CPTnet
13 February 2007
HEBRON REFLECTION: Defying definition

by Janet Benvie

I have met many different and interesting people in my life. Nothing,
however, prepared me for meeting Yossi.

Yossi is Jewish. He calls himself "a child of Palestine" and a refugee, but
he lives in a settlement. His philosophy is simple: all people should be
allowed to live where they want. He lives where he does until he can
fulfill his dream to return to his home in Hebron. The Israeli authorities,
he says, have told him that he cannot return.

Yossi's family, like other Jewish and Muslim families, settled in Hebron in
the late fifteenth century, after they were expelled from Spain during the
inquisition. They were there during the 1929 massacre in which an Arab mob
murdered sixty-seven Jewish men, women and children. Unlike most Jewish
families, they decided to remain in Hebron, where Yossi was born in 1934.
He told us his family finally left in 1947.

It was good to meet with Yossi, see photographs and hear stories of a time
when Jews and Muslims lived together here in Hebron--unlike now, when Jewish
settlers violently harass Palestinians. It was wonderful to hear him speak
affectionately about his Muslim Palestinian neighbors from Hebron. They are
neighbors no more, but have remained in close contact. He told us that this
family saved his family during the 1929 massacre. "They are my brothers,"
he said.

He proudly showed us olive oil, a special butter and dibs (a syrup made from
grapes) that these 'neighbors' had brought him from Hebron. He sadly told
of having to meet them at a checkpoint to receive these gifts. Israeli
government restrictions mean that he cannot legally travel to their home in
Hebron and they cannot travel to his home. He said he also worries that
Palestinian extremists would "cause trouble" if he went to Hebron.

Yossi regards himself as a refugee. His dream, like that of many
Palestinian refugees, is to return to his ancestral home, to live again with
his neighbors and 'brothers.' Unlike the present Jewish settlers, he cannot
live here. Perhaps the government is concerned that a legal precedent would
be set if they allowed a Jewish Palestinian refugee to reclaim his home?
Yossi is, after all, only one of 6-8 million Palestinian refugees worldwide
whom the Israeli government does not want to return to their pre-1948 homes.