Breaking the Silence: Hebron

[holyland]

Inside Hebrons H2 Area
A tour with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence revealed the zealousness of the reputed settlers in Hebron.
Palestine Monitor
17 November 2008
The city of Hebron is a 'hot potato' politically; it is disputed among Israelis, it arouses indignation among Palestinians, it is contested in the international community. It is also one of the focal points for any future peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, especially because of the some 800 Israeli settlers living in the midst of the 'former' city center, in the area carved out by the Hebron Protocol of 1997 as Hebron H2.

Hebrons H2 is often filled with a certain mystique about what actually goes on 'in there' as it is not the easiest place to access.

Palestine Monitor took on a quest to try to unravel at least some of this curious mystique of the city – and what better way to start than by a guided tour? Two reporters went on the tour that The Independent's Donald MacIntyre has described as 'a unique and tragical history tour'.

While we moved through the dead streets of the city center the settlers employed small whistles, shouting and megaphones to disrupt the tour. Eggs were trown into our group of visitors and at the bus as we were leaving the premises. Even an attempted violent attack on the tour guide, former IDF soldier and co-founder of Breaking the Silence, Yehuda Shaul.

Welcome to al-Khalīl
 
Just arrived in Hebron we were met by a massive turnout of the city's settler population. This man greeted us with the words "Yallah Auschwitz". Picture: Palestine Monitor  
One of the settlers hurling insults at Yehuda Shaul Picture: Palestine Monitor With his repeated returns to Hebron to show tourists and Israelis alike the consequences of the state-supported and militarily sustained settlement in the middle of the city, Shaul is a thorn in the settlers' flesh. A religious Israeli himself, his exposure of the settler violence and ill-treatment of the Palestinians by the IDF has made Shaul the favorite hate figure for the settlers in Hebron. Most of the shouting and yelling during our tour are directed against the "traitor" Yehuda Shaul, who has a hard time cutting through the infernal noise from small plastic whistles.

 
Picture: Palestine Monitor  
Picture: Palestine Monitor  
The settlers tried to drown out the voice of Yehuda Shaul Picture: Palestine Monitor "Yehuda Shaul, you have Jewish blood on your hands", a settler shouts through a megaphone. With his thick, pitch-black beard and robust stature Shaul looks older than his 25 years, or at least more seasoned than most young men at his age, and the insults do not seem to penetrate his armor of humoristic cynicism. All ages are represented among the settler demonstrators, who even expose their little children to what they perceive as a fight for existence in Hebron. At one point, a male youngster tries to break through the police circle reaching for Shaul, but to his disappointment a police man pushes him away.

 
The guide, Yehuda Shaul Picture: Palestine Monitor We stop in front of what used to be a range of Palestinian shops in a street that was once part of a city center bustling with busy merchants and Arab Hebronites. Now, the doors are sealed and David's stars and menorahs decorate the façades. "This is a so called sterile street," our guide shouts. "No Palestinians are allowed to come here, only Settlers and the military." Since the closure of the city center to the some 170.000 Palestinians living in Hebron in 2001, it has become a virtual ghost town.

 
Once a busy market, this "sterile" street is now off limits to the Palestinian population of Hebron. Today, 90% of the shops in the Old City have been closed due to military intervention or drop in trade. Picture: Palestine Monitor The restrictions of movement for the Palestinians in Hebron are not limited to a few streets in the city center. In 2005, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) measured 101 movement obstructions in H-2, the 4.3 square kilometers of Hebron which contains the Israeli settlements, 35.000 Palestinians and the city's commercial center.

 
These buildings have been sealed off by the Israeli Army as a "safety measure". Behind these cages Palestinian families live their daily lives overlooking the Shuhada Street where they aren o longer allowed to walk. Picture: Palestine Monitor Suddenly, a deep, powerful tone breaks through the piercing whistling. One of the settlers blows a curved horn of bone while his companion tries to convince us that all Muslims want to kill the Jews.

 
A settler shouting anti-Muslim propaganda. Picture: Palestine Monitor We get back to our bus and drive to the grave of Baruch Goldstein, a settler who murdered 29 praying Palestinians in the Ibrahimi-Mosque during a Friday prayer in 1994. Now, he's buried outside Hebron and the grave has become a site of pilgrimage for the most extreme settlers. The inscription hails him as a saint.

 
The grave of Baruch Goldstein. Picture: Palestine Monitor Hebron – at a glance
Religiously and historically , Hebron is important for both Muslims and Jews, as the city houses the Tombs of the Patriarchs, the caves where Abraham is said to have been buried with his wife Sarah, his son Isaac and grandson Jacob and their wives.

Hebron is a Palestinian city in the southern parts of the West Bank territory and home to some 165.000 Palestininans and 800 Jewish settlers. The city is devivded into two parts, the Palestinian governed H1 (80%) and the Israeli governed H2 (20%).

Hebron today is a city where violent conflicts and clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians have become an integrated part of everyday life for all residents of Hebron. The presence of settlers have made the IDF impose strict security measures such as creating 'buffer zones', by closing markets and shops and leaving Palestinian owned land at risk of being taken over by settlers, and therefore making it difficult for Palestinians to bring their goods to the 'Old Suq' for selling. Furthermore, the increasing 'settler violence', or fear of it, have driven many shoppers and traders away from the old market, as all vehicle traffic is banned by the IDF, leading many Palestinians who were once living in the area around the old city to move and causing what the old city of Hebron is now; a 'Ghost Town'. According to the UN report 'Settlements and Palestinian urban centres' (2008) consequence have been increasing poverty and public discontent as, "eight out of ten adults are unemployed and an estimated 75% live below the poverty line."

Key Landmarks in the modern history of Hebron
The 1929 Massacre or 'Tarpat'; Jews and Muslims and Christians had been living in the area around Hebron for centuries, however, following a turbulent period of unrest and riot in the city 67-69 people from the Jewish community were killed and some 60-70 people wounded over a period of three days beginning on August 23, 1929, the remaining Jews were evacuated by the British. The perpetrators were all from the Palestinian/Muslim community of Hebron, however, to complete the picture there are many accounts of Palestinian families providing shelter to more than 400 Jewish survivors. Moreover, since the Passover (see below) and the arrival of the present-day settlers, the 'Tarpat' has become a symbol and constant reference point for the settlers in Hebron.

In June 1967, during the Six-Day War Hebron was occupied by the Israeli forces' occupation of the West Bank and Gaza territory.

The 1968 Passover holiday; days before the Jewish Passover holiday, a group of religious Zionists, headed by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, came to Hebron and lodged at a local hotel. After the holiday, the group stayed, demanding that Jews were allowed to return to the city of Hebron. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the Israeli government, agreeing on building a new town in close vicinity of Hebron, in 1971 these settlers moved to Kiryat-Arba, this new town was to become the stronghold of Gush Emunim; a religious-messianic movement created in 1974 with a defined political program of establishing Israeli rule over the Holy Land i.e. including the occupied territories (West Bank, Gaza strip, East Jerusalem and Golan).

The Massacre of 1994, 'the Goldstein Massacre'; on February 25 1994, during Ramadan, Dr Baruch Goldstein, 38, burst into the mosque in the Machpela Cave in Hebron, where he shot and killed 29 Muslims while praying, and wounded between 70-150 people. Baruch Goldstein was a US-born physician and resident of the Kiryat-Arba settlement. Initially, the Israeli police announced that Goldstein had shot himself but in a later statement it was presented that he had been beaten to death with iron bars. This lead to the deployment of TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron), a civilian observer mission that was created outside the UN and consist of observers from Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, Denmark and Sweden.

The Hebron Protocol of 1997; is a part of a series of diplomatic agreements follwing the Oslo II Accord, its main points being; most importantly the redeployment of Israeli forces from Hebrons H1 area, covering 80% of the city and 166.000 Palestinians; this meant handing over control of much of Hebron to the Palestinian Authoritarity. The remaining 20%, the old city area where, today, 800 Jewish settlers and 35.000 Palestinians live, remains under Israeli control, the IDF have around 1500 soldiers stationed there. Moreover, Israel was begin first phase of withdrawal from selected areas of the West Bank territory, concluding with the third phase of Israeli withdrawal from the remaining parts of the West Bank, apart from Israeli settlements and military locations. The withdrawal was to have been completed before mid-1998.

Hebron links and further information:
Breaking the Silence ; is a an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah. For information on tours in Hebron H2 area, articles, testemonies etc. Available here

United Nations (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)) 2007: "The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and other infratsructure in the West Bank", July 2007.

MacIntyre, Donald, 2008: "A rough guide to Hebron: The world's strangest guided tour highlights the abuse of Palestinians", in: The Independent, 26 January 2008. Article available here

IRIN News (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) 2007: "Israeli settlements in Hebron make life nearly impossible, Palestinians say", September 9, 2007. Available here

BtSelem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) 2007: "Hebron City Center" - a section on the website concerning Hebron. Please do watch the videofootage from the organisation's 'shooting back'-project; lending handy cams to Palestinians to document human rights violations. Available here

BBC, On This Day (archive section at http://www.bbc.co.uk 2008: " Jewish settler kills 30 at holy site", February 25, 1994. Available here

Feige, Michael, 2001: "Jewish settlement of Hebron: The place and the other", in: GeoJournal 53: 323–333, 2001.

The Jewish Settler Community of Hebron also have a website and arrange their own kind of tour around Hebrons H2 area: http://www.hebron.com/
 RSS 2.0 | Private area |