12. Hebron - an epicentre of racist extremism.

12).  Hebron, cradle of extremist Zionism, nurtured by the State.

On our final day together in Palestine as a group, we went to Hebron.  As on all the other minibus journeys, when we crossed a fixed checkpoint along the road it was deserted and we could drive straight through it - it is only manned during the rush hours earlier in the morning and in the evening, to disrupt and delay people getting to their work.   I noticed another pattern - where there was a settler-only road going to an Israeli settlement, or going direct to Jerusalem, the junction would be laid out in such a way that the mixed or mainly Palestinian traffic would have to wait, even though it was much heavier traffic than on the other road; the settlers could drive straight across the junction with priority, but the Palestinians had to form a queue and wait; this was another example of the imposition of dominating force to create a little ritual of humiliation in the mundane act of driving along a road and waiting at a junction.

Hebron is in the middle of a plateau, on which there were many olive groves and fields of vines, and it seemed to be encircled by Israeli settlements.  As for the city itself, a protocol imposed in 1997 divided the city into two sectors, H1 controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, about 20% of the city, an enclave in the middle of the city, where about 600 settlers live, guarded by some 1500 soldiers, administered by Israel.  The Jewish people who lived in Hebron alongside Christians and Muslims for centuries - through times when military control of the city and the surrounding territory changed hands a few times between Christian and Muslim forces - were Sephardic Jews who were anti-Zionists; but in recent decades Hebron has been a magnet for extremist Ashkenazi settlers, and it is now a centre of extreme right-wing Israeli political groups, those now being offered ministerial post by Benjamin Netanyahu.  25 years ago Baruch Goldstein, an American settler, a doctor, with Israeli army weapons training, who was a supporter of Meir Kahane, a far-right anti-Arab rabbi who founded the Jewish Defence League, massacred 29 worshippers at the Ibrahimi mosque in the city and wounded 125, before being overpowered and killed.  After the attack, his killers were punished, the Israeli army closed off Shuhada street, the main street leading to the mosque, to Palestinian residents, and made part of the mosque into a synagogue, as well as banning Palestinian people from using the nearby park and gardens.  We were shown Palestinian-owner houses where the front of the house facing onto the street cannot be used, and the family has to climb up a ladder at the back of the house to enter through a window.

We walked past a forbidding checkpoint which led into one of the streets in the Israeli-controlled part of the town, though Palestinian families still seem to live there, as we saw two children entering the checkpoint from the Palestinian part of the city.  A child had been murdered there a few years ago by the Israeli forces, since she did not understand their shouted instructions in Hebrew at the checkpoint.  Further on we passed a market area where many shops were closed, past a large building, once a Palestinian school, which had been taken over as an Israeli army garrison, from which soldiers with guns emerged in a large group, whilst others watched us from a observation tower. 

 Next to one of the shops was a first floor home where the family had been raided in the early hours of that same morning, though they did not yet know what the pretext for the raid was, though it followed a street argument a family member had had with a settler.

 In a deserted side street we visited a house which was being used as a base for the Christian Peace Trust, whom the mayor of Hebron had invited to act as international observers after Netanyahu had recently expelled the International Observers who had been stationed in Hebron for 22 years, trying to protect the Palestinians from settler violence.  Inside the house we climbed up to a seemingly tranquil, lovely small first floor terrace with pot plants, where we listened to one of the Christian activists describing her work. We could go up onto the roof of this house to observe beyond the Israeli army camp a street that was occupied by settlers, but we could not take photographs or go in groups of more than three people, for fear of eliciting further attacks with tear gas, as had happened a week before; there were still empty tear gas canisters on the roof.  Next to the house the street was blocked off with huge concrete slabs, as used in the Apartheid wall, topped with barbed wire.  Some ducks and a peacock lived in the empty house opposite, bringing a surreal touch of natural splendour to this scene of urban barbarity.  The other houses seemed empty here, and the shops along the street were not receiving much custom.  

               "Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy"...The centre of Hebron was like a stage-set for William Blake's poem. (What is the price of experience?)

At the mosque, we had to remove our shoes and the women of the group each had to don a pale blue gown with a peaked hood,  unhappily reminiscent of a Klu Klux Klan outfit.  This felt like a ritual of patriarchal domination, as if the women would otherwise emit some pollution that would damage the other worshippers: and it was if it was a practice of pollution-avoidance was reactive to the domination of the Muslim population all around the Mosque, in a kind of repetition-compulsion of zealotry.  Inside the Mosque there were intricate carpets on the tombs, which were now in fact situated in the synagogue part of the building, but they could still be viewed from the mosque side. There were some striking mosaics in some little alcoves, but I could not escape the feeling that the terrible oppression outside had been brought inside,  so that this ancient building had an oppressive atmosphere and I soon wanted to leave.