Visit to Hebron

Yesterday we went to Hebron. It wasn't a long way, just over an hour over very winding roads. There was one particularly steep road that zigzaged up a hill. My friend Mousa who went with us said that it was the substitute Jerusalem Bethlehem road that was built when the older more direct one was closed at the time ofthe second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 2000. The road has lots of bends and on one side there are precipitous falls. When the road was first built with narrow lanes, Mousa said, drivers took the bends too fast and there were lots of accidents. Since then people have got used to it. The route is called The Valley of Fire. (It was more intimidating coming back when we were descending the steep slopes). So we go past Bethlehem, up the Valley of Fire and through a checkpoint guarded by bored-looking soldiers.
I have heard a lot about Hebron, how the city has a hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians, and five hundred settlers occupying the centre of the old city, settlers of the most extreme ideological kind, guarded by soldiers. I have also seen a dvd of ex-Israeli soldiers from the group Breaking the Silence talking about their experiences of being on patrol in Hebron.
The countryside around Hebron is quite fertile and green. There are some settlements and some fertile Palestinian land. The suburbs of Hebron look quite prosperous. There are industries here, a lot of glassware and pottery is made here. The bus takes us to meet our guide, an activist named Sharifa el-Sharif, who she tells us is the first woman to receive a tourist guide's licence in the history of Hebron. She takes us to the old city. It is very eery here. Bordering the old market streets is the settlement area which is separated from the old city by concrete blocks and barbed wire. The settlement area includes an ex-Palestinian school building which has now been converted into an Israeli school, a cluster of modern-looking flats, lookout posts and a road which is for the exclusive use of settlers. The settler area borders on the old market. In some places the settlers occupy the upper floors of the old buildings in the market, and the Palestinians are confined to the ground floor. In some places it is impossible to use even the ground floor areas and the entrances are kept permanently locked. Some old structures such as the Ottoman era hamam (baths) are now no longer usable. The main thoroufare of the market is poor, there a few shops, not many people around. This is partly because it is Friday (holy day for Moslems) partly because of the intimidating proximity of the settlement area. Fifteen years before, a settler had been killed in an argument in the street here. There is a memorial in Hebrew to him. As a result of the death, the whole market street had been closed for ten years, and only reopened five years ago. A few traders came back, but the situation is tense. When you look up you see that the street above the heads of the traders is covered by wire mesh. This is to protect them against the rubbish thrown down onto them from the settlers occupying the upper floors. One of the traders, who sells carpets and dresses shows us the results of eggs thrown down on his wares. Deep stains mark some of his carpets.
At certain points concrete barriers and barbed wire border the streets, but we are advised not to photograph there or get too close, because the barriers are being observed from the fortified blocks of the settlers. There is a possibility of being shot.
We walk up to the ancient mosque of Abraham through an army checkpoint. Sharifa shows us the tomb of her grandfather, who was mayor of Hebron. We are not allowed into the mosque. It is Friday, holy day for the Moslems, but this is not the reason why we are not allowed in. The soldiers have taken it on themselves, as they had when I was in Jerusalem last year trying to get into the Haram al-Sharif, to decide that non-Moslems were not going to be able to enter. There is a separate entrance to the mosque for religious Jews as the building commemorates Abraham, holy to Jews as well as Moslems.

Sharifa takes us to the flat of a friend of hers, also an activist. We talk about the events in Hebron during the last few years, especially the massacre that occurred in 1994 in the mosque, when a crazed gunman, Baruch Goldstein, open fire on the worshippers and killed 29 of them. Sharifa has a bullet in her knee from that day that she has been carrying around for the last 16 years. 'I went to an ambulance to help the injured. I was in the street. Some of the soldiers were opening fire. I got shot in the knee. This is my (she uses an Arabic expression) debt of faith'. The two women argue about numbers. Sharifa mentions the number of dead was 65, her friend says no it was 29. She says, 'I remember that day as if it was yesterday. There was blood all over the stones.'

I am reminded of a massacre of Jewish settlers that had occurred in 1929 by local Arabs from Hebron in which sixty-five Jews were killed. There is a long history of hostility in this area. Shortly after Hebron was conquered by the Israelis after the Six Day War in 1967, a group of settlers came to the centre of Hebron, to 're-establish the Jewish settlement', as they put it. That is the origin of the present standoff and the tense and depressing atmosphere in the centre of Hebron.
Later we go downstairs and talk to some volunteers from Canada and the US from a group called the Christian Peacemaker Team. There are a lot of NGOs working in Palestine and Israel. This group writes reports whenever there is any trouble between settlers or soldiers and local Palestinian farmers. One of the Americans tells us that he has been reporting on what had happened to some farmers who had been using water without permission. 'They had their water pipes cut, and their tomato plants ripped out'.

The chief impression I get from going to Hebron is that the Palestinians despite everything they have been subjected to, the danger, the daily humiliations, the pressures to move, are not going anywhere. They are determined to stay. That is why they moved back to the old market place in the face of open settlement hostility and regular attacks. You can see some of the videos that have been taken of these by going to http://www.youtube.com/ and and typing 'Hebron'. The chief weapon that the Palestinians have is their patience and stubborness. My cousin Peter acknowledged this last year when he said, 'the Arabs know how to wait', and they do. I ask Sharifa, as I ask everyone I meet here about the prospects of peace. She makes a wry pun as many Palestinians are very good at doing. 'We want peace (PEACE) but not what the Israelis want, which is Piece (PIECE), a piece here and a piece there. We don't want to push them into the sea, but we have to talk about the fundamentals. Even their activists don't want to do that. They have these wonderful slogans but they don't want to talk about basics'. Inevitably the question of refugees and the right of return comes up. There are different versions of history of what happened, and maybe at that level nothing will be solved. But I detect a certain level of reality on both sides. The Palestinians I talk to don't want to drive the Jews into the sea, Israelis like my cousin realise that a Palestinian state is inevitable. Intellectuals like Chomsky have stated that a solution to the conflict has to come by way of two-states.
It is Friday and a lot of buildings are closed. We go to a restaurant to eat, and then to a ceramics factory. All the time in the old market, the traders have been pressing us to buy things. I buy a Palestinian keyring decorated with the red black white and green colours. I realise that I will to take them through Ben Gurion Airport. I will have to present them to be scanned and the Palestinian flag will be like a red rag to a bull. So I will have to post it to myself in London from Israel.
We go back into the suburbs. Along the way we have picked up some other travellers: three German medical students who have been studying in Israel, and three women from South America, one from Venezuela and two from Mexico.