Hebron under siege
By Khaled Amayreh
In practical terms, the curfew means that everybody,
including women and children, must stay indoors, 24
hours a day, seven days a week. And in case a citizen
ventures out, even for an emergency, he or she could
be shot dead on the spot "for violating the curfew"
and "obstructing the function of the Israeli Defence
Force."
The shooting is not hypothetical. Last week the
Israeli army seriously wounded a 54-year-old Hebron
man near the Ibrahimi mosque for disobeying the
curfew. The man, hit with a bullet in the chest, is
still in hospital. Indeed, several Palestinians,
including children, have been shot dead for merely
stepping out of their houses during curfews.
Classified as H-2 by the "Hebron protocol" reached by
Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1996, Hebron's
old town is under joint Israeli-Palestinian
administration.
The people of Al-Khalil are no strangers to Israeli
curfews. In 1994, following the Ibrahimi mosque
massacre, when an American-Jewish settler, Baruch
Goldstein, murdered 29 Palestinian worshipers while
praying at the mosque at dawn, Israeli occupation
authorities actually punished the victims by imposing
a 60-day curfew, which ruined Hebron's economy and
caused a collective claustrophobia among the town's
160,000 inhabitants.
"Look, the Israelis don't understand the elementary
principles of justice. They always protect the
murderer and punish the victim," said Husni Kubabji,
an elderly citizen of the old town. "We are waiting
until the Almighty intervenes."
It is not apparent why the Palestinian inhabitants of
Al-Khalil's old town are being confined to their homes
for that long. Israeli occupation authorities cite
"security" as the main reason, a mantra that is meant
to justify the sustained abuse of the Palestinians.
"A curfew is a slow death. We are all facing
overwhelming stress as a result of this brutal
behaviour. I hope the world forces Israel to treat us
with some humanity," said Ahmed Sharabati, a
50-year-old shopkeeper. He adds with resignation,
"What can we do? We just [have to] wait until they
lift the curfew. We don't know when they will."
According to Abdul-Aziz Shuqir, head of the Princess
Alya Hospital in Hebron, the situation in the old town
is "extremely dire."
"They have been keeping 35,000 people inside their
homes for 38 days now. This is taking place at a time
when Jewish settlers wander about freely in the city
looking for a stray Arab to kill."
Meanwhile, the H-1 area, or those parts of Hebron
under the Palestinian Authority's administration, has
been coming under relatively heavy bombardment by
Israeli positions at hilltops overlooking the old town
and the Jewish enclave therein.
Numerous buildings are now being hit on a nightly
basis. The Israelis claim the Palestinians are firing
from their areas towards the Jewish enclaves. This
seemed to have happened a few times three weeks ago,
but it has ceased ever since.
Nonetheless, the Israeli nightly pounding continues
unabated, the situation bearing a burgeoning
resemblance to Beirut during the Lebanese civil war,
except that, in Hebron, there is only one side
shooting.
Interestingly, there is a surrealistic aspect about
the bombing in Hebron -- virtually all of it takes
place after nightfall and continues till pre-dawn
hours. In the morning, the bombed neighbourhoods
bustle once more with people, some shopping, others
examining the damage to buildings inflicted the
previous night, and many simply strolling around.
But this is not to say, of course, that life is
continuing as usual. The two main thoroughfares in
Hebron, Bab Al-Zawiay and the Shalala streets have
become the main flashpoints between stone-hurling
Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers. The
confrontations have led to several deaths and more
than 600 injuries, some serious.
The Hebron economy has been badly harmed. According to
Hashem Abul-Nabi Natshe, head of the Hebron Chamber of
Commerce, the city loses an estimated $3 million a day
as a result of the siege being enforced on Al-Khalil.
Natshe puts the total loss of the entire Palestinian
economy at $20 million a day, "in addition to the high
casualty figures we sustain."
The settlers in Hebron and in the nearby settlement of
Kiryat Arba'a, however, remain by far the ultimate
thorn in the side of the people of Hebron. "They
behave like wild, mad dogs. They shoot at Arab houses,
they break the windshields of our cars, they smash and
vandalise our property in full view of Israeli
soldiers, who look on nonchalantly. Last week, they
conducted several Kristallnachts ["the night of broken
glass" or the name given to acts of vandalism by Nazi
youths against Jewish property on a night in 1939 in
Vienna] at Tel Rumeida," said Taysir Zahdeh, who bore
more than his share of what he called "this torture."
"They think they can break our will by adopting these
Nazi-like tactics against us. But they are mistaken...
we will not leave our homeland, no matter what. We
withstood 33 years of their holocaust against us and
we can withstand more torment. But at the end, they
will be consumed by their own evil," said Zahdeh.
