While waiting at the Ra'em army base for the bus that would transport the media to the closing ceremony at Neve Dekalim, I fell into a conversation with an Orthodox female photojournalist who works for a right-wing Israeli newspaper. She wore the traditional female settler's garb of long, shapeless smock dress over a long-sleeved T-shirt, sandals and a scarf covering her hair.

We talked about the disengagement, which was of course over by then, and she sighed and said that it was sad, but she had come to accept it. I'm a right-winger, she said, but I think that the government was crazy to let those people move to the West Bank. First they were kicked out of Yamit, then Gush Katif, and believe me some day they're going to have to leave the West Bank. How many dislocations can they handle? What are they thinking about? It's crazy!

And then she continued:

My son lives in [the West Bank settlement of] Tekoa, and I told him not to get too comfortable there. I told him that one day, probably soon, he'll have to leave. Because I'm a pragmatist, even though I'm a right-winger and I'm religious. I'm not an extremist. I know that it's only a matter of time before the government decides to evacuate the West Bank settlements. That's just the way it's going to be.

Then she looked at me straight in the eye and said, waving her hands for emphasis,

"The fact is that the Nation of Israel [Am Yisrael] simply does not want the settlements. It just doesn't want them, and that's it. And we have to accept that."

As soon as she turned away I scribbled down the conversation so I wouldn't forget it. It was like hearing an American Christian evangelist tell me she was reconsidering her position on abortion and school prayer.

The next post will be about Gaza, and then Tokyo.