Peacemaking

"Don't leave home without it!"

Late this afternoon, a Palestinian friend stopped three of us and said a squad of Israeli soldiers had come through, taking four Palestinian men blindfolded and handcuffed to the Beit Romano checkpoint, the Bab iBaledeyyah.  We headed in that direction.  On the corner across the street from the Beit Romano checkpoint, four young Palestinian men stood against the building with their hands cuffed behind their backs, white blindfolds with thin black plaid stripes over their eyes.  Two observers from the official international observer group stood nearby.  A few Palestinian children gathered along with a few men.  An older man leaned against a large concrete block that stopped the movement of vehicles.  Two of the children walked over to the man and, in turn, took his hand, kissed it, and pressed it to their foreheads.  One of the soldiers drew lines and circles in the air with his nightstick.  Two stood guard at two corners.  One was on his radiophone.  Others gathered around the four Palestinians.

One, two, three, the Palestinians' handcuffs -- the plastic variety -- and blindfolds were removed.  The soldiers returned their ID cards.  They left.  The fourth Palestinian stood against the wall.

Twenty minutes after we got to the Bab iBaledeyyah it was all over.  The soldier undid the handcuffs of the fourth man.  The man removed the blindfold, took his ID, and walked off up the street away from the Old City and towards that part of Hebron nominally under Palestinian control.

Why the delay?  The young man did not have his ID card with him and either did not remember or would not give the Israeli soldier his ID number.  Someone had to fetch it.

You might ask what this has to do with peacemaking.

The Old City of Hebron and the area surrounding it is under total Israeli control.  The Israeli soldiers, border police and blue (regular) police can stop any Palestinian at will and demand his ID card. Around 20,000 Palestinians live in this area, designated H2, under Israeli military occupation.  About 1200 Israeli military and law enforcement personnel patrol it.  About 500 of probably the most ideologically radical of Israeli settlers, mostly Americans, live in H2 in settlement enclaves and clearly say their aim is to rid Hebron of its "Arab" population.

We choose to live some of our lives under Israeli military occupation.  We choose to witness its inhumanity and to tell its stories.  We seek to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being."  That is why we stood there until all four Palestinians were released: taking notes, asking questions, taking photographs.   That is why I am writing about this twenty-minute incident at the end of a busy day.

Hebron
24 October 2006

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