Hebron : Hashem, Harassment and Hope
“The settlers have full control over what happens in our home, that is why there must always be someone here,” Hashem tells me, “if everybody leaves, they will enter our home and destroy everything.” It does not always help: a few years ago, a large group of settlers gathered in the neighbourhood, smashed the gate, broke into a home and destroyed the furniture, the windows and attacked the people living there. One of the men in a neighbouring house managed to videotape the attack and Hashem shows me the video. I see a big group of settlers, both men and women, cheering while destroying the gate, kicking in the door and breaking windows. The soldiers watch. But do nothing.
Hashem lives in the area of Tel Rumeida, in the old city of Hebron. The area is within H2, which means it is under Israeli control. To get to his house involves clambering over earth mounds and negotiating a dirt track (very messy in the rainy days of winter), as the army allows only the settlers to have access from the main streets. Behind his house, and up high, the settlers’ apartments look over his property. The first time we visit Hashem his young nephew, Yusef, meets us. He jogs all the way to the house, while looking around him. ”Be careful,” he says to us, “settlers,” and points to the apartment block. Hashem meets us in the door, with his children Gharad and Yonas. His wife, Nasreen, serves us tea and biscuits. In their living room, they have several beautiful paintings that she has painted. Some of them are of landscapes with flower fields, while another one is of a place by the ocean with palm trees, but with bleeding children on the beach and people crying. Hashem says that two years ago a female settler captured Yousef, his nephew, outside his home. She put stones into his mouth and crushed his teeth. No wonder Yousef always runs.
Hashem himself has had his windows broken several times and now he has a fence outside his windows to protect them against the settlers’ attacks. Five days a week his daughter and the other children next door, walk the unsafe road to the Cordoba school, where we EAs stand every morning and afternoon when the children come to school and when they leave again. Here the settlers have attacked them several times. It is usually the settler children who throw stones at the Palestinian children, often encouraged by their parents and their teachers.
Because of the closure of the area for several years now, most people in the area have no work. They are poor and live off food aid. Hashem is one of those who lost his job. Before, he was a journalist, and for a while he was in the ceramics trade. “For a long period my family was only allowed to leave the house for one hour a month to go shopping. Imagine that, one hour a month!” he says.
Even now it is almost like living in a prison in the house as it may be dangerous to be outside. We are given a tour around the house and Hashem shows us his garden. There are some old washing machines that the settlers have thrown down from their high vantage point, along with other garbage. When Hashem won a court order that he should be allowed to harvest his olives with military protection, the settlers took all the olives from the trees before Hashem could harvest them, and the settlers have sawn all of his fruit trees across the trunk, leaving them hanging in the air. A Star of David has been painted on his garden door.
Hashem says: “One time a settler woman stood outside our window and shouted at me that I should leave here or she would come back with more people who were going rape my wife and kill me and my children.” He adds that the settlers living in this area are extremists, and several are members of “Kach”, (an Israeli group which uses terrorism to pursue the goal of expanding Jewish rule across the West Bank and expelling the Palestinians and which is banned by the Israeli government as an illegal terrorist organization). Five years ago, his phone line was cut by the settlers. Only recently did he finally get a new one.
Hashem has had many visitors - international journalists, church leaders, politicians high up in their own countries, also Israeli politicians - but nothing has improved his situation. Despite all this, Hashem is optimistic about the future. He and his family have never considered leaving. “It might not be peace in my generation, but we have to work for the next generation,” he says while pointing at his children. “I want that everybody who wants to live close to the holy places should be welcome here, but we need to live in peace with each other, no matter what religion we are. But how can we live with someone who harasses and threatens us all the time, and deprives us of our human rights?”
