FARMING ARMY NO MORE

Lydia Aisenberg
 

Amid much fanfare a new IDF Nachal (Pioneer Fighting Youth) outpost was recently inaugurated in the Wadi Ara region, a few hundred metres from the Green Line.

As it happens the area is known by most Israelis whether Jewish or Arab by the Arabic name Wadi Ara although there is a Hebrew name, Nachal Irron.  The latter is used in the main only by the state radio and television and some newspapers.

A nachal is a stream, whereas a wadi is a dry river bed or valley.  Until the new IDF Nachal outpost receives an official name, it will be known as the Nachal Irron outpost and presently around 30 soldiers are living there.  Rumour has it that a request has been put it to name the place after the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

Nachal is a branch of the IDF that until recent years combined military service with agricultural training.  Nachal soldiers focused on establishing new Jewish communities, usually on sites close to a border and deemed necessary for the security of the state.  Once established, and with basic development having been achieved then the site would be handed over to a civilian population. 

Sometimes the uniformed pioneers would remain in the place that they had put their backs into establishing following their army service, although the vast majority moved on.   

These days Nachal soldiers are more involved in planting the seeds of much needed educational projects amongst the weaker elements of Israeli society, although in the case of the new Wadi Ara outpost, there is a definite combination of past ideology and present day needs.

The soldiers now serving at the Nachal Irron outpost,  former members of the Israel Scouts and the HaNoar Lomed V\'Oved movements, will split their time between guarding their small well fenced in base and working in schools and community centres literally across the country.  In the area where they are situated \'across the country\' from the Green Line to the coastline is actually around 30 kilometres. 

These young men and women will not be ploughing fields, planting crops and reaping a good or not so good harvest at the end of the season.  They will help \'sabra\' and immigrant youth in their designated area do homework and keep them off the streets with after school activities.  Come to think of it, there is a definite comparison to be made being as these conscripted youngsters will be helping others, not much younger than themselves, plant the seeds of a better future for themselves and society in general.

The possible naming of the site after the late Ilan Ramon is indeed very fitting as the latest Nachal post is sitting slap in the middle between two Green Line communities, Katzir and Harish, that are two points in the early l990\'s Seven Stars plan of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The plan envisioned setting up new Jewish communities along the Green Line to act as a buffer zone between the Palestinians and Israel Arab towns and villages that hug this part of the former l967 border with Jordan.

The 700 families of Katzir sit atop the Amir mountain range overlooking Israeli Arab and Palestinian villages spread out on either side of the Green Line, and can also see the two storey buildings of Harish down below them.

All that can be seen of the new outpost however is a water tank perched on long steel legs protruding out of the greenery of a hill between two Israeli Arab villages, Barta\'a and Umm-el-Kutuf and Harish.  Nachal Irron\'s buildings are sitting on wedges of sandy soil cut out of the small hillside, a high fence surrounding them and a chain and padlock the size of a fist dangling on the locked front gate.

I am standing outside the gate at noon and hot is not the word.  Two soldiers, one female one male, are sitting under some netting pulled across between a few posts and a tree trunk, giving them some shade from the midday sun.

I call out and they glance my way, and carry on chatting.  I call out again and the male soldier, with great effort, manages to lift himself up and walk the twenty odd paces to the gate.

I explain who I am and would like to have a chat about their out-reach work with youth.  Grinning widely, he informs me they are not allowed to speak to the press.

For the next 15 minutes we discuss the out-reach project, the area where the base is physically situated and argue about whether the Green Line was 50 yards from the base fence or 100.  My mind boggles at what this young man would have told me had he been allowed to talk to the press!

The young man, rightly so, was very proud of his \'garin\' or group that had committed themselves to educational challenges before, during and hopefully, after their army service.  Their summer will be full of running summer camps for kids within their designated region and come September really get under way in schools and community centres.

Asked if he knew about the Seven Stars plan and the strategic mission he and his group were bit players in, he gave another big grin.  \"Sure do,\" he said whilst at the same time pointing in the direction of a small forest nearby – a large number of Palestinian homes dotted all over the landscape in the near distance visible through the breaks in the trees. 

At the inauguration ceremony two weeks ago, Dudi Sandrov who heads the local joint Katzir-Harish municipality, addressed the young, eager and still idealistic young recruits.

\"The Stars are meant to create an area of continuous Jewish settlement in the Wadi Ara region,\" said Sandrov.

\"As an outpost it creates an important military presence on the Green Line and also part of the \'beads\' programme which calls for a number of small communities to create Jewish territorial contiguity between Harish in the west and Mei Ami in the east,\" he explained.

Also between Harish and Mei Ami, a moshav on the mountain range named after the Jewish community of Miami who helped fund the civilian community, are Katzir and Ein-Saleh, a large Israeli Arab Muslim village of 3,500 residents.

Sandrov is pretty convinced that the new outpost will follow the way of Mei Ami in a relatively short time and stated that there were already enquiries from people who wanted to become one of the beads in the necklace of Jewish communities along the Green Line, and section of the new security fence being built in that area.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Entrance to Nachal Irron base close to the Green Line.