Ever since the reoccupation last month of H1, the Israeli Army has been reimposing curfew every night at 7 or 8. H1 is the portion of Hebron, which had been given over to the Palestinian Authority to rule as a result of the late 1990s Wye River Accords.
The curfews have served the obvious time immemorial purpose of theoretically keeping an occupying force out of harm's way by keeping the occupied penned up in their houses. Curfews, however, in Hebron, and elsewhere, are not leak proof. As a result as dusk ends and curfew begins, a nightly ritual takes place-the rounding up of the Shebab.
The Shebab are, strictly speaking, Palestinian teenage boys and unmarried young men, but the term is more loosely applied to any Palestinian young male who is under thirty. This is the age group, current history has demonstrated, which is and potentially is, with respect to the Israeli Army and settlers, the most lethal and, therefore, the most notorious. It is the one, which for a variety of other reasons too-including energy, strength, agility, occupation, and simply sheer youth-is most often likely to be in the streets when curfew begins and after.
For instance, young men and older boys may simply be slow in closing down the sales space where they work in Hebron's main market place-the Bab iZaweyya-simply because they hope to squeeze out a few more shekels in sales before shutting down for the night as ordered.
And there is another group, which, like the young men in the market, is made up of young men also willing to risk being in the streets as curfew begins. They are the ubiquitous taxi and Service (jitney) drivers trying to eke out a last round of fares before packing it in. And in addition to them, there are Palestinians still out in their personal cars trying to take care of last minute errands.
Right around the corner, however, from this waning activity, and about twenty five yards down a side street from the Bab iZaweyya is an Israeli Army checkpoint at an intersection, which the Army calls Tarpot Junction. It straddles the dividing line between H1 and H2, the section of the old city completely and perpetually under Israeli Army control because of the four tiny Jewish settlements of Beit Hadassah, Beit Romano, Avraham Avinu, and Tel Rumeida, which were established there in the decades following the 1967 war.
As curfew begins, the two-man Israeli Army patrol manning the check point heads into the Bab iZaweyya on a mission to round up young male stragglers driving into or through the now emptied market or those who are tardily headed home on foot. As vehicles pull into the area or a young man walks through, the car or man is ordered to stop. The roundup usually takes ten to twenty minutes or until what seems to be the nightly goal of bagging about fourteen or sixteen young men.
All-including the drivers-are herded against a nearby wall and their IDs lifted. Once the round up is completed, they are marched to the check point where again they are lined up against a wall across a small open space from the DCO (the Military's District Coordinating Officer's) shack. It's a tiny jerrybuilt guardhouse with a desk where the officer in charge can call in information he finds on the commandeered IDs to an Israeli intelligence center for checking.
Because of the potential for confrontation, Bab iZaweyya is the place where an intentional CPT early evening amble is likely to begin. The patrolling CPTers, if they haven't been diverted to some incident more pressing, will follow the detainees as they are being herded to the check point. The aim and hope is that the CPT presence will speed up the ID checking process and motivate the soldiers to let the men have water and be allowed to squat or sit on the ground, if they wish, while they wait for the results of the ID check.
Each Israeli Army patrol seems to have a specific personality. Some soldiers, at least in the presence of CPTers, will recognize the detainees humanity by allowing the acknowledging gestures described above. Others will not. Whether they do or do not often depends on the attitude of the officer in charge. In his presence they will tend to reflect it. Out of sight, they may not.
We have encountered-so far-two categories of DCO personalities: an almost "good cop bad cop" dichotomy. A Captain, who tells us his name is Marwan, which we doubt because that is a typically Palestinian name not Israeli, is very cold and surly to CPT. He doesn't like talking to us, and so simply refuses to discuss what's happening, because, he angrily explains, CPT has no right to be standing in his checkpoint and questioning him about the detainees. "You CPTs should not be here. Israel does not recognize you. Go. Leave."
After getting those assertions off his chest, he storms back into the shack. But we don't leave. Instead we slip into the shadows where Captain "Marwan" is not likely to see us when he comes back out. We are actually abetted by one of the noncoms who actually suggests we wait out of sight, apparently not minding our continuing to observe so long as it does not look as if he and is partner are letting us.
In fairness to Captain "Marwan", it does not take any longer (about an hour) to check the IDs of the detainees when he is in charge than when another officer, a Lieutenant, who calls himself, "Golan," is in charge and doing the checking. (We also have our doubts as to whether or not Golan is his real name too, because it has been confided by others that it is not.)
However, unlike Marwan, Golan talks with us, and doesn't have to be asked to let the men squat or sit down. His soldiers (often the same ones as when Marwan is in charge) even initiate giving the detainees water. Golan doesn't mind even explaining to us why there is the inevitable round up of Shebab at the beginning of curfew. "I am looking for the big fish," he says with a self satisfied grin. "This is how we catch them. I like to catch the big fish."
"Who are big fish?"
"I tell you," he says proudly. "In the spring, right here, just like now, I catch a big fish. You remember the terrorist killing of…? (He names the incident.)? Well, we know what terrorists look like. So one night just like this we catch the man who did it. Can you imagine it? This terrorist-looking guy was just walking around like those guys here. We check his ID and we catch him-the big fish. Maybe we catch another big fish tonight."
"But tonight it was already getting dark when your soldiers stopped the cars. How could they see the faces inside well enough to know whether or not they were of terrorist-looking men?"
"Never mind. We know."
"But if they look like terrorists, how come you let most of them go, after you have their IDs checked?"
"Never mind. That's how we catch them. And, I tell you, we catch them. The computer tells us if they are wanted. Then we arrest them. But we are not terrorists. So, if they are not wanted, we let them go."
A few minutes later, all the detainees are released except one.
Golan with a gleeful look on his face bounces out of the shack to tell us, "You see, this one is a big fish."
"How do you really know?
"The computer says he is wanted."
"Does it say he is a big fish?"
"Well, maybe not so big this time. We'll see. We are still checking."
A few minutes later the last of the evening's detainees is released.
"He is lucky," Golan says. "He was not a big fish tonight. Just a little Gold Fish. But maybe some night we will catch him again. And he might not be so little."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian man heads back toward the Bab iZaweyya and the car he was forced out of an hour and a half earlier. In it he finds his thoroughly frightened 11 year old son sitting in the dark-too immobilized by fear to do anything but wait uncertainly although hopefully for his father's safe return.