Hebron. (Photo: Julian Cole Phillips)
Blast walls, barbed wire, and four thousand soldiers separate Hebron’s 190,000 Palestinians from its 500 Jews. As in similar situations of urban segregation, the close proximity of the two communities provides individuals with myriad opportunities to superficially transgress their boundaries. Israeli security forces and foreign visitors freely pass between Jewish and Palestinian zones; local civilians trade projectiles over—and occasionally cross—the dividing line. On a recent visit to the divided city, I pondered whether or not such acts were truly transgressive, or whether they enforced the power differential that underlies Hebron’s segregation.
Israeli civilians began settle in Hebron in the 1970s by occupying vacant land and structures. The Israeli government refused to evict the settlers, and eventually legalized their presence in five areas on the southeastern outskirts of the Old City. Since that time, a few hundred Jews have resided in three complexes at the edge of the medieval town and in scattered buildings on an adjacent hillside.
In order to protect this population, Israel retained control of Hebron’s Old City and surrounding neighborhoods (about 20% of the municipality) after withdrawing from most Palestinian urban centers in the mid-1990s. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Israeli authorities expelled Palestinian residents and store owners from ash-Shuhada Street (which runs along to the four settlements and the Haram al-Ibrahimi) and placed barriers and checkpoints between the neighborhood and the rest of Hebron.
As an American, I was able to cross the checkpoints between Israeli and Palestinian zones with ease. Conversation in English or French served as a de-facto passport (I was never asked to present any documents). The exchanges were very brief:
“Lo Ivrit. English?”
“You are tourist?”
“Yes”
“Go ahead.”
My freedom to enter and exit both sections of segregated Hebron was extremely unusual. Palestinians require permits to access to the neighborhoods with Jewish residents; Jewish-Israeli civilians may not enter Hebron’s Palestinian areas under an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.
During my visit, I watched a Palestinian civilian cross into the Israeli zone under very different circumstances from my own. In the middle of the afternoon, I was standing outside the entrance to the Jewish section of the Haram al-Ibrahimi, which straddles the line between Israeli and Palestinian Hebron. I heard a commotion at the adjacent entrance to the Muslim sanctuary, and turned around to see a small group of Israeli border policemen dragging a screaming young Palestinian woman through a gate between the two zones. The policemen slammed her body against the exterior wall of a nearby trailer—possibly an accident—before forcing her inside. The woman continued to scream, apparently in pain and fear, as the officers held her on the trailer’s floor with her arms behind her back.
According to a pair of foreign observers from the Christian Peacemakers Teams, the young Palestinian had pepper-sprayed a border policewoman during a routine security check at the entrance to the Haram al-Ibrahimi. It is not clear what precipitated the altercation. An Israeli spokesperson reported that the woman had planned to stab the policewoman after incapacitating her with the spray, although there is no evidence to support this claim.
That afternoon may have marked the Palestinian woman’s only crossing into Jewish Hebron. Her journey was both literal and figurative. She physically entered a space that is usually reserved for Israelis and foreign tourists. And, briefly, she and the policewoman swapped conventional roles. For a split second, a uniformed Israeli felt pain and fear and a Palestinian civilian watched.
Ultimately, the Palestinian woman’s passage into the Israeli zone only enforced the Hebron’s segregation. She will likely spend time in prison for assaulting a member of the Israeli security forces, while the policemen who beat her during her arrest will not suffer any legal consequences. This will perpetrate the legal double standard for Israeli and Palestinian violence that parallels the geographic divide between the two populations.
My crossing between Hebron’s two zones also reinforced the racial-ethnic basis of the city’s division. On both sides of the line, my status as a foreign visitor privileged me above many local residents. Palestinians took the time to share their stories with me under the illusion that, as an American, I would somehow amplify their voices in a way that their neighbors could not. Israeli policemen provided me with information—their deployment calendars, the names of their hometowns—that I doubt they would have shared with Palestinian passerby.
Rather than battling this segregated hierarchy, I perpetrated it. I did not tell my Palestinian acquaintances that I did not possess the political or media influence to justify the time they devoted to our conversations. Nor did I reveal to the policemen that, unlike many American tourists, I was one of their ideological opponents.
For me, this was the most disturbing aspect of the situation in Hebron: the system of segregation is inescapable. Neither a Palestinian civilian nor a leftist visitor can cross the lines without normalizing them.
That is not a precise description of the reality on the ground. The reality is such that Palestinians require permits to access areas in which Jewish settlers have taken over a Palestinian, house, building or neighborhood.
But the reverse is not true.
The Palestinian Authority has no actual power or ability to enforce what Julian describes.
Instead, should any Jew decide to venture — heavily armed — into a Palestinian area of Hebron, the Israeli military will not hesitate to protect him or her and to provide him or her with an armed escort. Sure, at first the army may advise that person or group that going into Palestinian areas is undesired, but they won’t forcefully stop them. That much is certain.
And if that settler decides to harass, intimidate or threaten Palestinians in order to take over their house, then the Israeli military will stand by and do nothing. Why? Because the settlers are there to do the government’s bidding while the government goes on to claim plausible deniability. And should anyone ask the Israeli government about the carte blanche it has given settlers, the government will counter with the usual spin and lies: Israel is a state of laws. Understand that while we do our best to enforce the law, we cannot be everywhere at all times.
Worse yet, in such circumstances, the Palestinian Authority is nowhere to be seen as its forces are subservient and restricted by Israeli army diktats and control. He who has the bigger army and the bigger weapons is the one who rules the land.
So to recap, comparing the two entities, the Israeli army on one side and the P.A. on the other, as though they are equals with equal jurisdiction over each side, is factually false.
By saying “My crossing between Hebron’s two zones also reinforced the racial-ethnic basis of the city’s division,” “Rather than battling this segregated hierarchy, I perpetrated [perpetuated?] it,” and “Neither a Palestinian civilian nor a leftist visitor can cross the lines without normalizing them,” Julian Phillips seems to be saying that Americans and other internationals shouldn’t visit Hebron, or at least shouldn’t cross into “H2,” the part of town that encompasses the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods, where about 30,000 of Hebron’s Palestinians and 500-800 fanatical settlers live.
If that’s what he means, I have to disagree. I lived in H2 – specifically, in Tel Rumeida, the hillside next to the Old City that Phillips mentions – for two months in 2006. I was part of the Tel Rumeida Project, a now-defunct initiative to establish an international presence in the neighborhood in hopes of deterring or at least documenting the settler attacks that go on there almost every day. Our apartment was next door to the Tel Rumeida settlement, at the top of the hill, and just up the hill from the Tel Rumeida checkpoint. Our de facto leader and principal liaison to our Palestinian neighbors was Issa Amro, a Hebron resident who is now the coordinator of Youth Against Settlements. Most of our volunteers actually came from the International Solidarity Movement, and we worked in coordination with the Christian Peacemaker Teams group that lived in the Old City.
Aside from teaching a few English classes and doing some entertainment (a couple of our people were really good at “fire dancing,” and one was a juggler), our main “work” was hanging out on the streets with cameras and phones, especially in the places where settler attacks were most common – near the checkpoint, on Shuhada Street, and on the hillside by the Qurtuba School. When there was an attack – most often, settler kids throwing rocks at Palestinians – we tried to get between them, take pictures, and call our comrades for reinforcements. We also spent a lot of time on the path to the school, in hopes of protecting some workers (paid by TIPH) who were trying to make it safer for the teachers and students and of deterring the settlers from ripping up the work. And when the settlers attacked or soldiers raided people’s homes, they’d often call us, and we’d rush over.
Was it “transgressive”? I can’t claim that. In fact, most of the time I felt pretty useless – we couldn’t be everywhere all the time, and it often seemed that even if the settlers didn’t attack when we were there, they’d just wait until we weren’t around to do their thing. (I spent countless hours in the hot sun by that path, but the settlers would rip up the work every few nights.)
Still and all, our Palestinian neighbors told us over and over that there really were fewer attacks on them when we were around. (If that’s true, it’s partly just because we were a tempting diversion – some of the settlers got so into stoning, cursing, kicking, and spitting on us internationals that they had less time and energy to bother the locals.) They also told us that having us around helped them feel a bit less isolated from the world.
Of course, maybe they were just being polite, and who knows what the people we didn’t talk to really thought about us.
But if nothing else, it was an extremely intense and powerful experience for me and, I think, for every one else who participated. We were all pretty committed to the cause already, or else we wouldn’t have been there in the first place, but the experience certainly deepened my understanding of the occupation and Israeli racism, and to this day it continues to fuel my rage and determination.
And it gave me a lot to talk and write about. Justin Phillips said the Palestinians who took the time to tell him their stories were under the “illusion” that he could “amplify their voices in a way that their neighbors could not.” I don’t know about “amplify,” but what we could do, and have done a lot, was tell some of their stories, and our own, to our fellow Americans – something they and their neighbors, unfortunately, don’t get much chance to do.
It sounds like Phillips was there only a day or two, and that’s the case with most internationals who go there. Obviously that kind of visit doesn’t give you the depth of experience longer-term volunteers get. But – as his post here shows – he did learn quite a bit about the situation, and I trust he’s writing about it on his blog, talking to college classmates, and finding other ways to share what he learned.
So what’s wrong with that? Seems to me that having more people experience the realities over there and communicate what they learn when come home is all to the good. “Normalization” is an abstraction; education and activism based on personal experience are concrete contributions to the movement.
“Israeli civilians began settle in Hebron in the 1970s by occupying vacant land and structures. The Israeli government refused to evict the settlers, and eventually legalized their presence in five areas on the southeastern outskirts of the Old City.”
After the Six-Days War in 1967 The Israeli army occupied the Old City of Hebron and a very harsh repression began forcing the Palestinian store owners in Shuhada street to close their stores by many different oppression tools (arbitrary arrests ..) There was no vacant land and structures. The Israeli government did not refuse to evict the settlers, it placed them there. Settlers coming to Palestine have no maps of Palestine with them! Israeli Agents provide them with geographical knowledge. Settlers even ignore the ancient arab holy sites and towns. During the First Intifada repression became so barbaric in Hebron that a lot of the remaining Palestinians were killed or imprisoned. I intervened, as an international I could do it. The soldiers always say that they have be agressed, which is not true at all. May be the Palestinian woman wanted to pray in “her” mosque and “they” did not allow it. The slightest “why?” make them “nervous” and agressif. That’s the sad story.