"The Disgrace of Hebron"

Sonja Karkar

The picture below shows how the Palestinians who live in the old city of Hebron have to protect themselves from the rubbish and debris thrown down at them from the Jewish settlements which have been built right up against the
city's buildings. The wire mesh, however, does not stop the excrement and urine.

These are not isolated incidents, but every day occurrences and I have seen it for myself. If we saw animals being treated like this, there would be outrage. - SK



The Disgrace of Hebron

by Jeremy Salt

(sent by author)
20 April 2008







I was in Hebron in 1984. The only point in mentioning this is because in 1984, Hebron was still a complete Arab city, despite the presence of a settler colony on its outskirts and the penetration of the city centre by a small number of the followers of Rabbi Moshe Levinger. The Ibrahimi Mosque
had also been taken over and divided into two, one part for Muslim worshippers and one part for Jews. But despite these disturbing signs of what was to come, Hebron was still an integrated Palestinian Arab city.

Just before we (me and my children) arrived, the central bus station had been taken over, closed down and converted into a military outpost, sandbagged and was teeming with soldiers, following a 'terrorist' attack. But the souk, the central market, was still ancient. Ancient - it was what
travel writers would no doubt describe as a maze of colorful lanes, packed with buyers and sellers, a lot of noise and the smell of spices and cooking food. We dropped in to see Mustafa Natshe, then the mayor, an extraordinarily hospitable man. We simply knocked at the front door and his wife let us in so I could talk to her husband about the besieged state of his city.

Since then, and especially since Yasser Arafat agreed to the creation of a Jewish enclave inside Hebron in the late 1990s, the city has been subjected to a form of state-sanctioned racism that can only be called urbanicide. It
is slowly being put to death, strangled as a living organism in the place of which another one will gradually arise. The market has been closed down for reasons of 'security'. In its place stands a ghost market, whose shuttered
doors and lanes, empty apart from patrolling Israeli soldiers, are the only reminders of what was there in the past. There were 1400 shops in the market. Hundreds of families lived around it. They and the shopowners have
all gone, driven out in the same name of 'security'. Their houses have been vandalized by settlers coming down from the heights at night so that they can never return.

About 35,000 people lived in this part of Hebron. Most of them – some 25,000 – have now gone. They have not left voluntarily. They have been driven out
by the unrelenting pressure of settlers protected by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers are there at the orders of the state. It is the state that wants Arab Hebron put to death and the settlers are the blunt weapon being utilized behind the official mask of concern at settler excesses to get the
job done. The Israelis hate it when they are compared to Nazis but there is no other parallel for the settlers of Hebron. They abuse the Arabs as a
matter of course. They scrawl graffiti on the walls. 'Death to the Arabs'.'Gas the Arabs'. 'Arabs out'. In a somewhat different context, haven't we seen or heard all this before?

They beat and occasionally they kill. They bring their children up to be just as deranged as themselves. These little monsters will run up and take a
kick at a middle-aged woman, while their parents do nothing to restrain them. Outsiders who comes to Hebron to assess the situation for themselves will get the same treatment. Christian peacemakers have been beaten up by
these jeering thugs. Only last week Israeli soldiers stood by as settlers threatened and insulted a visiting group of German parliamentarians. They were called Nazis. Paint was poured on their cars. They felt so endangered
they cut their trip short. What will Angela Merkel, who made a disgraceful, slavishly sycophantic speech of support for Israel in the Knesset, make of all this?

The epicenter of this hatred and fanaticism is the Tel Rumeida district. Most of the Palestinians have been driven out. The small number that remain live inside the wire cages they have erected around their houses to protect
themselves from the settlers. They are stoned and abused. Attempts are made to break into their homes. They dare not leave them empty because of the danger that the settlers will take them over. The novelist Maria Vargas Llosa wrote recently after a visit to Hebron: 'Some 25,000 residents have
been cleared from their homes in H-2 zone in five years. In the Tel Rumeida neighborhood alone, where there is a [Jewish] settlement of the same name, barely 50 out of 500 Arab families remain. The extraordinary thing is that
they haven't already gone, subjected as they are to systematic and ferocious harassment by settlers, who stone them, throw rubbish and excrement at their
houses, invade and destroy their homes and attack their children when they return from school, to the absolute indifference of Israeli soldiers who witness these atrocities'.[i] The behavior of the soldiers is
scarcely any better than the behavior, as revealed in testimonies just published (along with others previously published) by Breaking the Silence
(Shovrim Shtika), a group of dissident soldiers.[ii] The army has a code of conduct but in reality soldiers can do whatever they want, including the looting of homes and shops, the shooting of unarmed civilians and the routine beating of civilians of all ages, including children. The chances that they will be punished are low.

Outside the city the settlers harass farmers, prevent them from harvesting their crops and tear the trees from their soil. Behind all of this stands the state. The settlers are no more than the blunt instrument used in pursuit of state policies. The official expressions of concern at their 'excesses' are rank hypocrisy. It is the state that wants the settlers in
Hebron, that puts the soldiers there to protect them and tells them not to interfere in the harassment and persecution of the Palestinian civilian population. The criminal actions of soldiers and settlers alike are sanctioned and promoted by the same state that Kevin Rudd and Brendan
Nelson congratulated only recently in the Australian parliament on the basis of its fine achievements over the past sixty years. Perhaps they should be challenged to go to Hebron to see for themselves.

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[i] 'Maria Vargas Llosa 'How Arabs have been driven out of Hebron', the Independent, April 19, 2008.

[ii] As of April 19 the organisation's web site appears to have been purged of all material.

Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne. Later when living overseas, he continued to contribute numerous articles to The Age and The Australian until it was deemed that his views ran contrary to the
editorial line of both newspapers.

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