Rebirth In Bethlehem

How does one attain peace in a land of ubiquitous trauma? Inside the growing bilateral movement to bring healing to Israel-Palestine.

- Madison Margolin

I’m in the passenger seat of a sedan cruising the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, passing dry hills, minarets and wire fencing beneath Palestinian villages looming over the road. “Sometimes they throw rocks at the cars,” Oren Lebovitch tells me as I try to catch a glimpse of the West Bank barrier, a wall that currently spans more than 400 miles. The chairman of Ale Yarok (“Green Leaf”), Israel’s cannabis- legalization party, Lebovitch assures me we’ll arrive safely at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, which is about to hold a hearing on decriminalization. Posttraumatic stress disorder among the populace is one of many reasons Lebovitch is pushing to get weed legalized.

Cannabis has been therapeutic for many of Israel’s 8.5 million citizens — Palestinians too, though in lower numbers. In the past year, 27 percent of Israelis have smoked pot, while nearly 35,000 legally receive medical marijuana. Others smoke hashish or resort to the Russian roulette of opioids to cope with life in an intermittent war zone.

“Some wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares, sweating, even wetting their beds,” says Lebovitch. “They can’t sleep for more than three hours and get hooked on prescription pills. Every Independence Day, they ask the public not to use firecrackers because it scares them. PTSD was not talked about for years; only lately do they dare to speak out. I think cannabis was one reason for that.”

Approaching Jerusalem, Lebovitch fumbles with the radio. News updates interrupt programming on the hour, a lingering wartime convention. It has been relatively quiet this June, save for the times Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel, causing dayslong outages. (Israel controls Palestinian access to water, gasoline, imports and international travel.)