So here's how my last Wednesday of the year 2010 started. I woke up around 7, and left my place at 7:27. Precisely. I tried hitch-hiking, clumsily, to no avail for a while. The first one stopped right away and I thought she stopped for me but it turned out she was dropping off her son and driving back to her house in the village. Second one, I was too late to point my finger on the ground, so he just passed me by. Third one was going to Tel Aviv, but with the fourth one I got lucky. A woman who just dropped off her kid at the kindergarten and on her way to Jerusalem gave me ride. Pleasant morning, and a ride. She warned me about Jerusalem getting real cold in the evening. Given the fact that it was 30C yesterday, I didn't bring my jacket with me, I thought it would be warm. Can't say I saw Jerusalem but when we entered the city from the forest as you might imagine it was simple gorgeous. Irit is a civil engineer and she works at an industrial district (not pretty). I had to take a bus from there to the central bus station where I was supposed to meet the rest of the tour. The public bus was filled with Orthodox Jews, all dressed in black. One of them was so kind to help me with directions. Most people in the tour were from the States, the rest were Israelis. Then there was a couple from Portugal, a girl from Holland and a guy from South Africa.
Before I start writing about the tour, here's Hebron from a brief historical perspective:
*Patriarchs and matriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel are buried here);
*Jumping to the massacre of 1929 (wikipedia: Arab rioters killed 67 Jews and wounded 60, and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; 435 Jews survived by virtue of the shelter and assistance offered them by their Arab neighbors, who hid them);
*End of Jewish organized presence in Hebron;
*67 the Palestinian Park Hotel and the passover (a group of Jews led by a Rabbi refused to leave the Park Hotel they rented, 1970 Qiryat Arba is built (Israeli government allowed the Rabbi's group to build K.Alba in an abandoned military base in Hebron);
*1979 the invasion of Beit Hadassa (wikipedia: A group of settlers headed by the Rabbi's wife led 48 Jewish women and children to move back and take over the former Hadassah Hospital, now Beit Hadassah in central Hebron, to found the Committee of the Jewish Community in Hebron near -a synagogue-. The take-over created severe conflict with Arab shopkeepers in the same area, who appealed twice to the Israeli Supreme Court, without success. This was later extended to other Hebron neighborhoods including Tel Rumeida, and the settlers are currently reported to be trying to purchase more homes in the city);
*The murder of 6 Yeshiva students in 1980 (They were returning from Sabbath service and were fired upon and attacked with grenades from the rooftops);
*Construction of the settlements in the 80s;
*Goldstein massacre in 1994, sterile buffer zones began (Qiryat Arba resident B. Goldstein opened fire on Muslim worshipers inside the Tomb, murdering 29 and wounding 125);
*Hebron protocol in 1997 where the city is divided into H1 and H2, %80 Palestinian control, %20 Israeli control;
*2000, the uprising of the Second Intifada. So these are the important dates.
Our tour guide Isaac calls himself an observant Orthodox Jew. His parents are from North America, he's born in J'salem. He says he grew up in a settlement surrounded by yeshivas, he had issues with the school and everything around him, so many questions in his mind. Then he served in the IDF between 2001-2004, during the Second Intifada, in Hebron. He says it is hard to fully understand what's going on in the army and in Hebron while you're still on duty. You know something's just not right but it is only after you're done with your service and some time passes that you begin to comprehend what you had experienced. He says he likes Hebron because nothing is hidden here. It is simply impossible to ignore, impossible to lie or hide facts. He thinks this is the microcosm of Israel and its politics. I must say I disagree with this but it clearly is an evidence as to how some politicians used Hebron as a leverage to their advantage. Seeing how they allow Palestinians being treated that way, I can even assume that it might be an indication of a political hypocrisy on some of the Israeli politicians' part. I can hope that those fractions will soon be eradicated from the scene, along with Hamas.
Before and after entering the West Bank, there were roads, mainly the high way where Palestinians are not allowed to drive on. There's actually a wall that separates that section from the rest.
Isaac gave us a brief history of Hebron and how it's been divided into two sections. H1 and H2. And here I'm quoting wikipedia: "The H1 sector, home to around 120,000 Palestinians, came under the control of the Palestinian Authority. H2, which was inhabited by around 30,000 Palestinians remained under Israeli military control to protect several hundred Jewish residents in the old Jewish quarter. A large drop has since taken place in the Palestinian population in H2, identified with the impact of extended curfews, strict restrictions on movement with 16 check-points in place, the closure of Palestinian commercial activities near settler areas, and settler harassment."
Our bus drove us from Jerusalem to the Qiryat Arba gate (this is the first settlement in Hebron). At the gate we had to stop and wait for our IDF and Israeli police escort. (Funny detail, the police force also had to wait for IDF to escort them since settlers don't like them more than they dislike the IDF soldiers.) Once our escort arrived, we entered from the north end of Qiryat Arba neighborhood and drove to the center of the settlement.
Breaking the Silence team calls Hebron as the ghost town. How come the center of the second largest city in the West Bank is a ghost town? "When you enter the city center, the Palestinians disappear from the frame. We'll barely see Palestinians today." Isaac continues to talk about the separation, settlers and the tactics on the ground. Curfew is one of them, which is mostly applied to Palestinians. Isaac says because of the amount of curfews from 2001-2004, the unemployment rate in Hebron reached to %75 today. He goes, "35,000 Palestinians used to live in the H2, in the Israeli controlled part of the city. Those were the numbers in 1997 when the city was divided. Today, no one knows the exact numbers of how many Palestinians still live there. The latest figures we have are from a survey done by the B'Tselem and ACRI-The Association for Civil Rights in Israel-, the two of the biggest human rights organizations in Israel, in 2007. The maps we gave you were published after the survey. The conclusions they came to are, we're talking about %42 of Palestinian families from the area have left because they couldn't continue any kind of ordinary life. ... There are three categories of reasons as to why this happened, to why Hebron became a ghost town. First and most important one is the IDF strategy. How you protect today 800 settlers in the city center of a 180,000 Palestinians? An the answer that the IDF gives to this question is by creating sterile buffer zones between both communities."
Apparently after the establishment of Qiryat Arba, the IDF was worried about a revenge attack by the Palestinians, so they apply a 2-month curfew on Palestinians to prevent any attacks. "The main street, a-Shuhada Street, was closed down for Palestinian transportation. What used to be the meat market of Hebron and the vegetable wholesale market around it, right in front of the settlement of Avraham Avinu, all of these places were announced as sterile buffer zones where Palestinians are not allowed to enter anymore. And since the beginning of the Second Intifada we have three levels of sterilization in the city. First, and the very basic one is the areas you see in the map in purple."
Quoting from Isaac again. "Purple areas, Palestinians are not allowed to drive their vehicles. Palestinians live on these roads, but the only way to get to their house is by foot. Only non-Palestinians can drive on these roads, and the concept is very simple. Less Palestinian cars mean less Palestinians, less Palestinians mean less friction, less friction means more security to the settlement. And as you get closer to the settlements, the sterilization is higher. The next level is the yellow roads. On the roads you see yellow and purple. These are roads where Palestinians are not allowed to open shops. And the highest level of sterilization you see are the red roads you see on the map. These are sterile roads. These are the roads that not only Palestinians cannot drive their vehicles, not only they cannot open shops, they can't even walk on them. OK? Pedestrian Palestinians are not allowed to walk on sterile roads. Sometimes Palestinians live on a sterile road. And most of the times when they live on the road, their front door would be sealed up. Their way to get in and out of the house is climbing on the roof taking ladders in a back way. So that's one of the reasons why Hebron became a ghost town."
"Between the settlements Qiryat Arba and Givat Arbo we have private Palestinian land owned by the Jabarri family, and that's where we have the outpost of the vision of David. You see the white tent? The settlers built this synagogue, no one really prays there, once a week they come. It's a way to take over the land and connect. The vision of David is removed already for 38 times by the army, and every time built again few hours after. I personally took it down twice. It's part of the game here."
Isaac showed us the Prayer's Road from Qiryat Arba down to the Tomb of Patriarchs. "On this same road, in November 2002 during the Second Intitada, one of the most lethal attacks happened. 12 Israeli soldiers and the security forces of the settlements were killed. After that attack, Israel added a plan to built a secure path between Qiryat Arba and the Tomb with demolishing around 32 Palestinian houses. Israeli human rights organization who appealed to the Supreme Court were said that only two and a half houses were demolished. After the Prayers Road attack in Hebron, Palestinians were in a curfew for 6 months straight." Once in four to five days, the curfew is opened just so that people could go out and get supplies and then go back. No school, no work."
While passing by a Palestinian neighborhood right after Qiryat Arba, Isaac starts talking about how the IDF soldiers have to make their presence felt in Hebron. And it means during the night shifts, your commander picks up a house. "What does the military do on a day to day basis to maintain order in an occupied city where the settlements are in the heart of the city?" "You barge in, wake up the whole family, men in one side, women on the other, search the house, get out. Then throw some stone grenades, make some noise, invade another random house in the same road, go out and send some bullets in the air, know on some doors, run to the other corner of the old city, invade another house, and that's how you spend your night to make your presence felt." I was thinking, I heard the same thing from soldiers and veterans of Iraq, and the Vietnam veterans in the documentary film Winter Soldier. I can't see these routines as a mean to a rightful end. At that moment Isaac says we're in the city center. It does look like a ghost town, hard to imagine here as the center of anything that pertains to human life. All shops and cage houses (I'll explain later why they're called the cage houses) are empty. The city center is right by the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Here's how the city center looks like, just to give you an idea:
We got off at the Tomb and started our walk. Right across from the Patriarchs, you see open tourist shops on both sides of the road. One side Arab, the other Jewish. Very touristic of them in terms of representing the irony here. This is the old city and it's in the H1 part. Isaac stopped us to make sure we know where we are on the map. Also he gave us some curious information about how the visits to the tomb are arranged. "Since the Goldstein massacre of 1994, the tomb is completely divided to two. But not according to nationality, according to religion. One part is a mosque, one part is a synagogue." Muslims and Jews have different entrance points and they cannot use the door assigned to the other group. "You cannot cross from one side to the other inside the tomb. There is an agreement with the Waqf, the Muslim authorities that each religion gets both sides for themselves for ten days a year. If you are none Muslim, non Jewish, you are allowed in both sides." We entered the tomb, but Isaac was not allowed to go in. They said he is political. As if the settlers are not but they're inside. Anyway, after that explanation, we started our walk towards Tel Rumedia.
Standing in the middle of what used to be the fruit market before the 2. Intifada, Isaac gives us few words about the history of the roads that lead to the market. "1994, the vegetable market is sterilized right after the Goldstein massacre, this market (fruit) is still functioning. March 2001 (A Hebrew name I can't understand but as far as I remember, the victim was a Jewish infant) is murdered by a Palestinian sniper. The settlers come, destroy the market, the army comes, barb-wires on both sides, this road is announced as a closed military zone where neither Palestinians nor Israelis allowed to enter. A year and 3 months after, June 2002 a settler is stabbed here in this square. 2-3 days after Israeli bulldozers come, clear the left overs of the market and the place is open only for the settlers. This is also part of how the dynamics in the city work. After every terrorist attack against the settlers, the way to calm them down is closing another road and opening it only for them." Then he points at the line of closed shops behind us and says, "The story of the wholesale market shops is one of the best stories to understand, I think, the bigger picture of what we're seeing around us. If you put yourself into the seats of Hebron Brigadier General, he's the military governor of the place, controls everything south of (Ushid Zion??) half a million Palestinians, 35,000 settlers. What is the story here in Hebron? He got the worst job in the army as a career general, the most politicized, problematic job that you can be appointed to: the Hebron Brigadier General. He cannot say no. What he wants? He wants to swim through these years and hopefully with no harm, continue his career. So how does he do this? He needs a peaceful situation, he needs quiet. How do you create quiet? The answer is around you. Palestinians, you push aside, no one will come after you for that. Settlers do something, you don't confront them because confronting them, the next day you are called to the parliament, ministers, media.. Who needs this headache? Now what I'm saying is not just an analysis from outside. It's basically something that comes very clear out of the story of the wholesale market. And I'll go into details."
Up until here, this is a little too speculative with regards to the Brigadier General's real intentions. Although not so unbelievable, there is no way for me to prove Isaac right or wrong, unless I talk to the Brigadier and trust my guts in the end. Anyways, he continues his story:
"March 2001, when (same Hebrew name he refers to) is murdered, 9 settler break in to 13 Palestinian shops here. Junes 2001, Israeli Supreme Court issues out an eviction orders announcing this invasion as an illegal invasion. Settlers are taken out only in February 15th 2006. What happens between June 2001 and Feb 2006? Very simple. Supreme Court sits down in 2002, asks the IDF, 'What's going on? We just ruled a year ago, you have to evacuate these families, why aren't you doing it?' And there's a special committee in the IDF that sits down and gives a position paper to the court saying, 'That's very simple. Look guys, there's too much terror in this town. We cannot deal with it. We have limited resources, we have to devote our resources to fight terrorism.' You know what? I do agree, I can accept this. I was here in that time. Tough times in Hebron, a lot of security problems, makes sense. You have a group of soldiers, you cannot bring too much. There is a Second Intifada all over. 2003, the same scene again. The Supreme Court asks what's going on and the position paper is 'We're sorry. We need to devote our resources to terrorism.' Fine, I accept. 2004 comes, the Supreme Court sits down. 2005 comes, the Supreme Court sits down. 'What's going on?' You know what the official answer of the committee from the IDF is? 'Look guys, finally the city is quiet, give us a break. Who needs to start it all over again? Who needs this mess?' So the Supreme Court says, 'February 15th, 2006, that's a deadline. Not one second after.' The time of the disengagement, the settlers with the orders of the Israeli society you are allowed to do to them things that you weren't allowed to do before. According to Israeli law, in order to evict a person form the property that he invaded into, he must give him a warrant 30 days in advance. So he has time to appeal against it. So January 2006 the army and the police come here, put the eviction orders, few officers are wounded by the settlers, suddenly Israel wakes up, 'Whoops, we have settler violence in Hebron, what should we do?' It was the first time people spoke about doing a closure, not allowing settlers from outside to come in and resist. A lot of talk. Everybody was expecting here a fight. February 15th comes, sun rises in the morning, around 2-3 nights before settlers left with no struggle. No one understand what happened. How come? Just for the orders? What's going on? Amos Harel, the military reporter back then of the highest newspaper (Haaretz) broke out the story. Yair Golan -we're not talking about a puppet- Yair Golan was back then the division officer of all IDF forces in the West Bank, signed a secret agreement with the settlers. 'You will leave now peacefully, in few months we'll allow you to return.'"
At that point, a journalist looking guy from our group wanted him to repeat the name. Isaac said to him that if he google Amos Harel, Yair Golan and the wholesale market, he'd get the story. Well, I did, and below you can see some of the articles I was able to find. But Isaac continues his story. "Once the Attorney General heard about this agreement he said, 'No no no, Yair Golan, this is not nice. It's against the government policy, it's against the Supreme Court decision. We will not allow them to return.' But of course, nothing happened to Yair Golan. Few months after when the settlers realized they're not allowed to return, two families re-invaded. And a year after in February 2007, they were re-evicted. I don't know if you remember this. There was a big fuss in the media. 200 policemen were sent to evacuate two families. Some people saw this as a serious sign for law and enforcement. Others thought that this was just a political show, trying to come out to the outside world saying, 'Look guys, we cannot do anything. Look how much force it takes to evacuate families. Sorry.' I'm one of the persons who think this was a political show. I'll show you why. Look at these shops. These shops look like just other closed Palestinian shops we saw on the way here, right? Look at the yellow shop at the end of the road? They look the same, no difference, right? Let's take a close look now." And we walk there. And here's the thing, I missed what he had to say about this yellow shop because I was distracted by the demolished part of the market, and when I went to hear Isaac, he was already finished. And I didn't have the time to ask him to repeat the story for me. :(
This is about the attack of the settlers:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3200187,00.html
This is a very detailed story of the surprisingly peaceful evacuation of the settlers from the Arab shops, very similar to Isaac's version of the story. It's worth reading the whole thing. And it is by Amos Harel:
http://www.haaretz.com/general/no-sorrow-no-pity-1.179075
Somewhere towards the end of the article, GOC Central Command at the time, Yair Naveh is quoted, talking about :
"A generation of frustrated children is growing up here with a distorted world view, and the rift between them and the state is deepening. These youngsters have ripped and burned Israeli flags." It is indeed sad. And I can't help but think about the contribution of the negligence of the State and how it allowed these people to settle there in the first place for the sake of their own "peace of mind". It breaks my heart to see 10 year-olds throwing stones and plastic bottles to Isaac and most possibly to their Palestinian peers and IDF soldiers. I can see on the boy's face when he cringes right after he throws the stone, worried that he might hurt Isaac. Is he going to cringe when he is 15? Does he cringe when the person he's throwing a stone at is Palestinian?
This is written by 3 journalists, including Harel, about IDF denying the secret agreement with the settlers:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/mazuz-denies-deal-between-idf-and-hebron-settlers-1.178852
Though I'm not sure what it is that they're denying. Those were Arab shops, and you are promising that you'd renting them out to the settlers? How is that not a compromise? Why did you evacuate them? Why didn't you just ask them to pay the rent instead? Has anybody asked Palestinians if they're OK with this deal?
And then the promise is being kept:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-ends-lease-with-hebron-for-wholesale-market-1.61898
The Palestinian merchants will not be allowed to return to their shops in the market. And they were taken out of there because of a massacre committed against them. And the army overlooked the settlers invading the shops during the Second Intifada. This cannot be in the name of security. You don't place extremists in an area of controversy and expect peace to settle in. And I'm not even sure if IDF is primarily to blame for this, since they had limited resources and enough trouble during the intifada. It is State's responsibility to provide the army with enough resources to deal with the issue and prevent any future conflicts, and they failed. I feel disappointed. And I fear that these are the things that are casting a shadow over the rightful acts of the IDF.
It seems like the settlers are still in those shops today. (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/palestinians-petition-high-court-to-evict-hebron-squatters-1.326634) And here is a recent article that involves quotes from the spokespersons of the settlers there which apparently are becoming a serious 'threat' to Netanyahu's coalition, published in Der Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,719203,00.html
Move on to the next post: Hebron 2
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