Occupied Hebron and a Taste of Farm life in Palestine

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Hebron is the most vivid reminder of the Israeli occupation. I don’t understand how Palestinians living in Hebron’s Old City have the energy to stay in the face of routine settler violence.

Over 500,000 (illegal) Israeli settlers live across the West Bank. But Hebron’s case is unique because settlers live right in the middle of the Palestinian city—rather than maintaining a degree of isolation, as is normally the case. Because of the settlers’ existence, the Hebron municipality was divided into two sections in 1997: H1 (under Palestinian Authority control) and H2 (under Israeli control). H2 includes parts of the Old City, such as the al-Ibrahimi Mosque. Visitors and worshippers have to go through three checkpoints to get to the mosque!

The H2 area (roughly 20 percent of the Hebron municipality) has 40,000 Palestinian inhabitants and 500 Jewish settlers. There are also 4,000 Israeli soldiers to “protect” the settlers. Meaning, eight soldiers for every settler! These settlers are the last people to need protection. They are ultra right-wing ideologues who rarely stop short of harassing their Arab neighbors—if not worse. In areas where settlement houses are above Arab-owned shops, fence roofs have been set up to catch the trash and bricks thrown by the settlers (see pics). My friend’s mother, who has lived near the Old City for the past 30 years, has never see the al-Ibrahimi Mosque. She’s been too afraid to go.

I don’t mean to undermine the determination of Hebron’s Palestinian residents but the place is a tense ghost town. One of the few exceptions was on my first day in there. Tens of kids were everywhere as part of a field trip (which is why one of my pictures shows a line forming outside the al-Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint).

Hebron is still the West Bank’s production center—i.e. for leather goods, rugs, limestone, grapes, ceramics…and it even has Palestine’s last keffiyeh factory—but it’s atmosphere sharply contrasts that of Nablus, its northern counterpart. Nablus is vibrant, despite the severe damage Israeli forces inflicted upon it during the Second Intifada. Both are considered to be genuine Palestinian cities in terms of historical importance, local production, and cultural manifestations.

My friend talked to the owner of an internet café who told him how Israeli soldiers come by every once in a while to question kids using the shop’s computers. Still, the owner opens his shop every day so soldiers don’t seize it in his absence. Gotta respect this kind of patience.

TARQUMIYA

I visited Rana’s (my roommate in Ramallah) family in Turqumieh, a town of 20,000 people in the Hebron municipality. My pictures of sheep and fresh milk are from there (and yes, I did try to milk a sheep). All I have to say is that it’s very hard to beat fresh bread and labneh!

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Photos

Trying to enter Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi
There are three checkpoints to cross.