Day 1 of Solitary Confinement

So now that Isaac's moved out, my room is just me and Yazan, who's rarely around anyway.  This has started a 2 week period of solitary confinement in which I have to write a 30 page paper and study for finals.  Day 1 was today, and I realized upon waking up that I was literally locked in my room.  I think I lost my keys when we went to the Kotel for Shavuot and forgot to pick em up after the metal detector.  A guy came in this morning to mess with the power and locked the door on his way out.  The stupid Israeli locks can lock both ways, so I was essentially a prisoner in my own apartment.

I just called administration and they're sending someone now to open the door - but wow, what a great start to the last 2 weeks.

*Egypt didn't happen, by the way - I'm still determined to get there sometime!*

The Stuff You Don't Wanna Hear (But Should)

Last weekend I went on back-to-back tours Thursday and Friday morning.  Thursday we went to Hebron with Breaking the Silence, a leftist activist group, and Friday was the separation wall tour.  Both tours shined an uncomfortable spotlight on the plight of Palestinians in Israel, a story that most Israelis (and American Jews) comfortably ignore because there is virtually no possible way of reconciling what happens to the Palestinians with the lofty Israeli virtues like democracy, justice, and being a "light unto the nations".  The only way to justify what happens is by holding fast to the idea that Israel is a Jewish state, so therefore the Palestinians aren't accorded equal rights.  Still, it makes you think - how far are we willing to go?

What I'm going to say is uncomfortable and will be viewed by some as being anti-Israel; I'd like to make the disclaimer that these are simply facts presented in (I hope) an objective light.  Furthermore, I disagree that opposing Israeli policies makes you anti-Israel in the same sense that opposing Bush's Patriot Act makes you unpatriotic.  There are red lines to any democracy which we can't cross without undermining the ideals we are trying to protect, the question is where these lines lie.

Hebron (West Bank)


If you remember, I blogged about Hebron back in January when I went with Hamerkaz to see the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  The area holds a special religious significance to both Jews and Muslims, and on 10 days a year the site is open exclusively to Muslims.  On other days Jews enter through the synagogue on one side while Muslims enter through the mosque on the other side; they don't come in contact with each other.

The story of Hebron goes back to Biblical times.  Hebron is the world's oldest Jewish community, supposedly founded around 1720 BC, and is mentioned in the Bible 87 times.  Jews lived in Hebron through the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC by the Babylonians; it was the site of extensive Jewish fighting during their revolts against the Romans in 65-70 AD and during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Byzantines 132-135 AD; Jews continued living in Hebron after the city's conquest by Arabs in 638 AD, and were finally expelled by the Crusaders in 1100 AD.  However, Jews returned to Hebron following the Mamelukes' conquest in 1260.  The Ottoman's conquest of the city in 1517 included a violent pogrom with many rapes, deaths, and plundering from Jewish homes.  Surviving Jews fled to Beirut, returning to Hebron in 1533 after Jews were kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition.

The current Hebron conflict can be traced back to 1893, when the Hebron Jewish community constructed a Beit Hadassah clinic which served both Arab and Jewish residents.  On August 23, 1929, local Arabs launched a violent pogrom against the Jewish community in Hebron with the goal of exiling Jews from Hebron.  Beit Hadassah was the center of the bloody attack; neither women nor children were spared.  Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Jordanian army conquered Hebron and laid waste to the Jewish quarter, building an animal pen on the ruins of the Avraham Avinu synagogue.  In 1967, following the Six Day War, Jews returned to Hebron.  On April 4, 1968, a group of Jews checked into the Park Hotel in Hebron claiming their intent to resettle the Jewish community.

The refurbished Beit Hadassah

Deep breath - you with me?  The previous two paragraphs came shamelessly from here.  My point in sharing the extensive history of Hebron is to show how the land had been fought over for thousands of years - what's happening now is nothing new.  But when viewed in the light of modern-day law, both international and Israeli, Hebron stands out as a huge red flag.

I can tell you're getting a bit worn down so I'm simply going to bullet point the controversial stuff that's happened in Hebron since 1967:

* The Jews that checked into the Park Hotel were transferred to a nearby IDF compound, violating international law by having civilians live in military buildings.

*In May 1980, six Jews returning from Shabbat prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs were murdered in a terrorist attack.  Following the attack, PM Menachem Begin's government agreed to rebuild Beit Hadassah, as well as allow Jews to move into the old Jewish quarter.  This was the start of a trend of limiting movement and land for Palestinians in response to terrorist attacks - now, the entire city center of Hebron - once the second largest Palestinian city - is entirely deserted.  It's literally a ghost town, with doors sealed shut and Jewish stars spray painted everywhere.

Ghost town

*After the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, it was arranged that the IDF would have the sole responsibility of protecting the roughly 6500 Jews in Hebron.  The Israeli police, on the other hand, would be responsible for investigating possible violations of Israeli law by the Jewish settlers.  This set up an interesting dichotomy in which the IDF would be in direct opposition to the Israeli police.

*It was very difficult for the IDF to defend a small number of Jews in the middle of a large Arab city.  Under the Hebron Agreement, the city was divided into two areas: H-1 (under full Palestinian authority) and H-2 (under full Jewish authority).

*On Feb. 25, 1994, Hebron resident Baruch Goldstein (a Jewish settler), opened fire inside a mosque, killing 29 Muslim worshippers and injuring 125.

Goldstein is still celebrated as a martyr by Jewish settlers in Hebron today

Goldstein's grave - the inscription refers to him as a martyr

*The Israeli government requires building permits in order for Palestinians to build new homes in Hebron.  Since these permits are almost bureaucratically impossible for Palestinians to obtain, they often build anyway and then pay the heavy fine for having homes without permits after the fact.  The Israeli government reserves the right to demolish any of these illegally-constructed homes, at any point.

Arab village in foreground; red-roofed Jewish settlements in background

Because of this, there are few solid structural Arabic homes.  The tour we were on led us past a Jewish tent built on an Arab's private property; the police had been called in to tear it down but it has been rebuilt immediately afterwards.  It's a running joke that whenever US diplomats come to the region to visit, the police will tear down that tent to say they are removing settlements.

*The government provides basically nonexistent funds for basic communal services like a sewage system, schools, and public playgrounds.

A soccer field

Normal living conditions

A Playground

*Throughout the tour, we were escorted by no fewer than four police jeeps responsible for our safety.  They wouldn't let us into certain areas that the tour guide wanted to go to because it would incite violence among the Jewish settlers, who the police said would throw rocks at us.  The tour guide, a fiery leftist ex-IDF soldier who had served in Hebron, berated the police officer for violating our rights by not letting us go there.  The tour guide said, "[The police] would rather deal with us, peaceful law-abiding citizens who only want to walk around, than with the loud, violent, rock-throwing settlers".  The tour guide was detained in the middle of the tour because he wouldn't listen to the police chief's orders, and his second-in-command took over for the rest of the tour (the tour guide later joined us on the bus; this is nothing too new for him, the tour is in the middle of a Supreme Court case against the Israeli police and he wanted his army of cameramen to fully document the incident.  He's like an Israeli Michael Moore).

Confrontation, and cameras to document

*To allow Palestinians to travel throughout Hebron, they must go through a bevy of checkpoints.  These checkpoints can take multiple hours and are easily abused when the IDF soldiers stationed there become bored or get in a bad mood; they can make Palestinians wait for hours so a simple walk into town to pick up some groceries can turn into an all-day affair.

A checkpoint - past that area is H1 (under full Palestinian authority)

*Cameras are constantly monitoring the volatile city, although there have been many legal battles fought regarding whether the footage - which is intended to be used for the security of Jewish settlers - can be used as corroborating evidence when the settlers break the law.

*A Palestinian man took us into his home and told us stories of what life was like in Hebron.  One story stuck with me - his 14 year old son broke his foot and needed medical care.  Since Palestinians aren't allowed to have cars in Hebron (and there aren't any buses), he had to carry his son 3 miles to the nearest hospital.  This included a 45 minute wait at a checkpoint, where a 19-year-old IDF soldier asked him for his ID and to wait (even though he recognized him) until he called headquarters to make sure he wasn't on any lists.  After carrying his son back home, his son missed three months of school because the Palestinian man couldn't physically carry him to and from the three miles to school every day.

Telling the story

*We also heard interesting stories from the tour guide, before he was detained.  He described how on his first day of service in Hebron, he was called on to do a routine called "deterrance fire".  Since Hebron is a city with slopes all over it, it's very easy for Palestinians to shoot down and attack Jewish settlers - within the past decade, a Jewish baby has been sniped from a Palestinian from one of the windows.  It's very very difficult for the IDF to find the person responsible for these attacks, since they come out of the entire Arab neighborhood.  Deterrance firing is the army's response to such attacks.

There are certain buildings in the Arab neighborhoods that are empty and marked as targets.  During deterrance firing, the IDF shoots grenades at the buildings to cause considerable damage, and serve as a warning to Palestinians.  There are two problems with this:

1) The grenade launcher is notoriously inaccurate.  During training drills in the desert with the weapon, our tour guide described how standard protocol was to be at least 1.5 miles away from the target.  An "accurate" grenade launcher will hit the target on the fourth or fifth try.  The first 3 are almost certainly misses, and that's where adjustments in firing angle are made.  So, to fire at one abandoned building - which is next to Palestinian homes, schools, and hospitals - is extremely dangerous and likely to produce collateral damage.

2) The weapon fires very fast.  If the trigger is held down for one second, dozens of grenades shoot out.  This means it is very hard to be surgical and precise.

I think it's very likely that the "deterrence firing" could end up as "encouraging firing", if it hits homes or schools and sparks violent counterattacks among Palestinians.  This was only used during the Second Intifada, but it's still pretty recent in the memories of Palestinians and our tour guide.

Hebron is a very complicated place, and for all intents and purposes Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens.  But not all of them (only a small minority are) responsible for violent attacks on Jewish settlers - again, there are over 160,000 Palestinians in Hebron.  Furthermore, Jewish settlers are guilty, too - they frequently clash with police forces and religious Jewish mothers have been known to place their babies in front of army Jeeps to protest police activity.  For only 6,600 Jews, a huge portion of Israel's police force and the IDF are allocated to help them live peacefully, making life significantly more difficult for the 160,000 Palestinians.  There are a lot of reasons why this occurs - there is still the belief that Israel is the biblical land of the Jews, and therefore Hebron needs to be occupied - as well as the practical fact that religious Jews control much of Israel's policies - in fact, the Jewish settlers in Hebron even sent a letter to the police advising them "how they should do their jobs" - and most of their recommendations were enacted.  They hold a lot of political clout.

One thing's for sure - nothing is going to change unless both sides can start viewing the other as human, and adequate living conditions and education systems are put in place that encourage forward, progressive thinking rather than instigating old feuds.

Separation Wall (East Jerusalem)

Hebron took a lot longer than I thought, and I don't have pictures from this tour, but we went right up to the wall and touched it and talked about why it was built.  A lot of people seem to think the wall was built as a security measure - they point to the huge decline in suicide bombings in Jerusalem after the wall was built as evidence - but what most people miss is the fact that the decline in suicide attacks happened when the wall was only 50% built!  Suicide bombers aren't like flies that can't find the open window - nothing was physically preventing them from walking into Jerusalem to blow themselves up when the wall wasn't fully built.  Even now, there are ways around the wall.  The main reason the wall was built was for SEPARATION - by bottlenecking the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem, the entire Palestinian movement lost its central organizer.  It may be possible to sneak across the wall now, but to sneak across with a truckload of goods to sell is virtually impossible.  Economic isolation, as well as communal isolation, cut off the head of the Palestinian movement.

Communal isolation

Another reason the suicide attacks stopped is that the Palestinians realized that the attacks, which were meant to show the Israeli government that holding occupied territories wouldn't be worth it, were met with huge counterattacks by the Israeli army that destroyed smuggling tunnels, pipelines, and generally did a lot of damage to the Palestinian side.  Furthermore, they were fast losing international support.  Those were the main reasons the attacks slowed down - they were always with an end in mind, and when they realized the attacks weren't reaching that end, they stopped.

All in all, it was a very interesting few days and I'm glad I finally had a chance to write about it.  Hard to believe there's officially less than a month left.

Daniel