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Jewish Settlers Invited Palestinians Over for the Holidays
(Washington Post) William Booth and Sufian Taha - Efrat is a bedroom community of 10,000 Jews, including many Americans, a few miles south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Efrat's mayor, Oded Revivi, invited Palestinians from surrounding villages to come to his house and celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, when the faithful gather in palm-roofed huts. A couple of dozen Palestinians accepted the mayor's invitation this week. Ahmad Mousa, 58, a contractor from the neighboring Palestinian village of Wadi Al Nis, said, "Seventy percent of our village works in Efrat. They treat us very well and we are very good to them, too." The mayor said more than 1,000 Palestinians work daily in Efrat: at shops, maintaining infrastructure, fixing solar panels, building new houses, and remodeling older ones. Mayor Revivi hailed the men who came to his home as "true men, courageous men. I know there were men I invited and they did not come." Palestinians may work in Jewish settlements without social censure, but Palestinian society discourages collaboration and "normalization." Efrat is just a few miles down the road from the Gush Etzion Junction, scene of more than a dozen Palestinian attacks in the past year.