A cherished Palestinian friend whom I have known for many years, and whom I trust with the keys to my house and would trust with what is dearest to me, lives in the village of Masafer Yatta, near Hebron, in the West Bank. He is a member of the Makhamra, one of the largest clans in the southern Hebron Hills. These people, also called Mahamreh, are Moslems and Palestinians, however they marry only members of their own clan and regard themselves as descendants of a Jewish tribe of Arabia.  I’ll call my friend “Musa,” though that’s not his real name.

In the better days, Musa would work in Israel and travel from his home to Jerusalem, a drive of about an hour and forty-five minutes, depending on traffic, to find work, often in carpentry, painting and the like. A friend of mine was a contractor and through her I met him. Musa would stay for some time in Jerusalem and vicinity while he had work, and then return to his village and family for Friday prayers and the weekend, or sometimes for longer during holiday periods. He spoke fluent Hebrew, and had friends on both sides of the green line. When our mutual friend the contractor passed away, Musa came to her Shivah, and was treated like a member of the family. When it came to skills that he could not manage himself, he always found a friend among the many Arabs in and around Jerusalem. Even then, however, he always made certain they were as reliable as him, and introduced them to me, and in this way my friendship with him spread to many of his workmen colleagues. Because he also served as a caretaker in a large building in the neighborhood where I lived, I saw him often, and not only when he did work for me.

As the situation between the Israeli government and Palestinians in the occupied territories deteriorated beginning in the 1980s and the First Intifada, a period of intense conflict and especially after 1991 when Israel introduced a mandatory permit system, marking the start of tighter........

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