Hebron

Deserted City Centre of al Khalil or Hebron

From the wide expanse surrounding the tents of the beleaguered village, we went on to explore the city of Hebron, this time guided by a man from a courageous Israeli group called 'Breaking the Silence'.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. "We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."

Our guide was bearded and chubby dressed in open toed sandals and a loose tracksuit. Hebron is one of the coldest places in the West Bank in winter, and his toes were a shade of purple. He was very together and mentally organised, but didn't look that healthy. I wondered if in breaking the silence these whistleblowers are also breaking themselves. As we discovered, they are loathed by settler communities in the city, and many of these settlers are armed and volatile.

Hebron is the only Palestinian city in the West Bank with a Jewish settlement in its centre. And in the centre of this city, a group of 400 settlers are protected by 1500 Israeli soldiers.

Hebron, or Al Khalil as it is known by Palestinians, was one of the places where Jews and Arabs once intermingled fairly functionally. Following the six day war of 1967, Israel occupied Hebron.

Our guide explained some key dates:

1929 The Hebron massacre which refers to the killing of 67 Jews by Arabs incited to violence by false rumours that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of holy places.

1968 The first Israeli settlement, Kiryat Arba'a was built outside the Old City

1979 The first group of settlers (5 settlements in total now) moved into the centre of the city

1994 The Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, also known as the Hebron massacre, was a shooting attack carried out by an American born Israeli, Baruch Goldstein, a member of a far right movement, who opened fired on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahimi Mosque, leaving 29 male worshippers dead and 125 wounded.

And in 1997, Israel withdrew from 80 per cent of Hebron, which was handed over to the Palestinian Authority. This area is now known as H1, and Israel retains control of the remainder which is known as H2.

However, as is often the case with these agreements, it didn't look that clear cut for long, and since then it has been a steady slide into what is now a policy of separation and discrimination between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority.

As B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories - explains in their leaflet: Ghost Town: 'The army severely restricts movement of thousands of Palestinian residents which has led to the destruction of the commercial centre and to mass abandonment of the area by its residents. Hundreds have shops have closed, thousands of people have been left without a livelihood, and many hundreds of families have been forced to leave their homes. The city centre has become a ghost town, where only Jews are allowed to move about freely.'

As we wandered around this ghost town, I wondered how Hebron would ever climb out of this eerie state. Like a virus which first attacks the heart. You wonder how the body will ever manage to defend its once pulsating centre.

We walked down completely deserted streets lined with once handsome Ottoman housing. Painted metal doors locked shut, watch towers manned by bored and cold looking Israeli soldiers littered with Israeli flags.

Barbed wire curled in loose bunches across entrances to streets, and the only house still occupied by a Palestinian family had its windows covered in thick mesh to protect its elderly occupants from the wrath of the Israeli settlers. Huge concrete blocks, painted with graffiti, barred access for Palestinians to the whole southern side of the city, thereby keeping the five settlements protected from any Palestinian retaliation.

512 shops are now shuttered up and inaccessible to their Palestinian owners, and 1152 remain inaccessible from other closures, such as blocked access to roads. Some Palestinian families are forced to enter their house by a ladder to an upper window, because Israeli soldiers have boarded up their ground level doorways. Our guide explained how he often watches an elderly Palestinian lady in her long 'thobe' gown, climbing slowly up and down a ladder each day to do her shopping.

Palestinian Thobe gowns hanging in Hebron market

As we walked you could almost hear the ghosts of markets past - the fruit seller advertising his wares, the butcher hacking at the corpse of a skinned cow.

Where are they all now?

An icy wind sliced through the empty street, where in the distance two Israeli soldiers strolled. Other than the wind, there was nothing in the air but the feeling of simmering hatred.

Towards the end of the tour, eggs rained down on us from a first floor window. We dodged the eggs, and looked up to see a bunch of angry faced Israeli settlers glaring down at us. Our guide brushed it off and said: 'Yup. This happens all the time. And eggs are not the worst we get.'

In order to believe and to understand, you have to visit. It is the eye of the storm, and it's getting fiercer.

And as our purple-toed sandaled guide warned: 'The first thing you need to take away with you is that this isn't just how the IDF behave in Hebron. This is their approach all across the West Bank. So use this as a microcosm of the entire situation. The second thing, is never underestimate how slow these settlers and the Israeli state are willing to play it. They know that even encroaching one millimetre per year is the way they want to go. And they know they will get there in the end.'

And with that he left us at the gate leading to the Palestinian side of town, which he had no permission to enter, despite his skillful and willful representation of their cause.