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Amira Hass SendSend me email alerts
Dec 03, 2019 12:13 PM
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A banner depicting Jabotinsky hung by settlers on a building in the Hebron
market, November 29, 2019.
A banner depicting Jabotinsky hung by settlers on a building in the Hebron
market, November 29, 2019.Amira Hass
On the building of the fruit and vegetable market in old Hebron, which the
Defense Ministry has been seeking to demolish for the past year months –
hangs a cloth banner with a picture of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
“Rebuilding the Jewish Quarter (“the market”) in Hebron,” is written on one
side of Jabotinsky’s face, and on the other a quote, supposedly from him:
“We will rebuild everything that they have destroyed, because we have been
endowed with this talent; to build to an extent many times what was ruined
and destroyed.” The banner is signed: The Jewish community of Hebron.
skip - Haaretz Weekly Episode 51
Haaretz Weekly Episode 51Haaretz
Without a doubt, the settlers of Hebron and their many collaborators have
proved in the past 50 years their ability to add and build more buildings
for Jews – which stand out in the whiteness of their stones during the
daytime, and in the bright, blinding light their spotlights cast on them and
their surroundings at night, all hours of the night. But the settlers,
military authorities and Civil Administration have mainly proved their
talents, with documented methods known to all, at emptying out the center of
Hebron of its Palestinian residents via routine harassment, and a series of
orders and restrictions on movement imposed by the army.
It can be assumed that those who hung up the banner on the wholesale market
building were not surprised by the letter sent Sunday by Defense Minister
Naftali Bennett to the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in
the Territories. In the letter he instructed the Civil Administration to
begin procedures for in the old Hebron market: in other words, to demolish
the in which the Hebron municipality is a protected tenant, and to build in
its place Jews. The previous defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, began the
process – but this plan is not the final word.
Hebron map.
A hint of the unhalting aspirations of the settlers of Hebron can be found
in the map included in the pamphlet “The Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Roots
of the Jewish People,” published by the Jewish community of Hebron back in
2014, and which is sold at the stand across from the Tomb of the Patriarchs
/ Ibrahimi Mosque. The map marks three areas in three different colors:
Light blue for the “area under Israeli security responsibility (H2),” dark
blue for the “Jewish community” and brownish orange for the area “under Arab
security responsibility.”
The names of the streets in the light-blue area were Judaized a long time
ago: Al-Shuhada Street is King David and in the Tel Rumeida and Ja’abra
neighborhoods are streets such as “Tarpat” (the Jewish year 5689 – 1929),
“Ma’alei Ha’avot” (The Patriarchs’ Ascent), and “Sa’adia Hahevroni” (Sa’adia
the Hebronite).
But the Judaization of the streets continues outside of the light blue area
and reaches deep into the brownish orange one. Be’er Sheva Street remains
the same, but big Al Shalala Street is Chaida Street (after Rabbi Chaim
Yosef David Azulai) and small Al Shalala Street is Grandpa From Slobodka
Street (Rabbi Natan Zvi Finkel), the founder of Knesset Yisrael Yeshiva in
Lithuania, which moved to Hebron in 1925.
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King Hussein Street has become Hahekhal (The Temple) Street. Ein Sarah is a
main cross street, filled with people, cars, colors and sounds, where Hebron
city hall is located; on the map it is called “Knesset Yisrael.” Near the
Old City it becomes Bab al-Zawiyah – Rabbi Bajayo, according to the map in
the pamphlet written and edited by one of the settlement’s elders, Noam
Arnon. Yasser Arafat Square is, in the language of this map, “Kikar Hayovel”
(Jubilee Square) while Manara Square is Hei Be’iyar (the fifth of the Jewish
month Iyar, the day in 1948 when Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of
the state).
We cannot dismiss the Judaizing of the Hebron streets on the map as the vain
imaginings of fanatics. The reality in old Hebron, in the part under the
settlers’ control, is deranged, but very real: The heart of the city has
been cut off from it. Driving a car is forbidden for Palestinians (only the
Hebron municipality’s garbage trucks, which also collect the settlers’
garbage, are permitted to enter through the checkpoint in the Salaimeh
neighborhood).
Houses in the area of Hebron`s abandoned market, 2007.
Houses in the area of Hebron`s abandoned market, 2007.Eyal Warshavsky
On Al Shuhada Street, Palestinians are also forbidden to walk, including
those living on the street itself. About 10 manned checkpoints surround the
area. They are made up of reinforced metal booths, revolving gates, barred
corridors, a bar that is raised for the residents in wheelchairs, and mostly
of soldiers and policemen who let people wait until they open the revolving
gate for them.
Dozens more permanent roadblocks in the form of concrete walls, barbed wire
and locked gates cut off the streets and alleys midway. A central flight of
stairs is blocked off to Palestinians. It is no surprise that about a third
of the 3,400 housing units in the Old City have been vacated by their
inhabitants over the years. Most of the empty apartments are in the area
under the direct domination of the settlers – but also in the outer ring
around the checkpoints, empty, deserted apartments can be seen. Some 1,500
businesses have been closed for over 20 years, a third of them by military
closure order, the rest because settler harassment and the restrictions on
movement make manufacturing and sales difficult, deterring customers and
suppliers.
Last Friday, while Israeli cars and the buses of the Gush Etzion Development
Company drove back and forth, the Muslim worshippers, many of them elderly,
walked slowly to and from the Ibrahimi Mosque, climbing the steep streets
with great effort. A few young people carried packages of food or cement on
their backs, and children who visited their grandmother carried in an
improvised wheelbarrow toys she found for them in the trash.
“The streets here are like under a curfew,” a resident who dared remain in
the Tel Rumeideh neighborhood told Haaretz. To leave and enter his home, a
few times a day he must pass through the Tamar military checkpoint in the
middle of the street, about 30 meters away. He must wait until the soldier
deigns to press the button that opens the revolving gate that leads to a
closed room, where they check his identity card, maybe search his bags, and
then open another iron door for him that leads to an entryway surrounded by
bars that leads to another revolving gate. On Friday afternoon he could be
heard arguing with the soldier for a long time, until the soldier allowed
him to return home. The same thing happened on Saturday.
The Netanyahus near the Cave of the Patriarchs, April 2019.
The Netanyahus near the Cave of the Patriarchs, April 2019.Emil Salman
The willful, conscious decisions of all Israeli governments (including the
Rabin government, which punished the Palestinians for the massacre Baruch
Goldstein committed against them), the army, the Civil Administration and
their legal advisers – these are what have allowed the “renewers of the
Jewish community of Hebron” to create today’s deranged reality. The 1929
massacre of Jews by Muslim residents has become a chief pretext for the mass
expulsion of Palestinians today.
The aforementioned map is found in a pamphlet dedicated to the memory of the
preacher of transfer of Palestinians from the country, Rehavam Ze’evi. It
imagines the expansion of the urban circles that will be emptied of
Palestinians. Its authors have already proved their talent in translating
their imagination into reality.
https://www.btselem.org/20200308_womens_day_overcoming_odds_in_gaza
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