The first time I heard about Hebron was through a zen-like roommate of mine when I had just arrived in Jerusalem. He had a long beard that he always twisted while he prayed, and was devoted to the study of Kabbalah. “Hebron. It’s the soul, man,” he said.
Granted there are many differences between my former roommate and I; he is religious and I’m secular; he prays after he pees, and I wash my hands and call it a day. But we got along well. For my roommate, Hebron is a sacred and personified piece of land where he can feel a holy presence, and to me, it is the city of imprisonment that my activist friends have always mentioned while shaking their heads in disbelief. After you leave Hebron, you have an uncanny urge to take Obama on a tour. You feel sick to your stomach and want purported social justice advocates throughout the American Jewish community to speak less selectively about the facts on the ground. You want to film a sundance documentary and postmark it directly to AIPAC. You don’t want to go back, but you don’t want to forget it, either.
A view of the Hebron marketplace. Above is the metal material separating Palestinians from settlers and protecting them from trash thrown onto the market
Trash that settlers throw collects on the metal barrier above the Palestinian marketLast week I had the chance to travel with several interns and internationals to Hebron to take a tour of the historic city. In case you are unfamiliar, Hebron is the southernmost city in the West Bank, and within the municipality, Palestinians live neck-to-neck with Jewish settlers who have come to “retake” the land as part of what they view as a holy war. While most other settlements in the West Bank are much like the ones represented in the New York Times–a cluster of newly built Sears rent-a-houses on a fortified hill–Hebron’s settlements overlook Palestinian streets, living rooms, and children, and their water towers overshadow Palestinians’ smaller rooftop tanks. The war over water is always revealing.
Water TanksInterspersed throughout Hebron are checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers. Some are matchbox road blockades through which all Palestinians must pass to get from their houses to the market. Others are metal turnstyles that lock automatically behind passerby, and soldiers must grant permission to all Palestinians who wish to leave a two block radius outside the mosque. To get to the holy mosque to pray, Palestinians must go through three checkpoints in the span of one block. I passed through the checkpoints in minutes, and I am not a Muslim. The Palestinian Muslim behind me who was born in Hebron was searched extensively, patted down, and treated like a seedy tourist with a criminal record.
A Palestinian boy poses for the camera in the Hebron marketplaceI guess it’s a good time to throw in that last Thursday was my first time seeing a turnstyle checkpoint. I’d seen roadblock checkpoints before, and while all “prove to me who you are” blockades are degrading for those who live on the land, there is something about watching a grown man coming through a stadium-esque metal turnstyle at the mercy of a twenty-year-old boy as he travels from his son’s school to the next block that casts serious doubt upon the security justification. There are security threats, and then there is separation by design that calls itself Security to hide its guilty conscience.
An Israeli flag hangs from a settler's house above a Palestinian road that lies under barbed wire
Trash collects in a barbed wire fence separating Palestinians from settlers
A Palestinian toddler crawls on the roof of her house underneath a metal barrier built to prevent settlers from attacking
A view of the sky from the rooftop of a Palestinian house in HebronA view of the sky from the rooftop of a Palestinian house in Hebron
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Thanks so much for this, Herb. One thing that has rung very true to me since I’ve been here: the tension between those who see the “fix-it” to the conflict as simply a matter of needing more dialogue, like the event you mention above, and those who see it in terms of power asymmetry and power politics. In reality I think it is both, and I think the wikipedia clip illustrates this. On the one hand, we do need dialogue that helps each side feel they are heard. But as we saw at places like Camp David II, when the dialogue, whether it be grassroots and impromptu or among formal leaders, reinforces an existing asymmetry, or continues to give voice to those who already have a voice, the dialogue can do little to improve the situation, or can even make it worse (aka making Erdogan ever frustrated with and less invested in the process).
More broadly speaking (here goes a tangent!) I find on the one hand these dialogue groups and encounter programs in Israel and Palestine and the States incredibly important, because they help the Jewish kid who has never before met a Palestinian or vice versa begin to understand “the other,” for lack of better cliches. On the other hand, dialogue forums can also stop short of highlighting the power asymmetry that perpetuates conflict. All of this is to say while dialogue, whether between Erdogan and Peres or between a Palestinian and Israeli throwing frisbees in the name of EU funding, can build bridges so to speak, it is important that it also doesn’t undermine or worsen existing power asymmetries. Perhaps slightly unrelated, but something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
Thank you, Rachel, for what, in my ignorance, was an eye-opener. And you grabbed me from the start by moving from the personal to the more general. (Please forgive my pompous pedantry.)
Your piece brings immediately to mind something I just read in Wikipedia, of all places. In a casual setting two days ago I met David Ignatius, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post, and was checking out his bio afterwards. It ended with this:
“At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ignatius moderated a discussion including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Israeli President Shimon Peres, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. With the December ‘08-January ‘09 conflict in Gaza still fresh in memory, the tone of the discussion was lively. Peres was the only participant who was explicitly defending the Israeli role in the Gaza conflict, so Ignatius gave the Israeli President the final 25 minutes to speak. Erdoğan objected to Peres’ tone and risen voice during the Israeli President’s impassioned defense of his nation’s actions. Ignatius gave Erdoğan a minute to respond, and when Erdoğan went over his allocated minute Ignatius repeatedly cut the Turkish Prime Minister off, telling him and the audience that they were out of time and that they had to get to a dinner. Erdoğan seemed visibly frustrated as he said to the President of Israel, ‘When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.’ Ignatius put his arm on Erdoğan’s shoulder and kept saying that his time was up. Erdoğan then gathered his papers and said, ‘I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak.’ Erdoğan then got out of his chair and walked off the stage, while the other discussion panelists were still seated. At that point the discussion ended.
Five minutes after the discussion ended, Peres called Erdoğan to apologize for any misunderstanding. Erdoğan later told reporters that he was not upset with Peres, rather he was upset with Ignatius for failing to moderate the discussion impartially, by giving Peres 25 minutes to speak while earlier only giving Erdoğan 12 minutes to speak and then later just a minute to respond to Peres. Erdoğan returned to Istanbul a day later to a hero’s welcome at the airport.
“Writing about the incident, Ignatius said that he found himself ‘in the middle of a fight where there was no longer a middle.’ Because the Israel-Palestinian conflict provokes such heated emotions on both sides of the debate, Ignatius concluded, it was impossible for anyone to be seen as an impartial mediator. Ignatius wrote that his experience elucidated a larger truth about failure of the United States’ attempt to serve as an impartial mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ‘American leaders must give up the notion that they can transform the Middle East and its culture through military force,’ Ignatius wrote, and instead ‘get out of the elusive middle, step across the threshold of anger, and sit down and talk’ with Middle Eastern leaders.”
powerful
great post!
i liked seeing your roomate’s point of view compared to yours.
“hebron its the soul”
chazak…