BISMA Municipality Mayor Riad Kabaha and Rabbi Morris Rubinstein meet in Barta’a
The B’Nai Jeshurun Congregation is known in Cleveland as the “Temple on the Heights” and is one of four conservative congregations in Cleveland.
A group of congregants from the approximately 1050 families making up the B’Nai Jeshurun community in Cleveland spent a few hours visiting the Wadi Ara region and village of Barta’a through a program organized by the International Department.
Somewhat pressed for time the congregants - with Rabbi Stephen Weiss at the helm – first of all traveled with guide Lydia Aisenberg to the Katzir vantage point.
The “Temple on the Heights” folks from Cleveland were afforded an expansive view over the West Bank Dotan Valley, across the State of Israel to the Mediterranean shore and over the rooftops of Barta’a village down below from the ‘Heights’ of the Amir mountain range.
Checking off places seen in the near distance with the maps each was given at Givat Haviva brought about a flurry of questions with regard distance and who lived where and of course, “where is the Green Line then?” – one of the most common questions asked during such tours.
The group then went down from the mountain ridge to the valley below, to the offices of the BISMA local municipality in West Barta’a to be precise. The busy mayor and former co-direct of Givat Haviva’s Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, Riad Kabaha explained the complicated situations the Arab citizens of Israel and the Palestinian citizens in East Barta’a faced. He touched on problems of infrastructure, health and education as well as the precarious relationship with those on the West side with those on the East side even though they were the same extended family.
Due to the village becoming a booming center for commerce over the last five years Mayor Kabaha explained how the infrastructure of the Israeli side was not built to take the amount of traffic coming in to the village to get to the shopping area on the east side. The school in West Barta’a has a high percentage of pupils coming from East Barta’a, children who have one Israeli Arab parent and therefore they are born into Israeli citizenship and entitled to an education in Israel over the line.
“A high percentage of the pupils in the school are from the Palestinian Authority side of the village – where they are paying tax to nobody, not Israel or the PA. We here on the Israeli side are basically absorbing the cost of their education and having to construct suitable facilities for this number of pupils,” explained the white haired mayor with a boyish face.
“I have to be honest though and tell you that I do not have a problem with getting funds for building on to the school as I am a good friend of the Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir,” he said with a laugh!
However, getting funds to pay for the education of the relatives from the other side is another matter although he said he hoped that would also be solved in the not too distant future.
A few days prior to the folks from Cleveland paying a call on the mayor a number of prominent politicians and ministers toured the area and met with him and municipality council members.
“There is a lot of interest in what is going on here and the complications that have arisen together with the commercial success of the ‘shuk’ (market) in East Barta’a and there seems to now be a possibility that all the people of East Barta’a will be given some sort of pass to be able to travel freely in the Wadi Ara region this side of the Green Line,” Mayor Kabaha told the American guests, but added quickly “but then again, who knows!”
The mayor said he personally favored a return to the 1948-1967 lines, which would mean the Green Line being brought back into effectiveness, a that there be two states for two people. “We want to stay over here in Israel and we want them to have a state of their own as well, over there,” he said.
The group and Rabbi Weiss asked many questions dealing with identity, extended family relations and land ownership among others. The mayor needed to be elsewhere but before he left, Rabbi Morris Rubenstein gave the mayor a warm hug on behalf of everybody.
“This has been a very important experience for us and we all wish you well in your endeavors for the village,” Rabbi Rubenstein told Mayor Kabaha.
Now retired and living in Camarillo, California, Rabbi Rubenstein was an Air Force Chaplain in Ankara, Turkey and also served at the Kessler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi where he became involved in the civil rights movement.
The Cleveland “Temple on the Heights” congregants certainly hit the Wadi Ara heights for a few hours and a number expressed how important and eye-opening an experience it had been.
Sign language: the banner on the front of the Cleveland bus and the logo of the BISMA council
Photographs & Text: Lydia Aisenberg
August 2008
