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PeacemakingO, What a Beautiful City
O, what a beautiful city My first visit to Hebron was in 1998, when I came with a busload of people. We parked in the dusty parking lot at the foot of the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs and walked up Shuhada Street to see the USAID-funded refurbishment in progress. According to the Hebron protocols of January 1997, "the movement of vehicles on the Shuhada Road will be gradually returned, within 4 months, to the same situation which existed prior to February 1994." When I returned in November 1999, with a CPT delegation, Shuhada Street was still not open. By the end of our stay, the street had opened and we could get in a van outside the CPT apartment door and ride all the way to the airport in Tel Aviv. By the time I returned to Hebron as a CPT reservist in August 2002, Shuhada Street was closed again. Our street, the Chicken Gate, and many of the gates out of the Old City were barricaded in one fashion or another. Since then the barricades have become more substantial - from rubble and haphazardly-placed razor wire to padlocked metal gates and doors, or cement slabs maybe ten feet high, or turnstiles and metal detectors such as those at the Ibrahimi Mosque gate of the Old City. The ways out of the Old City on the side away from the Israeli settlements are open. The ways out on the side of the settlements are barricaded or restricted. Since I got here at the end of March, two alleys down which Palestinian schoolboys came to go to the Ibrahimiya School have been blocked with razor wire. Since last August another street has been blocked with cement slabs. The ways down from the Abu Sneineh neighborhood to the Israeli settlement side of the Old City are slowly being closed down. Getting to Tel Rumeida on the hill above us, to visit Palestinian families severely impacted by the Israeli settlement enclave there, is problematic. The Israeli military have closed the area to any Palestinians who do not live there. There are no restrictions for Israelis, unless they come in through Palestinian-controlled areas. CPT is often denied entry through the Israeli checkpoint at the foot of the hill. If we go in another way - and there are a variety of ways to get in - and we try to go by the checkpoint at the turn to the settlement enclave, we may be denied access down the hill to the checkpoint at the foot, whose soldiers may have denied us entry but who let us pass through if we get down that far. The reason the Israeli settlers tend to attack us when they see us, which causes trouble for the soldiers. I said to a soldier the other day, "The settlers throw eggs and stones at us. We do not throw eggs and stones at the settlers. Why are we kept out? Why isn't something done about the settlers?" The soldier replied, "They are not 'ordinary' Israelis." These are some of the 'gates' around the Old City in Hebron. But there are other gates as well. Today, Palestinians have direct (official) access from the Israeli settler bypass road 60 at two points one on the north side of Hebron, through Navi Younis and Halhoul into Hebron, the other on the south side, through Dura. Two years ago when I came, we took a shared taxi van to Beit Anoun, got out and crossed the bypass road, walked over a machsom, an earth and rubble barrier piled across the road, walked down the road and picked up another vehicle, rode, got to another machsom, got out and walked over it, got in another vehicle, and rode into Hebron. I think I may be forgetting one or two machsoms. I think I may be forgetting a ride in one more vehicle. An article in the Israeli daily Haaretz online on Sunday announced that the Israeli military had "imposed a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday for the duration of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which ends Monday night". Closure does not necessarily mean a total shutdown of transportation. We can still get to Jerusalem from Hebron. There may be a more rigorous checking of vehicles and ID's at checkpoints, or an additional checkpoint or two. I get the sense that when there is closure, fewer Palestinians travel to and from Jerusalem than usual. Palestinians have to have a Jerusalem ID or a special permit to travel from the West Bank to Jerusalem anyway, so numbers are limited. I have a perception that fewer Palestinians are traveling between Hebron and Jerusalem even when there is not closure. When we got to the drop-off point in East Jerusalem, the border police and blue police were running the equivalent of a license check, for drivers not licensed to drive their Israeli-licensed-plated-vehicle from the West Bank to Jerusalem. Our driver apparently did not have the proper license. We got the usual line, "You've done nothing wrong, this is for your safety, the drivers don't have the proper insurance, you don't know the condition of the vehicle, what if there's an accident", etc. The police officer said, "There is a big problem here." Yes, there's a problem another way to restrict the movement of Palestinians. Another gate. O, what a beautiful city 14 June 2005 |
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