CPTnet
10 August 2007
HEBRON: Reflection on media coverage of Israeli security evicting settlers
in Hebron
by Kathie Uhler
The Israeli Border police, assisted by numerous other security forces,
evicted two Israeli families on 07 August from Palestinian-owned houses
where they had squatted illegally for months in a former market area of
Hebron.
Three CPTers--John Harris, John Lynes, and I--witnessed the eviction. En
route, walking along Shuhada Street that borders the market area, we saw
perhaps three dozen soldiers and a dozen settlers. As we found out later, we
were some 200 yards from the action, yet the streets were quiet. The
soldiers would not let us continue on Shuhada Street, so we veered off and
headed towards a long and arduous route that would put us on a hilltop
overlooking the market area of the Old City Hebron.
An elderly Palestinian, who introduced himself as Mohammad, greeted us and
invited us to view the scene from his rooftop. We got clear shots of dozens
of busses and other vehicles for security personnel parked near the Ibrahimi
Mosque (Cave of Machpelah). More important was our view of the epicenter of
the eviction. Blue-uniformed civil police filled a narrow underpass, and
were in the process of forcibly removing the seventeen illegal settlers of
the two families.
[Photos of what we saw may be seen at
http://www.cpt.org/gallery/Eviction-of-Israeli-settlers-from-Hebron-wholesal
e-market%2C-7-August-2007.]
Contrary to what we read in an 8 August Ha'aretz article ("30 injured, four
arrested as police evacuate families, supporters from Hebron market"), we
saw perhaps a half-dozen "protestors on rooftops" but no signs of anyone
"throwing burning tires" or throwing anything down onto the security
personnel below. We saw very few military or other personnel on Shuhada or
other streets or "hundreds of right wing activists"--those who had
"barricaded themselves inside three apartments" in the market area. I
wondered where they all disappeared to, since the police arrested only four
activists.
I am profoundly unsettled by the exaggeration of the need for security
personnel, of the numbers of such personnel reputedly present, as well as of
the numbers of activists and protestors, and of their reputed violence. What
is to be gained by all this hype?
I am more disturbed, however, by the minimizing in the Israeli and other
presses of the real violence of Israeli citizens, both settlers and security
personnel, against Palestinians and internationals, that I and other CPTers
have witnessed and endured each day, and increasingly so in recent days. Ten
masked teenaged Israelis attacked one Palestinian in the Tel Rumeida
neighborhood of Hebron on 5 August, for example. Israeli settlers beat two
international volunteers at the Palestinian house illegally occupied by
squatters in March 2007 that they named, "Beit Shalom," on 6 August while
Israeli soldiers stood and watched.
The ongoing violence of squatting in a Palestinian neighborhood is itself
another example of Israeli minimizing and supporting crimes against
humanity, justified under the banner of self-produced security needs in an
occupation that has gone bad.
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