Not a happy Passover for Hebron’s Palestinians

Palestinian youth stops in front of road closure to Shuhada Street in Hebron.

Hundreds of Israelis traveled over the Green Line to observe Passover in Hebron this week at a carnival-like event as Israeli officials closed the Ibrahimi Mosque to Palestinians in the West Bank’s largest city.

Since at least the mid-1990s, settlers and religious Jews have flocked to the Herodian-era site around the Cave of the Patriarchs for the holy week, which ordinarily is partitioned by religion between Jews and Muslims—or Israelis and Palestinians. But on Wednesday and Thursday, with an increased border police presence, the tombs of the monotheistic forefathers and mothers were only opened to the busloads of Jewish tourists.

The contrasts between the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish areas were stark. While most Palestinians closed up shop in Hebron’s Old City due to the threat of settler harassment, Israeli Jews marked Passover by dancing in the streets, surrounded by high-flying Israeli flags and armed soldiers.

The annual occasion was also marked by clashes between soldiers and Palestinians. Ma’an News reported that a twelve-year old was in “critical condition” after Israeli soldiers fired a rubber bullet in his head during the clashes. Hebron residents told us that the clashes began after the settlers made their way through a Palestinian area. 

Nawal Slemiah at Women in Hebron shop.

“If the mosque is closed nobody will come,” said Nawal Slemiah, the founder of Women in Hebron, an embroidery collective. “Last year when they came, more that 8,000 people”–Israelis–walked through the Palestinian neighborhoods of Hebron. Most shops closed this year to avoid the possibility of tensions with the Israelis, but each year Slemiah keeps the women’s collective open. “They took things from outside,” she said, explaining the scene last year. “Some of them they steal things.”

Slemiah’s shop in the historic district of Hebron is full of hand-made Palestinian embroidery garments. Outside the door frame of her one-room shop are two racks of brightly colored taubes, or traditional Palestinian dresses. There is a particular pattern of stitching for each Palestinian city. Slemiah showed us a black and a white taube with big flowers over the breast of the dress, indicating the design of Hebron. She said that last year, when Israelis marched through the old city, they dumped her dresses on the ground and stomped on them.

A short walk from Slemiah’s store is Hebron’s Bab al-Zawiya neighborhood. This year it was the site where Israelis marched through Palestinian streets adjacent to Shuhada Street, a downtown road that is closed off to most Palestinians by a checkpoint at its entrance and exit. The march set off the clashes that injured the 12-year-old Palestinian boy. The injury, along with the economic impact that settler harassment has on Palestinian shops, is only the latest example of the hardships Palestinians face in Hebron.

Shuhada Street used to be the central market for Hebron’s Palestinians. But that all changed as a result of the 1994 massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque, when Baruch Goldstein, a militant Israeli-American, killed 29 Palestinian worshipers. In response to that act, the Israeli military imposed restrictions on Palestinian movement, and forbade Palestinian traffic on parts of the main street. The restrictions on Palestinian movement were made worse by the Israeli military after the Second Intifada, and led to severe economic deterioration in the city. B’Tselem reports that “304 shops and warehouses along Shuhada Street closed down” since these restrictions were imposed. “Most of the properties on or adjacent to Shuhada Street, including homes and businesses, had been abandoned or had been closed by military order,” the Israeli human rights group stated in 2011.

Israeli Passover party in front of Cave of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque.

Unlike the desolate Palestinian area of Hebron, during Passover the plaza in front of the Cave of the Patriarchs couldn’t have been a happier scene. Inside of H2, we walked past scores of border police and Israeli security, as a Hebraicized version of Akon’s “Right Now” bumped from two speakers mounted to roof racks on a van. Once we reached the festivities, mostly religious Israelis enjoyed popcorn and pastel cotton candy swirled up by an Orthodox youth. Others who belong to the Na Nach movement, a Hasidic sect known for dancing like in the time of King David to bring on the era of the messiah, bounced to boom boxes. Brief discussions with some of the festival-goers revealed that some of them had come from outside Hebron. Tour buses lined up outside the festival to take people home, with most of the destination signs reading “Yerushalayim” in Hebrew.

Historically, Passover is a holiday that Hebron settlers regularly exploit for expansionist purposes. In 1969, a small group of settlers led by a hard-line rabbi established the first illegal settlement in the city without the Israeli government’s permission. The settlement in a hotel in Hebron was evacuated, but the settlers moved to a former military base nearby and established what became the Kiryat Arba settlement. The move was carried out with the agreement of the Israeli government, which at the time was led by the Labor Party.

Last year, in an action also timed to Passover, settlers again tried to establish a new colony without the permission of the Israeli government. This time, they were evacuated and no new settlement was established in Hebron. Shortly after the Hebron evacuation, though, new construction in Jerusalem-area settlements was announced.

Settler activity in Hebron around the Jewish holiday of Passover is so routine that many Palestinians in the area expect harassment—and are also familiar with the traditional Passover greeting.

“In English I don’t know how to say…” contemplated Mohammed, a teenage unofficial tour guide who regularly stops by the Women in Hebron store. With a smile on his face he continued, “‘happy holidays,’ ‘chag sameach.'”

All photographs were taken by Allison Deger.