An Israeli settler in the West Bank who produces world-class kosher wine has welcomed the resumption of direct peace talks in Washington, even though he knows he must abandon his vines if they succeed.
“Dialogue is always better than bloodshed. If a peace deal is reached, I will inevitably be one of its victims. It will be painful, but I won’t have any choice. I will just have to turn the page and leave my land with a heavy heart,” Yoram Cohen, 49, said.
The vineyard covers nearly three hectares of land in the locale of Ofra, a Jewish settlement with about 3,000 inhabitants that was established in 1983 and lies about 30km north of Jerusalem.
PHOTO: AFP
The countryside around the settlement’s red-tiled villas has changed little since biblical times. Two young Palestinian shepherds, perched on a donkey, guide their sheep down a steep path between the vines. Gazelles leap over rocks on the hillside.
Visible in the distance are the silhouetted minarets and houses of three Palestinian towns, Ein Yabrud, Taybe and Silwad.
There is no noticeable military or police presence in Ofra, nor any other apparent reason here to question the future of more than 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
However, Jewish settlements on Palestinian land occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war (Six-Day War) remain one of the biggest obstacles to any resolution of the conflict — and were high on the list of key issues addressed in the peace talks that resumed on Thursday, after a two-year hiatus.
Hardline settlers believe Jews have a God-given right to live in all of the biblical land of Israel, including the West Bank, while the Palestinians want Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and all settlements dismantled.
“I find it very upsetting that a settler has planted vines on my land. They behave like they own it,” said Abed Alhamid, a 46-year-old builder from Silwad. Married with six children, he lays claim to two hectares of land occupied by the settlement.
“More than 90 people in my town were denied access to their land in 1994. When they appealed in the Israeli courts, they were told they could only visit with special permits,” Alhamid said, adding that some of his land was confiscated by the settlers in 1996 and again in 2005.
Cohen flatly rejects such claims.
“On the contrary, it is the Palestinians who came and occupied our land, and they never had a state,” he said.
Cohen believes the nearby discovery of an ancient winepress amounts to “proof that, for 3,000 years, my ancestors engaged in the same activities as me.”
A heatwave this year made him harvest his grapes earlier than usual. However, he was delighted with the results, gathering 800kg per 0.1 hectare on average, a quantity that he expects will yield about 40,000 bottles of wine.
“The 2010 vintage will be exceptional,” he said with satisfaction, after tasting the juice from his latest crop.
Cohen is fiercely proud of his vineyard, boasting some 15 international awards and even naming his eight children after the different grape varieties — cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir.
The strictly kosher wine he produces — the entire process is closely supervised by religiously observant Jews — is mostly sold to Jewish clients in the US, France, Italy and Belgium.
“I laugh at the European boycott, which imposes a 28 percent import tax on my wine because it is from Judea,” he said, using the biblical name with which Israelis refer to the West Bank.
Under an association agreement with the EU, Israeli exports benefit from EU trade privileges, but these do not apply to goods produced by settlers in occupied Palestinian territory.
For the moment, with its rocky limestone, cold night-time climate, abundant sunshine and low rainfall, the land in Ofra provides all the conditions that Cohen needs to produce excellent wine. A fact that will only make it harder, if and when he has to uproot and leave.
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