By the middle of the week leading up to the big annual Fall Friday night and all day Saturday settler Sabbath celebration in Hebron, featuring the reading of the portion of the Torah (Gen. 23), which tells the story of Abraham obtaining a piece of land there from a certain Hittite inhabitant, the Army and the Border Police appeared to be tensing up, as well as gearing up, for trouble.
An influx of 10,000 religious and secular ultra nationalist Orthodox Jews, and fellow travelers, from not only Israel but elsewhere was being predicted by their sources. So, from about Wednesday on, Israeli military and police forces began to restrict Palestinian activity, by imposing lengthening curfews and launching more frequent wary guns-at-the-ready patrols into the Old City.
That's how Palestinians are protected by the Military authorities from settler harassment and attacks. Arabs are ordered into their homes and told to stay there.
On Friday, November 2nd, because it was the Muslim holy day, there was, of course, no school. Nevertheless curfew was imposed early and not lifted. So we wondered what the situation would be like at the schools Saturday morning, when they would reopen and the number of settlers and their supporters who would supposedly be flocking into the area was likely to be the most concentrated. At 7:15 AM when CPTers Kristin Anderson, Mary Yoder, and I, and also three members of a visiting Quaker fact finding delegation, approached the four schools we have been most concerned about this school year, we found out in a hurry.
As we walked down the hill from the check point, we could see hundreds of boys and girls in the street bordering the three schools for boys milling about in swirling eddies of excited yet hesitant youthful humanity. A knot of worried yet clearly furious male teachers was congregated helplessly in front of one of the schools.
By now the gates to all three should have been wide open with kids streaming into school yards from every direction. But all three were shut and no one was getting into the two on either side of Marief School for Boys. But at that one, even though no one was being let in, neither did it look as if those already in the school yard were trying to get out. Although from a distance we could see the frazzled Headmaster and some of his equally frazzled staff trying to shoo students huddling inside the gate out through it and into the street, the apprehensive kids weren't budging.
In the meantime that cacophonous crush of youngsters outside the gates was swelling ever more loudly because of arriving school bound youngsters streaming noisily into the area from adjoining streets. Suddenly a couple of Border Police Jeeps, their top lights flashing, roared unswerving from around a corner right down the center of the street, scattering all of us in every direction like scampering rabbits or startled chickens.
When we finally made it to the Marief Boys School gate, we found not only the sputtering Headmaster but also the equally distressed Headmaster of Hebron Basic Boys School. He told us that at about 6:45, as his kids were beginning to show up at his gate, Border Police showed up also and told him that curfew was on and that he should not unlock the gate. He was ordered instead to start sending all children home.
But easier said than done.
The furious Headmaster told us that a few minutes later other policemen in other Jeeps invaded the area, shooting off a couple of rounds of tear gas right into the throng of now venueless students. Not being sure where the next attack would come from, the kids were literally thrashing about uncertainly after each salvo-trapped in the roadway by doubt as to how to get away-much like sail boats caught in "irons."
Those provocative acts, the CPTers could see-now that they were in the thick of the still evolving episode-was exacerbating the children's' fear and uncertainty as to just what they could do, as opposed to what the Israelis were saying they should do: a typical Catch 22 for the young Palestinians and their hapless teachers. The menacing Jeeps stirring up dust as they sped by, their loud speakers blaring terse orders to everyone to go home and stay there, only served to keep pupils still stuck in the Marief school yard cringing behind its wall for safety-afraid to venture out-while kids already on the outside were obliged to scramble up side streets or into doorways for protection from the next tear gas attacks, which seemed almost certain to come.
And they did at about 7:30, when the crush of school kids being frantically urged out of the area by their teachers was encountering a reverse wave of still arriving youngsters-unaware of what had been happening. Suddenly a Jeep careened from around a corner, sped through the scrambling swirls of excitable boys and worried girls clear to the other end of the long block, but then suddenly came to a sliding stop.
Shrieking kids, already scampering to get out of the way, and sensing what was about to happen next, because of years of similar never ending always unsettling experiences, started running even harder to stay clear. Inevitably a tear gas canister was sent flying their way. It clattered onto the street near a group of quickly scattering children: its white sinuous snakelike smoke issuing forth in a steady ominously hissing stream, but which then quickly plumed into a wispy cloud enveloping several youngsters who quickly dashed out of the foggy pall holding their hands to their noses as they ran.
Then two more canisters were fired from the opposite direction. As one plopped out of the sky, its contents already spewing forth-this time like a fleecy sausage-one youngster dashing from upwind snatched up a canister and threw it clear of the kids into whose midst it had fallen…back towards the Jeep.
Good try.
But it landed closer to me, who then proceeded impulsively to do one of the dumbest things I've done in a long time. Being upwind, I moved serenely and confidently closer to the canister to get a really neat close up with my digital camera.
But then the wind shifted.
Meanwhile Kristin Anderson, looking to see where everyone had rushed to in order to get out of the way, got too close to the advancing cloud and had her own uncomfortable wheezing, coughing, tear streaming moments to work through.
Recovering, some of the CPTers regrouped outside the Marief School gate where the near frantic headmaster asked them to help shepherd his students out of the school yard. As Anderson, and Yoder, the headmaster, and other teachers were leading a large contingent of kids from it and into the street, another speeding Jeep raced toward them. The CPTers and the Headmaster, instead of scrambling out of the way, this time stuck to the middle of the road and advanced grimly toward the rapidly approaching Jeep, clearly refusing to flinch or get out of its way, while at the same time motioning-hopefully-for it to stop.
It did.
Moving to the window on the driver's side, they asked him to radio other Jeeps to stay away and call a halt to the tear gassing, so that the adults could escort the children safely away from the area. The soldier agreed, and in a few minutes the children were on their way to their homes without further interference from the Israeli Army or Border Police.
As the crush of kids disappeared, Marief School's Headmaster complained that since the start of school at the beginning of September, his had been closed down in a similar manner twenty times. The Headmaster of Hebron Basic Boys School reminded us that today's enforced closing was now number fifteen for his school. Both said that they think that the closures are a kind of deliberate provocation on the part of the soldiers and police to irritate the boys into throwing stones so that they will then have an excuse to retaliate against the kids even more violently, as well as have a rationale to keep closing down the schools.
So, we wondered: was it a coincidence that curfew had been reimposed several minutes after the time Hebron's children normally head for school?
Meanwhile 10,000 settler celebrants never showed up to commemorate Abraham's acquisition of Macpelah Cave and its adjoining field and trees. The number was considerably less.
No one in an official capacity is saying how many actually came. But some guess that all that malign energy was expended on behalf of less than 3,000 visitors. 3,000 pious yet militant so-called descendants of the founding patriarch on whom the irony of the situation is apparently lost with respect to their recalling reverently Abraham's scrupulous purchase of the place a few thousand years ago, while at the same time they continue their relentless, never ending theft of the same area-today-from its Palestinian inhabitants.