Because of an unfortunate agreement between Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the Israeli government Hebron was divided into two parts H1 and H2. H2 is about a quarter of the whole city and is home to the Jewish settlements.
Our hosts in Hebron H2 were members of the Christian Peacemaker team. In Hebron they are a handful of super brave people who try to observe what's happening to Palestinians and to escort Palestinians to prevent the attacks on them by settlers. Lorin Peters of CPT guided me and another American through the streets of the Old City of Hebron (think of the Old City of Jerusalem half deserted). There were several military checkpoints, the most serious being in front of the Abraham's Tomb/Ibrahimi Mosque. Lorin says Palestinian youth and men are routinely detained at the checkpoint for minutes or hours. We came through without incident. Two Palestinian stores were open with settlers freely buying items giving the lie to their myth that no one can live with the "bloodthirsty Arabs".
We took a walk through several blocks that had once held Arab shops which were now all closed. Each building was alike, a concrete rectangle with large folding metal doors. Each door was decorated with a six pointed Jewish star. The settlers have desecrated the Jewish star, making the holy symbol into a graffiti of fear, much like a swastika.
Al Shohada street was pretty deserted. After a huge legal struggle one Arab family was able to move back into an apartment above a shop and we could see items left out to dry. They don't dare to walk on the street with CPT escort. We passed a young man and Lorin said, "Shalom". The answer was, "And how are the anti-Semites doing today?" We walked on. It was just a tiny blip on the scale of provocations and assaults. Their "international" status doesn't given CPT members much protection. Lorin mentioned that many times he has been stoned by settler children. He remarked that the boys were getting older, the stones were getting bigger and the soldiers were making even less of an effort to protect CPT or Palestinians.
Settler efforts to take over H2 are working. The population of the Old City is down from 10,000 to 1,000. Fencing has been installed over the alleys of the Old City to deal with the rain of trash and feces that settlers throw at the people from their settlements built on top of Palestinian buildings.
By chance we had gone to Hebron on Tish B'av a fast day to remember the destructions of the Temples in Jerusalem. The Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah are read on that day. It begins with this quote, "O how has the city that was once so populous remained lonely! She has become like a widow! She that was great among the nations, a princess among the provinces, has become tributary." Perhaps Hebron was not once great, but H2 is fast becoming emptied of its native population.
The Wall
Removal of the Palestinian population is a goal sought everywhere from the Jordan to the Mediterranean by Israel's apartheid government. What it can't empty right away it surrounds and walls in. The Apartheid Wall is everywhere in the West Bank, supremely ugly and gobbling up thousands of acres of land. When you walk through the Bethlehem checkpoint to Jerusalem upon it you see a huge sign with some disgusting slogan wishing you the blessings of peace. As they say it gives hypocrisy a bad name.
On the day we went to Jenin we also traveled east to the northeast corner of the West Bank to the place where the first piece of the Wall was built. There it divides a small town from its relations in the city of Um El Fahm. It divides farmers from their fields as well. A long court battle resulted in permission for a farmer to go through a gate to farm his land provided he use no machinery and get no help from anyone but his immediate family. He won’t be able to use more than a fraction of the land this way. Eventually it will be declared “unused” and confiscated.
We were interviewing a man who was telling us that the soldiers had decided the village grave yard was too near the wall and demanded that it be moved. Appeals were fruitless. So the villagers had to dig up the bodies of their departed. As the six of us gathered in a driveway to hear this story an army jeep spotted us. A soldier demand we move.
We drove away.
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