Racist anti-Palestinian graffiti, Hebron, West Bank, 22.10.2012

A Palestinian woman and children pass the slogan "Gas the Arabs! JDL" spray-painted on an exterior wall of the Cordoba School near Shuhada Street, Hebron, October 22, 2012. "JDL" stands for Jewish Defense League, an extremist group founded by Meir Kahane and designated as a terrorist group by the FBI. On February 25, 1994, JDL charter member Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslims at Hebron's Al-Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs), killing 29 worshippers and injuring 125. Afterwards, the JDL designated him "a martyr in Judaism's protracted struggle against Arab terrorism."

Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/http://activestills.org/

Witnesses: Hebron settlers attack construction workers [ 77374 ]

Ma'an, May 3, 2011 HEBRON -- Dozens of Israeli settlers assaulted a group of Palestinian construction workers in Hebron's city center on Tuesday, residents said. Nayef Da'na told Ma'an that settlers attacked him and other workers as they restored a home near Ash-Shuhuda street, an area long closed down due to settler violence and military patrols. The owner of the home, Mufeed Ash-Sharabati, said the altercation began with insults being thrown by settlers at the workers, who responded in kind, and escalated into physical violence. Ash-Sharabati said Israeli forces intervened and ordered the builders to stop work. It was not the first time the workers repairing the home had been harassed, Da'na said, noting Israeli forces constantly bothered them in an attempt to prevent the home reclamation. Ash-Shuhada street in Hebron runs between two communities of ultra-Zionist settler groups, who have moved into areas of the Palestinian city, guarded by some 1,500 Israeli soldiers. The street has been shut down since the 1990s, and was once the center of commerce for city residents. Protests have been ongoing, and demand Israeli officials permit shops on the street to re-open.

American Surgery Mission Treats Kids in Hebron

On January 22nd, a 3-member team from the USA arrived in the West Bank town of Hebron to start a week of screening and treating children with urological disorders.

The team included pediatric urological surgeon Dr. John Gazak from Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Kevin Healy, an anesthesiologist from Ames, Iowa, and scrub nurse Teresa Bubb from Portland, Oregon. The same team worked last Spring in Palestine through the PCRF as part of a project in coordination with International Volunteers in Urology (IVU).

In addition to screening over 140 children on the first day, the team has a full week of complex surgery on children from all over the West Bank.
Dr. Gazak also has treated two Palestinian children for free at his hospital in North Carolina through the PCRF and another child from Gaza will be traveling there for surgery next month.

Edward Said Conservatory of Music: a world where children play melodies against the walls of siege

Jerusalem / Maisa Abu Ghazaleh for PNN – Music is the language of the people, one of the signs of excellence and growth believes the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.

The programs and projects of the Conservatory clearly aim at improving the musical life for all age and socio-economic groups in the provinces of Palestine. It targets the disadvantaged to discover their talents as well as those with means.

To reach the largest possible number of students, media coordinator Ruba Anabtawi says that a new music program was launched in 1996 in the schools of the refugee camps and the private and public institutions outside. It was through this program in Amari Refugee Camp that Ramzi Abu Radwan and Ramadan Khattab were discovered. Both began as talented students who are now professionals.

“So many people are able to benefit from this experience. We assigned a number of teachers to give lessons in violin and cello to kindergarten students in Jerusalem, and to a girls’ school in Ramallah / Al Bireh.”

Students from six to 16 years of age are now accepted at children’s center in Jericho, refugee camps in Bethlehem and Ramallah, and in the center of Nablus.

In 2007 the Conservatory added the southern Bethlehem and Hebron villages where 60 children were able to study, while 36 students were trained in Nablus’ Askar Refugee Camp. Much of the funding for the programs comes from the European Union.

In 2008 and 2009 sites have been opened in Tubas where 36 male and female students are preparing while other location is being readied in western Ramallah’s Na’lin Village to serve 18 children. A four day intensive during July of this year trained 60 students.

Anabtawi told PNN that the Conservatory has recently begun implementing a program of education that targets children in the Old City of Jerusalem and its suburbs whose circumstances would not normally allow them the opportunity. Financial grants are offered with the support of the Spanish International Cooperation Agency in Jerusalem.

To ensure the highest rate of success, said Anabtawi, cooperation with a number of youth organizations within the Old City and its surroundings, and nearby villages are crucial.

Administrator of the Outdoor Education in the West Bank, Mohamed Fadl said that the idea of implementing the program in the heart of Jerusalem is part of the process of breaking down the isolation imposed on the city. “It is a challenge to all attempts to crush youth where citizens are mired in the worries of an ever-repressive occupation.”

He added, “The program is a space for children to walk in the world of music and play melodies against the walls of siege.”

Eleven year old Norhan has dreams of mastering the Oud. The sixth grader is one of the students who is able to take advantage of the program from the Hebron district. After school her hours are devoted to studying music free of charge. Violin, lute, flute are at her fingertips.

Norhan's mother expressed her thanks to the Conservatory, but did not want her daughter to participate in a summer training in Bethlehem that would culminate in a performance in Italy because the political situation is too risky. The family added that nonetheless, the experience is unique and beautiful.

The volatile Hebron colonization project

Zak Brophy writing from Hebron, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 15 September 2009


Israeli settlers occupying Palestinian property in Hebron often discard their waste onto the Palestinians below. (Zak Brophy)

According to the Abrahamic religions, that is to say Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Hebron is where human civilization started. It now appears to me to be where it is tearing itself apart. The ideological and actual struggle between the Palestinian population and the Jewish Israeli settlers is fraught with hatred and violence and while walking through the now dilapidated markets of the Old City or the deserted streets of the Israeli settlement, a sense of intransient destruction pervades.

Trade and activity in the antiquated souq or market of the Old City is sluggish at best due to the strangulation by the settlement developments and the forced closure of hundreds of shops. Some resilient traders remain. "This shop has been in my family for more than 60 years and I will stay here till I die" said Jamal, a Hebron market trader.

In the alley outside his store there is wire mesh and fencing overhead to protect those walking below from the waste that the settlers throw down from above. "They throw on to us dirty nappies, used toilet paper, waste water, half-full cans of drink," seethed an angry but defiant young man who still lives with his family in the Old City. The proof is there for all to see rotting on the wire mesh in the mid-day sun.

Once inside the Jewish Israeli settlement there was a complete absence of any signs of life or activity. All of the shops were barricaded and the trees and shrubs were reclaiming the buildings. To demarcate this desolate territory as exclusively Jewish all of the shop fronts have been sprayed with the Star of David along with plenty anti-Arab graffiti. One can't help but feel that there is either a complete misunderstanding or disregard for history. Didn't the Nazis mark all Jewish properties in the same manner?

While searching for signs of life I found a small group of children playing on a brightly colored playground flanked by an army watchtower. It was a strange juxtaposition that poignantly reflected the settlers' attempts to create a semblance of normality in this hostile home. I spoke to one of the adults sitting nearby and although he wasn't prepared to be interviewed himself, he arranged for me to meet with the official spokesperson for the Jewish community in Hebron, David Wilder. I challenged David about the rubbish thrown down on his Palestinian neighbors and he reasoned, "We have been trying to clean that for a number of years but we have been prevented because it can be used as a serious piece of propaganda against us. One has to remember that for many years people were physically attacked, even killed ... and there were times when some people, especially the younger folk, had difficulty controlling themselves."

The settlers live completely separated from the Arab community in a fortified complex dominated by barbed wire, concrete roadblocks, army watchtowers and a road network reserved exclusively for Jewish Israelis. Throughout the markets they have occupied the upper floors of many of the buildings and in some cases, they control whole streets that are barricaded with steel gates and barbed wire. Consequently, they can roam through the upper floors of the sealed buildings and the overhead passageways almost completely out of view of their unwanted neighbors. Normal interaction between the two communities is non-existent.

The click click of rotating turnstiles and the bleep bleep of metal detectors is not the sound one usually associates with the entrance to a place of worship. It is unfortunately the welcome received at the Ibrahimi mosque in the heart of Hebron's Old City. As well as being the supposed burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Jacob and Leah, it is also the site of one of the most barbaric incidents in Palestine's recent history. During morning prayers on 25 February 1994, in the month of Ramadan, a Brooklyn-born settler by the name of Dr. Baruch Goldstein burst into the mosque in Israeli military uniform and opened fire on the prostrating worshipers. By the time he was overwhelmed and killed he had managed to murder 29 men and boys and wounded almost 200 more. It is shocking and depressing that his tomb and memorial are to this day sites of pilgrimage for ultra right-wing Zionists.

In the eyes of the settlers the real breakdown in trust and coexistence between Palestinians and Jews in Hebron was in 1929 with the murder of 67 Jews by Palestinians and the expulsion of the remaining community by the British. The immorality of this act is undeniable but the question of causality has to be raised. Was it not the case that the violent breakdown in Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine was because of the stated designs of the Zionists to take over the whole country for Jewish domination?

David Wilder's response was categorical. "No, not at all! The fact is Hajj Amin al-Husseini [the Palestinian grand mufti at the time] was a tremendous Jew hater and anti-Semite. In 1929 it was the period before the war of independence when Zionism was still a very small movement ... the land was pretty much desolate." This is very thin ice to tread. By 1929 the Balfour declaration had been signed and the Zionists had the support of the British for their homeland in Mandate Palestine. Arab fears and resentments were very real and justified. That the land was pretty much desolate is a myth that has been categorically disproved so many times, and often by Israeli sources, that it's not necessary for me to dispute it here.

The power of the settler communities is growing. Most of their support and money comes from ideological Zionists, particularly from the US, who have a firm belief in the creation of a Jewish homeland in all of Eretz Israel with all of Jerusalem as its capital. I wanted to know if David thought that if Israel were to be guaranteed its security in a final political solution, then the Palestinian people should be granted a viable and sovereign state of their own. His answer was very telling: "Of course, they can form a state in Sinai [Egypt's desert peninsula] if they want ... or east of the Jordan river in the country that is today called Jordan." In essence, he means there is no place for the Palestinians in Palestine!

Many Israeli apologists try to portray the disastrous colonization of Hebron as the workings of a group of fundamentalists living in a messianic fantasy world outside of mainstream Israeli society. However, the Israeli government provides approximately 4,000 soldiers to protect the community of 500 to 800 settlers and it builds the settler-only roads, the watchtowers and the fortifications. With such blatant and explicit support from central government it is not credible to dismiss this as the workings of a fringe group of extremists. The continued presence of the settlements in Hebron is fomenting an engrained culture of violence, distrust and hatred and it is with the Israeli government that the buck must stop for this downward spiral.

Zak Brophy is a freelance print and broadcast journalist from the UK and has been living between London and the Middle East for the past six years, including Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

West Bank: illegal settlements cause hardship for Palestinians

Settler violence and severe restrictions on movement are affecting the daily lives of Palestinians in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, especially in the old town of Hebron. Matteo Benatti has been head of the ICRC's office in Hebron since September 2007. He explains the situation.

What are the humanitarian issues in Hebron?

The settlements have made many aspects of life very difficult for Palestinians. In the old city of Hebron, about 600 settlers live in colonies, in close proximity to some 30,000 Palestinians. The Israeli authorities impose tight security measures and have set up many checkpoints in this area of the city, which includes the Cave of the Patriarchs, an important place of worship for both Jews and Muslims. A number of roads are closed to the Palestinians and they are not allowed to bring cars into the areas where they live.

Movement restrictions, together with recurrent violence by settlers, are affecting the Palestinians in their daily life.

How does this affect them?

Hundreds of Palestinian families have to pass checkpoints in order to buy food, for instance. They often face intimidation by settlers at the checkpoints. Women are particularly vulnerable to this form of abuse, the more so because Palestinians are not allowed to drive along many of these streets, forcing women to cross the checkpoints on foot. Because of closed roads, old people are forced to lug shopping bags over extended distances.

Ambulances taking Palestinian residents to hospital in emergencies can face long delays at checkpoints. Families have been forced to carry their sick relatives on stretchers or use donkeys to transport them to a pickup point where an ambulance is waiting.

The economic life of the old city has almost died out because of movement restrictions and settler violence. Some shopkeepers have been ordered to close down by the army. Others have lost their customers, because Palestinians are afraid to go close to the Jewish settlements. Poverty is rampant. According to an ICRC study of households in the restricted areas of the old city last summer, 86 percent of families live in relative poverty, as they have only $ 97 per person per month for food, clothes and all other living expenses.

Most Palestinians living in the old city have had to put wire in front of their windows and have to keep them shut as they risk having urine, rotten vegetables or stones thrown at them through the windows. For children, even the daily walk to school can be frightening, as settlers may threaten them or throw stones. It is extremely tiring for families to live in this constant atmosphere of tension.

What is the ICRC able to do in this kind of situation?

We regularly receive calls from Palestinian families in the middle of the night who are being attacked by settlers or are desperately waiting for an ambulance stuck at a checkpoint. When people are in difficulty, we liaise with the local civil administration and with the Israeli armed forces. Luckily, this does help in many instances, and in general I think we have a good working relationship with the local Israeli authorities.

We are also able to help families in practical ways. We provide close to 7,000 people with food every month, for instance. In addition, a number of families have received bee hives and produce excellent honey for themselves and for the market. We have helped establish roof gardens for others so that they can grow their own fresh vegetables. Of course, this is not a real solution to their problems, but it does help to alleviate their difficult economic situation.

Under international humanitarian law, the Israeli authorities, as an occupying power, must ensure the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation, as well as public order and safety. For us at the ICRC, it is frustrating that we are not able to help as much as we would like and that we see no improvement. That being said, we are still hopeful that the restrictions on movement will ease.

What is the situation in the southern area of the West Bank?

The most southern area of the West Bank, Masafer Yatta, is also a hotspot of settler violence. This area is home to thousands of herders and Bedouins who are used to moving around freely in the grazing areas with their sheep and goats. People looking after the animals, including women and children, are often attacked. Some villages are also situated in what has become an Israeli military training area and it can be quite dangerous to move around.

To make matters worse, the climate is extremely harsh. The land is arid and barren and the hills only take on a slightly green tinge for a couple of months in spring. A number of the families have had to reduce the size of their herds because they could not find enough food and water.

How do families manage under such harsh conditions?

Coping is becoming increasingly difficult. It looks like we are heading for another drought this year, which compounds the fact that many of the families in the Southern Hebron Hills suffer from a chronic lack of water. The Israeli authorities do not allow Palestinians to build new rainwater cisterns, so the ICRC provides mobile water tanks for those families with the most acute problems.

This reduces the time they spend fetching water, as the tanks can normally hold a week’s drinking water. Families used to pay someone else with a water tank to bring water to them – and this can be quite expensive. Now, they can save this money for other essentials.