This report is not about Palestine.
An elemental CPT undertaking in Hebron is to take the thankfully never-ending stream of requesting fact-seeking visitors from around the world on exploratory tours of its dying Old City. We do that in order to help them comprehend the extent of the harm and never ending peril to Palestinian lives and livelihood that has been taking place in the heart of old Hebron's once thriving main commercial and residential area.
The bitterly flourishing campaign of debilitation and dispossession taking place here is a microcosmic reflection of the incredible energy and dynamism of the equally flourishing macro campaign of dispossession and destruction being waged by Israel throughout the West Bank, especially in the north and central areas around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. For it is at those other locations that starting less than two years ago the "annexation" wall/fence--in one historically stupendous rush of construction--began unilaterally finessing what may well be the final push in land greedy secular and religious Zionism's massive take over and absorption into Israel of the occupied territories
Although "annexation" wall/fence building of the kind taking place in the northern and central areas of the West Bank have not yet begun in the south, the effects of the relentless house-by-house shop-by-shop expansion of the perimeter around the tiny settlements congregated in the heart of Hebron's Old City has, nevertheless, been essentially the same and equally successful.
So in reality what has been taking place here in Hebron (and elsewhere in the West Bank) has not been a "peace process," but a "piece process." A Palestinian friend of CPT's got it right when she once talked about the practice of de facto annexation masquerading as separation as "Israel taking a piece of Palestine here, a piece of Palestine there, and another piece of Palestine here again…"
Hebron's tiny settlements are located in Israeli army ruled H2, the part of the city consigned to Israel because of its concerns for the "" of the no more than four hundred and fifty settlers living there. But the process of gradual and continual confiscation of Palestinian Old City homes and shop space adjacent to the settlements even before Oslo II, had been, to say the least, provocative. Spates of settler rampages through adjoining Palestinian neighborhoods inevitability triggered violent protest and retaliation followed by Israeli military counter reaction, which included placing all of H2 under long curfews in order "protect the Arabs from the settlers…" No such would-be pacifying measure has ever been imposed on settlers.
The pace of Israeli retaliatory confiscation actually quickened and has become steadily more debilitating since the second uprising began At any one time there are two to three thousand Israeli soldiers, border, and local police separating the settlers from their approximately twenty thousand Palestinians neighbors, who are still trying to hang on there. Meanwhile the settlers protected by the Israeli military and police are constantly finding new ways to run those Palestinian off and expand their domain.
In order to visualize the catastrophic effects of "piece processing" in Hebron, CPT's tours often begin in the city's Manara section, about a mile north of the settlements. We start there in order to contrast what the fact finders will see and hear there with what they will later encounter around the settlements in the Old City. Manara is in H1: the part of the city granted by Oslo II in 1997 to the Palestinian National Authority but which was reoccupied by Israel two summers ago. About one hundred and twenty thousand Palestinians live there.
While making our way through the busy noisy outdoor market clogging Manara's network of H1 feeder streets, we have to shout to be heard over the perpetual din of shoppers packing the sidewalks, boisterous shop keepers yelling out their wares, as well as the inevitable and continual accompanying obbligato of automobile horns being pounded impatiently by frustrated drivers of taxis, jitneys, buses, private automobiles, and trucks. All are trying to snake their way through the crowd of pedestrians also vying for much of the same piece of the street that the several kinds of motorists are trying to penetrate.
In about ten minutes we reach Bab iZaweyya, another major crossroads, but half the distance to the Old City and, which until late December of 2002, was as hectically busy as Manara is these days. Back then Manara was just another unclogged shopping neighborhood.
But now the Bab iZaweyya junction is empty and relatively noise free. That's because business in the shops lining the streets around that intersection has declined precipitously. That is the result of the Israeli Army deciding fourteen months ago to unilaterally push the post Oslo II border between H1 and H2 a quarter of mile into H1 territory, stopping at a line just north of Bab iZaweyya.
As a result, touring visitors crossing the boundary into defacto H2, which is marked by large thigh-high heavy cement cubes blocking the streets, encounter an urban commercial landscape that is increasingly desolate and deserted. Pedestrian traffic drops to a trickle. Vehicles, except those belonging to the Israeli military or Israeli police, are not allowed. There is no problem being heard even if one whispers. Shopkeepers can be seen standing listlessly in front of their stores waiting for business that continues to dwindle or simply never comes at all any more.
The noise of human activity drops even further, as the group moves through a major Israeli Army checkpoint called Beit Romano--adjacent to a several stories high orthodox settler yeshiva, which looms over that end of the Old City. Then we walk through a small plaza surrounded on three sides by Palestinian shops, none of which are open. The little plaza marks the northern entrance to the Old City's once thriving residential and market area.
Just two years ago this tiny piece of Palestinian real estate was still full of vigorous sights and sounds of life because most of its twenty or so shops were still open for business. Now the plaza is gritty, dusty, trash-strewn, and abandoned. The apartments above the shops are empty, as are most of the shops and many of the apartments that the visitors will pass by during the rest of their quarter of a mile trek through the Old City. Most have been deserted for the same reason: rampaging settler action and subsequent military indifference to the shopkeepers' and residents' resultant plight.
The roof of the Old City building in which the CPT apartment is located is a very good spot to provide visitors with a panoramic view of the entire intensely troubled and slowly dying area. I usually start by facing visitors north where, among other sites, they can look down and into a small Israeli Army outpost about a block away. It is located in what was once Hebron's busy central bus station. Because of the outpost, it is a no-no to take pictures facing in that direction.
To emphasize the prohibition I point out two small Israeli military roof top outposts situated just across the street from us at either end of a row of abandoned apartment buildings. We know the soldiers stationed there are keeping an eye on our comings and goings because if someone does take a picture facing the army outpost, very often by the time that person has walked down the steps leading from the apartment into the street, soldiers are waiting outside poised to confiscate his or her film or memory card.
No matter what direction one looks from the roof, a striking fact is the lifelessness of the Old City. One can see as well as sense a pervasive gloom and malaise, especially when compared to the energy and vitality experienced moments ago just a few blocks to the north in Manara.
The muffled situation along the street beneath the CPT apartment is typical of all the Palestinian shopping streets in the Old City. A once busy poultry market, where the sounds of cackling geese and crowing roosters was just part of the din created by chattering shoppers and shopkeepers, is deserted most of the time now.
Until early last year, Palestinians still shopped there, as did CPT. But not any more. The steel doors to the several shops, which also serve as coops for the flocks of poultry or pens for the occasional rabbit being readied for market there, are rarely open these days. And when they are, it is only so the proprietors can tend to the animals and birds inside or bring in replacements for those that are removed and transported to the one or two shops still open for business elsewhere in the Old City or to stores much further away in H1.
Last year a handful of Palestinian families still lived in apartments above the shops. Today, except for CPT, every family has fled.
Settlers-only Shuhada Street just to the west of the CPT apartment building is empty most of the time: except for an occasional car, military or police vehicle, or Israeli bus that is 1) ending its regular run down from Jerusalem's central bus station or 2) in the process of starting back.
Looking north again, a settler or two may be seen now and then walking up Shuhada Street toward or down from the two tiny settlements of Tel Rumeida or Beit Hadassah. The only Palestinians allowed to walk it are the relative few who have tenaciously hung on. But to do that they must live under terribly lonely and intensely degrading circumstances. Friends and family members who live in H1 or elsewhere are not allowed to visit. Residents themselves must pass through an Israeli checkpoint every time they want to leave or return to their neighborhood; and frightening often injurious or destructive settler harassment is a constant.
Looking south toward Avraham Avinu, the last of the inner city settlements, virtually no activity can be spotted, because there is hardly any. An occasional settler car can be seen heading toward Kiryat Arba--the big settlement perched behind Hebron's eastern ridge--perhaps to shop there or to go to Jerusalem an easy half hour drive away…if you are an Israeli.
When I first came to Hebron about eighteen years ago, Hebron's main commercial area was the Old City and many of its main markets were on Shuhada Street, along which all the inner city settlements are now congregated. Back then during business hours the area was even more crowded than Manara is today, because besides local shoppers there were tourists, hundreds and hundreds of them pouring into the Old City each day as well. And, of course, there were big rumbling tourist buses competing for street space too.
So it was an even noisier and far more joyful place than any section in the city anywhere today. In fact, many of the vendors loudly hawking their wares from tabletops lining the streets in Manara these days are merchants who once conducted prosperous businesses, which they could lock up at night, in the Old City. Now they must take everything down at the end of the day, cart it away, lock it up in some nearby storeroom, and then set it all up again the next day.
Just before coming down from the roof, I ask the visitors to "listen… just listen to the sounds of the Old City, and then tell me what you hear."
After thirty seconds or so of straining to hear something, there usually is no answer, so I ask, "Well, what do you hear?"
Some of the visitors look confused or at least unsure as how to respond. Finally one will say in a hesitant almost questioning tone. "Nothing?"
"Exactly!" I say. "Now you know how to go home and begin to tell the story of Hebron's dying Old City…"