Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 7-8

With American Christian Peacemakers

The Grotesque Situation in Hebron: Where Israeli Soldiers and Settlers Compete to Harass Inhabitants

By Jane Adas

The situation in Hebron is grotesque. That is what a TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) observer told members of our Christian Peacemakers Team delegation while we were watching the clashes. The Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), a violence-reduction initiative among American Mennonite and Church of the Brethren congregations and Friends Meetings, arrived in Hebron at the invitation of Mayor Mustafa Natshe in June 1995, and has maintained a presence there ever since. Among the team's many tasks, such as physically intervening to support Palestinians harassed by Israeli security forces or settlers and attempting to block the demolition of Palestinian homes, is hosting short-term delegations like ours of people who are committed to nonviolence and want to see for themselves how the "peace process" is working.

Since the Israeli redeployment last February, 80 percent of the city of 160,000 Muslims and 400 Jews has been under Palestinian control (H1) and 20 percent under Israeli control (H2). This is even less fair than it sounds. H2 is the very heart of the city, and includes the central commercial area as well as the Ibrahimi mosque, the site where, on Feb. 25, 1994, settler-soldier Dr. Baruch Goldstein opened fire on praying Muslims, killing 29 men and boys.

No Israelis live in H1, whereas 20,000 Palestinians live among 400 settlers and yeshiva students guarded by some 1,000 Israeli soldiers and police in H2.

The logic for such a division seems to have been inspired by the U.N. partition of Palestine in 1947, which gave 53 percent of Palestine to the one-third of its inhabitants who were Jewish, and 47 percent to the two- thirds who were Muslim and Christian. This meant that nearly half the population of the area assigned to the proposed Jewish state were Palestinians, while 1.3 percent of the population of the proposed Palestinian state were Jews. A similar calculus underlies the present situation of the Palestinians, who constitute about 94 percent of the population of Gaza and the West Bank, but control less than 3 percent of the land.

The settlers who live in Hebron justify their aggressive takeover of what they call formerly Jewish-owned property in the city by exploiting the 1929 massacre there of 67 Jews. The first structure the settlers took over was Beit Hadassah in 1979.

Before going to Hebron, our delegation met the granddaughter of the former owner of the building, Yonah Rochlin. Prompted by the violence surrounding the opening of the tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem and by settler opposition to the Hebron redeployment, Ms. Rochlin, who had not formerly been politically active, gave an interview last October to the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot stating that she "didn't want her son to be killed over her grandfather's tomb in Hebron."

Out of this was launched the Association of Hebron Descendants, now numbering more than 50 people who seek to disassociate themselves from the settlers now occupying their family homes. Ms. Rochlin told us that Israeli history texts glorify the 67 murdered Jews, but neglect to mention the more than 400 Hebron Jews who were hidden and protected by their Muslim neighbors. The settlers do not allow her to enter the small Beit Hadassah museum, where her grandfather is erroneously listed among the murdered.

Our 10-member delegation arrived in Hebron on Monday, June 16, the third day of the clashes. We dropped off our things at the CPT apartment located in the chicken souq of the old market in H2, then went out to monitor the confrontations. The precise areas of the clashes differ from day to day, but are easily located by following the sound of gunfire.

What we found is not what I expected. The American media routinely describe such confrontations in terms of rioting Palestinians. Accompanying photographs show keffiyeh-masked young men hurling rocks. There is no place in such pictures for non-rioting Palestinians—women, children and older people. They are presumably taking refuge from the stones and the retaliatory Israeli bullets somewhere out of sight. Reading newspaper accounts, one imagines the din of angry mobs and the clatter of a hailstorm of rocks landing everywhere, with besieged Israeli soldiers firing rubber-coated bullets in self-defense.

Instead, except for the rifle fire, the scenes were eerily quiet. That first day, wearing red baseball caps with CPT monograms, we walked up a hill past small groups of Palestinian spectators and a pair of TIPH observers to a rock-cluttered intersection. No "rioters" were in sight, only a dozen or more Israeli soldiers in full combat gear, some on roofs and others on opposite corners. They intermittently shot rubber-coated bullets individually and by the canister up empty streets.

One of the soldiers explained to us that the canisters are for "crowd control." But where was the crowd? The rocks we saw weren't very big. A soldier told us one of his comrades was injured the day before by a slingshot-launched marble that struck him in the forehead, "like David and Goliath." When we pointed out that the Palestinian was in the role of David and the soldier in that of Goliath, he thought a moment, then responded, "A Palestinian David? Never!"

Occasionally a soldier would assume a crouching position and run, finger on the trigger, across the intersection where we were standing, as though he were performing a scene from an old movie for us. One soldier, firing down a side street, nearly shot another coming out a building that presumably had been commandeered. At one point, thinking they had hit someone, a few soldiers laughed and cheered.

From time to time and with incredible composure Palestinians strolled up the street down which the soldiers were firing—a mother with two children, an older man, two young men nonchalantly lighting cigarettes as they walked toward the pointed weapons. Immediately behind soldiers firing around the corner and below soldiers on the roof, Palestinian men sat at outdoor tables, like a scene from the movie "Brazil."

Although it seemed like a game, there were casualties. After the first week alone, before Tatiana Susskind pasted copies around the Arab marketplace of her cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a pig, over a hundred Palestinians were treated for injuries from rubber bullets. Two of the soldiers told us that they are not allowed to shoot children, and are not allowed to fire the rubber-coated bullets at a distance of less than 500 meters.

But they were unable to show us how far 500 meters are. And when we later visited one of the hospitals, we saw eight-year-old Lena Rizk with five rubber bullets in her abdomen, which necessitated the removal of 30 centimeters of her intestines. Lena was walking up the street holding up her identity card when she was shot. The bullets were of both the round and cylindrical types, indicating that they came from at least two rifles. We also saw, among others, 12-year-old Mondari Natshe with a rubber bullet still lodged in his lung; 11-year-old Mohammed with rubber bullets in his shoulder; two 13-year-olds with rubber bullets in their legs; and a young man shot in the hand with live ammunition, perhaps fired by settlers. In another hospital 12-year-old Murad Jamjum was in critical condition, having been shot in the head. This is by no means complete, but calls into question the Israel Defense Force's definition of children and gives the lie to any notion that rubber bullets are humanitarian.

The TIPH personnel with whom we spoke sounded frustrated, even apologetic. As part of the Hebron Protocol, their forces have been increased to 140. They come from six countries, and most have police backgrounds. Their orders are to observe only, never to intervene, and to write objective reports of what they have seen. The reports are never published and the observers never receive any response. One of the observers assured us that they are able to be of use in cases of locating disappeared Palestinians who have been arrested or detained in unidentified prisons. All of the TIPH observers we spoke with felt that their presence is probably a deterrent to the harassment of Palestinians. But the TIPH mandate expired on Aug. 1, and there was some question about how much longer the Israelis would allow it to be extended.

Daily Harassment

Still, harassment is a daily reality and we witnessed a particularly disgusting example of it on our last evening in Hebron. When Zleikha Muhtaseb, an English teacher who accompanied us as translator on our visits to families threatened with home demolitions, was late for dinner, three of us went to look for her at her home directly opposite the Ibrahimi mosque.

We found her returning from the Israeli police station where she had been arrested and fingerprinted for disorderly conduct. Her criminal activity was objecting to a soldier who had urinated in the family's water tank on the roof of her family's home. The police advised her to wash out the large tank with soap and water. We found two TIPH personnel who came at once to investigate and write a report. In discussing the matter over tea, Ms. Muhtaseb explained that the soldiers frequently occupy the roof as a security measure. The TIPH observer shook his head saying, "We know all about these security matters." As we saw during our stay in Hebron, security Israeli-style means justifying all manner of assaults on the property, privacy, dignity and persons of unarmed Palestinians in order to protect the hostile, gun-toting settlers in their midst.