Reflecting on Life and Accompaniment in Hebron
Today is Saturday, Shabbat for Jews. It is a day when work is not allowed for Jews, and the settlers stay in Hebron. The school we serve as accompaniers has had the most settler attacks on Saturdays, especially at noon when the settlers return from their prayers. We are there to offer ‘protective presence’ (the premise is that when people from outside are watching, the settlers will be more restrained in attacking the children). Schooldays have been rescheduled to avoid Saturday attacks, but today was a catch-up day for the school - for days missed because of snow.
The appalling murder of 8 Jewish students in Jerusalem was committed last Thursday. Many of the settlers in Hebron came from this religious school. Since in this conflict everything is related, and every action has a reaction, everybody is waiting for vengeance. It is a strange sensation to have so many different feelings about your own security during the day: from being terrified, to calmness and a (false?) sense of security.
The day was calm, and the children got to school and back home normally. We stand at the bottom of the stairs that the children have to take, which is right in front of a small settlement. These stairs are on Shuhaddah street, which is today a ’sterile’ street only for Jews, a decision made by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for “security considerations”.
If I had to choose a word to describe the old city of Hebron, it would be surreal. The things I see are too messed up to be real. They should not be real. Yet it is life for Palestinians, the Israeli settlers, the army soldiers. And now mine as well, as a visitor. I feel like I am in a strange dream with empty, tense hot air. I have the sensation of floating through these different scenes that pass before me. An Israeli human rights report referred to the old city of Hebron as a ghost town. I have been waiting for the day when a sense of routine would come to me. But so far, every day is as difficult, and brings with it its own negatively astonishing phenomena. What has made Hebron this way?
Hebron, or Al-Khalil in Arabic, is a vibrant city of 160 000 inhabitants, in fact the second biggest city in the West Bank. It is located 35 kilometers south of Jerusalem. Although its economy has also been hit hard by the occupation, it is lively – shops are open, the streets are filled with people and new buildings are being built. It is renowned for its glass-making craft and grape production.
But the Hebron I spoke of above is the old city of Hebron, the Suq (market). To understand why the Suq is different, one needs to understand the unique situation with the settlers and why it is so important to them. Hebron is the only city, apart from East-Jerusalem, where settlers live inside the city, and all of them live the Suq area. Hebron is the city of the Tomb of the Patriarchs. This is the cave where Abraham and his wife Sarah are buried, and also according to tradition Adam and Eve, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. Abraham is the common forefather of Christians, Jews and Muslims. On top of the grave, there is today the Ibrahimi Mosque and a synagogue. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is the second holiest site for Jews, and fourth holiest for Muslims. The main reason for the Jewish settlers being in Hebron, then, is religious. As their spokesman David Wilder stated in an interview with me: “If people don’t live in these areas, it won’t be part of Israel…and if you believe in something, its not enough to talk about it, you need to do something about it”. Thus, even though the reason is religious, the objective, as everywhere else in the West Bank, is land and annexation. The settlers here are some of the most extreme and ideologically fueled in the West Bank.
In 1997, three years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, an agreement was made between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government that divided the city in two. The division of the areas was done the same way as in the rest of the West Bank – into areas A, B and C. In area A, Palestinians hold control over civil administration and security. In truth, Israel holds the ultimate power, especially on security issues over the whole West Bank. Area B is under Palestinian civil administration but Israeli security control, and in area C Israel holds control over both civil and security matters. According to an Israeli human rights activist, who has dealt extensively with the civil administration in the ‘territories’, the civil administration is mostly staffed by settlers and soldiers. While the majority of the city of Hebron is area A, the Suq was made area C. These areas are also known as H1 and H2 respectively. We mostly work in H2, which is severely affected by the occupation. See a map of Hebron: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200705_Hebron_Center_Map_Eng.pdf
What does all this mean in practice? In the H2 area of Hebron there are according to different estimates 400 to 800 settlers. The exact number is not known, and varies according to visitors and number of students at the religious school. To protect these settlers, there are, according to one Israeli estimate, 1500 soldiers, which also varies. That is about three soldiers for every settler. This is the only city in the West Bank with a fixed military presence inside the city - all this, in an area (H2) where 40 000 Palestinians live.
One of the central things to realise is that in the Occupied Territories all Israelis, in this case settlers, are under civil law. Palestinians however are under military law. This has several consequences. In addition to severely violating the human rights of the Palestinians, it also means that the army will not interfere with settler violence, since it is there to protect the settlers. It is left to the police, who in Hebron, according to a massive amount of different testimonies I have heard, rarely enforce the law. Settlers hardly ever get sentenced for crimes they commit.
To guarantee security and movement for the Jewish settlers the military has closed a number of roads, taken over houses, declared areas military zones, enforced the security of the settlers and neglected that of the Palestinian inhabitants. The security plan is based a ’separation principle’, that is, the two populations are to have minimum contact. Also, buffer zones are created. Since H2 is almost uniquely owned by Palestinians, their lands are confiscated for these “security reasons”. These policies have directly contributed to the displacement of people from these areas according to their ethnicity. The results have been devastating for the Palestinians.
Of the city center housing units, 42% have been vacated. 77% of the commercial establishments in the area are no longer open for business, of which at least 440 directly because of military orders . The harshest years for Hebron were the ones of the second Intifada, when Hebron experienced a non-stop curfew of 182 days, with breaks for an hour or two per day. Imagine surviving in such conditions.
A local said that, ’honestly the only thing that kept us alive was the Red Cross food deliveries’. Hashem described dragging his pregnant wife who was about to give birth through the fields, to try to get out of the curfew area to an ambulance. According to him, the first soldier he met told him to go back home, he had said: ’I don’t care if she dies’. Having hidden behind a house for half an hour and trying again, a compassionate soldier got them to an ambulance.
To describe a part of the occupation, I would like to quote a soldier who has served in Hebron: “the ease in which you actually do whatever you want to do unsupervised, that is, enter people’s homes, and conduct random searches. Every officer, every commander can decide now I’m entering a home, ordering the family out, ransacking the house... In fact, I think that in Hebron, I was disturbed and frightened most of all by the unregulated and uncontrolled power, and the things it made people do”.
Yet, even if it feels heavy to be here, the heartfelt warmth and hospitality of the local people, in spite of the occupation, manages to balance out the negative. I think that in this case however, pictures will tell the story better than any words I could write. I therefore ask you to please see the pictures I have taken in Hebron:
http://flickr.com/photos/24136657@N03/sets/72157604106640781/detail/
Read more:
Israeli report on Hebron: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200705_Hebron_eng.pdf
Soldiers’ testimonies from Hebron: http://www.shovrimshtika.org/UserFiles/File//hevron-englishforweb.pdf
