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Hebron

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Summary

The largest city in the southern West Bank, and, other than East Jerusalem, the only Palestinian city with an active Jewish settler presence inside city limits: in Makdisi’s account its some 500 settlers, defended by 10 soldiers for every settler, make life virtually impossible for its 130,000 Palestinians, who have no defences and no real legal protection from settler intrusion (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.190-191).

Details

  • A widely circulated amateur video, shot in the doorway of a Palestinian home on a street leading to the Tel Rumeida settlement where only Jewish traffic is permitted, shows the family living behind a wire cage it was obliged to build over its doors and windows: a mother inside the cage, waiting for her children from school, is pelted with stones by settler boys while soldiers stationed there fail to stop them; a settler woman pushes open the cage door, then puts her face to the wire and moans “Shaghmouta” (“whore” in Arabic) at her (PDF p.190).

  • A British film crew entering a Palestinian family’s property in the same neighbourhood is accosted by two settlers: “We killed Jesus, and we’re proud of it”; “this is our land, you get the fuck out of here”; and, backing into the family’s olive grove, “We’re going to kill you and the Palestinians, you…you Nazi! You son of a shit! This is my house, this is my land, God gave it to me—and fuck you!” (PDF p.191)

  • Gideon Levy, quoted by Makdisi, says a visit to Tel Rumeida ought to be mandatory for every Israeli schoolchild: “Not a day passes without violence, not an hour passes without the throwing of stones, garbage and feces at the frightened neighbors cowering in their barricaded houses, afraid even to peek out the window.” (PDF p.191)

  • Much of the abuse is intended to loosen the Palestinians’ grip on their land and homes and ultimately to force them away: Najah D’ana’s land, 65 feet from Kiryat Arba, lost a hundred large olive trees cut by soldiers in 2002 and three to four dunums seized and settled by Kiryat Arba settlers that June (PDF p.191-192).

  • House intrusions near the settlements are common: Maryam al-Natsheh’s home was invaded by more than ten armed settlers who beat her son Falah unconscious and stabbed Ahmad, eight (PDF p.192-193); Fadel al-Samuh’s house at Beit Hadassah was attacked at night by over 150 young settlers, his water tanks smashed into the street (PDF p.193-194); Tareq al-Shartabi’s house was occupied by Avraham Avinu settlers who destroyed everything in it, and the family has been unable to return (PDF p.194-196).

  • South of the city, the herder communities of Jinba and Twaneh face total expulsion, and on 29 October 2007 the army eliminated one nearby cave-dwelling community of refugees expelled from Beit Jibrin in 1948 (PDF p.186-189).

  • Chapter 4, “Inside Out”, opens at the Qurtuba Elementary School in Tel Rumeida: Palestinian schoolgirls are obstructed by settler girls and pelted with stones by settler boys as young as five or six on the only path to school — the main entrance was sealed with razor wire by the army in 2002 — while soldiers under orders to protect the Jewish children are not allowed physically to restrain them; international escorts from TIPH and EAPPI, who cannot physically protect the children, have themselves been assaulted, including Swedish worker Tove Johansson, whose cheekbone was shattered by a bottle in November 2006 (PDF p.268-270).

  • A 1997 agreement divided Hebron into H1 (about 7 square miles, over 100,000 Palestinians, the equivalent of Area A) and H2 (just over 1.5 square miles, the equivalent of Areas B and C), contrary to Oslo’s stipulation that Palestinian cities be Area A (PDF p.270).

  • Chapter 4 concludes the H2 account: the collective life of H2’s 30,000 Palestinians was effectively sacrificed to the few hundred settlers protected by 4,000 soldiers — 1 percent of H2 dominates the 99 percent, a third of a percent of Hebron the whole; a senior military figure quoted anonymously in B’Tselem’s May 2007 report calls centre policy “a permanent process of dispossessing Arabs to increase the Jewish territory”, and B’Tselem calls the once-vibrant centre “a ghost town” (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.271).

  • The author’s walk with Abu Karim: activity has shifted from H2’s closed souk to a makeshift market at Bab al-Zawiyah; Martyrs Street is sealed as a closed military area; of al-Casbah Street’s 500 shops, under netting catching garbage thrown from the settlement above, only 15 survive; 2,000 to 2,500 businesses in the Old City and Bab al-Zawiyah have been wiped out, unemployment is some 70 percent, and three schools for almost 2,000 children were closed and taken over by the army (PDF p.272-276).

  • On 25 February 1994 Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba killed 29 Palestinians at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque; Makdisi recounts his veneration by Hebron’s settlers and the metal-detector regime that is his legacy at the mosque (PDF p.278-279).

Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Ta’ayush, B’Tselem, Transfer

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