Report Four: Living Together
Apart
Thursday, May 31, 2007: Ephrata
and Hebron
A Walk in Al-Khalil (Hebron)
Hebron/Al-Khalil is holy to both Judaism and Islam. According to
Jewish tradition, the door to paradise is here, with Adam and Eve
buried beside it. Both Muslims and Jews believe that Abraham is
buried here along with Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah. The
tombs are enclosed in a large building that contains a mosque, known
as the Ibrahimi mosque, and a synagogue. Since a massacre in 1994
in which Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler entered the mosque,
opened fire and killed 29 Muslim worshippers, the building has been
strictly divided into two halves. For security reasons, there is
no entry for Jews on the Muslim side and no entry for Muslims on
the Jewish side. Abraham and Sarah's tombs may be viewed from both
sides; Isaac and Rebecca are in the mosque and Jacob and Leah in
the synagogue. The mosque contains a beautifully carved minbar (platform
for sermons) commissioned by Salah Ad-Din (Saladin) in the 12 th
century. To enter the mosque/synagogue we passed through 5 checkpoints,
each with metal detectors and a bag check. I was relieved to see
that many Arabic inscriptions in the synagogue had been left intact.
The city of Hebron (Al-Khalil in Arabic) is home to about 150,000
Palestinians and around 800 Jewish Israeli settlers. The settlers
claim to be redeeming Jewish property lost in the rioting of 1929,
yet the heirs of the Jewish inhabitants of that time have denounced
their activity. The settlers have expanded throughout the old city
little by little, taking over individual buildings and creating
facts on the ground. They are regarded as on the ideological fringe
of the settler movement, and they are often violent, lashing out
at both Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers who protect them.
Although they are by most Israelis, they are rarely taken to task
for their illegal actions. As they have expanded their settlements,
the military presence has increased, at a rate of five soldiers
per settler.
The streets of the old city are lined with green-shuttered shops,
many closed, but many still vibrant. Below the Avraham Avinu settlement,
fencing and chicken wire have been strung between the shop awnings
to catch the garbage that is thrown down to the street by settlers.
Shohada street has been reserved exclusively for settlers and their
vehicles, apart from a few residents with special permits. Settlers
welded shut the doors of many Palestinian-owned shops to prevent
Palestinian residents of the street from entering their homes. A
court order and police action eventually opened the doors, but many
Palestinian families have left. A young Palestinian boy who walked
with us down the street drew the attention of a settler boy, who
appealed unsuccessfully to an Israeli soldier to do something about
his illegal incursion.
--Daniel Rice
The Production of Violence
Our day today started with two people talking to us about peace
and hate. They spoke to us about a time they remembered when there
were no checkpoints, a time when Jews and Arabs lived happily together,
a time when there was certainly a territorial dispute but one that
seemed surmountable.
These two people were Ardi Geldman and Batya, Rabbi Riskin's daughter.
Their nostalgic recollections were of the early years of Efrata,
an Israeli settlement that is part of the Gush Etzion complex located
between Bethlehem and Hebron. Efrata was founded by Rabbi Riskin
and about 200 families in the 1970s, and now houses 10,000 people,
40% of whom are from the United States. According to them, before
the founding of the settlement this land was "just rocks."
However, the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ) has
documented with satellite images that this was in fact cultivated
with grapes and other rain-fed farming (wheat, barley, chickpeas).
The fields are planted in October/November and harvested in May.
ARIJ has satellite images from both seasons. However, we have heard
that Israelis sometimes use photos taken after the harvest to show
that the land was ?barren? and justify building settlements
and making land bloom that had been "just rocks" under
the Arabs. (Another fact not generally mentioned by the Israelis
is that many hills have been completely razed of their trees in
order to build settlements.)
For Ardi and Batya, Jews and Arabs living happily together meant
a time when "we employed the local village Arabs and gave them
electricity and modernization. We improved their quality of life
tremendously. It was a wonderful thing for them." All was well
until the Palestinian Authority was formed and started shaking things
up with that "madman" Arafat. A number of the members
in our group felt reminded of white folks in the U.S. who talk about
how well they got along with Black people during the Jim Crow era
until those civil rights people came and started agitating. The
white man's burden is complete with a sense of being betrayed by
ingrates who have become a threat, committed to destroying everything
held dear. In Batya's words: "We even helped create this political
entity to give them more opportunities;" but they just turned
it into a "terrorist structure." In Ardi's words, the
Palestinians shifted the political situation from one in which land
was the primary source of the conflict to the main cause of violence
being "pan-Islamism -- it's no longer about turf but about
an extreme religious ideology that denies a Jewish presence in the
Middle East. And it is slowly reaching its hands around the world
to effect where you live."
Unlike the settlements that many Israelis oppose and that even the
Israeli government calls illegal (a rhetorical move that implies
there is such a thing a legal settlement), Efrata is well-established
and accepted. When asked whether to achieve real peace they would
be willing to relocate to behind the green line, Ardi said, "That's
such a rhetorical question that I don't even answer it when people
ask. I don't think it will happen that way. No mainstream government
would include this community in a peace package. We would become
annexed. I certainly would never live in a Palestinian state but
I don't think this would be part of one." In other words, they
are very secure in their place and very unsettled by the fact that
the Palestinians no longer seem so secured in what they had designated
as their proper place.
Both Ardi and Batya have "moderate political views." They
are "against housing demolitions, demeaning behavior at checkpoints,
and the Wall following a route that unnecessarily makes lives of
Palestinians more difficult." But to them even these measures
are all "responses to terrorism." When we asked whether
they have ever acted on behalf of these "moderate" views,
they said they haven't and also mentioned that they have never been
to any Palestinian neighborhoods. When pushed on why he doesn't
show up as an ally to Arabs when the actions he disagrees with are
being implemented, Ardi simply stated: "You're saying I should
do that as an ethical imperative and I'm saying I'm not interested.
You don't have the right to keep prying and implying that there
is something wrong with me."
Ardi and Batya do not see peace for land as a viable solution. In
a closing statement before we left, Ardi did offer a route towards
peace, however: "If all Palestinians laid down their weapons,
peace would break out in 24 hours. If Israeli soldiers laid down
our weapons, we'd be massacred."
For me, this meeting has been one of the most difficult moments
of the trip. It's not like anything was said that I didn't expect.
But coming face to face with power that sits so comfortably and
expresses itself with such entitlement, claiming "all morality
and ethics is on our side" -- my body goes into overdrive shaking
sobbing screaming stoic steaming stupified. I find it in some ways
even harder to deal with than all the soldiers roaming the streets
with their automatic weapons. It's pretty straightforward to get
outraged about soldiers walking around harassing people or about
extremist settlers who terrorize the Palestinians whose neighborhoods
they move into. Ardi and Batya do not belong to this extremist camp.
Their settlement is very established -- it resembles a suburb like
the one I mentioned in my last post. Homes in Efrata can be bought
starting at $120,000 but many cost in the millions. In fact, Ardi
and Batya proudly exclaimed, "Really, the sky is the limit
-- whatever you want to spend, you can build a home here."
And they are friendly people, all smiles and welcoming and seemingly
well-intentioned. But they live comfortable lives that depend every
day on the occupation, brutalization and humiliation of others,
in complete denial of this relationship, taking no responsibility
whatsoever for that suffering. In fact, they paint themselves as
the victims in this situation: "We didn't want to live this
way, with checkpoints and bars on the windows. But terrorism has
forced us into this situation."
I would like to give you just a brief glimpse into the rest of our
day today, a glimpse of the cost paid for the lives led by Ardi
and Batya as settlers living beyond the internationally recognized
green line. Within one afternoon:
? Our local guide, Said, who is Palestinian, was detained
while soldiers ran a security check on his ID.
? A soldier hollered for a kid (probably 10-12 years old)
to come over to him and then whacked him square across the face.
This is illegal but the only place Palestinians can file a complaint
is with the Israeli police. There they typically get the run-around:
hours and hours of waiting, after which often the police "forget"
to file the complaint or, if they do file it, the Palestinian then
has to go through hours and hours of questioning.
? On a road that passes through a settlement in Hebron, a
settler boy (about 8 years old) saw a Palestinian boy (about the
same age) named Mustafa who had latched onto our group for a bit.
He kept glaring at Mustafa with a look of hatred I've never seen
in someone so young. When he passed a soldier, he tried to get him
to do something about Mustafa's presence. The soldier told the kid
to mind his own business. (Hebron houses some of the most ideological
settlers in Israel who are even looked down on by many Israelis;
many of the soldiers there are not thrilled to be serving them.
However, we later learned from CPT that other soldiers have taken
orders from Israeli kids and beaten up Palestinian kids before arresting
them and trying them as adults.)
? I watched a group of six soldiers parade through the market-place
in Hebron and watched one of them turn and give a teenaged Palestinian
a look that made my blood chill -- as though he were saying, "you
are my prey, you monster."
? Above that same market I noticed nets were strung up everywhere
-- I inquired and found out that these were there because settlers
who had moved in above throw garbage and stones down on the merchants.
There is much, much more but I must end now to get a few hours sleep
in order to continue tomorrow. I will share more when I return.
For now, I will end with the words of Zleikha Muhtasib, the founder
of a kindergarten for traumatized children. She started the kindergarten
because she thought that helping the children helps both them and
their parents. When the children are healthy and happy that makes
the parents less stressed, too. She saw that the children were absolutely
terrified of the soldiers, so in addition to art therapy and play
time, she began a program of going with them to checkpoints and
having them walk through. That helped them get used to the idea
that they would not get beaten or killed if they came within range
of a soldier. Then they could overcome their fear and actually walk
from home to school, for example, which often requires passing through
multiple checkpoints. Zleikha said a big problem they face in Hebron
is that many of these traumatized kids are hyperactive and violent.
She and other volunteers (mothers and teenagers who have themselves
been a part of her program when they were children) work hard to
provide some counseling, some non-violent outlets, and to help the
kids get to a place where they can concentrate and do well in school.
They are fighting a battle against the education in violence that
these kids get every day. As Zleikha explained, "There are
soldiers on the roof near here [the kindergarten]. They often point
their guns at the children who are coming and say, 'children go
home.' When we ask them why they are scaring the kids, they say,
'We have orders, there is to be no school today.' Many people say,
'Palestinians teach their kids to be violent and to hate us.' This
is not true. The soldiers are teaching them violence."
This, however, is something that Ardi
and Batya refuse to understand. It is much easier to sleep comfortably
if you make yourself/are made to believe that the prison you are
committing others to for your "security" and for your
entitlement to that particular piece of land needs to be built and
maintained because those people are all potential terrorists. It
is much easier not to think about the terror of ghettoizing people,
of shoving guns in children's faces, of demolishing people's homes,
of humiliating people at checkpoints, of starving people by making
their local economies nearly impossible to sustain, of shooting
holes into people's water-tanks or putting dead chickens in them
to poison the water. It is much easier not to think about the production
of violence.
--Cecilia Lucas
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