Report Seven: Settlers, Settlements, and Life in Hebron

Tuesday August 9, 2005

We drove due south on bypass road #60 towards the large Gush Etzion settlement bloc” south of Bethlehem and turned toward the large settlement of Efrat, which is being extended each day along the hilltops. The Gush Etzion bloc will form a continuous string of settlements between the Palestinian cities of Hebron, to the south, and Bethlehem, to the north. As we headed east towards the Dead Sea, we saw a new four-lane road under construction. It will link the Etzion bloc to the settlement of Har Homa (what Palestinians call Jebel Abu Gneim), effectively cutting Bethlehem off from the rest of the West Bank. This is part of the process of constricting the growth of Palestinian communities and cutting them off from one another to form what many critics call “Bantustans” or “cantons.”

Bruce Brill, who lives in the settlement of Kfar Eldad near Tekoa, was our first appointment. He described the superficial “factory Bar Mitzvah” Jewish education that he received growing up in the United States. He later studied Arabic in the US Army and was assigned to the National Security Agency.

In October, 1973, though he was of relatively low rank, he was told that Egypt and Syria would attack Israel. Two days later, the attack began and Bruce was monitoring radio communications from the battlefield. He overheard a young Israeli soldier manning the Bar Lev Line, Israel’s defensive position along the Suez Canal. From the soldier’s comments, Bruce could tell that he had been unaware of the impending attack, even though the US and Israel are supposedly allies. How could Bruce, a U.S. citizen in Washington D.C., have known of the impending attack, while an Israeli soldier in harm’s way was unaware? Brill looked down at his uniform and determined on the spot that he was wearing the wrong uniform. He left the Army in 1974 and headed to Israel, where he has lived for 23 years including, 21 years in the West Bank, which he refers to as “Judea.”

Bruce Brill gave us an impassioned explanation of the settlers’ presence in the West Bank. He began by challenging the use of the term “West Bank,” pointing out that the Jordan River  is more than 12 miles away (“West Bank” refers to the West Bank of the Jordan River). Brill also rejected the term “Palestinian,” which he claims the Romans introduced after the Second Jewish Revolt in the second century of this era (CE or AD). According to Bruce, the Romans replaced the previous and historic name “Judea” with “Palestine” because the latter term is derived from the term Philistines, the Jews historic enemy. Bruce said the Romans picked “Palestine” as an added affront to the Jews.

Bruce said that too many people in the United States express sympathy for the Palestinians because the image of the Palestinians, even to the detail of wearing headdress, harkens back to TV battles between cowboys and Indians that we are  so familiar with, in which “white men’s colonies were stepping stones for displacing the natives.”

According to Brill, this stands the truth on its head. The Israeli Jews are in fact the indigenous people and the Palestinians the late-comers attempting to push them off their land and colonize them. (We were reminded if a banner we saw hanging on a building across from the Women in Black vigil last Friday. It had a picture of an American Indian and the words, “We know what land for peace is like.”) He argued that Israel “is the only God-given reservation in the world. . . We’re uniquely the Indian in this case.”

Brill said few Palestinian Arabs have lived more than two generations in the region, whereas Jewish claims to the land go back thousands of years. The culmination of Brill’s argument is expressed in an article he published in the Jerusalem Report, April 5, 2004. In “The Great Humanitarian Solution,” he argues that U.S. president Herbert Hoover’s plan (from the 1940s) to provide compensation for Palestinians to voluntarily relocate to Iraq should be considered as a solution today. 

As for the current situation, Brill claimed that “Not one Arab family was ever evicted from their home anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza to make room for a Jewish home.” He stated that there is no restriction limiting “innocent” Palestinians from using the bypass roads. He also was adamant that we not describe him as a “religious fanatic.” Even though he is not religious, he explained, deep within the heart of every Jew there is this yearning to return to Israel. “It’s like a homing pigeon.”

From Kfar Eldad we continued south to Hebron. We were met in Hebron, known in Arabic as “al-Khalil,” by members of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT): Christina Gibb, Dianne Roe, Kyle Kordsmeiere, and Fr. Bill Baldwin. Over falafel sandwiches we heard from Hani Abu Heiikal, a journalist who has ties to CPT. Hani spoke with us about the double bind that Hebronites face in dealing with the violence of the soldiers and the settlers. In dealing with the soldiers, Hani spoke of a time that he had been handcuffed and blindfolded during one of his multiple arrests. However at least this time, he commented, they let him pray.

Hani also gave us a few examples in which he has personally suffered at the hands of settlers. First, he said,  the settlers cut his water pipes 10 years ago. Later they burnt some of his olive trees. He told of a time when the settlers attacked his house and when he went outside, soldiers came in and arrested him. He has had Israeli soldiers tell him that they will protect him from settlers if CPT members and internationals leave his house. But he doesn’t trust the protection from Israeli soldiers. Hani sees international presence as one of the few securities for him and his family. Hani said he found inspiration in Mubarak Awad, who during the first Intifada founded the Palestinian Center for Nonviolence. Awad was later deported from Israel and is now involved with Nonviolence International (http://www.nonviolenceinternational.net) and a variety of international children’s organizations.  

After our discussion with Hani, we walked to the CPT office where the team discussed the precarious state of the Palestinian residents of Hebron. They explained that while there are only around 500 Jewish settlers in Hebron compared with 130,000 Palestinians, Israel deploys 2,000 soldiers to protect them. This has created not only extra monitoring and pressure on Palestinians, it also creates a strain in Israeli society as it forces Israeli soldiers who don’t believe in the settler movement to live in Hebron.

Zleikha Muhtaseb from the Ibrahimi Cultural Center joined us in the office.  Unfortunately, she did not have much time with us because in a few days she was getting married. After many congratulations, Zleikha described Israeli curfews and how they have severely affected the people of Hebron. When Israel places the city under curfew, no one is allowed to leave the house until the curfew is lifted, leaving no way to get to work or to school. Curfews may be as short as a day, but they have lasted as long as a month.

Zleikha spoke about some of the ways that curfews affect children. For example, when curfew is enacted, children are not allowed to go to school. In order to get to school they take a precarious route up ladders and through the backyard of the Ibrahimi Cultural Center. At the center Zleikha uses art to bring out some of the emotions that the children are going through due to the occupation. She described how she sees many children drawing pictures of soldiers trying to kill them. When kids play, they sometimes act out trying to kill the soldiers.

After leaving our meeting with Zleikha, some of the members of the delegation noticed Palestinian filmmakers being harassed by Israeli soldiers. When the delegates went to see what was going on they noticed an Israeli sniper on the building above looking over the scene. When the sniper noticed delegates moving closer to the soldiers, he pointed his gun at them and a red light flashed over their faces. While the group later decided that the soldier would not have shot any of us, we were aware that this form of intimidation is used against the Palestinian population all of the time. Additionally most Palestinians don’t have an American passport, which gives at least partial immunity to the daily humiliations of occupation.

At the end of the day, delegates divided and went in smaller groups to Palestinian homes in Hebron to spend the night.  During the home stays we were greeted with typical Middle Eastern hospitality, a warm bed and wonderful food. We were thankful to our families and reflected over a difficult but educational day in Palestine.

Report Submitted by Scott Kennedy and Kendra Froshman