Natalie Kerpel lives in Jaffa, the old port of Tel Aviv, a bohemian, Arab, but also Jewish and international neighborhood, with narrow streets and stone houses.
To the glass towers of Tel Aviv's seafront, a symbol of modernity, Jaffa responds with two ancient towers, one a clock and the other the bell tower of St. Peter's Church, two buildings from 1903 built under the rule of the empire Ottoman.
Jaffa is history and coexistence, but also conflict. What ancient stones in this part of the world have not known confrontation?
Natalie has lived in Jaffa since 2014, a difficult year, marked by another war in Gaza. She came attracted by its cosmopolitanism, the languages heard on the street, the Arab cafes and bakeries, the art galleries and the Anna Loulou, a music bar, which became an emblem of coexistence.
Natalie misses him. “It was an incredible place, with a lot of hope,” but it closed more than five years ago. Its promoters grew tired of gentrification and municipal pressure.
Natalie also remembers French Hill, the Jerusalem neighborhood where she was born 34 years ago. It stands on land located west of the city that Israel occupied during the Six Day War.
Newly arrived Jews from many parts of the world settled there to make the dream of their particular Israel come true. “Then it was an open and progressive neighborhood, but today it is dominated by the ultra-Orthodox. “My family no longer lives there.”
It is difficult to explain when everything began to go wrong, to open the social gap. The past is a well that in Israel and Palestine takes you to the biblical abysses. There is no place to return to to start over.
“Today everything is more difficult,” he explains. I'm not afraid of living with people who find it difficult to love you, especially now, with all the destruction that is happening in Gaza. In my neighborhood it is very evident. The young Arabs try to scare me by passing by on their motorcycles near me, but they don't scare me. “I know them and I go about my business.”
“The tension is also very evident among the Jews,” continues Natalie. The distance with those who do not think like you is very great.”
The October 7 massacre united Israeli society, but also radicalized it. “It is difficult to find someone moderate, centrist and with common sense. I wonder if in Israel we are all enemies now, we are distancing ourselves from each other. People are my biggest concern, and there is not much hope.”
Natalie lost several friends at the rave that Hamas attacked on the morning of October 7. She has been to her funeral, she has visited the site of the massacre, and the pain lingers.
Does a Palestinian woman suffer more? Does it make sense to ask this question, to compare the sufferings of Natalie Kerpel in the ruins of Kibbutz Beeri with that of Asha al Rayes in front of her destroyed home in Gaza?
Asha has managed to escape to Cairo, where she hopes her husband will find a job.
Natalie is still in Jaffa. She works at Comtec, an events company. She is the executive responsible for developing the business, an extremely difficult task today, not only because of the war in Israel, but also because of the rise of anti-Semitism around the world.
“I don't see a way out,” admits Natalie. “Everything seems like a political game.” He would like his government to release the hundred kidnapped people still in the hands of Hamas and for it to be possible to reach a permanent solution to the conflict. “If we want peace, we have to start with education, on both sides.”
