Hebron is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and should be a tourist goldmine, but Hebron’s got problems, big ones. In 1929, 67 Jews were murdered and over a hundred where injured by 1000s of rioters from Hebron and the surrounding villages reacting to the influx of Jews to Palestine sparked in part by British Foreign secretary Lord Balfour’s generous offer of a state in 1917.
After the riots, the British rulers of Palestine moved the remaining Jews in Hebron to Jerusalem, ending centuries of continuous Jewish inhabitation of a place which contains the purported resting place of Abraham, father of the monotheistic religions. Jewish settlers started to come to the town after it was occupied by Israel in the war of 1967, seeking a return to one of the spiritual epicenters of Judaism.
The EAPPI programme is the one of a host of international organizations who come to provide a protective presence in a divided city. The Hebron Protocols of 1994 put 140,000 of the Palestinian population under the control of the newly formed Palestinian Authority control while 30000 Palestinians and 500 Jews in the oldest part of the city remained under full Israeli military control. The part of the city under Israeli military control is known as H2.
A priority of the army in H2 is to protect the 500 Jewish settlers who have moved into Palestinians homes either by force or by paying grossly inflated prices for properties. Many live above top of a narrow marker street leading to the Ibrahimi mosque. Here above the street there are grills in place to stop the rubbish settlers throw out their windows falling on the heads of Palestinian traders and their customers.
In 1994 The Ibrahimi Mosque was the site of a massacre when Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli doctor, opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing 29 and wounding 125. Harsh security measures were imposed on Palestinians in the wake of the violence which followed the shootings. Since that time, through various failed piece initiatives and a Palestinian uprising the measures have tightened and have resulted in the stagnation and decline of the local economy
One of the tasks of an Ecumenical Accompanier is to stand entrance to Ibrahimi mosque and monitor the passing of Palestinians as they enter on a Friday to pray. At the entrance to a mosque, cages and electronic turnstiles, operated by soldiers control the movement of Palestinians. A further set of turnstiles manned by soldiers is in place at the entrance to check the IDs of the Palestinians.
As I stand there I observe a soldier cock his gun to the head of 10 year old Palestinian boy as his colleague looks on in amusement. A sign to his right says in Hebrew, Arabic and English, marking the entrance to the adjacent tomb of Abeer (a holy Jewish site) says “Kindly show respect for the sanctity of this site.” It seems like a cruel joke.
Close to the entrance of the mosque, Abed and his son Mohammed sells trinkets to passersby. Abed’s business is dying, but he talks easily with and with a smile on his face to the soldiers, who are in the process of barring the entry of a 15 year old boy who used to work is his shop when Abed could afford to have paid help. Shuhada street, a few hundred yards away has been closed to Palestinians since the Ibrahimi massacre. It means his business has suffered greatly. He has been offered 10 times the price of his shop from settler groups but refuses to take the money.
Shuhada Street in one of H2s main thoroughfares, but the perversity of its closure to Palestinians due to massacre by a settler is somehow lost on the town’s Jewish population, who walk defiantly up and down the desolation, leaving graffiti saying “no mice or Arabs” and “only Jews sell to Jews” on the welded shut metal hoardings at the front of building which were once at the centre of the West Bank’s economy.
The closures in Hebron are working. Since 2000, 20,000 Palestinians have left the city. According to a study by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), conducted in 2009, 77 percent of the Palestinians in Hebron 's Old City
One of the jobs of the 2000 or so soldiers in Hebron is accompanying settler tours of the Old City where Jewish sympathizers from all over Israel and the world get a private tour of the old city with complete army protection. When we follow one, kept out of earshot and threatened with arrest on several occasions the soldiers seem to be particularly fearful of Palestinian children as they play on the streets and peer out of their windows; as one of the soldiers said to me with serious urgency “little ones become big ones”. He was only a kid himself, no older than 20.
H1, which is supposed to be under Palestinian control, also contains patrols of Israeli soldiers who police neighbourhoods were a number of violent settlers have moved in. In Tel Rumedia settler harassment has forced Palestinians to seal their front doors and access their homes through rooftops, ladders and back alleys out of harm’s way.
At the home of Mashim, we climbed into his backyard down a ladder and listened as he told us how a notorious settler activist, Yvette Shakin had finally been arrested and charged after years of physical and verbal abuse directed at her Palestinian neighbours. She had attacked his nephew, grinding a stone into his mouth. It had been the Jewish holiday of Purim the week before and he showed us a video of settlers celebrating it on the street outside of his house, chanting “death to Arabs!” with soldiers standing beside them, keeping the peace.
“Debased”, “degraded” and “inhuman” are some of the words which Israelis use to describe the acts of terrorism inflicted upon them by Palestinians. They also accurately describe the actions of settlers in Hebron, but such self awareness is sadly beyond this section of Israeli society. Prominent figures in the Israeli government, including former Prime Ministers have been strong in their condemnation of the actions of hard-line settlers in Hebron, saying they do not represent Israeli society, but instead shame it. This condemnation seems contradictory in the light of a high intensity, crippling military occupation which seems to protect and support the Jewish residents and a government policy which legislates against settlers as civilians and Palestinians under military law.
I left Hebron after two days with one solitary cause for hope. At a protest against the closure of a nearby village I watched a middle aged Israeli woman remonstrate with soldiers for over an hour, trying with all her might to make the young men see the fault in what was happening. She had a son about to leave home for the army. “The worst thing is,” she said to me, “is that they must believe in what they are doing”.
When Lord Balfour made his declaration in 1917 which supported the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine it contained the proviso that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” 93 years later, Hebron is an extreme example of how this guileless and naïve promise has been forgotten. It is testament to the arrogant and lofty ideals of imperialism and the damage they leave behind.
I work for Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) as an ecumenical accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained in this email are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer (QPSW) or the World Council of Churches. If you would like to publish the information contained here (including posting it on a website), or distribute it further, please first contact the QPSW Programme Manager for I–oPt teresap@quaker.org.uk for permission.
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