A small group of children stand behind the fence in the early
morning. They are waiting for the gate to be unlocked. In their hands
are empty plastic jugs their mothers have given them to fill for the
day’s cooking needs. The gate is supposed to be unlocked every day at 6
a.m. But this morning, the soldiers haven’t come to open it yet. Maybe
it’ll stay locked for an hour longer. Maybe it will stay locked all day.
On the other side of the fence, Israeli buses, setters’ cars,
military jeeps and Israeli settlers on foot pass with ease. Soldiers
stand guard to ensure that no Palestinian, or even a Muslim visitor from
another country, will set foot on the street.
Around 50 Palestinian families live behind this fence. It has been
over three months now that the Salayma and Gheith neighborhoods of
Hebron have been imprisoned. The children play in the small space
between the houses and the fence. Wheelchair-bound individuals require
assistance to get through the gate. Even while the gate is unlocked
during the day, a loud buzzer sounds each time it is opened.
There is no other way to say it: These families have been locked inside a ghetto.
It wasn’t always so, but throughout the past years it’s been getting
worse and worse. On the other side of the fence is the Ibrahimi mosque.
In 1994, following the massacre in the mosque of 29 praying Palestinians
by a settler from Brooklyn, it was divided in two to create a synagogue
for settlers and their guests. Since then, a policy of segregation has
taken hold, with increasing restrictions imposed each year on the
Palestinian worshippers and residents.
The lawn outside the mosque, where I spent my childhood playing
soccer, is now off limits to Palestinians. In 2012, the Israeli military
installed a fence on the road leading up to the mosque. Two-thirds of
the road, on the left side of the fence, are for Israeli settlers to
walk and drive on. The other side, the one -third of the road, on the
right with the broken pavement, is for Palestinian use.
This past June this fence was extended to enclose the Palestinian
neighborhoods entirely. A gate for entry and exit was installed. It is
locked shut from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. every night. Soldiers also lock it at
whim.
We didn’t always live behind fences, getting locked up at night like
animals. Before the 1994 massacre that divided Hebron, we had bustling
marketplaces. We were a major market for gold, glass, ceramics and
camels.
During the Ottoman period, from the 1500s until the 1900s,
Palestinians and Jews in Hebron lived as peaceful neighbors, sharing
marketplaces and hospitals. But starting in the late 19th century, Jews
from Europe began to come in larger numbers to Palestine with a
nationalist political agenda: They wanted to change the identity and
population of the land from Palestinian to Jewish. This agenda, that
sought to erase us from the map, went a long way toward ending the
peace.
In 1929, rumors began to circulate of a Jewish plot to take over the
al-Aqsa mosque. Riots broke out in Jerusalem and both Jews and
Palestinians lost their lives. Word got out that the Hagana, the Jewish
militia, was planning to march on Hebron. Palestinian mobs formed and
carried out a massacre against Hebron’s small Jewish quarter. Between 65
and 68 Jews were brutally killed.
It was a horrific massacre, one that we must not negate or minimize.
Without negating the horror of that day, it’s necessary to point out
that it was only a minority of Hebronites who took part in the riots.
The majority instead hid their Jewish neighbors, providing them with a
safe haven from the violence outside.
After the tragedy of 1929, the surviving Jewish community was
evacuated from Hebron by the British against their wishes. But they
wrote a book about the events. In it are recorded the names of the Jews
who survived and each of the Palestinian families who gave them
protection.
Many Palestinian families in Hebron today remain close to the Jewish
Hebronite families they saved. This is the true nature of the
relationship that existed for Jews and Muslims for centuries in Hebron
and throughout Palestine. And it is a relationship that can return -–
but only when the nationalist agenda Israel pursues stops depending on
locking us up and keeping us in ghettos, erasing our own
self-determination and freedom.
For these ghettos are not about security; they are part and parcel of
the nationalist agenda that seeks to erase us from this land. And they
are expanding. The Salayma and Gheith neighborhoods are not the only
areas in Hebron where Palestinians are facing increasing imprisonment.
This summer, two new checkpoints were installed in the Tel Rumeida
neighborhood, the most ancient section of Hebron, which dates back to
the Canaanite period. There are now no entrances to Tel Rumeida that do
not require Palestinians to walk through a turnstile and a metal
detector and have Israeli soldiers check their identification at
gunpoint.
Last month, while passing through a checkpoint to reach his house, my
friend Noor had a soldier cock his gun and point it at his 4-year-old
son. Noor lost his calm and screamed at the soldier not to kill a child.
He was promptly arrested, charged with impeding the work of the
military, and ordered to pay a 3,000 shekel ($850) fine.
Imprisoning us inside our own neighborhoods is part of the settlers’
plan of “Jewish return” to occupied Hebron. (Where are the
internationally enshrined rights of Palestinians to return to their
homes and lands they were forced out of in 1948, across all of historic
Palestine?) Last week, Netanyahu gave reassurance to these illegal
settlers. “We’re here to stay,” he said. Similarly, Defense Minister
Avigdor Lieberman granted Hebron settlers their own municipality and
official status as a settlement.
On the other side of the fence, we are being locked up at night.
Regardless, as we continue to live on the ancient lands of Hebron, we
will remain steadfast. We will remain here and resist our oppression
until we turn the tides of history in Hebron toward freedom.
It is the only way for a people who longs for self-determination as
we do. But it is also the only way back to peace between Arab and Jew.
We long for both these things, and hope to see them one day soon.
Issa Amro is a human rights defender living in Hebron.
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