Keresés

IN EARLY MARCH, ON A SUNNY AFTERNOON, A suicide bomber came into the Caffit café on Jerusalem’s Emek Refa’im Street, pale and nervous, asking for a glass of water. The waiter, thank God, noticed something was odd, particularly the wires leading from a switch in the man’s hand to the huge bag he was carrying. In an act of either folly or heroism, the waiter hurled himself at the man, pushing him outside the restaurant "not too hard, in case he turned out to be a patron in the end," while, at the same time, pulling the bomb’s wires to disconnect them. A security guard and some policemen who had been on duty nearby quickly overpowered the attacker and, thankfully, the incident ended there. That was on a Thursday at the end of the bloodiest week Israel has faced since the current war began, with over 30 people being killed and dozens more wounded.

And then, on Saturday night, a suicide bomber came to Moment, another café just like Caffit, not far away, just on the other side of Talbiyah. This time the terrorist was successful. His bomb was also particularly devastating, being packed with not only high-grade explosives, but nails, ball bearings and metal shards, to ensure as many casualties as possible. Eleven people were killed in Moment and dozens more were wounded.

In a country deluged with terror and sadness, the attacks on Caffit and Moment touched deep. Those in the cafés at the time were very much Everyman, mainstream Israel -- young people, full of hope, their whole lives ahead of them, who could have been your children or mine, a friend of a friend or a distant cousin. Among the dead was a young couple due to be married in just a few weeks’ time, now buried side by side in Jerusalem. How the country wept when at the funeral the next day, the bride-to-be’s mother placed a bridal bouquet on her fresh grave instead of a wreath.

The pavement outside Moment has now become a shrine. Friends of those killed and injured along with loyal clients have made memorials from little mounds of rocks, leaving notes in the crevices and candles lit at their base. Caffit, on the other hand, is very much alive and well, both its owners and clientele determined to live their lives as normally as possible. Together they very much symbolize Israel at this time: Sadness and determination.

The situation has changed, so Caffit, as an allegory for so much else in this country now, has adapted. At the entrance is an aesthetic gate with rails cleverly placed to ensure that one person enters at a time. An armed guard with a metal detector stands just outside the gate. What seems to be bulletproof glass now separates the open-air restaurant from the street and an iron fence has been built at one end of the garden to restrict entrance from behind. The owner, or a member of the staff, is on hand once one gets through the gate to apologize for any inconvenience, and a one-shekel security surcharge is added to each bill to help defray the cost of the guard.

As for the patrons? Visiting one morning, I see some are mothers enjoying a quiet coffee while their babies sleep in the morning sun. Three women in their late 60s, who obviously used to work together, are enjoying a late breakfast, sitting down only after much debate as to what table they should choose lest another suicide bomber appear. There are a few real estate agents glumly looking through newspapers and one or two hardy tourists here for Pesah despite it all, who have come to Caffit to show Yasser Arafat that he can’t scare them.

Common wisdom has it that the Palestinians are convinced that Israel is beginning to crumble, and conversely, that Palestinian society has come together in the face of Israeli occupation and aggression and is determined to fight until liberation. Similarly, common wisdom says Israel is divided and weak, its army fat and incompetent, its people confused and exhausted, its leadership directionless.

Objectively, there is an element of truth in all those observations. It perhaps takes a visit to Caffit for breakfast to understand the subtext. This is a strong, resilient country. It adapts quickly and efficiently. Yes, we have weak leadership, but that should not get in the way of a good cup of coffee and a freshly baked roll, and it is something that can be changed if something better comes along -- certainly a subject to be discussed over breakfast.

The incident at Caffit came a day before and the one at Moment the day after Sharon announced his unilateral decision to drop his demand for seven days of quiet before cease-fire talks begin. There have been dozens of attacks since. Sharon, in response to the wave of violence in February and March, announced to the Knesset a new Israeli strategy of using force massively to bring Arafat to his knees and make him beg for a cease-fire. Not only is Arafat not begging for a cease-fire, he obviously does not want one.

Sharon, it seems, has learned the limits of force. Arafat, however, has yet to understand the quiet strength of the Caffit syndrome, to learn that force has always made this people strong in the face of adversity.

The divided, weak Israel one reads about in the papers and hears about from politicians is certainly there. But that’s on the surface. If you want to understand, come to Caffit for breakfast. This is a people that aren’t going away. They are not even going to stop drinking coffee or having a good breakfast. Life goes on. Up yours, Yasser.