniel responded, still stunned by what he had done.

  “Don’t lie! You ran him down intentionally. He’s never done anything to you!”

  Uzi’s girls were sobbing. He looked at them in pain and then turned to glare furiously at Othniel. “I never thought you’d go this far, Othniel,” he growled. “Will you guys stop at nothing?”

  Under the barrage of Shimoni’s continued accusations, Othniel’s shock soon transformed into a growing rage. “What about the NPO, Uzi?” he asked, glaring at Shimoni. “What’s with the finances?”

  Shimoni didn’t respond. He drew his pistol, loaded it, and put an end to the dog’s suffering with a single shot. “Come,” he said to his family and turned back toward their home. The following morning, he packed everyone up and left for a hilltop in Samaria, branding Hilik and Othniel “worse than Korah,” the biblical villain who led a revolt against Moses.

  Left behind were two families, united in their love for the land and in a singular viewpoint as to the nature of the outpost and its management, yet penniless. Slowly but surely, however, their luck changed. Because an Israeli anywhere in the Land of Israel is afforded protection in the form of a security perimeter to keep Arabs out, Israel Defense Forces troops were dispatched to the area to keep watch over the Assis and Yisraeli families and the three empty trailers, bringing with them a guard post, a water tower, and a generator that was ten times more powerful than the small one provided by the Jewish Agency. Othniel called in a favor from his friend Giora, the brigade commander in the sector, and asked to be allowed to draw electricity from the military generator and water from the tower for the trailers. “Sure. Why not?” Giora responded with a wink.