Two strangers — a Palestinian and an Israeli — tell the story of a region's pain

Photography by

Dec. 1, 2023 3 AM PT

JERUSALEM — The two men have never met — they come from different worlds in this troubled land — but they share in war’s misery.

Bassam Alzaarir is a Palestinian shepherd living with his family in a narrow valley of the West Bank, where on many nights Jewish settlers descend from hilltops, jamming rifles in the faces of his children, demanding that he leave his land. Malki Shem-Tov is an Israeli father whose son, Omer, was kidnapped and taken to Gaza when Hamas raided Israel on Oct. 7, changing the trajectory of a nation and lives on both sides of a long and bitter conflict.

“They constantly attack us,” Alzaarir said of the settlers, who, since the start of Israel’s war with the militant group Hamas, have become more violent and aggressive. “They’ve blocked us from all sides.”

Malki Shem-Tov poses for a portrait in Tel Aviv, Israel

Shem-Tov is menaced by different forces. While more than 100 of some 240 hostages have been released during a cease-fire in recent days, his son remains captive, a young man believed to be trapped in a warren of Hamas tunnels. “I sleep two or three hours a night,” said Shem-Tov. “The night was always a good time for me, but now I’m afraid of the night.”

The rhythms of the men’s lives have been upended; doubt has subsumed certainty, and rage mixes with helplessness. Their wives worry. Their friends console. They live on threads of rumors and unreliable news. Alzaarir watches his sheep as his grazing area shrinks amid the encroaching settlement above his encampment. Shem-Tov, owner of a multi-sensory media company that produced Israel’s Pavilion at the World Expo 2020 in Dubai, has not been to work since his son vanished across the Gazan border.

There’s a brokenness throughout Israel and the occupied territories — decades of turmoil, intifadas, stolen lands, forsaken promises, intransigent personalities and tattered peace negotiations have accumulated and delivered a moment that has shaken Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants killed at least 1,200 Israelis, including 364 at a music festival in the desert where Omer was seized. Israel’s retaliatory bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip have killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Every day brings names, numbers, fresh graves and new recriminations. Comparisons are made to the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973 — each shaping the contours of the Israeli-Palestinian divide that determined who would live where in a region that became increasingly dangerous. But most Israelis — and many Palestinians — agree that the bloodshed that unfolded in early October has no precedent since Israel was founded more than seven decades ago. It is a cruel marker of how a history of mistrust and enmity is ever dangerous amid political failings and persistent trauma.

The life of this restive land — or at least this terrible chapter within it — can be glimpsed in the fate of two fathers, strangers who share misfortunes brought on by larger powers and are now left to find their way.

Shem-Tov walked along the highway recently as part of a protest march that started in Tel Aviv and would end at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem. Israeli flags snapped in the air around him, voices chanted, “Bring them home,” and photographs of hostages, ranging from old women to children, bobbed on sticks above the streaming crowd. Shem-Tov wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Omer, a handsome 21-year-old free spirit with a swoop of dark hair. His father spoke a few decibels above a whisper.

More than a thousand people march along highway 1 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

“The government until now has told us nothing,” said Shem-Tov, 59, his face at times shadowed by passing clouds. “We hear a lot of rumors about negotiations with Hamas. But we haven’t been involved. That’s why we’re walking to Jerusalem. If you’re not coming to us, we’re coming to you. My son and the others will not be forgotten. That will not happen. Every second this war goes on is dangerous to the lives of those kidnapped.”

Days later, Hamas and the Israeli government agreed to swap hostages for Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and adolescents, held in Israeli jails. The deal brought a temporary cease-fire as scenes of destruction were replaced by quieted guns and freed faces pressed against windows of Red Cross SUVs. More Israeli hostages and Palestinians — about 240 Palestinians have been freed — may be released in coming days if the cease-fire holds. But if fighting resumes, Omer and the remaining hostages will slip back into the clamor of war.

The relatives of the abducted started the Hostage and Missing Families Forum to ensure the fates of their relatives and loved ones. They appeared at vigils, protests, marches; they were seen on television and in front of the Knesset, pressuring lawmakers, many of them right-wing politicians who did not want to negotiate with Hamas, to find a way to free the kidnapped. Added pressure mounted on the Netanyahu government after several hostages died, including Yehudit Weiss, 65, and Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, whose bodies were found after Israeli forces stormed Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

Omer finished his compulsory army services eight months ago and was waiting tables to save money for a trip to South America. “He’s a party guy,” said his father. “A DJ.” Omer had traveled to the Negev desert in early October for a psychedelic music festival a few miles from Gaza. Many concertgoers were sleeping when the militants raced in, firing weapons, burning cars and sending people running across bare expanses, through thickets and beneath eucalyptus trees, diving for cover.

Omer called his parents. “I spoke with him from 6:30 a.m. until about 9 a.m. on Oct. 7,” said Shem-Tov. “He was telling us about the attack. His voice was more panicked. He said, ‘They’re shooting at us.’” Omer told his parents he had found a car and was going to escape. He sent them a live location on his phone. He told them he loved them. His parents tracked him — they didn’t know what happened next — but they grew confused when they saw his phone heading west into Gaza. They called him. He didn’t answer.

Shem-Tov drove south from his home in the wealthy coastal town of Herzliya and went searching for his son, checking hospitals and other places. A friend — many families found out this way — saw a video posted by Hamas on the messaging app Telegram. It showed Omer handcuffed in the back of a truck. “It was so hard to understand,” said Shem-Tov. He hugged his wife when he returned home from his search. “I told her, ‘We are going to bring Omer back.’ This is the first sentence I said.”

Shem-Tov repeats the sentence often; it has become a kind of prayer. He follows news of negotiations. On Nov. 27, he was invited to attend a meeting between Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Elon Musk, who visited Israel to ease the furor over his endorsement of an antisemitic post on X, formerly Twitter. “You are a very powerful man,” Shem-Tov is quoted by the Times of Israel as telling Musk. “Relay our voices to bring back the hostages.”

On many days, though, there is no news at all. Nothing is clear, only fragments. His son, he said, remains a prisoner in a place about an hour’s drive away.

“I don’t think it’s a question of belief or trust,” he said. “We don’t know the whole picture. So many pieces, like a puzzle. If you don’t have the pieces, you can’t see the puzzle.” He glanced at the marchers, flags and faces of the missing. He wondered how much bargaining and negotiation it would take to free his son and the other hostages. “What is the price for their release when their lives are priceless?”

A man and his son amid a desolate landscape

Bassam Alzaarir doesn’t have a price to put on the land where his and his brother’s family — 24 people in all — live in the West Bank south of Hebron. It is rocky, hard-to-farm earth with a strip of grazing grass along a stream rimmed by hills. Since the 1948 war, when Israel won its independence and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes, Alzaarir’s family has been displaced twice in the occupied West Bank. He fears it may happen again.

“This is my land,” he said. “I have nowhere else to go. We came here in 1993. We plant wheat and barley to feed the sheep and goats. We have a flock of about 500. The settlers are preventing us from grazing.” He nodded toward the stream that ran through the valley. “If we try to cross they shoot at us.”

The settlers watch, he said, annoying and dangerous, omnipresent. Like ravens. They brought in a bulldozer one day and blocked the road leading from Alzaarir’s encampment to the highway with piles of dirt. In other Palestinian communities in the West Bank, where about 500,000 settlers live amid 2.7 million Palestinians, settlers cut down and burned olive trees, trampled farm fields and demolished houses. Since Oct. 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 238 Palestinians in the West Bank; settlers have killed eight, according to the United Nations. At least seven Israelis have been killed by Palestinians, including in an attack this week by militants on a bus stop in Jerusalem.

“Nobody is stopping the settlers,” said an editorial in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Nobody is thinking about protecting Palestinians’ safety. Even though senior military officers frequently warn that settler violence could result in the opening of another [war] front, out in the field, the Israel Defense Forces [have] turned a blind eye to their crimes. Sometimes, IDF soldiers even actively participate in the pogroms. This lawless situation is intolerable.”

Alzaarir has heard it all before. But this time, he said, it’s worse. His sons and nephews — he has taught them to clear and furrow fields, to tend sheep and train dogs — gathered around to hear the story. Alzaarir pointed to a ransacked car and a tractor with shattered windows. “The settlers did that,” he said. The encampment is mostly tents with tarp roofs fastened to rocks. Boys navigate the terrain on donkeys — water is drawn from a cistern, and grain is stored in a cave, where women and girls light cooking fires and talk about makeup and strangers who visit.

“We’re scared the settlers will kill us, but it’s either life on this land or death,” said Alzaarir, 55, who wears a thin beard and fidgets with a string of beads. “They came the other night and pointed guns at my children. They said we had 24 hours to leave. They smashed things and tried to take our phones.”

“The settlers left,” he continued, “and came back the next afternoon in cars, hitting our houses with sticks. Then seven to 10 of them returned in the night. They had their faces covered. They said: ‘Why are you still here?’”

The question perplexed him.

“If I move to that mountain, the settlers will come there. They will come everywhere,” he said. “What can we do? My kids go to school afraid and come back terrified.”

A car wound through the valley. It passed beneath the gaze of settlers and parked at Alzaarir’s encampment. Two of his friends got out. Plastic chairs were set up, and tea was served in the dust. A dog growled, tugged on its chain and went quiet. The men talked beneath the sun about the war. The sheep stayed in their pens, girls covered their faces. Alzaarir looked to the sky, the same one Shem-Tov saw many miles away in central Israel.

Neither man knew what would come. One wanted his son back; the other wanted his children to live undisturbed on a land where so many have been killed. There was nothing shared between them, except the night, which had become a terrible time for both.

Two strangers — a Palestinian and an Israeli — tell the story of a region’s pain

More From the Los Angeles Times

Most Read in World & Nation