Witnessing Apartheid in Hebron

A little while ago I spent the weekend taking tours of Hebron and the surrounding hills given by Breaking the Silence, a group of ex Israeli soldiers speaking out against human rights abuses that occur in Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories. It was one of the most depressing experiences of my life, just witnessing first hand what human beings are capable of justifying doing to one another, situations of blatant apartheid and ethnic discrimination that people either ignore or dismiss...

The first day we spent walking around the city center of Hebron, a city of 166,000, the largest in the West Bank next to East Jerusalem. At the center of the city is Ibrahimi Mosque / The Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Abraham and his sons are supposedly buried. Hebron had always had a small Jewish community until 1929, when, in one of the worst cases of violence that preceded the creation of Israel, an Arab mob attacked the Jews of the city, killing 67 (hundreds of Jews escaped the mob by being sheltered by their Arab neighbors as well). After the riot all the Jews of Hebron, some of whose families had lived there peacefully for generations, fled the city. During the war of 1948 in which Israel was created, Hebron, along with the rest of the West Bank, became part of Jordan. In the 1967 war, Israel captured, among other territories, the West Bank, which it has continued to occupy to this day. Shortly after that war, a group of Israelis rented out a hotel room in Hebron, and then refused to leave, claiming that they were reclaiming the Jewish presence in Hebron. The Israeli government made a deal with them to leave and granted them a large plot of land adjacent to Hebron which became the settlement of Kiryat Arba instead, but a few years later the the settlers occupied a house where Jews used to live prior to 1929 and an old hospital, and established a settlement right in the center of Hebron. The settlers and the Israeli government claim they have a right to reclaim land in Hebron that had belonged to Jews, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the settlers are not related to the victims of the 1929 massacre in any way except for happening to share the same religion, and despite the fact that the millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants of refugees that lost their lands in what is now Israel are always denied the right to move back to their homes or be compensated for them in any way.

The settler presence in Hebron has grown steadily since then to about 800 in the center of Hebron today, and there has been friction and mutual acts of violence between the settlers and the Arabs of the city since the settlement's inception, intensifying during the last two decades. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein walked into the main mosque of Hebron with an automatic rifle and killed 29 people and injured over 100. The response of the Israeli army to that massacre was to shut down part of the main street of Hebron, along which the settlements are located, shut down all the Palestinian shops in that area, and impose a curfew on Palestinian residents in order to protect the settlers from reprisal attacks (no restrictions were placed on the settlers). They developed a policy that stated that Arabs and Jews should be separated from each other in order to ensure security. When the Al-Aqsa intifada erupted in 2000, the Israeli army expanded this separation policy to the entire city center. Take a guess which group had to bare the consequences of this policy.

It was during the intifada that our guide Ilan had served in the Israeli army in Hebron. He said he came from a right wing family, and went into the army supporting what they were doing in the West Bank and Hebron, but that his service there changed his mind. He took us on a walk through the center of town, which before 200 was not only the commercial center for Hebron, but for all of the southern west bank. Today, except for settlements here and there, the place looks like an abandoned ghost town. In order to keep what at the time was 500 Jewish settlers safe in the center of town, the Israeli army evicted approximately 13,000 Palestinians from their homes in the city center, closed down hundreds of shops, shut down main market places, closed all the main roads to Palestinians and installed checkpoints everywhere else, and imposed frequent curfews on the Palestinian residents that remained. Ilan had been in charge of one of the teams of soldiers in charge of kicking people out of their homes. He said sometimes you would give them an eviction notice giving them a couple days, sometimes you would give them a notice giving them a couple hours. Sometimes he said he would knock on a door and tell whoever answered that he and his soldiers would be around the corner having coffee and cigarettes, and would be back in 20 minutes, and that they had that long to move out of the house that they had lived in their entire life, that they were born in and that their children were born in, and that they would not be allowed to return. Forcibly evicting people was a pain though, and often times had to be done repeatedly and involved violence, so he said they soon figured out a more efficient way of doing things. While we walked through the main street he pointed out how all the doors we were passing were welded shut. He said the army would formally evict the people living on the ground floor and weld all the entrances shut, and ban use of the roads leading to the house. The residents of the top floors would be trapped inside with no way out but to jump to and from the roofs of buildings, which is difficult for the very young and very old. This combined with the curfews, restrictions on movement, and settler violence towards them was usually enough to coerce most of the residents of a building to leave without as much work on the part of the army. He showed us what used to be the busiest markets in the southern West Bank that were now deserted, and blocked off with concrete blocks and barbed wire. He said that he had been stationed at a checkpoint at the entrance to the meat market, and that he and his fellow soldiers always hated the smell. When the army decided to shut down the whole market and wall off the entrance, he and his friends threw a big party in celebration, and it was only later that he realized that he was celebrating taking away the source of livelihood for thousands of people. Most of the shops in the area were also given eviction notices, and had their doors welded shut before the owners had time to move the food inside that was for sale. Ilan said one of the things he remembered most vividly was the wave of rats that infested the city during the period he was there, that just fed for months on the food trapped in those abandoned shops. Meanwhile, much of the time the residents of the area were trapped in their houses under curfew, unable to shop for food, go to school or work, seek medical attention, give birth, or just step outside for a breath of fresh air. At one point there was a curfew for 180 days straight, with only a few hours break every week that people would use to scramble to get food and water for the next week. In the first three years of the intifada, Palestinians in the city center were subject to curfews that lasted from a few hours to the entire day on over 500 days. Anybody that is caught on the street during curfew can be arrested, shot at, or have their keys confiscated and tires slashed if they are in a car. The main roads through the center of town were also closed to Palestinians. This cuts the city in two, and to get from one side to another you now have to go all the way around the city, passing through numerous checkpoints. Any Palestinians that wanted to go to and from their homes in the city center has to pass through a checkpoint and be searched each time as well.

The settlers, who have not once been subject to curfew or had their movement impaired in the city center, cause their own set of problems. Ilan said that after evicting Palestinians from a home or shop, it was not uncommon to return that night to find settlers occupying the place, sitting around playing cards. Seeing as how the Palestinians had been evicted ostensibly to create a "buffer zone" around the area of Jewish settlement, the fact that the settlers are expanding into the newly vacated "buffer zone" is more than a bit problematic. Ilan said that if he or his fellow soldiers asked the settlers to leave, they would be spit at and cursed at. Which brings up another major problem, the fact that, according to Ilan, and every Palestinian I have met, soldiers are not authorized to impose the law on settlers. The army's purpose is to act as combatants, and their mission is to protect the settlers from the Palestinians, not uphold the law. As Israeli civilians, settlers are not subject to military law the way a Palestinian is, they get the benefit of Israeli civil law, which must be administered by a policeman. The nearest police station is in the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, and the policemen are settlers themselves. The most the army can do is detain a settler until the police arrive, although according to Ilan this is rarely done. This creates a situation where while the city center is teaming with soldiers to protect the settlers from the settlers, there often times is no one around to protect the Palestinians from the settlers, and when there is enforcement is extremely lax, even according to internal Israeli government reports. Ilan said it was routine to see settlers vandalizing Palestinian property, physically assualting Palestinians, and looting Palestinian shops, but that there was nothing he could do. Almost every window on a Palestinian house that I saw either had a wire mesh cage around it, or had broken glass from rocks thrown by settlers. Above the market places that are now pretty much completely deserted, there are wire mesh roofs to protect Palestinians from settlers hurling stones at them from the rooms they had occupied above the markets. And while it may not be policy, there are documented instances of Israeli soldiers and policemen humiliating and abusing, and on at least one occasion even killing, detained Palestinians.

In what universe can this be seen as a remotely just solution? There were 500 Jews in the area, and to keep them safe the Israeli army evicted 13,000 Palestinians from their homes, trampled the human rights of those that remained, and disrupted the hundreds of thousands that depended on the area as a commercial center. If it is true that the two populations needed to be separated for their own safety, why was it preferable to move 13,000 civilians instead of 500? Because they are Arabs, because their well being is far secondary to that of Jewish settlers. If there is another explanation someone please point it out to me, because I can't see it.

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The next day I took a tour out to the villages in the South Hebron Hills, and while the setting was very different, the story was more of the same. The first town we visited was Bir al 'Idd, one of many communities of people that live in the caves in the southern West Bank, in or near a large area declared by Israel to be a military training area and firing range. A few years ago, claiming that the cave dwellers were a security risk to the nearby armed settlements, and that they had no right to be in or near the military zone, the army forcibly evicted the cave dwelling communities, and destroyed their caves and wells. Rabbis for Human Rights hired a lawyer and took the case to the Israeli supreme court, which ruled that the people of the area could move back, but that the status quo had to be maintained: no new buildings, or even repairing buildings and wells the army had destroyed. When we got to the village we saw international and Israeli volunteers helping rebuild homes for these people anyway, including Rabbi Arik Ascherman, if any of you know who that is. We heard from the villagers and the activists that even though they were allowed back, there was still constant harassment, intimidation, and violence from settlers. The army had built a low concrete barrier through their land, which while easy for a human to climb over effectively cuts off shepherds and their flocks from much of their land. They are not allowed to use the one paved road of the region, which they themselves built decades ago, because it is now reserved for settlers. Instead they have to take a roundabout route which needs a 4x4 vehicle in the dry season and is often inaccessible after it rains. Instead of taking half an hour to get to the nearest town, it now takes over 3 hours, which is a major problem for children that used to go to school there or villagers that used to go there to sell their goods. Settler violence is endemic. I listened to one man tell me how the settlers came and scared his flock of sheep into jumping off a cliff and killing themselves. A few days before some villagers and internationals accompanying them were beaten and robbed by settlers on the detour road. As elsewhere in the West Bank, law enforcement on the settlers is almost non-existent. While there are army bases and patrol cars everywhere, as I described before it is not their job to enforce law on the settlers. The nearest police station with jurisdiction over the settlers is in the Kiryat Arba settlement half an hour away, and it has two patrol cars responsible for the entire southern West Bank.

Next we went to the town of Susya. The family I met, and apparently many of the residents of the village, used to live on the other side of the border and fled from their lands in fear during the 1948 creation of Israel, and, after not being allowed to return, settled in the area that we were visiting. After Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, a team of Israeli archaeologists found an ancient synagogue right near the town, and Israel created a national park in the area. And since by Israeli law no one is allowed to live in a national park, the villagers homes were demolished, that part of their land was confiscated, and they moved into the southern half of their property (today there is now a settlement outpost, which are illegal even under Israeli law, right near the synagogue where the town used to be). Later, many of the town residents were relocated a third time when much of the rest of their land was declared as a buffer zone for the settlement bordering them from the other side, and their homes and wells were destroyed and more of their land confiscated yet again. After this time, the villagers that had to relocate decided to spread out as much as possible so as to not have a central location that could be confiscated from them. There is only one problem. They were never given permits to build their new houses after the army demolished their old ones. And since building without a permit is illegal, what can they army do but come back and demolish their new homes? The cost of applying for the permit is the entire family's combined monthly income, and it is well known that permits are rarely given to Palestinians. The Israeli human rights group Ta'ayyush has repeatedly put together the money to submit a permit for the villagers of Susya, and so far have been denied three times. Meanwhile every time the villagers try to build a place to live or dig a new well to replace a damaged one, the army comes in and demolishes it. All of this is going on within sight of Israeli settlement outposts, illegal even under Israeli law and all built without permits. Far from demolishing these outposts, the state built a paved road connecting the outpost to the main settlement, connected them to the electricity and water grid, and posts soldiers around it to keep it safe. And this is despite the fact that the villagers of Susya have a legally recognized title to their land, and, in this case, at least one of the outposts does not (its on a national park). As with many other places I have visited, the villagers are constantly subject to settler violence. One of the old men I talked to described how one time in the middle of the night his family awoke to the smell of fire, and ran outside to see that settlers had lit their home, which is a combination of rock walls and tarp coverings, on fire while the entire extended family, including children, had been sleeping inside, and were lighting other homes on fire as well. Fortunately they managed to chase the settlers away and put out the fires before anyone got hurt. All of this went on while an army vehicle was sitting and watching just a few hundred meters away, according to the old man.

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The situation in the West Bank, especially in these examples, is one where one ethnic group is systematically preferred over another by the state. In Hebron, when the army decides that Arabs and Jews need to be separated, it would rather remove 13,000 Arabs from the area and impinge on the human rights of countless others than move 500 Jews. When it is determined that a "buffer zone" needs to be established between a settlement and a Palestinian village, it is always Palestinian land confiscated to make the buffer. All over the West Bank and especially in and around Hebron, a huge military apparatus is deployed with the purpose of protecting Jewish settlers, while law enforcement to protect Arabs from Jews is lacking to say the least, even according to internal Israeli government reports. Not to mention that the law itself differs; settlers get the full protection of Israeli civil law, while Palestinians are subject to military law, with no right to a trial or a lawyer, and obscure Ottoman Turkish laws that allow the expropriation of privately held farm land that Jewish settlers are not subject to. The law is applied selectively: Palestinian homes built without a permit are demolished (and permits are almost impossible to obtain) while illegal settlement outposts built without permits get roads, electricity, water, and security provided for them by the state. Settlements are provided with modern infrastructure by the state, but even in areas where Israel has accepted responsibility in civilian matters (like the granting of building permits), little or no money is given to Palestinian towns, and on the contrary the army demolishes many Palestinian attempts at infrastructure they build at their own cost. Public infrastructure like roads are many times reserved only for the use of Jewish settlers, and the Palestinians are forced to take long detours on substandard roads. And, needless to say, settlers get full democratic voting rights in the state that controls their lives, while the Palestinians I came across on this tour do not.

Pro-Israeli-policy advocates will usually argue that the state discriminating between settlers and Palestinians is ok because the Palestinians aren't members of their state, and as such Israel is not responsible for their well being. To that, I would answer that Israel cannot have it both ways. Either Palestinians in the West Bank are not members of the Israeli nation, and are thus members of some other nation, in which case I would ask what is Israel doing planting their civilian populations on the land of another nation, with the intent of future formal annexation? That is called colonization. Or is it that Palestinians never were a "real" people to begin with, that the West Bank never "really" belonged to any nation or group of people and is therefor somehow up for grabs? In that case in areas Israel has de facto claimed for itself (by occupying it for 60 years, moving in hundreds of thousands of its civilian population, and in most areas claiming complete security and civilian control), denying equal rights to some of the inhabitants of the land that you have de facto annexed on the basis of their ethnicity is apartheid.