The Palestinian city of Hebron has an Israeli settlement at its heart. As a result it was divided in two areas for “security reasons”: H1, the Palestinian area, and H2, under Israeli military control.
Restrictions on movement, curfews imposed by the Israeli army on its Palestinian population to “protect” the colony, settler violence and harassment have, in the last decade, forced thousands of Palestinians to abandon homes and businesses leaving behind what is now known as the “ghost town”.
In H2 lies the Israeli controlled section of the town and what’s left of its once vibrating center, a gradually emptied core of its Palestinian inhabitants, left behind to an expanding settler community.
The city center, now known as H2, has become a maze of restrictions and jurisdictions.
What used to be a market that once served around half a million people, is now a landscape of empty, closed or barred Palestinian shops and homes within a city center gradually occupied by a growing colony of Israeli settlers, considered as one of the most violent and militant.
Behind barriers and checkpoints, is H1, the rest of the Palestinian city, barred from access to its now emptied center, except for its residents who gradually have been forced to leave or have “voluntarily” abandoned downtown Hebron.
The settlers, accuse, on their part, that they cannot access the rest of the city although, on Saturdays the thriving community makes its presence felt by marching on H1, escorted by full geared Israeli soldiers.
In the empty centre of the largest West Bank city, the occasional breaks in its stillness are settlers jogging, strolling, and welcoming their own “educational heritage” tours arriving in buses or scrutinizing any unfamiliar presence. Vigilant soldiers on patrol walk trough Palestinian-sterilized streets.
At the same time a bus arrives with Israelis and internationals in a tour organized by the Israeli military whistleblower NGO Breaking the Silence.
Their aim is to raise awareness about the "reality of the Israeli occupation", as lived and witnessed by Israeli Defense Forces conscripts and reservists who have served in the city and by that, to challenge the occupation itself from within. Their main target public is Israelis, mostly youngsters in pre military age, as well as the general public and the international community.
Alongside passes a group of voluntary international observers, TIPH – Temporary International Presence in Hebron. Their presence has not been temporary.
Palestinians are seen in limited access or “Palestinians only” areas under the sight of full geared soldiers on watch towers over the street. These areas and streets are limited by military checkpoints, roadblocks, walls, fences and barbed wire. In shared access streets, Palestinians and settlers are separated by barriers and soldiers.
Settlers and Palestinians gaze at each other at meager distances. In between, the Israeli military makes its presence felt.
On a rooftops, one or another Palestinian is seen walking. Palestinians are not allowed in most of the streets surrounding settlements, even if the entry to their house is located on these arteries. As a result, its access is done by ladders to rooftops, windows and balconies on the non-restricted side of the house.
On the Palestinian restricted side of the houses, where only Israelis and internationals are allowed to walk, many of the Palestinian houses have their balconies wrapped in wire cages, designed to protect its inhabitants from rocks or molotov cocktails thrown by settlers.
One of such Palestinian houses, belonging to the Abu Eisha family, faces directly one settlement building at just few meters from its entrance in Tel Rumeida. The house is now entirely covered by a fenced iron cage.
Martial law has been imposed in Hebron’s city centre and its Palestinian citizens since 1994, a year marked by the assassination of 29 Palestinians by a Jewish settler, the tipping point of growing tensions and brutal violence between both communities which, on one single of such ever increasing events, flared in the massacre of 67 Jews in 1929.
Despite the remaining Jewish community having been saved and given safe haven by Palestinian neighbors and friends, survivors left the city in fear of further violence and bloodshed. Years after, the modern Jewish presence is comprised by mostly Canadian and American militant immigrant Jewish settlers.
Since the 1994 massacre which killed 29 Palestinians perpetrated by an American born settler, Baruch Goldstein, the area has been, in military jargon, “sterilized” of Palestinian movement in order to protect a growing population of about between 500 to one thousand settlers.
The official stand is that Israeli army’s presence in Hebron has the sole goal of “peace keeping” among communities.
International law considers the transfer of civilian population to occupied territory as illegal. Israel considers that the West Bank is not “occupied”, but “disputed” territory.
Settlements are regarded by Palestinians and the international community as one of the main obstacles to the creation of an independent and economically viable Palestinian State.
