"You know, during the first Intifada when the Israelis killed one Palestinian, the schools closed to protest. Big posters were printed with pictures of the martyr, so he - or she - could be honored; so he - or she - could be remembered. Everyone knew. Everyone wept. But now," says Saleem, a Bethlehem based doctor, "the Israelis kill four or five Palestinians every day. Every day, they do this, and no one does anything. Who knows about them? Who knows their names? Who remembers?"
A shop keeper in Hebron's Old City complains that since the war in Lebanon, the situation has gotten worse for Palestine. "Hezbollah did not help us. He (meaning Hezbollah leader Sheik Nasrullah) does not care about Palestine. He only cares about Lebanon." He adds gloomily that days go by without any business.
We encounter a confident Israeli soldier protecting squatter-settlers on Shuhada Street, the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) modernized boulevard along which the four small arch Orthodox arch Nationalist Jewish squatter-settlements at Hebron's old city are located. (The U. S. fixed up Shuhada Street shortly after the Oslo agreements were reached to commemorate the new "peace." Of course, Palestinian vehicles were not allowed. And not long after it was completed it was closed to even Palestinians on foot except those living along its confines. There is no record of the U.S. demanding its money back.)
Meanwhile that soldier we met insists that there is no occupation; that he is glad to be on guard in his country from terrorists.
"But this is not your country. This is Palestine, where you are now."
"No," is his answer. "This is our country because it says so in the Bible."
I mention the Fourth Geneva Convention, specifically article 49, which declares, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies."
"But," says the soldier with a shrug, "the Geneva is not the Bible."
On a Jewish Sabbath a pious squatter-settler in Shuhada Street headed into the Avraham Avinu squatter-settlement echoes the soldier's sentiment when he tells another CPTer, "Torah is the only law."
An Israeli woman who is a no holds barred supporter of the occupation reacting to my recitation of the on going confiscation of Palestinian land still taking place in the West Bank responds haughtily and self righteously, "But the owners are compensated."
Yeah. Right.
CPT visits an area just east of Hebron where a broad swath of Palestinian farm land lying between the squatter-settlements of Kiryat Arba and Harsina was recently confiscated. A gravel and dirt connector road to the rear of a Border Police barracks was built over it so that huge sections of concrete barriers could be trucked in one by one. A Border Police guard explains, "We need to block the windows from terrorist shooters."
"But the barracks has been there for many years. Has any one every attacked it?" Looking sheepish, the guard doesn't answer.
"Has there ever been an attack on the barracks?" we ask some nearby Palestinian women.
"Never," is the answer. We are invited into their home. The new road has been built down the middle of the dirt yard outside the house where children try to play. The older of the women complains angrily about the dust that the trucks and military vehicles have been stirring up as they rumble swiftly by the house. She says it is making her and the children sick. Recently, she says, she asked one of the soldiers in a jeep to not drive by so fast, because it is frightening the children "and making danger for them."
"What was the soldiers answer?"
"He didn't answer," she replies. "He accelerated."
The worst part of the occupation the women say is the closure of the roads leading to their home. "No Palestinian cars may come here. So everything we want must be carried in."
A young mother holding her twenty-day old baby tells us that when the baby was about to be born the previous month, the occupation authorities would not allow an ambulance to pick her up or even allow a Palestinian car to drive in to get her. She was in such great pain that she couldn't walk, so her husband had to carry her a half mile to a point beyond the road blocks where finally they were able to find transportation to the hospital.
She gave birth in the car.
We think she is through with her story, but then she recalls that a year and a half earlier, when her first child was about to be born, the road blocks were positioned even farther away from the house than they are now. "So I must walk more than a kilometer into H1 (the Palestinian administered section of Hebron) before being able to find a taxi to take me to the hospital."
Despite those complaints, throughout the meeting the young woman remains smiling, radiant and startling cheerful. I ask, "With all these terrible problems, how are you able to stay smiling and cheerful?"
With an even sweeter smile she instantly answers, "Because of the children." They too are smiling.
While walking back to the Old City, we pass a Palestinian shop with a sadly meager supply of sundries, canned goods, and produce for sale. It is situated directly across the street from the main entrance to the Kiryat Arba squatter-settlement. An elderly squatter-settler couple who appear to be on very friendly terms with the owner is inside shopping. After they leave, the owner says that a few of the poorest squatter-settlers in Kiryat Arba, mostly Russians, and many of them not Jewish, shop with him because the prices are as much as 2/3rds cheaper than inside the squatter-settlement. "The very religious Jewish don't come," he adds.
He describes the difficulties in keeping his business above water since the second uprising began in 2000. "I used to have a half a million shekel (about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars) worth of items for sale," he tells us. "You could hardly get around in the store I had so much for sale. Now with closure everything must be brought in on hand dollies that my sons must push up steep hills from H1 to get here," a distance of about one kilometer. Looking around the sparsely stocked shop with wide expanses of empty uncluttered floor space, I ask the owner about the value of the merchandise on hand these days. "About six thousand shekels (about one thousand five hundred dollars)," he says.
Later in Shuhada Street at a gate leading into the Old City, we are talking to two Israeli sentries trying to remind them that while they are occupying Palestine, there are no Arab Armies occupying Israel, invading homes in Tel Aviv or confiscating land around Ashkelon. "Never mind," one soldiers says. "We are here because of the Holocaust."
"The Arabs did the Holocaust?"
"Never mind," he says again.
Then a car with two squatter-settler men in the front seat pulls up. One of the men lowers the window and yells at me, "Do you speak English?"
My answer, of course, is, "Yes."
"F-k you!" he yells and speeds off.