As told by a traveler. On the 19th of August a Canadian traveler living in Israel visited the city of Hebron in the West Bank. Her travel through the city was documented and shared with Bikyamasr.com: On Friday, the 19th of August, a friend and I decided to go to Hebron via the settlement of Qiryat Arba. We first tried to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which we weren't allowed to enter as for four or five Fridays a year, during Ramadan, the Muslims of Hebron are allowed full access all of the caves. Instead, we stood outside and looked across the barrier dividing us to the Muslim side. We stood on the Jewish side and were divided by two barriers and a mass of soldiers; facing us were Palestinian men and boys, their hands gripping the fence. I felt so absolutely miserable looking at the separation; it seemed so prison-esque. We then headed down Shohada Street towards the downtown settlements. After the Hebron Agreement, the US and Israel had built the street in hopes of improving Palestinian quality of life in the area. However, everything was shut during the second intifada and since then shops haven't been allowed to re-open – both because Palestinians would face harassment from settlers and because no one would shop there due to the bad security situation. The street was completely empty and we didn't see any Arabs (or Jews, for that matter) walking along a good part of the street. Interestingly (and oddly reminiscent of the holocaust, my friend said), stars of David had been painted onto a large number of shop doors by the settlers. Having narrowly missed Avraham Avinu settlement, we tried, to no avail, to access the closed Beit Romano yeshiva-settlement. We did, however, find gates to peek through and, having not yet grasped the intricacies and details of the H1-H2 separation, were baffled to find a bustling market and Palestinians on the other side. A soldier told us off and told us to get away from the gate. Was what we were seeing H1 or H2? Could we get there? How? He answered none of our questions. We then visited Beit Hadassah, the first of the downtown settlements established in 1979 when 10 women and 40 children entered, in secret, the empty Beit Hadassah (which had been a Jewish hospital until 1939 when the last Jews were evacuated from Hebron after the massacre) through a window and refused to leave. Menachem Begin, though he opposed the establishment of the settlement, allowed them to remain and ordered the army to surround the house as he was disturbed by the idea of forcibly removing women and children. A year later, in 1980, when 6 yeshiva students were killed in a Palestinian ambush in front of the building, the government decided to allow the women's husbands to join them. Finally, the settlement was recognized and rehabilitated and today it is home to about 25 families. We went around the back of the house and looked down onto the Palestinian (H1) market below. Metal nets had been put up to catch debris thrown by the settlers onto the Palestinians below. My friend and I were appalled to see, among the rubbish, that a knife and a chair had been tossed down. We were later told that bricks, garbage, dirty diapers and bags of human feces are also dropped onto the Palestinians below. Angry and hungry, we left and decided to see if we could enter H1 Palestinian territory. We easily crossed the checkpoint and stepped into another world – from the ghostliness of Shohada Street into bustling Hebron with taxis beeping, shops open, and bustling crowds. We walked no more than 30 meters before we found a store selling snacks and found ourselves surrounded by 10 or so men, all eagerly welcoming us to Hebron and asking where we were from. Among them, was an older man named Adris who spoke very good English. Adris invited us to go back to his house, on the H2 side. He fed us fresh figs from his garden and made us tea. He spoke to us about his life, his children, his home. He showed us newspaper articles and described to us how, 14 years ago, the settlers of Beit Hadassah had offered him $3 million for his house. When he refused, they beat him and – with help from some soldiers –knocked most of his teeth out of his head. He then located an envelope containing his teeth, which he keeps as “souvenirs”, and poured them onto the table for us to see. He showed us Palestinian buildings on which the settlers sprayed “gas the Arabs”, he showed us the well on his property that settlers have tried to appropriate saying it was Abraham's well, he walked us through his olive groves, he showed us his deeds for two houses in West Jerusalem that he cannot get back, he gave me a bottle of amazing olive oil, he invited us to return and eat with his family and stay at his house and pick olives with him in November. Adris then took us back to the H1 side showed us around the old the suq, the same market we had seen from the gates outside Beit Romano. He pointed out the many locations in which streets were blocked with barbed wire or walls separating H1 from H2, we walked under the metal nets holding up rubbish thrown by the settlers, we smiled non-stop and thanked people for their shouts of “welcome to Hebron!”, and we absorbed the beauty of the old buildings. It was s absolutely surreal. We saw first-hand the apartheid in the city. By the end of the evening, Adris quickly shook our hands and disappeared, leaving us in the hands of his very sweet son who seated us in the cafe he works in and plied us with free drinks while we waited the hour and a half for the servees taxis to start running to Bethlehem. Adris and his family ensured that we left Hebron not only with the bitter taste of the occupation in our mouths, but also with the sweetness of the hospitality of the Palestinian people and their eagerness to share their lives and their stories with us. I am certain I speak for both my friend and myself when I say we cannot wait to return. ** The full story can be found here BM
