The spacious manicured streets of the illegal Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba.
I’ve been to al-Khalil a number of times. I’m intentionally using the Arabic name for the city because every time I’ve visited it has been to the areas populated by Palestinians. I’ve visited on my own, with Palestinian friends and with the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) who maintain a presence in the old city. Every visit is a new lesson in the occupation.
Today for the first time I visited Hebron rather then al-Kahlil; the streets where Palestinians cannot drive and sometimes cannot walk and the illegal settlements of Kiryat Arba on the periphery of the city and the inner city illegal settlements of Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumeida with B’tselem an Israeli human rights organization.
Driving to Hebron from Jerusalem was mind blowing. Living in Bethlehem I associate “going to Israel” with a combination of checkpoints and slow public transport. This is not the case if you are Israeli or traveling with Israeli’s and are going to the West Bank. Driving from Jerusalem into the West Bank was seamless. We got all the way to Hebron and unless you knew what you were looking for there was nothing, no signs or road changes that would tell let you know that you had entered the West Bank.
We entered the old city of Hebron through the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba. I know I am probably annoying you, maybe even alienating you, by prefacing all of these settlements with illegal but I don’t have a choice. International law and foreign consensus is pretty unanimous on this point. Israeli settlements within the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, are illegal.
Traveling by private car or bus from Bethlehem the last part of the journey into the old city is always a set of narrow busy streets. Not so coming in through the settlement, it was easy to drive our huge tour bus right up to the convenient parking lot outside of the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of Machpelah.
Hebron is one of the largest Palestinian cities, home to 250,000 Palestinians. As part of the “Road Map to Peace” coming out of the Oslo Accords Hebron was supposed to be gradually turned over to Palestinian Authorities. As a step towards this in 1997, the city was divided into two parts - H1 and H2. The Palestinian Authority would control H1, and H2 would remain under Israeli military control. H2 is home to 25,000 Palestinians, 500-800 illegal settlers (shouldn’t we be a bit worried that no one will confirm the exact number) and at any given time around 1,000 Israeli soldiers. Check out this link for more information about Hebron including excellent maps: link to www.btselem.org.
These numbers are bit misleading though. While there are only 500-800 settlers in the four settlements located in the old city of Hebron, the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba is perched right outside Hebron and flows seamlessly into the old city. Kiryat Arba is home to 7,000 settlers and is part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. This large settlement bloc falls within Area C from the Oslo Accords, which is an area of land covering some 60% of the West Bank and is under complete Israeli control. When you look at the Hebron settlements in this larger context they appear not as wild outposts but as a continuous part of a larger colonial settlement system.
In H2 Israeli settlers are subject, as citizens of Israel to Israeli civil law, their Palestinian neighbors, as an occupied population, are subject to Israeli military law.
The apartheid street system in Hebron, Palestinians can only walk to the right of the concrete barrier while israelis and internationals are free to walk or drive in the wider left lane.
Walking within through the parts of H2 Hebron that are not illegal settlements was a heart wrenching mixture of post-war zone and ghetto. The former Palestinian markets were vacant, crumbling and desecrated with racist anti-Arab propaganda. There were posters of “Israel” that showed it occupying large chunks of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Palestinians unlucky enough to live in this area are subject to the worst living conditions I’ve seen in the West Bank. You can’t tell me this is not apartheid when Palestinians have fenced off lanes for walking. When Israeli settlers are allowed to drive cars on a street Palestinians can only walk down. When on certain streets Palestinians have to turn right, if they continue straight they will be arrested. When settlers can carry guns.
In the settlement of Beit Haddash we met with David Wilder. The name should be familiar to some of you. David is the “spokesman” for the illegal settler community in Hebron. A native of New Jersey, David has a degree in education a great Jersey accent and a leather jacket. He showed us around the settlement’s museum, a series of dark rooms with exhibits meant to establish a continuous Jewish history in Hebron and persecution of Jews (highlighted by the killing by Palestinians in 1929 of 67 members of the tiny, 500-700 out of a city of 20,000, Jewish community of Hebron during the early stages of the Zionist movement within historic Palestine)
A former open air market now completely off limits to Palestinians.
David Wilder will not use the word Palestine or Palestinians. He refers to his Palestinian neighbors categorically as Arabs. Their lack of equal rights is to him, simply “the price of war” a phrase he repeated often. His line is that since “the Arabs”, all of them evidently in consensus (even Ben Gurion’s own diaries show this to be a lie, Israel was the undoubtedly the aggressor in 48) decided to attack Israeli in 48 and 67 and lost, they deserve what they get. Of course Israel as a benevolent nation has tried to give them “gifts”, he wasn’t clear as to the exact nature of these “gifts”, but “the Arabs” won’t shut up and graciously accept so what is to be done? He very clearly tried to build up Iran as a threat and link Iran to Palestinians.
The kicker for me though was when he framed the illegal settlements in Hebron as something, which is widely accepted throughout the world, civil disobedience. The irony of a man with a gun on his hip, part of a community that routinely physically and verbally abuses their Palestinian neighbors and their children (Please check out the photos and videos at B’tslem, CPT and even the NYTimes for examples of this) calling their actions civil disobedience was hard to stomach.
I had a very visceral reaction to visiting the settlements; fear, for myself and Palestinians and outrage, the kind I always feel when people try to put a PR spin on injustice.
However, that is not enough analysis. I’m not writing this to tell you that the illegal settlers deep inside of the 1967 green line are a bit off-kilter. You know that already, or you should. It was the Palestinian counterpart to the tour, Issa, who helped put the settler phenomenon in context. He met us the end of Shuhada Street. As a Palestinian he was not allowed to walk any farther to meet our group.
So you just met with David Wilder? He asked after welcoming us.
Yeah we mumbled warily
Did he show you his gun? Issa continued.
Which is really the perfect question to highlight the hypocrisy of a man who plays himself off as just this regular Jersey guy who hopes for a good life for his family and justice for his people. And Wilder as you can see if you goggle him does indeed wear a gun or at least poses for pictures with one prominently displayed on his hip.
You know, Issa said at the end or our tour (and I’m not quoting directly but basing this on my notes) David Wilder talked a lot about the Massacre in 1929, right? It was a horrible thing that happened to those Jewish families he said. Did he talk about the 19 Palestinian families who took Jewish families into their homes to protect them. By some accounts over 400 Jews were sheltered by their Palestinian neighbors. My wife’s relatives were one of those families, that Palestinian family living in a cage up near Tel Rumeida, they were one of those families. We have more of a connection to the Jewish community in Hebron then David Wilder does as an American from New Jersey. Yet we live under terrible conditions and he moves freely with a gun on his hip.
All of this is very true of course but nothing revelatory. But what he said next helped to remind me of the larger perspective and get past my own disgust.
I don’t hold the settlers responsible for this he said. This is not the settler’s fault. This is the fault of the Israeli State, they use the settlers as a political tool. Most of the new settlers now he said, they’re no religious fanatics, they’re poor people from Russia and now even from India. They don’t know that they are going to end up in this situation.
And I think this is an incredibly important point to remember. The settlers may or may not be crazy. But they do not have control over the Israeli state. Israel removed 8,000 illegal settlers from Gaza in less then two weeks. If there are settlers in Hebron, in the West Bank they are there because they serve a political purpose for Israel domestically and internationally. They are there because Israel wants them there. If the Israeli state did not want them there, they would not be there. When we reduce any aspect of the occupation to the rational or irrational actions of individuals we over look the fact that they are operating as part of and often in service of a system.
Jo Ehrlich is a graduate student from the United States. She is currently living, working and learning in Dheisheh refugee camp in occupied Palestine.
[Aljazeera] إسرائيلي يدهس فلسطينيا ثم تعود للخلف لتدهسه من جديد قبل أن تتوقف عليه أصابه الجيش بعيارات نارية
Very interesting video, I have seen this a few places. It’s really a moral quandry. The man’s wife and another woman had been stabbed by this person who was subsequently ran over. The man is now under arrest for attempted murder. Really sad situation
Maybe you should learn to read Arabic, Galen Sword. The film clip that is attached to the link that you have cited is from Al Arabiya and not Al Jazeera.
You should learn how to cultivate an attention span for more than five seconds. There are two videos in the link he provided.
When my mum was little, she and her dad witnessed Jewish family being found sheltered by some Polish people. Poles were executed on the spot. Jews were put on gazik (pickup truck) presumably to be taken to ghetto, but not before Jewish baby was picked up by legs, swang round by SSman and had it’s skull smashed on the wall of the building. These SSmen were the Masters of the Universe for few years.
I guess the driver of the car in the video shown by GalenSword that run over , twice, that injured Palestinian felt just like SSmen felt in Warsaw.
I’m trying to get the clear story on this for my own personal information but I’m hearing different things. It seems this man was already shot once and on the ground after hitting the mans wife with some kind of knife or axe, the man then went into a rage and ran him over after he was shot.
Does anyone else have more info on this?
That seems to be the gist of it.
link to english.aljazeera.net
I think that attacking settlers is akin to “suicide by cop” in Occupied Palestine reality. Makes you wonder what sort of mental state this Palestinian was, as you don’t really get state of the art mental health care in West Bank.
I’m assuming that he got into a scuffle with some Israelis, pulled out a knife to defend himself, “lightly wounding” two Israelis, ran off got shot by an IDF soldier, then was run over multiple times by a settler as a crowd of Israelis and IDF soldiers watch .
In my experience, I’ve never met an American Jew who did not voice contempt for the Polish people when the subject arose, either seriously or by spontaneous joke. Of course I am only one American, married to a Jewish lady, and who has lived among the Jews for decades. I’ve also lived among the Polish American community, both in Chicago area. There sure is a lot of unsettled rancor internalized on both sides.
I have come, frequently, across anti-Semitism voiced by Polish people in Poland, but it was only on this site that I realised just how strong the contempt of Jews was towards Poles (even two generations down the line!). It certainly did not help in creating a common front against Germans during Second World War. To risk life of yourself and your entire family to save someone who despises you and everything you stand for! And yet there are wonderful (and deeply humbling) stories of sacrifice and courage.
I am aware of the stories of Polish sacrifice and courage you speak of in behalf the Jews, but only through intense reading; I never heard it from the mouth of a Jewish American and I am old. Something’s wrong. I grew up in the Heartland
and heard all the jokes aimed at Poles and Jews in my childhood. Later, in those respective communities in Chicago, I heard the mind set of the tribes within the USA. And now, I see diversity has its own set of problems, like an antidote that comes with bad side effects.
Eva- An attempted murder of a man who just stabbed two women is legally culpable, but to equate it to a killing of a baby by smashing its skull against the wall is certainly confused/obtuse/silly/obscene. (choose one).
Regarding animus between Jews and Poles: Before World War II, there were 3 million Jews living in Poland and there are very few Jews living there today. How many Jews returned to Poland after the war to be killed by the Poles, who didn’t want them to return? How would two generations of living on a different continent lessen the pain unless one wishes to forget.
Further: one needs to realize that the Poles were occupied by the Russian empire from the late 18th century until the early 20th century and after World War I for the first time in almost 150 years Poland had an opportunity to rule itself. The Jew hatred in Poland between the wars was quite significant.
Have you seen Claude Lanzman’s “Shoah” and the attitude of the Poles towards the Jews?
I am in favor of trying to reconcile with all people on this planet to build a better future.
Considering the Israeli version of “arrest” for Palestinians for attempted murder is getting gunned down, then run over twice, whereas their version for fellow Israelis is mere house arrest — you know, in the house they build illegally on Palestinian land — and you don’t seem to bat an eyelash at that, huh?
Even if the Israeli state wanted the settlers gone, they lack the force to remove them. The IDF would mutiny and join the settlers.
Just turn the water and electricity off.
I think they would just take it from the Palestinians.
That is the beauty of my plan: Palestinians have no water and not enough electricity, and plenty of practice of how to manage without either. Imagine all those commuters to Jerusalem having to bring the water to flush the toilets from the standpipes in the villages in the valleys below.
It would empty settlements of all but few fanatics.
I disagree. They did it in Gaza, 8,000 settlers in 2 weeks. The bulk of the IDF forces are not ideologues they are bored kids with guns. Force is one thing Israel does not lack.
They lack the will to use it. They don’t have another Ariel Sharon. And the evacuated settlers from Gaza have been sitting in sackcloth and ashes screaming “Never Again!” ever since.
RE: And the evacuated settlers from Gaza have been sitting in sackcloth and ashes screaming “Never Again!” ever since. – potsherd
SEE: “Jordan Valley may be hurdle in peace talks”, By Howard Schneider, Washington Post Foreign Service, 11/02/09
(excerpt) ….That is certainly the view from Maskiot, where settlers such as Yosi Chazut are confident they have a permanent home. Chazut, 30, was among the thousands of Israelis removed from settlements in the Gaza Strip when Israel left the area in 2005. The government let him and his wife and three children settle here a year and a half ago with a long-range plan to develop the surrounding hillsides.
During one of Netanyahu’s visits to Maskiot, “he said clearly — the Jordan Valley remains in Israeli hands in every future negotiation,” Chazut said…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to washingtonpost.com
Phil these articles are important, please focus more on the apartheid in Israel. Provide information. Do this and help people see what it’s like over there for Palestinians. Show them what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians.
Notice also, that pathological liar Richard Witty usually does not post here.
It would be of benefit to the Palestinians cause and to justice against colonialism to focus on providing information. Less on the day to day criminality of the Zionist lobby, etc. – although that is indeed important. Less on the academic issues where a liar like Witty thrives – since he can be purely rhetorical and not provide a substantiated argument.
Focus on the Palestinian experience. If people know what its like for Palestinians day-to-day, they will be compelled by their own humanism to do something. The other side has to lie over and over to make their case.
All those in solidarity w/ Palestine have to do is point a camera at the oppressors.
Anybody ever wonder what Obama would feel if he walked that Palestinian-only side road, and was subject to even an easy-going IDF check point? Obama strikes me as having an imagination, some historical reference points, and the zeal for all humanity his white mother possessed in abundance, as well as the racial constipation of his
father born of colonialism and locked into it. Why is Obama doing what he is doing?
Moral cowardice.
I agree with Cliff that more pictorial exposure of the apartheid sytem in Israel would be useful, and very telling.
I was horrified to see a photo of a wall segregating two sides of a small street in Hebron. Did anyone notice the same kind of wall in the street where the man was run over? This is not just apartheid. It’s ghettoisation. In their own city.
One of the minor factors in my epiphany about Israel was meeting a lady from an old Hebron family who told me that she was not allowed out of her house from Friday evening to Saturday, because the local Israeli patrol didn’t operate on Shabbat.
I have visited Kiryat Arba, and perhaps would have gone inside had the gun-toting American goon at the front gate not been quite so intimidating. That was 30 years ago.
I understand that ‘gated communities’ are frequent in the US. They aren’t anywhere else, except where the US-aligned elite keep themselves isolated from the local rabble. I lived in one such in Manila, Philippines.
RE: “because the local Israeli patrol didn’t operate on Shabbat”
RELATED: “Soldier sent to detention for cooking on Shabbat after cat ate his meal”, 12/02/09, ynetnews.com
SYNOPSIS: Kfir brigade soldier about to eat Shabbat meal finds out a cat has ‘tasted’ their meal. Soldier offers to cook new meal, gets caught, sentenced to 20 days in detention for violating IDF rules
ARTICLE – link to ynetnews.com
I had to drive past the gas station where the people were stabbed and the man ran over going into Hebron the other day. It is right below the gate into Kiryat Arba with the intimidating “security” presence. It’s not the same situation of apartheid through barriers that exists on the streets of the old city. But the gas station is clearly an Israeli place and I would absolutely not feel safe as a Palestinian stepping on foot on the premises.
To be honest, the Jewish settlers are in Palestine because the European Christian-majority wanted to get rid of them and the World Zionist movement made an offer which the anti-Jewish West could not refuse. The British offered several of its occupied foreign countries to the Zionist movement. However, knowing that the European Jews will not agree to leave their European homelands for some foreign lands, the Zionists mixed some Jewishness to their proposal – let’s make “Aliya to the Promised Land”.
Neither the Zionist regime nor its western supporters want to put a stop to the new settlements or demolish the old illegal settlements for their own reasons. Zionist regime want more foreign Jews to uproot the native Muslims and Christians to create a demographic Jewish state – while the Christian supporters want to see their biblical prophecy fulfilled, sooner the better, which is the second-coming of Jesus and either converting Jews to christianity or killing them.
You left out the other key ingredient: money and Western career ruining ability. You need to remember that the USA and England, and France, are plutocracies. The Enlightenment always has had that Achilles heel. The haves always want to keep what they have; shell democracy and fluid currency has been the grease, the mask, the
reality of the limits to freedom, and liberty.
“…they are operating as part of and often in service of a system.” I think this nicely rounds off the article. To be frank I get tired of the silly postulations that Israel cannot control its settlers, being perhaps the forth most powerful armed force. We might say in deference to those who disagree, and that there would be a massive insurrection if the settlers were removed by the combined armed forces – that this is what happens when you purposefully put together a system that is meant to be irreversible. Still I would say that it is not impossible to remove them, unless they want a civil war which will destroy their entire prospects of the “Jewish state.”
The control is political, not military.
Would be interested to hear how much of this separation is due to the Oslo accords. The barrier on the street for example. Wonder if there will be a mass influx of Jews to Hebron due to government policy stated in this article. Is it true that Hebron is the second most holy city to Jews, akin to Medina for Muslims?
It is certainly convenient to the settlers to say so.
BSDNOW- I assume your question was asked in honesty. I don’t think that Hebron can compare to Jerusalem in its holiness, the temple was in Jerusalem and Jerusalem is referred to constantly in Jewish prayers. But yes, Hebron is the second holiest city. It is true that Abraham was not the first Jew. The Children of Israel technically were not Jewish until Moses received the Torah or the 10 commandments on Sinai. The word Jew or in Hebrew Yehudi was indeed used to refer to the Jewish people, because after the death of Solomon, there was a split between the two kingdoms, one called Israel and the other called Judea. The kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians and exiled and scattered to the winds (see the lost 10 tribes) and the kingdom of Judea was conquered by the Babylonians, but maintained a certain identity in the exile and also in the land. According to Jewish lore, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives are buried in the tomb called the Cave of Machpela. (Isaac was the only monogamous one of the three. Abraham’s wife Sarah was the first one buried there and Jacob’s wife Rachel was buried in Bethlehem, but his wife Leah was buried in Hebron.) As such Hebron is certainly the second most holy city to Judaism.
(These might all be myths. I am no historian and I haven’t checked the tomb in Hebron and tested the DNA to confirm who is or isn’t buried there. This is the account available in your local Hebrew Bible. Genesis for the burial of the fathers and mothers and Kings I and II for the splitting of the nation into two and the exile of Assyria and Babylon.)
TV series about the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians!
link to youtube.com
Hebron is certainly not Medinnah where the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is buried. The legend says that prophet Abraham is buried inside Ibrahimi Mosques. However, Abraham was not Jewish as the Jews took their name after Judah, the oldest of 12 sons of prophet Jacob (Israel). Furthermore, in Judaism Abraham is not called “a prophet”, but Patriarch.
link to hebron-city.ps
Trailer for new tv series ready for prime time:
link to youtube.com
Let’s go the whole hog: There are settlers in Hebron because the United States wants them there.
It’s hard to argue against that premise. The whole of American foreign policy would seem to be built to catering Israel’s whims, right down to letting them have, of all things, nuclear arms with no accountability whatsoever.
Well, JFK did try to stop Israel having nukes, but he was conveniently and coincidentally killed while he was dead set on calling Israel to account for its
secret nuke building.
One must assume that the survivors of the USS Liberty mourn for JFK too.
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