If we do not and cannot know the
others, how can we trust them?
I spent this past weekend in the
West Bank, first in Hebron, then Dheisheh Refugee Camp, and finally to
Bethlehem, in the hopes of learning more about the perspective of “the other.”
What I found was heavy yet encouraging, life existing, prevailing under the pressure of oppression, surviving
through strangulation. And most people were smiling, living.
A friend and I started in
Jerusalem, leaving Friday morning by bus to Bethlehem, transferring to a
private taxi (don’t do this, find a collective taxi just up the road from the last stop at the intersection of Bab El-Zakak/Beit Jala Road;
you’ll save lots o money), and arriving in Hebron. Our tour wouldn’t start for
another 40 minutes so we walked around, lightly exploring side streets and the
few open stores. A few minutes before 10:00, Abboud showed up in his little red
car and we started seeing and learning.
Quick tip #2 (#1 is above about transportation): Try to visit Palestinian cities on a day
other than Friday, it’s Islam’s holy day of the week and businesses were
closed. Unfortunately, our (and the tour company, Hantourism’s, which = very
solid, definitely recommend) schedule dictated the only day we could go.
Abboud brought us to a downtown
Hebron hostel where he treated us to tea, coffee, and a brief history of
Palestine and then of Hebron in further detail. Interestingly enough, in the Oslo
Accords that delineated land in the West Bank as areas A, B, and C, they had
trouble with Hebron and left it out of the agreements altogether.
*For quick reference, Palestinian
authorities govern Area A (the Palestinian cities) supposedly completely
(because though restricted in the Oslo Accords previously, since 2002, Israel has
decided they can enter and patrol as they see fit), Israeli and Palestinian
authorities allegedly co-govern Area B (Palestinians oversee civil law but
there’s joint security control with Israel), and Israelis control Area C (which
is Palestinian land on which they cannot build and is constantly being “bought”
– read: confiscated – for the purpose of building settlements). Hebron,
however, has settlements in the heart of its old city, presenting the secretive Oslo clan with a bit of an
issue. Unable to reassign part of this Palestinian city as Area B or C, in the late 90s, the Hebron Protocol divided the Old City
of Hebron into H1 and H2. All shops owned by Palestinians were forcibly closed
in the Old City that fell into H2 without compensation. Even some ground floor
level shops in H1 were closed because the upper floors were chosen for Israeli
settlements. The main market of the Old City, too, closed, as it happened to
find itself behind H2’s own iron curtain. The occupation also relegated the Old
City’s main road of commerce and way to reach the mosque to a pedestrian
walkway, but only for Palestinians; don’t worry, the Settlers can still drive
it. Hebron is the West Bank’s largest city. There are ~850 Jewish settlers and,
according to Abboud, around 2,000+ Israeli soldiers who patrol H2 and the area
surrounding the Israeli-controlled Old City, to “keep settlers safe.” Not a bad
per capita ratio for the settlers, who are also all allowed to carry guns, by
the by, just in case someone who doesn’t look like them gives them the spooks.
**Another interesting piece of
info to note is that Abboud asked my friend to remove his Star of David
necklace. “Not for me,” Abboud said, “but because if a soldier sees that, they
will take you and bring you back to Israel because it is forbidden for Jews to
be here.” No, I didn’t record the sound bite for a perfectly dictated quote,
but that’s the gist (always thought that word was spelled with a j). It is illegal,
in the name of peace, for Israelis to go to any Area A. There are giant red
signs on the roads leading into any Area A that in English read: “This Road
Leads To Area ‘A’ Under The Palestinian Authority The Entrance For Israeli
Citizens Is Forbidden, Dangerous To Your Lives And Is Against The Israeli Law.” It's a little blurry, but here's the sign seen on our way into Hebron:
We’ll come back to this sign because it’s incredibly important to the situation at hand.
Ok, onto the tour (jeez Than, pick
up the pace). After some tea, we headed towards the Old City, passing checkpoints,
walled-up former markets and passageways, and closed shops (one side of the
street’s stores were closed because it was Friday in observance of the holy
day, the other’s due to the occupation and settlements above). Abboud pointed out the security
cameras, the watchtowers, the rooftop soldiers, and most dishearteningly, the
metal fence built above the new main road to the Old City accessible for
Palestinians. When I saw the fence overhead, I absolutely thought it was built
by the Settlers to stop any potential street-born attacks on their newly built
homes perched above. I was wrong. Palestinians built the fence to shield
themselves from the trash and filth dropped from above. Abboud and one or two
shop owners even claimed that liquids poured from above, as well, not excluding
urine. The creation of H1/H2 all but strangled the Palestinian economy in the
Old City of Hebron, forcing many into other parts in the surrounding area.
“Boycott Israel” and “Existence is
Resistance” art greeted us at the now fenced-up, barbed-wired, and concrete-blocked former
entrance to the Old City’s main street via the main road.
Things were bleak, to say the
least.
We walked to and spent some extra
time in two places of pain. One was the Old Jewish hospital, which in 1929 was
stormed by Muslim terrorists who murdered almost 70 Jews after hearing rumors that Jews planned to take control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The prevailing story, as Abboud tells it, points to the British as the rumors origin. He spoke of the
attack with remorse and disgust. By this point, he’s made it abundantly clear that
he doesn’t take the side of anyone who is willing to take another’s life. Also that the word "terrorist" shouldn't be reserved for one side of this fight (YUP!). That
horrific act ended the Jewish presence in Hebron. That is until Settlers
decided on the Jewish Hospital's buidling for their new settlement, on the upper floors above
Palestinian shops.
Now, it serves as home to settlers and new rooftops for soldiers to patrol.
The second place was the Ibrahimi
Mosque, which is known as the Cave of the Patriarchs. In 1994, a Jewish
terrorist passed through the metal detectors at the Israeli-attended security
checkpoint at the mosque’s entrance unimpeded, the same security checkpoint used for
Palestinians, with a machine gun (ignorance, willful ignorance, incompetence,
or encouragement?) and killed 28 Palestinian Muslims as they knelt in prayer,
injuring 125 others. 30 people were killed that day in the mosque, including
the Jewish terrorist, but also including the man who stopped the terrorist from
continuing his slaughter, who was killed by Israeli security when they finally
entered the mosque. The mosque subsequently closed for 6 months and upon its
reopening, had some previously undiscussed and unbeknownst modifications. Without warning, a Jewish synagogue now
occupied half of the mosque to be more inclusive to everyone who
believes the place holy. Since they cared about being respectful and inclusive,
Israeli architects designated two different entrances for the now separated
holy place. The former entrance to the mosque serves now as the entrance to the
synagogue and its former exit walkway now functions as the Palestinian entrance.
Right outside the mosque is a
Palestinian neighborhood in the Old City separated from the Ibrhahimi Mosque
complex by a green fence. To get to and from the Mosque and the neighborhood,
there’s a singular electric, Israeli-controlled door (the neighborhood’s
access to the city, through this door, can be allowed or prohibited with the
touch of a button and on a whim). About 100 yards of road separate the neighborhood from
the mosque. However, to get to the fence's door, Palestinians must walk the other way, around a set
of buildings about a ¼ mile out of the way because of an Israeli-controlled bus stop was placed right there on that road in between. Think of H2’s property line as a formerly gerrymandered congressional district in Pennsylvania …
Here’s a map for reference. H2 is
in pink, settlements are in blue, and H1 is the rest:
These last two examples just
scratch the surface of the nonsensicalness of the living situation
Palestinian’s face everyday.
But people smiled at us and said
hello. Shopkeepers greeted us warmly, open to speaking with us like old
friends. For our benefit, a local potter even left the keys to his shop with Abboud
while he went to pray so we could go sit and drink coffee (I DRANK COFFEE ON
THIS TRIP. WHAAAA? … it’s still gross, though). Hospitality runs very, very
deep and is taken incredibly seriously here, but more on hospitality in my next
post on Dheisheh.
To finish our Old City tour,
Abboud directed us to the road through the settlements, the easiest way from the
Old City to downtown. He only showed us the way because he wasn’t allowed to walk on the
road. And because he’s a wonderful tour guide and simply a Palestinian citizen
of Hebron, knew to make a contingency plan should a “clash” break out.
What we saw wasn’t a big clash,
two soldiers perched on a rooftop responded to three to five thrown rocks by
shooting three to five tear gas canisters. Abboud knew some of the press
members readied nearby so we chatted with them for a little. They concluded
with “Have a nice day!” the sarcasm of which seemed a bit trite, but certainly
makes sense considering.
Abboud’s main argument against the
occupation is simple: If Israelis aren’t allowed to visit and interact with
Palestinians and vice versa, and each side is fed propaganda of the others’ alleged
threat to their safety, how can there be peace? How can they know “their enemy?” How does
adding checkpoints and restricting movement in one’s native city promote peace?
How does segregation bring people together?
Even going to Jordan evoked
questions of personal safety from Israelis. I didn’t tell very many people
about my plans for this trip. People are very nervous about Palestinians
because the media are really good at keeping themselves in business. The BRS
(big red sign) leading into Area A I mentioned before furthers the “us versus
them” narrative, that interacting with Palestinians on their turf, or rather
what’s left of it, is life-threatening.
When people ask me whether or not
I want to stay here and I respond in the negative, usually citing my disdain
for an all-too pervasive apathy/encouragement towards oppressive behavior as
gently/agreeably as I can muster, saying I want to return to the States, they comment on America’s issues and how it’s
not much better there. First of all, terrible argument to say that one bad
situation is acceptable because it’s similar to another bad situation. Neither
is acceptable. It’s 2018 and we know better. I’ve said it a thousand times this year, how much I hate the misplaced
obligatory feelings of so many people towards Israel because of their
connection to Judaism. I’m not touching the idea of whether or not the country
should exist or not. It exists now, it’s here, and it is here in the name of my
religion, but it is not acceptable in its current state. My problem is in the active bastardization of Jewish values by Jews
in the name of preserving Judaism. Jews love to quote Rabbi Hillel’s famous
words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But the quote doesn’t stop
there. The next line reads: “If I am not for others, what am I?” There’s a
third sentence: “And if not now, when?” I feel strongly that when too many Jews
regard Israel, they wholeheartedly embrace the first and third sentences and completely forget
the second, or rather, severely limit their scope of its inclusion.
Bottom line, though, however you
feel about this country, stop calling it a democracy. It’s not. Call it an
ethnocracy. Case and point: The Jewish State Bill. Regardless of whether or not it will move further in the Israeli
government, it passed the first of three rounds in
the Knesset and has the full support of Trump’s BFF Netanyapoo (lolz poop joke).
It unequivocally states support that Jewish law should always supersede civil law if
the two are ever in contention. Democracy at its finest? … No.
Abboud’s thoughts are very f’in
valid and true. It’s infuriating, actually.
But we haven’t even gotten to the
best part of the trip.
… stay tuned for the next blog post!
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