Three Days in the West Bank
One Saturday morning in August, eight human rights activists were on their way to visit villagers attacked by paramilitaries. Earlier that morning armed paramilitaries attacked a young man while grazing his flocks outside of his village, and beat him up. The activists had decided to travel to the village to collect testimony. Upon driving toward the village, they were stopped by the military and were told that they would not be able to enter the entire area where the village is located, because it was declared a “closed military zone” for the entire day. The activists asked for the reason behind the closure of the area. The answer: “You are the reason, you are trouble makers.” But it was the paramilitary that beat up the villager, the activists think, so why are they allowed to travel freely and not us? No answer was given. While they waited by the check point, cars passed by; everyone was allowed into the “closed military zone” except the activists.
Did this happen in Tibet? Colombia? Or East Timor? Indeed, should it have happened in occupied Tibet, the entire world would have been on its feet calling to prohibit the Chinese from hosting the Olympic Games. But it happened in South Mount Hebron in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The activists–Israelis; the villagers–Palestinians; the military–the Israeli Defense Force, and the paramilitaries–armed settlers. No calls from the U.S. government were heard to protest the repression of political activists.
I was in that group of activists traveling from Jerusalem to Hirbat Susia in South Mount Hebron that day on August 16, 2008, when we were stopped on the way by reserve soldiers in the Israeli military. We were told that the entire area was a closed military zone. The soldiers had set up a check point on the road, and would not let us pass.
In the West Bank, there are two types of license plates: yellow license plates for citizens of Israel, and white license plates for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. White plate cars are stopped at every check point regularly and can wait sometimes hours for the green light to go. Cars with yellow plates are rarely stopped. Unless, that is, they belong to human rights activists.
The soldiers were probably waiting just for us. When we asked for the official reason for the “closed military zone” order, the reserve captain began explaining to us that “although a Jew can go everywhere in the land of Israel…” But before completing his explanation, the captain was interrupted, by our cynical laughter. This outburst offended the captain, and he refused to continue. We begged him to tell us why the area was a closed military zone. But the captain would no longer talk with us; he was deeply hurt.
So we set to call some members of Knesset (MKs) and ask them to try to rebuke the order so we can get through with our mission to visit the peasants in south Mount Hebron who were beaten by Jewish settlers earlier that morning. The MK we called promised to try to help. We waited for about three hours, seeing many yellow license plates drive into the closed military zone. Finally, when the answer arrived that even the MK could do nothing that morning, we turned and went back.
South Mount Hebron is the home of thousands of peasants whose livelihood is based on farming and grazing. These peasants preserve an ancient lifestyle of residency in caves and shacks. After the 1948 and 1967 wars their access to the lands was severely restricted, and during the 1970s, large areas were declared closed military zones, although the military hardly used these areas. In the 1980s, the Israeli government declared these lands “state lands” and started constructing settlements on them. During these years, the military sporadically expelled residents of the area, and life for the remaining residents was complicated by occasional prohibitions on farming and grazing. Starting in November 1999, the military began destroying and sealing caves and shacks. Hundreds of residents were expelled. Following the petition of human rights organizations to the Israeli Supreme Court, the residents were allowed to return to their homes in the spring of 2000. However, after the killing of a settler by Palestinians in 2001, the Civil Administration decided, in cooperation with the military, to expel residents again (including residents that were returned after the Supreme Court decision), and to destroy homes in five villages in the area. In addition, the military and the Civil Administration poured sand and stones into water wells, and destroyed shacks, fences, and ovens. Today, the number of Jewish settlers has increased in the Carmel, Susiya, Shani, Livne, and other area settlements. Palestinian kids on their way to school are regularly harassed, and peasants who brave the settlers and go grazing and farming are occasionally beat up. The police and military often neglect calls from peasants, and occasionally arrest settlers for a few hours at a time. The settlements in south Mount Hebron are considered illegal according to international law, particularly outlined in Security Council resolution 446 and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
A month earlier, on July 18, I went to visit the city of Hebron in a tour organized by Shalom Achshav (Peace Now). The city of Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, with approximately 166,000 inhabitants. Hebron is an exceptional case among Palestinian cities because Jewish settlers live inside the city itself. It is home to 400 of the most fundamental religious groups of Jewish settlers, who live in the center of the city under the protection of the army and the police, who regularly terrorize the Palestinian soldiers and police. The daily reality in downtown Hebron is that of settler rampages, checkpoints, shop closings, no-go zones, long curfews during Jewish holidays, and house demolitions. According to B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, settlers in the city have routinely abused the city’s Palestinian residents. Abuse often takes the form of physical assaults, including beatings with clubs, stones, and the throwing of refuse, sand, water, chlorine, and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts, and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl. Soldiers are generally positioned on every street corner in and near the settlement points, but in most cases they do nothing to protect Palestinians from the settlers’ attacks. The police also fail to enforce the law and rarely bring assailants to justice.
Regular Israelis know very little about the reality in Hebron; they hold dear to the illusion that the settlers are terrorized by Palestinians and that they should be protected by the army. That’s the reason why Shalom Achshav, the biggest peace movement in Israel advocating the dismantlement of settlements and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, organizes tours to Hebron. Their goal is to show Israelis what’s happening.
On the morning of my tour, four buses departed from Tel Aviv, and one more bus joined the group when it reached Jerusalem. We were escorted by police. We traveled to Hebron, where we were stopped by the military before getting close to the city. Hebron is now a closed military zone, we were told. The reason? The settlers attacked another tour (by Shovrim Shtika — Breaking the Silence — an organization of former fighters in the Israeli military who served in the West Bank, who have decided to tell the Israeli public what they have seen and done during their military service) with eggs earlier that day, and a fight had developed. The army decided to deny our tour entry in order to avoid more clashes. The settlers’ aggression was well-rewarded — they managed to expel all witnesses to the violence in Hebron and none of them was arrested or expelled.
But I refused to be deterred by these many obstacles and I decided to join a group of young activists in their weekly protest against the separation fence partitioning the villages in Ramallah. On a hot Friday morning, August 15, I went with some veteran activists to the village of Bil’in, in the West Bank. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by friendly local Palestinians, who knew all the veteran activists by name, and were delighted to meet more Israelis who came to show solidarity with their struggle.
Bil’in is located four kilometers east of the Green Line. In January 2005, the Israeli military started constructing the so-called Separation Fence around Bil’in, effectively separating the village from 60 percent of its farming land. A new neighborhood of Modi’in Illit, an Israeli settlement, is designated to be built on this land. In September 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to redraw the path of the wall because the current route was deemed “highly prejudicial” to the villagers of Bil’in. Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in the ruling “We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil’in lands.” Despite the ruling, the fence was not removed, and construction of Mattityahu East, another settlement close by, has continued on Bil’in land. Attorney Michael Sfard, an unwavering human rights lawyer in Israel, has recently sued Canadian companies involved in the construction of these neighborhoods in international courts. Although the fence has been completed, weekly protests continue in Bil’in, with dozens of Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists participating.
At around one that afternoon, the protest left from the middle of the village and headed toward the fence. We held Palestinian flags and posters of Mahmud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet who died earlier that week. Palestinian activists yelled slogans in Arabic, and the Israeli and International activists repeated them. Some Spanish activists started calling “Viva viva viva, viva Palestina!” and the Palestinian hosts gladly joined in. A few other Israeli activists, including myself, stayed in the back and observed the protest.
When we reached the fence, some brave activists went close and repeated some of the slogans. Fully armed soldiers looked at them from the other side of the fence, mounting their weapons against the activists. No verbal communication occurred between the soldiers and the protesters. Then a big white truck showed up and started tossing a white chemical at the protesters. It was “Skunk,” a new deterrent devised by the Israeli police force for the purpose of protest dispersal. “Skunk” is a chemical that stick to clothes and skin and smells worse than a skunk. The chemical even reached us in the back of the protest, but happily, the wind was against us and the noxious chemical blew back at the soldiers. Some mayhem followed and more Skunk was dispersed. To this the soldiers added tear gas, and soon we were smelling awful and crying from the gas. Making matters worse, the sun was in the middle of the sky and there was no place to hide. This hell-like confrontation continued for another hour until both activists and soldiers got tired and retreated.
The fence was not dismantled that day, as the Supreme Court ordered. The villagers retuned to their homes and we drove back to Tel Aviv, That afternoon, we had humus for lunch.
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