If you ask a member of the international community here about Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, the chances are they will roll their eyes and say it's the eye of the storm. If you ask a Palestinian about Hebron they might also tell you the people are famed for their strength of spirit, their penchant for picking a fight, the sweet and delicious grapes that sprout languidly from the vines each summer and the fact that the Hebronite women are beautiful and spoil their men by looking after them so well.
Zoe my friend and I set off first to a little Palestinian tented village called Susiya, in the hills near Hebron. It's a tented village because the Israeli state has made sure the villagers, who once inhabited the nearby caves until about 30 years ago, were evicted in favour of an archaeological site build there, which is now inaccessible to Palestinians. And the villagers have been on the move ever since. Shunted by Israeli settlers, and shunned by the supposedly protective forces of police, civil authority, and the Israeli legal system.
Rabbis for Human Rights were our guides for this part of the tour, and though I was expecting the guide to look more rabbinical, the Israeli woman representing that day was secular and liberal, despite her right wing roots. 'My family haven't disowned me. They let me get on with what I do. But they don't agree with it,' she explained. She's part of a team of four dedicated lawyers to the cause of Palestinians being evicted from their lands in this region. But as we sat and listened to the case of this one tiny village of 450 inhabitants, we soon discovered the enormity of the task, and this is only one of thousands of patches over the West Bank suffering the same continuous, exhausting and tragic struggle.
Mahmoud, the village leader talked us through their situation, as his 9 month-old daughter, Dalia, perched on her grandfather's lap, sat chewing on the handle of his wooden shepherd's crook. Her brothers giggled as they wrestled on the carpet and ran outside to chase their gaggle of geese through a tiny pond outside. This is a rare part of the year where water is visible. Mahmoud explained how most of the year they are dependent on cisterns which they've placed on rocky terrain, but are no longer allowed access to because Israeli settlements have mushroomed around them on these very same rocks. Mahmoud explained that they're taking advantage of Ottoman law which stated that you could cultivate on private land (in the 'wadis' - valleys) but not on state land (the rocky hillsides). So the settlers are taking over the hillsides, and denying access to water for Palestinian communities, who've always lived there; and also blocking access to the lands they might cultivate, which lie below their rocky look out point. Any Palestinian who ventures into a wadi to try and cultivate risks being shot or at least badly beaten up or reported.
And the anguish of no water is exacerbated by the fact that the Israeli settlers receive cheap, clean water piped from Palestinian owned lands in the West Bank. And the Palestinian villagers are faced with the eternal struggle to collect their own, or find extortionately priced water they have to pay for themselves and collect from the city which involves hiring a tractor for a day.
In the recent storms the Israeli settlers uprooted more than 300 of their olive trees - one of the village's only remaining commodities. The same happened in last year's storms, they told us. And Rabbis for Human Rights explained that the police receive at least one call per week from desperate Palestinians claiming the settlers are attacking them and trying to take their land. The police and civil administration do nothing, and close the cases, because they don't care, and they aren't supported by the legal system in any case.
Though the Palestinian village is inevitably growing, they have no permission to erect even one new tent to house newly married couples in their very termporary looking camp, because the authorities ensure that in return for the settlers not destroying, the Palestinians cannot build. As if 'build' is ever a verb you'd use in relation to a tent.
We left the gaggle of geese and giggling boys and set out for Hebron where we were shown the urban equivalent of what is happening in the village of Susiya.
Zoe my friend and I set off first to a little Palestinian tented village called Susiya, in the hills near Hebron. It's a tented village because the Israeli state has made sure the villagers, who once inhabited the nearby caves until about 30 years ago, were evicted in favour of an archaeological site build there, which is now inaccessible to Palestinians. And the villagers have been on the move ever since. Shunted by Israeli settlers, and shunned by the supposedly protective forces of police, civil authority, and the Israeli legal system.
Rabbis for Human Rights were our guides for this part of the tour, and though I was expecting the guide to look more rabbinical, the Israeli woman representing that day was secular and liberal, despite her right wing roots. 'My family haven't disowned me. They let me get on with what I do. But they don't agree with it,' she explained. She's part of a team of four dedicated lawyers to the cause of Palestinians being evicted from their lands in this region. But as we sat and listened to the case of this one tiny village of 450 inhabitants, we soon discovered the enormity of the task, and this is only one of thousands of patches over the West Bank suffering the same continuous, exhausting and tragic struggle.
Mahmoud, the village leader talked us through their situation, as his 9 month-old daughter, Dalia, perched on her grandfather's lap, sat chewing on the handle of his wooden shepherd's crook. Her brothers giggled as they wrestled on the carpet and ran outside to chase their gaggle of geese through a tiny pond outside. This is a rare part of the year where water is visible. Mahmoud explained how most of the year they are dependent on cisterns which they've placed on rocky terrain, but are no longer allowed access to because Israeli settlements have mushroomed around them on these very same rocks. Mahmoud explained that they're taking advantage of Ottoman law which stated that you could cultivate on private land (in the 'wadis' - valleys) but not on state land (the rocky hillsides). So the settlers are taking over the hillsides, and denying access to water for Palestinian communities, who've always lived there; and also blocking access to the lands they might cultivate, which lie below their rocky look out point. Any Palestinian who ventures into a wadi to try and cultivate risks being shot or at least badly beaten up or reported.
And the anguish of no water is exacerbated by the fact that the Israeli settlers receive cheap, clean water piped from Palestinian owned lands in the West Bank. And the Palestinian villagers are faced with the eternal struggle to collect their own, or find extortionately priced water they have to pay for themselves and collect from the city which involves hiring a tractor for a day.
In the recent storms the Israeli settlers uprooted more than 300 of their olive trees - one of the village's only remaining commodities. The same happened in last year's storms, they told us. And Rabbis for Human Rights explained that the police receive at least one call per week from desperate Palestinians claiming the settlers are attacking them and trying to take their land. The police and civil administration do nothing, and close the cases, because they don't care, and they aren't supported by the legal system in any case.
Though the Palestinian village is inevitably growing, they have no permission to erect even one new tent to house newly married couples in their very termporary looking camp, because the authorities ensure that in return for the settlers not destroying, the Palestinians cannot build. As if 'build' is ever a verb you'd use in relation to a tent.
We left the gaggle of geese and giggling boys and set out for Hebron where we were shown the urban equivalent of what is happening in the village of Susiya.
"If you ask a member of the international community here about Hebron..."
ReplyDelete"If you ask a Palestinian about Hebron..."
That's right, ask everyone except the poeple who has the strongest connection to Hebron.
Hebron was populated by Jews before there was even Islam or before one Arab set foot in the holy land. But Hebron in your opinion are not relvant to the Jews.
The Jews in Hebron were victims of repeated massacres committed by Arabs before the state of Israel ever existed or before there was an "occupation". A few examples:
The 1517, 1834, 1851, 1929 Hebron massacre.
In 1936, the British forcibly removed most Jews from Hebron, after more than 3,500 years of continued residence and Jews were not permitted to return until after the Six-Day War of 1967.
In 1980 Arab terrorists waylaid a group of Jews walking back from evening prayers at the Tomb of Abraham and murdered six of them.
In 1994, after the Oslo Accords were signed - a Jewish pregnant mother and an army reservist were murdered by arabs who also made dozens of other unsuccessful attacks.
In 2001, an Arab sniper shot dead a 10-month-old Jewish baby
And so many more repeated attacks.
The presence of Jews in Hebron is not even illegal from an international point of vew. According to the Oslo Accords which the "Palestinians" signed Hebron was to be divided with one part of it given to the arabs and the other to the Jews. The Jews in Hebron are banned from entering the Arab side of town because they have no chance of getting out alive. The presence of Jews in Hebron is not some illegal settlement activity. Hebron is one of the 4 sacred cities to Jews in the land of Israel and has a thousand years history of Jewish presence in it.
The ONLY reason the "Palestinians" have restrictions of movement (as the Jews do to!) in Hebron is the only reason they have restrictions and hardship anywhere else in the west bank is THERE OWN VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM.
You are too ignorant to know, but from 1967 until the first Intifadah broke out there were no restrictions on arabs living in Hebron or anywhere else in the west bank and they used to drive into Israel freely to work or other things. Israel spent millions on constructing or upgrading the water, sewage and electricity systems of the Arabs in the west bank, connectiong many villages who had none of those to these systems for the first time, and investing in many other aspects of infrastructure in Arab towns and villages.
But again, this all changed with the first Intifadah and later after the signing of the Oslo Accords when Israel gave the Arabs in Hebron FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY control over parts of the town. Before that Hebron was NEVER under "Palestinian" control but Jordanian and before that Ottoman.
Your one sided report of things that you know little about is amazing.