Hatebron

In the southern region of the West Bank lies a big city known by most as Hebron. In order to catch a ride down using public transportation you must know it by its arabic name, Al-Khalil. The heart of the city is in Bab al-Zawiya, a huge outdoor market, where you can find anything from fresh vegetables to fly kuffiyehs.

A few steps away from the market, around a corner from the busiest point, lies a checkpoint. A pedestrian checkpoint! At first, I thought it was a curious thing. I am a teacher in a jail so I go through metal detectors daily, and I took a flight to arrive here so I am familiar with safety procedures, but I wasn't mentally prepared to pass a metal detector to get from one block to the next. That is the reality of Hatebron, a city ripped apart by the occupation.

I had been in Hebron for a few minutes once before to get a used cellfone a pizza and return to the village I love, but that visit didn't afford me the time to see the occupation in all its shock and awe. After a weekend in Qawawis, three of us made our way to Al-Khalil on the way back to Beit Ummar.

Parched, we thought we would drop in to see Joe Skillet, an ISM'er who has put in weeks of work documenting and confronting the violence of settlers on Palestinians in the neighborhood that lies behind the checkpoint, and get some water.

Security measures were lax, perhaps because we were obviously not Palestinian, but we put our bags on a counter walked through a metal detector and then picked up our unchecked bags. Hmmm, is this thing here just for show, I thought, Is it meant to frustrate and intimidate folks rather than really afford any real safety? Through the checkpoint, we turned an immediate right and walked up a Bay Area-calibre hill, passed two military booths with soldiers on standby. NYC is militarized, but its got nothing on Hebron.

On the corner of the spot where ISM and the Tel Rumeida Project share an apartment there is a soldier stationed and hanging off the roof of the building there is military-issue camo netting. This place looks like a war zone. I am told that I have just entered H2 an area populated by close to 50,000 Palestinians and around 500 Israeli settlers spread out over 4 settlements. The military presence is designed to protect the Israeli settlers.

Hebron has been split into H1 and H2 since the Oslo period and more specifically by the Hebron Protocol. H1 consists of about 80 percent of the city and is predominantly Palestinian and H2 consists of the other 20 percent and its also predominantly Palestinian. The difference lies in the form of occupation. H1 is occupation lite while H2 is extra-strength.

In order for the 500 Israeli settlers to feel safe they are given the right to defend themselves at all cost and face little to no consequence while Palestinians have little to no rights. Hebron is the example of Apartheid perfected.

I saw a man walk down Al-Shuhada street accompanying a group of little girls, carrying a very large assault rifle strapped to his back. He was an Israeli settler. I couldn't imagine a Palestinian man making it very far claiming the same right to bear arms to defend himself and Palestinian youth from Israeli settlers.

I watched this scene from a cement path constructed by an NGO so that Palestinian children can walk to the Cordoba school. The path is the only option for Palestinian children since they are forbidden to walk down Al-Shuhada Street beyond a certain point guarded by Jeish. Palestinian children are treated like terrorist by the residents of the Beit Hadassah settlement across the street from their school. This cement path is the object of Israeli aggression determined to push Palestinians out of H2, if not the West Bank, if not Palestine.

A man walked with four little girls towards the checkpont from the H1 side was stopped in his path by Jeish. A few meters behind them something was occuring around the bend causing soldiers to draw their assault rifles and to stop pedestrian traffic. A bunch of us busy-body Internationals began to videotape and snap fotos, while asking questions. One daring American asked why the man with the four little girls were being held practically at gunpoint and the soldier responsed, "because they want to kill us." The man and children were Palestinian. I feel like I have to tell you that I am not exagerating; I saw this with my own eyes this past week.

On another occassion, in the same two days, a Palestinian man was attempting to go home when a knife he uses for work caused much alarm at the checkpoint. This mistake caused the man to be taken down, beaten by Jeish, and arrested. Our own guide and a local ISM contact was asked to kneel, at the same time, and when he refused he was physically submitted into a kneeling position.

All of this is contained in downtown Al-Khalil. A group of us walked down streets where Palestinian businesses used to boom but have been forced to close, where residents once lived but have since left for fear of settler or military violence. We visited the mosque that is the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham, Issac, and others are said to be buried, and had to go through two sets of metal detectors. Imagine doing this to enter your house of worship. Palestinians and Israeli settlers gaze at each other through barred windows on diametrically opposed sides of Abraham's tomb. This is a metaphor for Hatebron, a settlement built on Al-Khalil.

The occupation's strength is in its ability to control Palestinians, to destroy economies, families, and to dehumanize them. The potential for humiliation that Palestinians have to face daily is incredible. It is a wonder there aren't more suicide bombers, more people so fed up with this Israeli institutional violence that they are willing to take their own lives while taking out a few of their oppressors.