Of Prisoners and Watermelons

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice but I am also conflicted. I firmly believe we should not negotiate with terrorists and yet I firmly believe that we should do anything we can do to bring every Israeli soldier home.

I think about Gilad and I think about his parents, friends and family. 

I also think of all the others who will be impacted by the release of hundreds of terrorists. I realized this week that it is 25 years since I was discharged from the IDF.  Time has flown and time has crawled and times - they have certainly changed.

I was in uniform in 1985. I served in a smaller outpost just south of tzomet Mickey Mouse; named not after the efficiency of the soldiers but after the shape of one of the original building which ( I was told) looked like Mickey Mouse ears. When I first arrived on the base in January, it was a pretty relaxed place. When we weren’t on guard duty we would often change into civilian clothes and walk down the hill into the Arab village and buy fresh bread and cremebo-im. The locals greeted us warmly and sometimes saved loaves of bread for us. There was no bus service into the base so we would be trucked down to the nearest Egged stop and left alone to wait for the bus. To be honest, in the first few weeks, I would often hitch hike home to Beer Sheva rather than wait for the bus to Jerusalem and then take another bus south.

By March, there had been some terrorist activities in the area. Couples out walking in the hills had disappeared and were later found dead. A number of soldiers were taken from trampiadas and killed. Security in our area was increased. We were no longer allowed to wander into the villages in the evenings. If we went during the day to buy fresh bread or produce, we were only allowed to go if one of us was armed, and female soldiers were discouraged from going at all. The truck which took us to the bus stop to go on leave now waited with us until we got on the bus. I was told by my commanding officer that if he heard I was hitching, he would never give me leave again.

But, the villagers were still friendly for the most part. The children would wave to us as we drove through and the adults waved and smiled.

When the prisoner exchange was arranged, there wasn’t the same oversaturation on the news. Granted, in 1985 nothing was as oversaturated in the news and our little outpost had only a radio for news and music and of course, cable tv wasn’t standard issue with our uniforms.  I know that there was concern. We went into full alert, no leaves, more guard hours and we were armed all the time, even on kitchen duty. Of the roughly 1500 prisoners, convicted terrorists and felons, roughly 800 were expected to return to their homes in our area. The army set up road blocks in the villages and our small outpost became headquarters for part of the added security and intelligence gathering teams who were supplementing the regular teams.

It was a strange place for a woman soldier to be. Theoretically, women were still not allowed to be on the front lines. And yet, the front lines had come to us. I think had they been able to evacuate us, they would have. But, there wasn’t time or capability and so they left us on the base, with our male counterparts. We served as front gate guards, radio room operators, and kitchen cooks, just like the men did. The only thing we were not allowed to do was to walk the perimeter. But, when the road blocks were set, the men were taken to ‘man’ them and the women were left to fill in on the base. Instead of one shift a day at either the front gate or the radio room, we were now doing two shifts, one at the radio room and one at the gate. And of course, there was still kitchen duty and more mouths to feed because of the extra teams.

One of the things I am most proud of is my IDF training. Because of the division I served with I had more in depth training, more on par with a typical male soldier than a typical female soldier. I was trained to serve on an outpost and to be part of the non-gender specific team, including being qualified on many of the ‘larger’ weaponry and potential bullet wounds. We had been trained to be soldiers and yet somehow, the nascent Jewish mother genes kicked in.  I, and the other women who served on that outpost at that time, were more concerned with whether our men were getting enough to eat at the roadblocks than whether we were being shot at.

The first couple of days, we sent food to the roadblocks. We baked, and cooked and sent the best pieces of chicken, and the freshest produce out to them. In fact, I have vivid memories of trying to keep my gun slung over my shoulder onto my back while taking trays out of the oven. The first day, they came back to the base grateful for the wonderful chuparim( treats). But the second day, they brought back some of the cookies and fruit we had sent them but also a couple of watermelons which hadn’t come from the base.

It turns out that some of the villagers who had been stopped at the roadblocks  had taken pity on the soldiers and left them with watermelons, and in the coming days, peaches, avocado and fresh bread. Relationships which had been developed through the years of soldiers walking into the villages for produce and ice cream were still intact. For the week the blockade was up, we had more fruit and vegetables on the base than we ever had before.

We also had our military incidents as well. If you have ever gone to bed with the sky lit up from flares, or to the sound of not so distant gunfire, then you know how easy it is to fall asleep when you need to. I have been fired at and returned fire and consider myself lucky that I don’t know if any of my bullets actually hit anyone.  And in those weeks which followed the prisoner exchange in 1985, we were in more overt danger than we had been before the exchange. Combatants were injured on both sides, as were civilians.

But, I would not have told the government to not exchange prisoners.

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice; just as I can’t help but think of the soldiers in the outposts. I hope that someone is saving them the best bread and watermelons.

Welcome home Gilad.