Hell in Hebron

-Am Johal and Devorah Brous

Going south on Rt. 60 from Jerusalem on one of the 29
settler highways in the West Bank, the summer heat is
overwhelming. In the distance, you can see the
terraced hillsides stacked in the landscape
to catch rainfall as it has for centuries. You can see
pine trees planted in nature reserves to deter
Palestinian encroachment on the land. Flanking either
side of the road, you can't help but notice the
settlement expansion - new trailers literally trace
the hilltops all along the route to Hebron.

Passing the Israeli military bases, you
can see the showcase of physical infrastructure
required to maintain the Occupation: the military
jeeps, the Kalashnikovs, the barbed wire, the
checkpoints, the tanks, and the various units of young
soldiers.

Hebron is over 3,700 years old. It is one of the
oldest Palestinian
cities,
and
considered the second holiest Jewish city after
Jerusalem. The Bible mentions Hebron in connection
with Abraham. It hosts the Cave of the Machpelah,
also known
as the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs, is enclosed
by the Mosque of Ibrahim, also known as the Avraham
Avinu Synagogue. It
is
the traditional burial
ground of the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah, Itzak
and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. According to Jewish
tradition, the
Cave was
built by Herod, King of Judea during the Second Temple
Period some
2,000
years ago.

Tensions run deep - during the 1929 riots, Arabs
massacred
67 Jews in Hebron in early days of conflict
during the British Mandate. In 1980, 6 Jews were
killed in Beit
Hadassah
building in Hebron, and today, the site serves as a
flourishing yeshiva
for
over 250 students. More recent violence in Hebron
centered around
dividing
up the Cave in 1994 for Jews and Muslims. Baruch
Goldstein (an American
Jewish physician who immigrated
to Israel) opened fire and killed 29 Palestinians in
prayer at the Mosque, before being lynched to death by
an angry Arab
mob.
During the
Jewish festival of Purim it is not uncommon to find
militant Jews dressed up as Goldstein with fake
beards, doctors coats and army uniforms, toting guns.
There is a marble plaque in the nearby Jewish
settlement of Kiryat Arba which reads, "To the holy
Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish
people, the Torah and the nation of Israel." Many
other Jews and
Palestinians have died in terror, state-terror, or
settler violence.

In 1997, Prime Minister Netanyahu signed the "Hebron
Accord" with the Palestinian Authority. Israel
imposed a closure on Hebron in 1998 after the murder
of a Jewish settler.

As we drive into town, we are cursed at by the yeshiva
students for driving on Shabbat. We are near the
Old City of Hebron which now has a Jewish settler
presence of just over 500, smack in the center of a
city of 120,000 Palestinian Arabs. What used to be a
bustling Arab
market,
is today a
series of boarded up shops and barbed wire encased
residential quarters for some 10 Jewish families,
spraypainted with
the Star of David, a clenched fist, and the words,
"Death to the Arabs." Nearby, is the Jewish
settlement of Kiryat Arba which has a population of
over 6,000.
There are clusters of Israeli soldiers on every street
corner of Al Shuhadah Street for a 5km periphery
around Hebron's Old City and the holy burial grounds,
the Cave. Since 1984, a mere 7 families live at Admot
Yishai settlement
in
Hebron (Tel Rumeida), where
there is an army presence of some 12 soldiers per
settler, and expansion plans include building an
archeological park, to
redeem Jewish property.

Welcome to Hebron, the frontline in the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

As we enter the home of Idress Z., who before the
Intifada was the local butcher by day and security
guard by night, we notice the
black and white picture of him with a cigarette in his
hand taken over thirty years ago when he spent some
years in Germany. He tells us that he's smoked Farid
cigarettes for 37 years and that his family has called
Palestine home for over 1,000 years.

On the wall is a Certificate of Appreciation from the
US Agency for International Development for managing
the security work on Al Shuhadah Street "for his
contribution to the Middle East Peace Process and for
his dedicated performance under usually difficult
circumstances." Next to it, is another framed
certificate - Idress Z.'s family
was involved with saving Jewish lives during the 1929
riots and the names are listed.

As he sits in his living room with his family gathered
around him, a week before his daughter's wedding, he
tells our group of Israeli human rights advocates, "I
have an
obligation to raise my children without hatred - to be
good people and not to hate Jews,
Muslims or Christians. I want them to be able to
shake hands with the soldiers. But they treat us like
animals. What are we supposed to do?"

Just a few weeks earlier, the military stormed his
house at 7am and moved all the kids into 1 room and
threatened to kill him, accusing him of being involved
with Hamas. The soldiers told him they would make him
famous and put his name on Al Jazeera. His son-in-law
was killed, an apolitical person caught in crossfire,
and his picture was hanging on a wall in their home.
The soldiers shredded the picture in front of the
family.

Later that evening on the family rooftop, we are being
watched by soldiers atop the adjacent house and are
warned not to go to the edge of the roof for fear of
being shot at by the security forces across the street
near the Old City. Being in the Palestinian part of
the city inherently means exposing yourself to
differential treatment. Z. would sleep on this rooftop
in a small corner sheltered in jute plastic when it
was summer and too hot inside his home. He showed us
stones that littered his rooftop, and the plastic tarp
above where he used to sleep.
Settlers from Tel Rumeida up the hill throw stones to
harass the Palestinian neighbors, with the hopes of
clearing more families out of Hebron.
Reportedly some 30% of the Palestinian population has
left, since the
outset
of the Intifada.

Z. shares with us a story of how when he wants to
buy a kilo of tomatoes, he is not allowed to walk
across the street to the Market because it is closed
to Palestinians. Instead he has to take two sheruts
and pay 16 shekels to go 7km around the main artery of
Hebron, Al Shuhada street, to a vegetable market. He
says, "This is how Jews were treated in Europe."

Curfew and closure are constant. Palestinians are
literally prohibited
from
crossing the
street into the Old City.

Over coffee with cardamom, he shares his experiences
with us. A few
years
ago, when he found a three-year old Jewish
boy, lost and despairing outside his butcher shop, Z.
took him to his
parents place and was greeted by the child's mother:
she then slammed
the
door in his face. Other incidents involve being
harassed by an angry
mob and having his
teeth knocked out into his hand.

He pulls a black
suitcase off the shelf
and
shows us the evidence, photographs and newspaper
clippings in Arabic, some in Hebrew,
even some in English verifying his stories. He was
tear
gased inside his
own
home resulting in his infant daugher spending three
years in
and
out of hospital getting treated for severe burns all
over her body
after she
fell
into a pot of boiling food running away from tear
gas. His
house was entered by the IDF, and his kitchen was
burned down.


Not surprisingly, he has a hard time accepting why he
can only open his
store near the Old City for 2 hours every 15 days, why
his children are not allowed to go out and play
because of closure and Jewish children are on their
bikes and playing in the streets.

That evening, his 11-year old son is crying, curled up
on the
couch and quivering in fear. He's been hit in the head
with a bottle
by three young Jewish kids from across the street. We
have to sneak the
boy
and his family out during curfew, through a dark
corridor between
houses and
through a cemetary, before
meeting a family member with a small bus, to take them
to the hospital
for
X-rays. He stops along the way and throws up for the
second time. His
father
apologizes to us, and says, "He is really afraid."

We wait at Z.'s neighbour's house until they return
from the hospital.
It is riddled with bulletholes inside and out.
Z.'s neighbor has lost his job as a carpenter four
years ago because of
the
Intifada, and now catches birds and puts them in cages
to sell them
for 40 shekels or what his customers
can afford. His wife and their relatives sleep with
four people in one room. Over nargileh and mint
tea, they share their frustration with the
situation. The economy in Hebron is suffering and
everybody feels they, like the birds, are living in a
cage.

The next morning as Mr. Z. opens his briefcase to
show us some of his personal possessions and the
newspaper articles about Hebron, military officers
knock on the door asking for our identifications. The
authorities are wondering what we're doing in Hebron.

Later, we walk toward Ruth's Tomb, discovered in
Hebron within the past
few
years. There is a line-up of elderly
Arabs and a bunch of kids stuck at the checkpoint
waiting to be allowed
through
in order to walk across the street. The IDF soldiers
are calling the Shabbak to see if they can get
permission to let them through.

Today they are allowed through after waiting for a
half hour in the early afternoon heat - if they had
been denied, they would have been doing the dreaded
7km walk to get home. This is the Old City which is
now sealed for
Palestinians. We see members of the predominately
Scandinavian Temporary International Presence in
Hebron - human rights observers who are not allowed to
make their human rights reports on Hebron public.

We walk to Ruth's Tomb. Soldiers gather at the
entrance. The narrow
corridors leading to the gravesite are made of
corrugated tin and
barbed
wire. The gravesite is empty of civilians, and grossly
neglected.

Our fact finding delegation led by the human rights
organization Bustan is here to understand some
of the concerns in Hebron and to see the situation
firsthand, and meet with members of the local
community
to understands what can be done by Jews, Arabs and
internationals to
make
the situation better.

The military presence is palpable. The
soldiers who make it to Hebron are some of the
best trained in the IDF. It is a complicated
place to be. On one of the security posts where the
soldiers stand, somebody has written poetry from a
French Jewish writer. Everybody has their own way of
dealing with the madness of the conflict.

Speaking to a Jewish settler outsider her home with
many of her ten children and their friends sitting on
the steps for a discussion with our group. She
comments, "This is a
Jewish
state and Jewish
land. An Arab can stay here if they put up a sign
that says this place is for the people of Israel.
This is the Jewish homeland. Jews have the
right to rule here." She continues, "they can go to
any of the other 22
Arab lands, and leave us alone."

We are escorted through Kiryat Arba, harassed by a
Russian immigrant upon leaving and are asked who we
stayed with multiple times.

On the way back to Jerusalem, we are stopped three
times by IDF forces and asked what we are doing in
Hebron. The drive back is still less than an hour,
but the line-up back into Hebron for Palestinians is
snaking
around and looks as though it will take at least three
hours to get into this City of Hell.