Thursday, July 19th, 2012
A walk through occupied Al Khalil (Hebron) offers a shocking and heartbreaking insight into the struggle of the oppressed souls of one of Palestine’s most important cities. Day by day, Al Khalil is becoming a ghost town as the indigenous Palestinians are forced out through a wickedly evil campaign of terrorism, intimidation, and oppression.
Israel’s occupation is multi-faceted, one which attacks the Palestinians’ freedom, culture, economy, and way of life, as well as their very survival in ways which will shock and perturb any person who harbours even a modicum of humanity in their soul.
As a result of Israel’s criminal conquest of Khalil, the city is now separated into two zones: H1 and H2. H1 constitutes approximately 80% of the territory of the city and is located on the western part, while H2 is roughly 20% and sits on the eastern section. As with the apartheid wall, the boundary between H1 and H2 snakes in and out in order to award the foreign settlers with the most coveted land and property.
Movement is severely restricted for Palestinians. Only the illegal Jewish settlers are allowed to drive their cars in certain designated areas of the city.
Palestinian schools are located within restricted areas, meaning that children are forced to take classes in the street when checkpoints are arbitrarily closed by the occupying army.
On certain roads, Palestinians are not even allowed to walk on the street, and this includes areas where Palestinian homes are located. This has forced Palestinians to create new entrances and exits to their homes.
Of 1,829 shops in the Old City (in both H1 and H2), 77% have been closed by the Israeli occupiers. Each and every shop that is closed leaves a Palestinian family unable to provide for their children. These are not merely statistics. As of 2008, the unemployment rate in Khalil was at a whopping 50% – Khalil is being economically strangled by the occupation. While the Israeli occupiers close shops with military orders and other arbitrary techniques, they also employ an especially cynical method of dividing Palestinian society.
What was once the gold souk (market) in the Old City, is now an abandoned and filthy street in complete disrepair. The occupiers have closed it off using metal fencing and razor wire. The settlers who live on the floors above have thrown trash and soiled nappies onto the street below, demonstrating their complete contempt for the land they claim to be divinely promised to them.
On top of the economic restrictions and other restrictions aforementioned, Khalilis (Hebronites) are suffering an ongoing campaign of terrorism aimed at making them vacate their land in favour of extremist Jewish settlers. Within H2 there are 400 illegal Jewish settlers who enjoy the protection of 1,500 occupying IDF soldiers, who give the settlers carte blanche to terrorise, harass, and attack the Palestinians to their black hearts’ content.
One Palestinian man named Adham told the story of his brother, who now lives with his family in zone H1 in defiance of the expanding Jewish settlements, right on the border with zone H2 and just around the corner from the ethnically cleansed gold souk. The majority of the building which was their family home is now occupied by settlers. Adham’s brother and his brother’s wife now reside in a tiny portion of what was their family’s residence. This makes their family’s story both a sad example, and a tragic microcosm of Al Nakba, wherein most of Historic Palestine was stolen by invading Jewish terrorists, leaving the Palestinians forced to accept tiny enclaves now referred to internationally as The Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Israel offered Adham’s brother a cash bribe equivalent to hundreds of thousands of US dollars to vacate what was left of his family home – territory highly coveted by the Zionist state. This dignified man refused the bribe and chose to remain on his land, an act which would later cost him and his family early.
Settlers murdered his wife right outside his family home, and threw bleach in his young son’s eyes, blinding him.
They randomly fire automatic weapons through the adjoining walls in order to terrorise Adham’s family into leaving. This family’s only crime? They are not Jewish.
The external doors of the family property have had their locks punched out by the IDF, meaning that they can have no semblance of security or peace within their home.
Water is an invaluable resource in the arid lands of Palestine. This family is being denied a reliable supply of water; settlers have climbed across the roof from their neighbouring settlement of Avraham Avinu, and punctured the family’s water tank – depriving them of their very life source.
Standing on the roof of the family home, one is surrounded by razor wire, IDF army look-out posts (which dominate the skyline of the Old City), and the adjoining illegal Jewish settlement. There is no trace of normality for these occupied Palestinians.
In 2007, an unspeakable tragedy befell the family. Jewish settler-terrorists entered the family home from the adjoining settlement and threw a molotov cocktail (petrol bomb) into the living room. An eight month old baby boy was sleeping in the room, and the family was not able to get him out in time; he died of smoke inhalation.
These are merely two stories that were shared with this writer, of over 200,000 Palestinians who live in central Khalil, and who are forced to live alongside aggressive colonists.
In spite of the extremist Jewish terrorists globally referred to as ‘settlers’, it must be said that the Zionist project is not an exclusively religious one. Arguing such a stance would be incorrect, and would represent an ignorant and lazy viewpoint. The religious zealotry and hatred of the settlers is merely one facet of the Israeli occupation, and it is part and parcel of the Zionist project – essential to Israel’s cancerous growth. The settlers’ violent and terroristic behaviours are the very lifeblood of Israel. Aside from the crimes committed in places such as Khalil, the terrorist state of Israel exercises equal and far greater brutality in all spheres of its existence both at ‘home’ and abroad. We need only look to Operation Cast Lead, 9/11, or the countless other crimes against humanity that punctuate Israel’s short history.
Also we must remember: the conflict between ‘Israel’ and Palestine is not one between equals or one between neighbours. It is a conflict between invader and invaded. It is a conflict between terrorist and terrorised; between victimiser and victim. It is a struggle of the oppressed people of Palestine to rid their land of a cancerous, expansionist foreign occupation which seeks to erase the indigenous from history and take their lands.
It is not valid to argue that the settlers are somehow a ‘rogue’ element of the Zionist project. The settlers are fully protected and enabled by the occupying soldiers, making them a valued tool and asset of the colonist state of Israel. The following testimony – obtained by B’Tselem – is from an Israeli soldier occupying Khalil:
During my time in Hebron, we saw many attacks by settlers and couldn’t do anything. As a soldier, they tell you, ‘You are here to protect the settlers. You are combatants, not police officers.’ There wasn’t anything we could do with the children of settlers anyway. For those under age twelve, the police can’t touch them either.The settlers are the very human embodiment of what Israel represents: terrorism, racial supremacism, conquest and theft.
If a land were promised to you by god, would you vandalise it with razor wire and concrete walls? If you were given a divine gift of a beautiful country such as Palestine, would you decorate it with bottles of excrement, and throw broken glass bottles and soiled nappies at that country’s people? Would you mercilessly terrorise and murder those people, including children and babies?
Of course these are rhetorical questions. The notion that Palestine was somehow promised to these hateful racists is a laughable delusion. The notion that ‘Israel’ wants peace is equally imaginary. These people and ‘Israel’ – the state that patronises them – do not respect or love the land; these are invaders and conquerers whose modus operandi is terror and violence. There will never be peace with ‘Israel’, and there will never be justice in Palestine unless the world comes to terms with this reality.
River to Sea
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