Jerusalem to Hebron

Today we go to Hebron where Abraham and Rachel are said to be buried and where Absalom betrayed his father David. But before we leave, we have an audience with the Minister for Tourism. This is no small ministry. It involves one of the biggest industries in Israel. The offices are next to the Prime Minister who is away currying favour with European governments.

Our meeting is held in a bomb-proof meeting room; not unusual even in Downing Street these days. I imagine. When Raphael Ben-Hur comes in, it is all smiles from him. But when he sees the faces of the group, he is very disappointed. Nevertheless he continues with his welcome speech about the importance of tourism to Israel and then prepares himself for questions. They are hostile.

Ben-Hur describes the fear he had letting his children go into town when terrorists were blowing themselves up. “Innocent people are killed by these extremists and the leaders stay alive” He went on to outline an Israeli policy based on fear; not unjustified at the time in the face of what was going on.

But the questioning changes into fierce condemnation of Israeli policy as it concerns Palestinians. Ben-Hur, seeing that he is never going to make any headway, goes into autopilot talking his way through a route he has been many times before, I sense.

Everything he chooses to say is true. He goes back as far as when the US government withdrew support for the Shar of Iran and allowed the present type of regime in. We hear a litany of reasons why Israel has to take defensive action in the face of people determined to destroy her. He has definitely been this route before. He carries on like this without stopping for about an hour; a magnificent performance. But he allows no time for even one more question.

My feeling is one of disappointment. Here is a man with intimate knowledge of the actual mechanism of a policy which is causing no end of suffering for the Palestinian people. And the group is throwing away any chance it has of gaining some inside knowledge that might help in the peace offensive being fought by the people we have met.

The group is composed of people too human to be pragmatic. They have deep feelings which they too readily directed at this Ben-Hur and he sees this in the facial expressions directed at him. I understand why they are doing this but I have sat on a large enough number of committees to know that we will learn nothing by doing this. And he is certainly no longer in understanding mode!

I was interested in two things he mentioned in autopilot. First he proposed what I saw as a sort of Christian Haj that we do once in our lifetime – a nice idea and great for the region’s economy. The other was a sincere belief that tourism will bring so much prosperity to places like Bethlehem that eventually but very gradually a lot of problems would automatically be solved.

Now we set off for Hebron late as Ben-Hur’s autopilotting has taken a long time. In fact we are so late that we miss the opportunity to see the tombs of Abraham and Rachel.

The most extraordinary situation exists in Hebron. Radical Jewish Zionists have settled right in the middle of this old city that we have come to see. In 1994, one of the settlers, a New York born Orthodox physician Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians in the Mosque of Abraham and was killed himself before he could do more harm. (The family later sued the Mosque for his death) Israel’s solution was to impose more restrictions on the movement of the local people. There is a more detailed description of the situation in a United Nations report, which came out later. I have appended it below this diary entry.

A number of roads, including the former main street leading to the settlements, have been sealed off with shop doors welded shut. At either end of the street there are checkpoints. We walked down the deserted main street until soldiers turned up to expel the ESPPI volunteers who were escorting us. We could stay but the EAPPI people (sponsored by the World Council of Churches) had to go as their job was to escort schoolchildren only; not to be tour guides.

It was a rather creepy walking down that deserted street with soldiers looking down on us. Walking through the souk was even more weird. Above us was stretched netting to catch rubbish thrown down by settlers. They had even tipped paint which the netting could not stop on top of a dress shop. It takes a huge number of soldiers to guard a relatively tiny group of settlers. I later found out from soldiers that this was a posting they hated. Before these settlers turned up, Jews and Moslems lived together in this ancient city just as they do in the Old City of Jerusalem.

We eventually reach the headquarters of the Hebron Restoration Group where we see details of the work they are doing to rebuild sections of the old city. People are moving back into the centre of town and managing as best they can. But it seems an impossible and silly situation to be surrounded by radicals.

Halfway back to the bus, the two EAPPI people with us receive an urgent phone call. Israeli soldiers have left an area where Palestinians have their sheep and radical settlers are harassing the shepherds. They leave immediately to see if they can help. They will stay in the Shepherds’ camp until they can get more help or the settlers go back to their settlement. They fear another ‘landgrab’.

This report appears a day later on the Israeli, (NOT a Palestinian) human rights B’TSELEM website .. Remember that B’Tselem workers Jewish Israelis.

“

SETTLERS FILMED ATTACKING SHEPHERD NEAR SUSIYA

On 10 Aug.’09, settlers attacked a Palestinian shepherd from Khirbet Susiya and stabbed an Israeli B’Tselem worker who photographed them. The victims identified the assailants and filed a complaint with police, who were given all the footage of the event.

“

Despite all this, Hebron’s town centre still seems a bustling active place. Life goes on there without any indication of what has happened or what is happening at the moment.

We spend the afternoon in Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum. I expected it to be a really horrific experience but the effect is different to my expectations. Everywhere survivors are telling you using videos how it really was. It seems as though they are talking to their grandchildren. The video screens are surrounded by the actual horrific evidence from different places. As you walk along the corridor from side to side the stories unfold.

The design of the building reminds me of the acropolis at Cumae where Aeneas consulted the Sibyl before the founding of the new promised land of Rome. Virgil tells us that the Sibyl’s room was off to one side as each of the rooms are in the Holocaust Museum. Although the corridor roof is much much higher, Because of the same roof design, I have same feeling there as I have had when visiting Cumae.

I had already seen many of the interviews presented on the video screens in documentaries and I had been briefly stationed in the British military base of Bergen Belsen. I had also talked to many of the soldiers who arrived first at the Bergen Belsen. They were so disgusted that they rounded up all the villagers and forced them to walk through to see the dead and dying occupants. They felt they had to do something!! I also had access to the film records of the British War Office and I ordered film which graphically covered this event. So I did not experience in the Holocaust Museum that stark horror that I had felt years ago. But I am sure that the guides taking children around the exhibits will emphasize the aspects that horrified me then.

My doctor used to say, “Bang a drum and they’ll do it again!”

The group finds it difficult to avoid comparing the nazi attitudes of the thirties (NOT the forties!) towards the Jews with the present attitude of the Israelis towards the original Arab Palestinians, part of whose land they have received from the UN or later taken. Half of the world’s Palestinians live outside their original homeland. This diaspora actually started with the exodus of many Palestinian Christians during the Otterman occupation and now includes both Christians and Moslems.

“A country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates.” Kurt Tucholsky

UNITED NATIONS REPORT – Israeli policy in Hebron city center has led thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and some 1,829 businesses have been shut down since 1994, a report by the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights has charged.

Entitled “Ghost Town”, reflecting the two groups’ opinion of what has befallen the once vibrant center of Hebron, the report surveys Palestinian life in the divided city.

“Israel’s policy severely impacts thousands of Palestinians by violating the right to life, liberty, personal safety, freedom of movement, health, and property, among other rights,” said the report

“The limitations on movement and commerce in the city of Hebron are the ‘necessary minimum’ needed to provide protection to Israeli Defense Force soldiers and residents of the Jewish community in Hebron,” the Israeli military said in response to “Ghost Town.”

According to an agreement reached in 1997 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, Hebron was divided into two sections. H1, about 80 percent of the city, fell under the control of the Palestinian Authority, while Israel maintained control over H2, which contained significant parts of the commercial center as well as the Israeli settlements, considered illegal under international law.

“Ghost Town” cited one Palestinian woman as saying that violence and a feeling of isolation, as well as restrictions on movement, had forced her family, reluctantly, to leave for H1.

“We were frightened and felt we were in a dangerous situation. It was impossible for us to continue living in [our] apartment,” Na’imah Ahmad said, adding that most of her neighbors had done the same.

Restrictions on Palestinians

Hebron is unique, with the exception of East Jerusalem which Israel illegally annexed in 1967, in that the settlements there are located in the heart of a Palestinian city (OCHA’s report refers to “the insertion of settlers into the heart of a densely populated Palestinian city”).

The security of 800 settlers has led the Israeli military to impose harsh restrictions on the 35,000 Palestinians living in H2. An additional 115,000 Palestinian live in H1, making Hebron the second largest city in the West Bank and arguably the most volatile.

Many of the harshest restrictions began after an Israeli settler murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in 1994. The Israeli military reacted by limiting Palestinian movement in H2. These restrictions were intensified after the start of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in September 2000. Militant Palestinian groups targeted Israeli soldiers and settlers in the city.

In large sections of H2 Palestinians are forbidden to drive cars. In other areas they cannot open shops. In some cases, like Shuhada Street, a main thoroughfare, and on nearby roads, Palestinian movement of any kind is essentially forbidden and the street’s closed shop fronts are all that are left of a once vibrant area.

The restrictions on movement have a direct impact on health. Palestinians say the movement of ambulances must be coordinated in advance, which is not possible in emergency situations.