I’d asked my friend if there was a decent sized park in Tel Aviv a day or so before Shabbat. She didn’t know of one, and after we found ourselves there the next day, admitted in all the years she’d lived in Israel she’d never been to the National Park at Ramat Gan. Although really an urban park and not officially ‘national', it is the second largest in Israel, opened in 1953.
Such is the way of most of us, often traveling the world but rarely seeing the best parts of our home locales!
The most immediately striking thing to an Aussie like myself are the giant eucalypts which line the pathways and literally forest some areas of the park, but we’ll come back to these gentle giants again shortly.
It had rained the day before, a downpour that took the city by storm so to speak, and flooded Tel Aviv’s streets for an hour or so. The storm-water system was obviously not up to the task, as it was really only an intense shower and not the kind of blinding incessant rainfall that an Australian is used to in Byron Bay, or Sydney for that matter, let alone far north Queensland! The streets had become slick and dangerous and it seemed like half the cities washing powder was foaming in the boulevards. Many people seemed almost afraid of the rain, in the manner we might in Australia be afraid of say .... raining missiles.
It was the day after Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations which followed the Palestinian claim submitted for statehood, and President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech. There was an uncomfortable feeling abroad somehow in Tel Aviv, some dire predictions abounding, and at dinner the night before we had talked about the future security of the country in the light of these developments, but frankly had decided NOT to pay for the optional ‘security fee’ on the restaurant tab! I had remarked earlier that unemployment would soar in Israel if there was peace, as so many are employed at security jobs in shops, restaurants, and just about everywhere else.
One of our Israeli friends, who lives in Byron Bay, had been at her parents home during the speech. Obviously firmly left wing she commented how shocked she’d been that all her mother could say about Netanyahu as he held forth before the international conclave was – “isn’t he handsome?”
In the park there were a dozen Ethiopian weddings in train, tiny little black bridesmaids in pristine white frilly frocks, rose-coloured bridal gowns against the steamy afternoon glow, slender handsome best men in powder blue suits, while fat-lensed cameras clicked away. Apparently the Ethiopian custom is to go about in luscious settings taking all the photos before the wedding! I wondered what would happen to all these gorgeously crafted shots should a bride or groom get cold feet at the end of such a picturesque day and flee the final festivities.
We walked with family into the park, past all this colourful buzz, to an enormous playground, the likes of which I have never seen. Undercover and covering a soccer field sized area, the climbing, swinging and rotating structures were sophisticated, elegant, and architecturally brilliant. Hundreds of children were all over them like ants on honey. It is one of many such places designed for underprivileged children, but here today Jewish and some Muslim Israelis, and ring-ins like myself enjoyed the playful afternoon together.
The grass is radiantly green for this time of year, and a large artificial lake features in the centre of the park. Water supply in Israel is a delicate political issue, and one that many see as just as important as who has what territory – more valuable than oil, and a longer term threat than the occasional deadly missile lobbed by mad fundamentalists. Water is life, and despite sophisticated systems of water management, Israel relies partially on surface water from the Jordan River and thus on political stability. Despite agreement in 1995 with Jordan, Israel is in dispute continually with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians over this water, and the water that sleeps in the West Bank mountain aquifer.
Before 1964 Syria was secretly attempting to divert water from the headwaters of the Jordan River away from Israel's thirsty population, but was foiled by one Eli Cohen, known to many now as Israel's greatest spy. And to many, Israel’s capture in the ’67 war of the Golan Heights, from which Israeli villages in the Galilee had been shelled by the Syrian army for years, was largely due to Eli Cohen and to the eucalyptus trees planted there due to his novel espionage techniques.
Cohen was a Syrian Jew born in Eqypt, who after moving to Israel at 33 had offered his services to Mossad, which initially turned him down, despite his experience already as a political operative. But a few years later they came back to him, and after intensive training and assuming a new identity as a Syrian, Kamal Amin Ta'abet, then spending time in expat Syrian society in Argentina to establish his cover, he found his way into the centre of power in Damascus and into the embrace and trust of high level government and military operatives. He attended and hosted lavish parties, even orgies, supplying dignitaries with beautiful women – a practice he was not averse to partaking in himself – but meanwhile began to transmit information to the Israelis. So trusted was he that he was given a tour of the Syrian Heights army fortifications. In early 1964 the Israeli Air-force destroyed the machinery being used in the water diversion operation based on Eli’s photographically precise intelligence.
But what about the Eucalypts? Well while on a visit in the Golan Heights Eli Cohen had convinced the Syrians to plant them around their fortifications, to hide them from the Israelis and to provide much needed shade. In 1967 after defeating the Jordanian and Egyptian armies, Israel used the location of these eucalyptus groves that Cohen had told them about three years earlier to defeat the Syrians and take the Golan Heights.
Eli Cohen however did not live to see this decisive result of his spying. He was captured and executed in 1965 after getting just a little too cocky and underestimating the technology of the Soviets who were helping the Syrians discover why so many exact intelligence leaks were happening.
Because they grow so fast, Eucalyptus were originally brought to Israel at the end of the nineteen century to dry out the swamps, but none of those original settlers could have imagined their later use.
Meanwhile as the battle for holy earth and water continues, people get married, children play in the park, and the restaurants are full on Friday and Saturday nights in Tel Aviv. What will happen next to this place living in a constant state of uncertainty and readiness for disaster? And what will happen to the Palestinians, whose children also play, whose adults also marry, and who would also like the luxury of a restaurant meal every now and then in their own legitimate and safe State. A state of independence that all beings deserve.
From “State of Independence” by Jon and Vangelis, originally sung by Donna Summer
Home be the temple of your heart
Home be the body of your love
Just like Holy water to my lips
Yes I do know how I survive
Yes I do know why I'm alive
His truth will abound the land
This truth will abound the land
This State of independence shall be
This State of independence shall be
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