Last year Sis and I attended a small gathering in Bethlehem where a Newsweek correspondent was touting his book on the siege of the Nativity Church. For the life of me I can't remember his name; and I really don't have an inclination to look it up. Perhaps that's because of the following:
Once done with his presentation which included readings from the account in order to demonstrate how exquisitely balanced it was. I introduced my self. After explaining my long expired mainstream journalist background, I eagerly offered to escort him about Hebron so that he could see what the latest effects the occupation was having there -- especially in the Israeli army controlled neighborhoods adjacent to Shuhada street and the four inner city settlements built near to or along it. He thanked me and said, "That's not really the kind of story we're interested in. I doubt that I'll get back down to Hebron unless the next suicide bomber comes from there." So I'll have to hope all of you reading this report will help spread the word about what has been happening there instead. Like what's been happening at Tel Rumeida.
Tel Rumeida is the small settlement established atop a ridge overlooking Hebron's Old City and the three other ultra-orthodox ultra nationalist inner city settlements of Beit Hadassah, Beit Romano, and Avraham Avinu. The handful of settlers (eight families comprised of approximately thirty souls) living in Beit Rumeida are among the most violently vicious of the four hundred to five hundred people comprising the population of all four settlements. For at least two decades now Tel Rumeida's bullying settler ideologues (and that includes their rock throwing children) have been menacing -- often injuriously -- their Palestinian neighbors in order to coerce them to flee their homes and way of life there.
A series of court challenges some of which were jettisoned by the military for security reasons has seen the settlement grow from one tiny caravan (mobile-like home) about twenty years ago to seven double decked caravans and a brand spanking new apartment building. This expansion has taken place despite the fact that the tiny population has remained constant for most of the twenty years. There is much more space available in the caravan/apartment building settlement than has ever been used. In addition -- and always with the military's eventual acquiescence -- they have over run and taken over one of the Palestinian homes directly adjacent.
Twenty years of this constant hell means that many of the Palestinians living in the frightening shadow of Tel Rumeida have known no other kind of existence. Twenty years ago there were about eighty inhabited Palestinian homes there. In that time about thirty exhausted families have left their homes for the safer confines of housing elsewhere in Hebron. Some of those homes from which families fled but did not give up ownership have nevertheless been taken over by the settlers with the approval of the military. Meanwhile fifty other families are still hanging on. Incredible courage and unshakeable principles are rooting them to the spot.
For several months now these evil doers (ah there, President Bush!) have been revving up their perpetual violent campaign of menace against the Palestinians still grimly hanging on. Because of the increased ferocity, CPT (in addition to its accompaniment work) and other human rights groups have in turn stepped up their attempts to get the worsening story out through a variety of alternative communications outlets, especially the internet. The reason, of course, is because much of the professional mass circulation international press has been ignoring the story. Repeated invitations, requests, entreaties to come on down to Hebron have been repetitively ignored. So out of the glare of main stream scrutiny the menace to Palestinian children, women, and men of all ages is non-stop.
Non stop while settlers harass primary school age girls on their way to or from the girls' school situated directly across from Beit Hadassah on a bluff overlooking Shuhada Street,. Too often the girls and their teachers have been obliged to run a gauntlet of screaming, spitting, shoving, hitting even kicking settlers (including their children) whose aim seems to be to terrorize the girls into giving up, going home and dropping out.
The settlers clearly have designs on the school building and all the surrounding homes. That's why for several years CPT at the beginning of the school day and then at the end posted a couple of CPTers in front of Beit Hadassah in order to at the very least try to get between the menacing settlers and the frightened kids (and their angry frustrated teachers) as they tried to pass by. Then starting a couple of years ago that began to put a strain on CPT woman and man power because our team was also accompanying kids to school at the other end of Shuhada Street. So TIPH (Temporary International Presence Hebron) agreed to post two of their official observers there in our place. Later TIPH was joined by EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine Israel) volunteers. (EAPPI is a World Council of Churches humanitarian endeavor.) The hope, of course, for this kind of regular presence is that it will discourage settler harassment. No such luck. The settlers are clearly determined to keep at it.
Non stop also are the settlers frequent invasions of neighboring Palestinian gardens and orchards. After cutting through fences, forcing open gates, or hopping over walls, they cut down fruit bearing and shade trees, trash garden plots, throw dead brush and branches onto the walkways leading up to Palestinian houses, and hurl rocks, pieces of cement, old liquor and wine bottle, etc at the dwellings -- and those living in them -- at all hours of the day and night. Long ago the Palestinians were forbidden to drive their cars up to their houses. The street closest to them early on was reserved for settler and military vehicles only. Instead the Palestinians must park a very long distance away. So every kind of necessity must be carried in by hand.
And finally non-stop while a military contingent of about one hundred soldiers situated in an outpost cheek by jowl to Tel Rumeida and the Palestinian homes directly adjoining is invariably slow to react to settler intrusions. Soldiers usually are content to hope the situation won't get out of hand too much. They try to gauge when a frightening incident may be about to have run its course so that it will be easier for them to move in and try to persuade settler rampagers that enough is enough. The operative word is "try." The military is not permitted to lay restraining hands on settlers. Israeli police can, so perhaps that is why they are usually the last to show when called to the scene of an incident.
Now the military has announced its intention to build a road down from Tel Rumeida through Palestinian gardens, orchards, and a Muslim cemetery to Shuhada Street below, to intersect between Beit Romano and the old produce market at Avraham Avinu. (Palestinians were banished from that market years ago.) The purpose is to provide a convenient, faster more direct route to the inner city settlements, the synagogue carved out of the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994 at the other end of Shuhada Street, and the nearby settlements of Kiryat Arba and Harsina. This new road will complete the encirclement of the remaining fifty families with settler only roads and streets which will greatly increase the families' already excruciating isolation. The order authorizing the road is being challenged in an Israeli court. So in retaliation for such nervy resistance Tel Rumeida's settlers have stepped up every kind violence that was described above.
In response to the order and the ratcheting up violence, Palestinian organizers along with Israeli colleagues, CPT and other internationals on Saturday May 21st planned to embark on a series of "visitations" to beleaguered Palestinian families who would tell their stories and point out the kinds of damage their property has suffered over the years. About sixty Israeli anti-occupation activists planned to take part and then do their best to carry the Palestinian's message over the Green Line into Israel. But when Israeli authorities learned of what was being planned they turned away about half of the Israeli contingent before they could even reach Hebron, and they arrested thirty two who did make it in. However, most internationals did get through as well as a television crew from Al-Jazeera. No other mainstream journalists (except three from Sweden but who also were turned back) responded to the invitation to take part and learn first hand what has been going on here for more than a generation.
They missed quite a story. From where I was standing when the rocks and bottles started flying our way, I think it compared quite easily to any one of the terrible incidents during Krystal Nacht (Night of the broken glass) back in 1938. Only this incident took place in the afternoon.
(To be continued)