Pat Devlin shares more of her experiences as a member of the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
Occupation writ large in Hebron
Think wartime films of occupied France and you will capture something of the atmosphere of central Hebron. Even after a month here it was quite a shocking experience during my two day visit to our team in Hebron.
The Oslo Accord of 1995 divided the West Bank into 3 zones
- Area A Wholly under Palestinian control (this includes most of the Palestinian cities)
- Area B Joint control: Palestinian civil administration, Joint Palestinian/Israeli ‘security’
- Area C Wholly under Israeli military control ( this includes many Palestinian rural communities – more of this another time)
Unlike other Palestinian cities, Hebron is divided into H1 under Palestinian control and H2 under Israeli military control. H2 includes much of the city centre and old city as well as the mosque and synagogue housing the tombs of the patriarchs. The reason for this is that in Hebron the Israeli settlements are in the centre of the city.
As you approach the city centre the road forks. The left fork leads into the old city and the right fork leads to a pedestrian military checkpoint with metal detectors and if you pass though successfully, you find yourself in the infamous Shuhada street. This was once the main shopping street of the Palestinian city, but now it’s like a ghost town. If you are a Palestinian (or even an international during the time I was there) you are only allowed to walk the first 200yds of the street before being halted by another military post, just before the Jewish school and central settlement. This is precisely where the Palestinian girls must climb the stairs to the Cordoba school and for the Hebron team one of their main tasks is watching the girls safely in and out of the school, because in the past they have had to run the gauntlet of stone throwing settlers as they came down the stairs from school. On the day I was there, the school had an open day and the contrast between the normal excitement of the pupils as each class lined up to perform their part of the show was a testimony to the Palestinian determination to continue with as normal a life a life as possible despite the abnormal context of their lives.
From the school we were able to walk by the houses on the hillside below the Tal Rumeida settlement and we saw how the settlers had cut through the trunks of the vines growing in the gardens and heard of their violence even towards the children living in those houses. Descending from the hillside we entered the Old City where some of the walkways have overhead wire mesh to prevent the settlers tipping their waste onto the Palestinian traders and customers below.
In the Old City we met Nahla at her handicraft stall. She is the aunt of two boys who were arrested after the disturbances when Netanyahu announced that the site of the tombs of the patriarchs would become a Jewish heritage sight. Nahla’s sister Leyla had sent the boys to buy bread, but they were detained accused of stone throwing and the 15yr old had now been in prison in Tulkarem in the north of the country for some weeks. That morning they had heard that he was to be released, but only after falsely admitting to stone throwing and the 15yr old would have to find his way from Tulkarem right down to Hebron with only 15 shekels in his pocket. We hoped our team in Tulkarem would be able to help.
We continued on our way through the Old City until we reached the military checkpoint and turnstile leading to the Mosque and Synagogue housing the tombs of the patriarchs. Having passed through the turnstile we had to go through an airport style checking system before entering the Mosque. The underground tombs were actually sealed up by the crusaders before they left, so what you see is something like giant tabernacles erected on the ground above the tombs. Abraham’s tomb can be seen both from the mosque and the synagogue. We moved on to the synagogue, where a young Israeli told us: “It’s better that they can’t come here and we can’t go there, that way we don’t fight – not that I want to fight and I don’t think those other guys want to fight either – it’s the big guys that want to fight!”
The next day we returned with a watching brief, as over 800 Palestinians made their way through the elaborate security checks to Friday prayers in the mosque. Identity papers were taken from about 15 young Palestinian men and they had to wait after prayers until the Israeli military were ready to return their papers to them . Later we took tea with a Palestinian shopkeeper, whose premises are just opposite the mosque and synagogue. He told us the Israelis had offered him large sums of money for his property, because they want exclusive occupancy of this important area, but so far like many Palestinians he has quietly resisted.
