Why did Rav Goren shoot out the lock at the Cave of the Patriarchs? Why were especially heavy benches built? And how did Atty. Haetzni convince the defense minister and the prime minister that it is possible for Jews to sit in the cave?
With the approach of the anniversary of the day of liberation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan, we spoke with a number of key figures of the settlement enterprise, we aroused memories from the first days and we wondered how much the vision of sovereignty occupied the pioneers of Judea and Samaria in those days, days of the first steps of the settlement enterprise.
Elyakim Haetzni
Atty. Elyakim Haetzni, who is considered one of the giants of the settlement enterprise, tells of his personal involvement in the Jewish return to the Cave of the Patriarchs in particular and to Hevron in general, as well as of the spirit and the atmosphere that prevailed then in the country. When he is asked to relate also to the matter of sovereignty in those days, for him, everything is contained in one story and one situation.
“I had a personal concept of Hevron, I had a relationship with Hevron, and so I decided during the Six Day War that I would go to Hevron, but there was a double sort of alienation. They did not understand what I was talking about, and when I asked people that belonged to my circle they did not understand me, until I got to Rav Levinger, who had “divisions” of Rav Tzvi Yehuda. Without them, if it were up to people without skullcaps like me, all of this would have become Palestine long ago..”
Haetzni continues, telling of the alienation with which he was confronted in the beginning of the return to the cradle of the Jewish People’s homeland: “the first problem was that authorities did not want to hear about it. We began with Kfar Etzion and, of course, there is nothing clearer than the need to return to Kfar Etzion only 19 years after ‘the fall of the queen’, as this was called. Only 19 years had passed. Every year we mentioned the fallen in memorial ceremonies, the orphans and the families would meet and the sense was, during all those years, that we would return again to Kfar Etzion and later to all of Gush Etzion. It was all a fresh memory for us. They would meet near Beit Shemesh at the point from where you can see the lone oak. This was within living memory and the government said ‘nyet’”.
Haetzni continues and tells of the 10,000 liras that were contributed by a Jewish American philanthropist for the purpose of illegal return to Gush Etzion. “I was involved in the matter and it alarmed the Mafdal people, (National Religious Party) because I had a frightening reputation from the period of fighting the corruption of the ‘Line of Volunteers’. There was the usual archaeological syndrome – when you want to build a Jewish home, if there is even one stone on top of another at the place or the finding of half a crumb, then it’s already sacred, but when, at a distance of fifty meters over the fence, Arabs are destroying entire sites and building on them, it does not interest the Archaeology Staff Officer. This is how it also was with the Mafdal, which was then the “leftist” of the Left, under the leadership of Moshe Shapira, who was more of a dove than any dove in the Labor party”.
Haetzni finds it difficult to forget his criticism for the apathy of the leadership of the various sectors and mentions also the words of Moshe Dayan, who refused to command his soldiers to enter the Old City because he “did not need this Vatican”, and Levy Eshkol’s response to Yigal Alon’s and Menahem Begin’s demand for the liberation of the Old City. “That’s an idea”, answered Eshkol then, to Alon, drily. “It wasn’t urgent for them, even for those who answered to the demands, it did not burn within them”.
And the apathy of the leadership trickled down to the people. “The people did not know anything, they did not learn in the schools about these areas and the leadership did not deal with it. On the other hand, , the desire to redeem the area and hold onto it so that it would not be lost, did burn in our bones. That summer, the government of Israel announced to the world that we were ready to withdraw to the last centimeter in Sinai and the Golan in exchange for peace. Begin did not allow such talk about Judea and Samaria.
In such a situation, he explains, it was not possible to make long-term plans for sovereignty. “Who had it in their mind, in such a situation, to think about how we would hold onto it. We were not engaged in this. What we were busy with was holding onto the place for the People of Israel so that it would not slip between our fingers. We began from zero”.
And from here, to the event that he relates to Sovereignty, an event that shows how true it was that they began from zero. It was the days before the holiday of Shavuot, ’68, the first Shavuot after the liberation of Judea and Samaria. After 700 years when the Muslims forbade the Jews and Christians from rising above the seventh step in the Cave of the Patriarchs, it was determined and announced by the minister of defense, the sovereign over the liberated territory, that this would no longer be the case. There would no longer be a limitation to the seventh step. In order to concretize this declaration, Dayan exploded these steps, including the seventh one. “He used the alibi that they had thrown a grenade from there, despite the fact that it was not from there, but actually from another direction altogether. It’s a shame, because it was a beautiful Mamluk gate”, says Haetzni.
Despite the decision to blow up the steps, Dayan restored the keys of the building to the Muslim WAQF and announced that Jews and Christians would only have visiting hours because the place belongs to the Muslims, “but Rav Goren came and took command. He came with the army. The heavy gate was locked and he shot it with his Uzi gun and blew up the gate. Until today, you can still see the holes from those bullets”.
From here onward, begins the unceasing struggle over every single detail of normalization of the Jewish presence in the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Atty. Haetzni is responsible, in no small part, for these changes.
“They did not allow us to do celebrations of brit mila or weddings at the place; women remained there and recited psalms. There was a struggle over hours… During the Fast of Gedalia young men, including Rav Rodrig, climbed up and broke into the cave outside of visiting hours. We said that there is not and will not be any limitation on hours for Jews. In Jerusalem it was a failure but here, in Hevron, there was a small group that fought and did not let go”.
“The army forbade us from bringing in a holy ark after it was agreed that we would be able to pray there on Shabbat. There was nowhere to sit. The Arabs removed the carpets”, says Haetzni, and adds: “I got to Hevron in September, ’72 but even before then I came to prepare for moving the family to Kiryat Arba. On the Sabbaths I went to the Cave of the Patriarchs to pray and I saw that people were standing. There was a very old man there, from Hevron, leaning on the wall with two people supporting him on both sides and he had no place to sit. We were not allowed to bring in benches”.
This absurd, but total, prohibition brought about a situation that was difficult to take: “In the hall of Isaac, the large hall, there is a beautiful wooden Muslim preacher’s pulpit for the from the Middle Ages and stairs that lead to the speakers’ pulpit. So when it was time to raise the Torah scroll and roll it, the one who was holding the Torah scroll sat down on the stairs. The military governor came and pulled him by the ear, because it was forbidden to sit there. I saw this and I went crazy”, says Haetzni, indicating that this was the point that brought him to active legal involvement in the events of the City of the Patriarchs.
“The legal work for the residents of Hevron, I did on a volunteer basis. I got power of attorney from some of them and I appealed to the defense minister with a letter in which I described the scandalous situation in the Cave of the Patriarchs. I said that I demand that benches be brought in to allow people to sit during the prayer. I claimed that the Protection of Holy Sites Law states that it is forbidden to discriminate against members of any religion, but at this site, Jews are being discriminated against. I received the expected terse response from the minister of defense – ‘please ask the prime minister’. I sent a similar letter to the prime minister without noting that I had already appealed to the defense minister and the answer was ‘ask the defense minister’. I took these two letters and sent them to both parties, and I said that if this is their answer, I will turn to the High Court. I wrote to them that they are not taking it seriously and I demand that they reconsider it, and then, between Pesach and Shavuot, there was a decision to bring benches into the Cave of the Patriarchs”.
The decision was received gratefully, but to be on the safe side, “we ordered the benches from the local carpentry and we made them so heavy that it would be impossible to move them after the prayer, and they indeed did remain there”.
Haetzni draws a straight line between the responses then and similar events today, and tells of how shocked and condemnatory articles were immediately published in Haaretz crying about what was done to Haram Ibrahim (the Arabic name for the Cave of the Patriarchs) “’why, there are no benches in a mosque, and the fact that there is a holy ark and benches in a mosque might cause the entire Islamic world to rise up against us’. A suggestion was made to find a nearby building where we could place a synagogue, like the Mahkema building near the Western Wall. There was a conceptual division between us that has remained until today. We did not understand each other, and the fact is that today, there are 4-5 synagogues and the planet Earth continues to turn on its axis, just as before. They were sure that there would be an explosion because the Jews demanded what belonged to them”.