Day 17: Hebron 2

After not hearing the yellow shop story, I decided not to miss anything from now on. Leading us back to the beginning of the market, Isaac started talking about his own experience here in Hebron when he first arrived. "At the beginning of the Second Intifada, every night Palestinians would shoot. From top to hill Abu Sneina down to Avraham Avinu (settlement); from Haret a-Sheikh, a neighborhood on the other side to Abu Sneina from top the hill down to the settlements in the valley. And we had no idea who is firing from where. So our decision was, basically what we did as we took over three high posts, one is a Palestinian house, a family up in the other side of Tel Rumeida, entered the house, gave the family 45-50 minutes to pack up. Until today family doesn't live in the house. Then a roof top of a Palestinian family on top the hill of (Jabari) neighborhood; and the third place was what we call the school barrack. It was a Palestinian school, we shut it down, four and a half years, we turned it into a military post... We post there snipers, machine guns, grenade machine guns, and the idea was they shoot, we shoot back. Now we have no idea who is shooting from where, so every barrack like that had between 10 to 15 empty or abandoned buildings and the neighborhood across the valley served as targets." 

Then he went on to point at some of those abandoned houses that were their targets. "In my advanced infantry training I was trained as a grenade machine gun operator. That's why my first assignment on the ground actually, after finishing my training was a school barrack. I just arrived, first briefing by the company officer, good guys, bad guys, H1, H2, who sits where, the radio we listen... And then my platoon officer takes me to the grenade machine gun post. It's a machine gun that fires grenades to 2212 meters away. Very massive. And he explains to me, 'Look, Isaac. You see these buildings? Every evening when they shoot we shoot back.' Now I don't see you people that look to me people who went through military training. But the first second I heard my mission, I was like 'What are you stupid? No way we're doing this, this is insane.' Three months before when I was training with these machine guns, it was somewhere in the middle of a desert in the south of Israel, safety regulations are no one is allowed to be a mile away from each side of the target. You have to understand that a machine gun is not an accurate weapon. You don't aim at your target, pull the trigger and the target is down. You aim to the area, it doesn't matter where you hit, what matters is that you see where you hit in order to be able to aim. So you shoot, you see where you hit, fix, take left, up, right, down. If you're a really good operator with a lot of experience, you probably hit your target the fifth, the seventh time you try. I'm talking about a kilometer away, night, one millimeter you're wrong, here a kilometer is (he shows the whole neighborhood with houses side by side.) Mind you we're talking about a grenade. It's not bullets. Grenades hit something, explode, kill every one in the 8 to 16m radius. But that's noon time when you get the order. 6 o'clock it gets dark. 6:15 Palestinians start to shoot, and your order comes out from the radio, and what you're not going to shoot now? They're shooting the settlement. And you approach the machine gun, you aim to the area and you pull the trigger and you leave it as fast you could and inside of you, you just pray that the less amount of grenades were fired. Because if you pull the trigger for one minute it's 88 grenades are sent out.  And you have these 4-5 seconds until the grenades reach the target line which is basically the neighborhood, because it's a kilometer away. You hope you never hurt anyone. After a while it becomes the most exciting event of the day. you're locked down in this building 24 hours a day, without going out, bored to death, at least you can play with the joystick a bit every evening. After 2-3 weeks if this doesn't work and those bastard Palestinians continue to fire, they didn't get the message, the decision from now on that we're not going to wait for them to shoot what we call response fire. We would shoot what we call deterrence fire. 5 o'clock before it gets dark the order comes out through the radio. 10-13 machine guns from the 3 different posts start to open fire after 30 mins you stop because you don't wanna waste too much ammunition. 6 o'clock it gets dark; 6:15 they shoot, now you must respond. And after few weeks if this doesn't work, we're not gonna wait for them and we're not gonna fire from far away. We're gonna invade their neighborhoods and we'll do violent patrols. Drive through the neighborhoods with APCs, and you do patrols for deterrence." 

Again, a very familiar story one can hear from several veterans from different wars. In the event of close battle or sudden attacks, you do what you can to stay alive. They shoot, you shoot. You may not have the time to contemplate on your actions or on non-militaristic solutions. It's the present survival that matters. However it's the military policy that is at issue here. Same tactics are used when there is no state of emergency, but acts of deterrence. 

Isaac looks overwhelmed and perhaps felt relieved when someone asked him about how people react to Breaking the Silence. "Since we've started till today, there's only an increase in the amount of people who are willing to listen. Israelis. Most of our work is done with Israelis. What they do with it afterwards, that's a different story." At that time, we were waiting for the people to gather so that we could start walking again. I was curious about the initiative and didn't want the topic to be dropped. So I asked, "What about the soldiers on duty? What do they think about BTS, are they supporting what you're doing?" Here's Isaac's response. 

"It very much depends on what's their background, which unit they are, where they serve, how they see themselves. In most of soldiers, I believe, of course will not accept what we're saying. Because they're inside. Just like when I was inside, everything made sense to me. But still I think that most of the soldiers who served in Hebron specifically, if you don't put them in front of the camera, not from a judgmental approach, they would tell you that's what's going on here is wrong." Then I remind him what he told us earlier about his unit and how they used to talk about their discomfort about the situation and their need to do something about it. He goes, "Look, you really wanna open all this issue? Because we can do it, but it's going to take time." He pauses and then continues, "When I was a soldier, and I firstly arrived here to Hebron, I arrived in to the school barrack. But after 4 or 5 weeks, I don't remember exactly how long, it was after a Minister of the Israeli Government Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated in the Hyatt Hotel. I think it was October 2001, I'm not sure (he's right about the date), but after a few weeks the rest of my battalion came and we replaced the unit that controlled Hebron. I served in a very unique unit. In a way my story does not represent anything. I'm a person who always lived his life in bubbles. American modern Orthodox, a modern Orthodox yeshiva in a settlement. The unit that I served in is the most leftist unit in the army. It's to do with the way Israel was built in the 50s and the 60s, it's people who come from youth movements, who live in socialist communes together, mainly from socialist youth movements, in the past they used to build kibbutz in the border, now they do education work in the poor communities. So if everybody serves 3 years in the army, they volunteer for another year and a half social service... So people who are more educated, who come from better social economical background, and that's one of the reasons this unit is sent a lot to Hebron. That's why I did two lines in Hebron. Because the perception is that this kind of unit in a place like Hebron where the friction with the Palestinian civilians is so high, this is the best unit to have. And I think that's why it was so a big shock to see our exhibit and hear these testimonies; and these testimonies are coming out of this unit. Again it doesn't represent anything. %10 of my company voted Hadash when we were stationed here. (Hadash is what used to be the Israeli communist party.)" At that moment Isaac's partner calls and informs us about the clashes in the south of Hebron. Nope, we didn't go there. And clashes between who, I don't know. 

(Press coverage about BTS, IDF and other issues will be on the Hebron 3 post.)

Later on Isaac indicated that this is a complex issue and said 9 of the people from his company, right after they arrived in Hebron, thought to refuse to serve in Hebron. I don't doubt that it is an easy answer to give. He seems frustrated but willing to talk. Or at least he striked me as a person who cannot simply say yes/no but have to fill it in with some extra information. Suddenly he asked us to follow him to the main road, a block away from where we were. So here we are at the door of an abandoned Arab house. "One of the evenings the settlers came down with a 5kg heavy hammers and started banging on this door to break in. Men were inside, a ring of women outside. But of course the orders are, we're (IDF) not allowed to touch them. Go on the radio and call the police." Then he stops and kindly calls some of the members of the tour to stop filming the "exotic and exciting" soldiers and join us. I find it a little annoying the fact that people were filming and taking pictures of the IDF soldiers most of the time without asking for their permission, and from right in front of their faces. I even saw a guy trying to run backwards in front of a jogging soldier just to film him from the front. I felt uncomfortable being part of the group at times like this, and no no less uneasy with the fact that I'm holding a video camera, and a photo camera hanging from my neck. We walked 10 more meters to see "one of the things that pissed them off." Isaac announces that we are on the a-Shuhada Street. That's a sterile road which means "Palestinians are allowed to be on the other side of the fence, of the Muslim cemetery." He shows the house right behind him and says, "they can be behind these doors but they're not allowed to step where we are standing now. We were actually sent, you see, (he points at the seals on the doors) all the doors are sealed up." A woman asks if people living in these houses have another exit. Isaac says, "on the roof, the ladders, into the old city." He continues, "After we were sent to do this, there was a lot of discussion in our company. And it got to a way, to a place where... the officers understood that the only way they can control us is by opening these issues. So it came to a point that every day, every day you have a barracks briefing between 3 to 4, or 2:30 to 3:30, so every day for few weeks after the barrack briefing there was a discussion about refusing of our officers. Which again, every person who served in the IDF hears the story, it sounds to them, you know, this is madness, this is not acceptable, to think that an army unit can operate this way is really weird."

I need to cut in here and talk about the A-Shuhada Street. Isaac told us something very important but unfortunately I have no footage of that. So I'll do my best to cite him as best as I can. The street is currently closed to Palestinians. However, according to what's official, it should be open. So Isaac and some other people appealed to the court and the court said, yeah you're right, it is open. So with their court order and some Palestinians they go to the soldiers there, showing the permit. They open the road to them. After a week, it is again blocked. Same court order, it's open one more time. When it happened again, IDF says we're not opening it again. So, I will try to contact Isaac and ask for more about this, and I have a feeling that he will be accessible. So we'll see. But two of the things I observed -and it was impossible to ignore them- were, one, the cage houses of Arabs in H2. Picture below gives you an example for that. All Arab houses, their doors and windows are covered with metal cages to prevent stones or other solid items being thrown in by the settlers. 

Another thing was the ridiculous rules that ban Palestinians to walk on streets that have Jewish residences. There's this street where one side has the newly-built house of a settler, detached to an Arab house abandoned some years ago. In fact when you look inside the windows of the abandoned building, you see another window, which at first makes no sense. Isaac explains to us that the settler family decided to expand their house so they built inside the Arab house. Anyway, because of this property, Arabs are not allowed to walk on the street which they need to use in order to get out of their apartments to, for instance, visit someone on the other end of the street. Since they cannot use the street, they either climb up the rooftops, or sometimes use the tunnels inside the buildings or take the stone stairways made for them to bypass the part of the street they're not allowed to use. And I'm not sure if I am able to describe the absurdity here but it looks incredibly silly. Also unjust since none of the settlers are prohibited from using the streets where there are Arab houses for the sake of security.

Anyway, I'll pass it on to Isaac again. "Later on we left Hebron, we were sent to Defensive Shield operation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Defensive_Shield). That's where the questions vanished. It was after, I don't know if you remember, March-April 2002 and two months over, 120 Israelis were murdered in suicide bombing attacks. And we were taken out of Hebron, taken to Ramallah, and you know, the perception was we're not anymore protecting the settlers. Now we're fighting terrorists. Arresting people, coming back with APC's (Armored Personnel Carrier) full of guns and ammunition and explosives. And when I first came back here, my first patrol back after the Defensive Shield operation, I came to the post, it's a building that used to have a lot of medical clinics, and I saw that the doors of the clinic were open. And I remember the place, it was closed, I was there four-five months before, from October to April. So out of curiosity I pushed the door. And what I saw there basically, soldiers have replaced us during the operation so we could operate in Ramallah, they were holding the line here. Destroyed the place, shitted on the floor, everything was broken. Two things happened to me when I was standing in this clinic. One is, I took out a camera. i took photos of the place, the first week I had (somebody's name) develop the photos, scanned them, opened my first email of my life. I sent out the story, my name, my phone number, my photos, every Israeli journalist I could get, I sent this email. Nothing happened of it. And the second thing was, I decided I'm going to be a commander. To make sure that soldiers don't behave this way. We're good guys, we don't do these things. I came to my officers and I asked to go out for Sergeant training and they looked at me laughing, 'What are you, stupid? A month ago you were talking about refusal, now you want to be a sergeant?' And I told my Sergeant, 'You were with me in that patrol, you remember what this and this unit did. I wanna make sure people don't behave this way.' And later on I went to sergeant training. First time that I met the army.Went out to protect the environment of my unit. And the stuff that I've experienced... We were called for three weeks, for deterrent path, June 2002, in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp, in Bethlehem for an operation, and I can go on or years just talking about these three weeks, what we've done there and what I've seen, one of our sergeants in our company killing a Palestinian boy with a rubber bullet to his chin, that was just, you know, became something funny that everybody spoke about, tell the stupid cases of breaking up places and then doing a lot of other thing that we've done there. And in a way if there is one thing that brought me to do breaking the silence was that it was only towards the end of my service... Look, when I was a company sergeant, it's a bit difficult to say it, that's why I'm saying I'm not representing anything. In that sense I'm a lonely case. Every Friday that I would go out back home for a weekend, I would stand with women in black at Peres Square against the occupation, and then Saturday I would stand outside of Saron's house for demonstrations, and when I was a sergeant, I would take my soldiers in the uniforms in military vehicles to testify in human rights groups. The last seven months of my service, we're operating in a level that, let's say we were outside of Bethlehem and they're supposed to now expand a settlement and uproot a Palestinian field so, my soldiers in the war room know that they don't give the OK to start uprooting the trees until I get the OK. Meaning, we have a TV crew coming there, to film it. It was in that level. And I think that one thing that brought me to breaking the silence was the moment, I don't know if you followed the stories I told, throughout my service, it was all about other people who have done wrong. It was about the settlers and how they behaved there and that's why we don't have to be here, and how other units behaved there and that's why I needed to be a sergeant, how the other units behaved during the sergeant training and that why... yeah?" 

"The moment that changed me was the moment I started seeing myself in the story. It is the same officers and the same people who fought to refuse to serve here, that had this discussion between 3:30 to 4:30 every day, 5:30 on the APC, went and blow up parked cars. And that was the real shock for us. And then you really put things in the perspective and you understand that, OK, there is settlers, there is other units...That's the way that you're not actually seeing yourself. That's the part of your wall of silence. So you can a lot of people and how they behave, other units and how they behave but you cannot see yourself. And that's part of it. Because there is not way to actually understand what I understand today." 

Finding Isaac that talkative, I wanted to ask more. I was curious what would happen if an IDF soldier does take action and try to stop a settler who is, say, hammering down a door that belongs to a Palestinian property. Again he tells us a story that, although doesn't answer my question fully, is still interesting. "It was quite in Hebron, there was no shooting for few days. Suddenly you start hearing gun fire. And the soldiers that were standing in front of the gate, thought that someone was shooting at them. So they started shooting back and ran into the Old City. No one understood what's going on, right away we did what the military needs to do. If there's shots from the Casbah, the Old City, you start to operate, all the forces started to do what they needed to do. And what happens, slowly slowly we started to understand that no one shot actually the post. And then dogs came and started to check around, there's trackers, and they started checking and looking for signs but they didn't find anything. And what they came up, what they understood after an hour is that a settler took out an uzi (name of a famous submachine gun produced in Israel), a guy from Avraham Avinu took out an uzi and fired towards Abu Sneina. He probably wanted noise, he wanted mess. They found the clip, the remains of his fire, his gun shot underneath his window. And the soldiers that were standing underneath Avraham Avinu, the fire was above them, they're actually thinking that someone is shooting at them. And a lot of Palestinians could die. Thank god nothing happened, because they were running into the Old City and firing all over, streets were empty at that specific moment which was good. You think something happened to them? No. Nothing we were just, 'Good bye, go back to sleep.' They didn't even go and check who was the person who shot. Serial numbers of ammunitions, nothing." 

Then I, Aylin, repeated my question. "Since IDF soldiers are not supposed to touch the settlers, what happens if one soldier tries to arrest one? Is there a punishment for such a behavior?" Isaac quickly corrects me, "You're wrong, they're supposed to. Official law, he's the only person who has the authority. His orders on the ground, you're not allowed to do anything. Text, written law in a court, the authority is the army. The orders that they get, that we get on the ground, seven months as a soldier, seven months as a sergeant briefing my soldiers, you don't touch them." I have a feeling that Isaac can indeed speak for years on this subject! Right after this one, without stopping or breathing in between, he starts telling another one I would like to share with you here as well.

"In the middle of the day, my friend Avram was a sharp shooter, he was at the top of a sharp shooter post on top of the old market. It's a line of shops they broke in. Around noon time Avram recognizes an Israeli flag on top of Abu Sneina. This is before Defensive Shield Operation, before 2002 when we took over all the city. This is a place where you have armed Palestinian police and we don't enter. Suddenly he realizes, he sees an Israeli flag on top of a Palestinian house, and he goes on the radio and reports. And what we understand is, women and children from the settlement just went into H1, took over a Palestinian house. What do we do? Right away we called all the emergency squads in the area, APCs, snipers, machine guns, we invade the neighborhood, put posts, take over all the houses leading up, all the junctions with APCs... They're women, so we can't touch them. Because we're men, and they're religious women. So there is a bus collecting all the female soldiers from the area of the Hebron brigade, bringing them down here. They go up, drag them one one down into H2, and then we leave H1. No one is arrested, nothing. This is something for their own safety, we wanted to take them out, there's armed people, armed Palestinians. This is an example when we do intervene. But we don't arrest anybody." 

A question comes, "I think there's a law that allows soldiers to detain people until the police comes? Maybe it's not in Hebron but in other places?" Isaac impatiently cuts in and says, "The law is that you can actually arrest them. You wanna talk about law properly, you know, clean law? If a policeman stops you here, you can come and ask him, who are you? It's like an American police stops you in Berlin, or in Paris. 'Man, you have no authorization, you don't touch me.'And the answer he'll give you, 'I'm operating here on behalf of this and this military order that gives me the authority.' That's the only reason he can touch you here. It's because the army gave him the authority. That's the law. The law is that everything is the army. Just in order to make sure that we are not treated...", he stops and then continues, "All this thing came up from the fact that you have settlers here, yeah? That's a big problem. You have settlers here that are Israeli civilians and they would be court-martialed in military courts because they live in outside of Israel. And that means that an arm of the Israeli government has them on trial without the rights they deserve as Israeli civilians. And that's why you have this instrument where Israeli civil law  becomes the law in them according to the military law and that's how they can be tried in the civil with the rights of ordinary civilians. Even though they live and what they've done, they've committed outside of the borders of Israel. So basically as an Israeli you walked into West Bank in a bubble of Israeli civil laws around you. The land you're stepping on, Israeli law doesn't apply on, the person standing next to you not necessarily, depends if he's Palestinian or not, but Israeli law applies on you as individual." 

Well, that's quite a fact. I'm wondering if the civil law was not applied -since the area and the circumstances are certainly not ordinary and comfortable as a "safe" habitat, military law could have applied on them- and ALL the settlers who attacked the Palestinians and their properties were arrested and tried and punished just like their Palestinian counterparts who had damaged Jewish property -despite the question whether or not it's legal in the Palestinian land- and attacked Jewish civilians here, who were sent to Israeli prisons, how would that affect the settler-Palestinian conflict in the long run? If it is deterrent enough, which I think it is, then why won't the government or the IDF apply that and take care of the most part of the Hebron problem? 

MOVE ON TO THE 3rd AND THE LAST HEBRON POST.