“This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor”
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor”
The Specials ‘Ghost Town’ written by Jerry Dammers,
released 1981
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Palestinian
children playing football at the top of Shuhada Street (Derek Oakley/EAPPI)
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Navigating the large concrete blocks that strew the entrance
to Shuhada street in the old city of Hebron I take a moment to read the
stenciled slogans adorning them. One phrase in particular catches my attention
“Fight Ghost Town”
As it must for many visitors from the UK this immediately
evokes the classic Specials song ‘Ghost Town’, with its haunting sound effects
and evocation of urban decline and civil unrest during the Thatcher years. As I
emerge from Checkpoint 55, which marks the division between H1 and H2, the two
zones that the make up Hebron under the 1997 ‘Hebron Protocols’[1] I see why the nickname was
chosen. Shuhada street is dead.
The closures were made around the beginning of the Second
Intifada in October 2000, and were accompanied by an intensification of other
restrictions imposed upon Palestinian civilians that Israel deems security
measures necessary to protect the Settler population, whose presence in the
area is considered illegal under international law.
Whilst the tarmac on the road is in good repair, there is
very little traffic, and all of it is cars or buses bringing settlers and
soldiers in and out of the area. Palestinians are not allowed to drive on
Shuhada street and after a certain point, designated by another checkpoint,
they are not allowed to walk either. Just down the street, now called King
David Street by the Settlers, rests the former bus station for the whole of
Hebron, now an Israeli military base.
Palestinian children still study at Cordoba school, which is
flanked to front and rear by Beit Hadassah and Tell Rumeida settlements,
running the gauntlet of potential abuse and physical violence daily. One of the
core duties of EAs in Hebron, which I joined my colleagues in during my visit,
is providing protective presence to children on their way to and from the
school.
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A female settler and her child walk in
front of shut Palestinian shops. The signs in the windows above read “This was taken by Israel, you are
apartheid.” And “Arabs are FORBIDDEN, This is Apartheid”. Palestinians are not
permitted to walk on this part of the street (Derek Oakley/EAPPI)
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The families that do
remain living behind or above the abandoned shops on Shuhada street cover their
windows in tight metal mesh to protect them from the regular attacks that come
from the settlers. Like many of the properties in the old city, their buildings
are in disrepair. Something that local NGO the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee[1] seeks to change in order
to preserve the unique heritage of the city.
Palestinian residents are forbidden from entering by front
entrances and must find alternate routes into their own homes. Likewise for the
wider population of Hebron access to the large Muslim cemetery that sits on the
street is now only achieved by a convoluted route that takes them 5 KM around
Shuhada street.
As I walk the streets
of Hebron with the EAPPI colleague who is hosting me, “Ghost Town” becomes more
than a reference to economic or social depression and segregation but also to
the violence that colors the history of the city.
Perhaps the most famous incident in the modern era is the
1929 murder of 67 Jewish residents by Arabs amidst hysteria about a planned
Jewish takeover of significant areas, with 435 surviving by sheltering with
other Arabs, to be later evacuated by the British forces that controlled the
area at the time[2].
One of the claims of current Settlers is that they are reclaiming property
stolen in the period between the last Jew leaving Hebron in 1935 and the
establishment of the first new settlement in the old city in 1971.
In 1994, 29 killed and 125 wounded after Baruch Goldstein
opened fire on Palestinian Muslims worshipping inside the Al Ibrahmi Mosque,
the site of which also contains the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest
site in Judaism, and Goldstein himself was beaten to death by survivors[3]. Many of the security
measures that restrict the movement of Palestinians in place in H2 were
introduced after this tragedy and then tightened in 2000.
The Second Intifada saw regular bloody clashes, shootings
and bombings, memorials to the dead can be found in many neighbourhoods,
including to the 10 month old baby Shalhevet Pass, murdered by a Palestinian
sniper on March 26th 2001 and whose death proved a rallying point
for settlers calling for more aggressive tactics by the IDF to reclaim parts of
the city[4]. His parents still live in
Hebron[5].
On the 12th December this year, in one of the
most explosive incidents during my tenure, 16-year-old Mohammed Ziad Sulaima
was shot dead at a checkpoint near Al Ibrahimi Mosque by an Israeli border
guard, with the IDF claiming that he attacked soldiers brandishing what later
turned out to be a toy gun. Widespread rioting erupted across Hebron and later
reports have cast doubt on the official version of events[6].
During my visit, having climbed to the neighbourhood of Tel
Rumeida, resting on the hill side above Shuhada street, we visited Hashim
Al’Aza. He and his family have been constantly harassed by settlers attempting
to force them from their land. They are unable to access the property through
the front door, their crops have been uprooted and poisoned and a number of them
have assaulted physically by settlers. Hashim says that his wife has twice been
attacked whilst pregnant, losing the babies as a result. Still he resists
“I am not moving. One day I will open my door. It is my
right”
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Hashim Al’Aza in his living room, Tell
Rumeida (Picture: Alessandra Bajec from www.iemec.org)
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I leave Hebron inundated with dates, figures and names, a
litany of blood and recriminations echoing in my head along with the same old
song looping on repeat. I also leave with the memories of the Cordoba school
children walking home past the checkpoint carefree and smiling as kids should.
The towns and cities that the Specials were talking about in
the 1980s[1] have recovered and
reinvented themselves to some extent in the UK of the 21st century. Hebron carries a heavier weight in its history
and will not cease to be important to Jews or Muslims, Israelis or
Palestinians, but I hope for the sake of the next generation that it can one
day cease being a town ruled by the ghosts of people and crimes past used to
justify more violence and repression in the present.
[1]
http://www.hebronrc.org/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=1:hrc&catid=12:contacts&Itemid=55&lang=en
[2]
See this story for a personal insight into this tragedy http://www.google.co.il/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGsQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fprint-edition%2Ffeatures%2Fsurvivor-of-1929-hebron-massacre-recounts-her-ordeal-1.281727&ei=_ePjUIvWMpGZ0QWr94GIDA&usg=AFQjCNGZ9in4i9Bb9UcRUxnjaR89FkGaag&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.d2k
[3]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/25/newsid_4167000/4167929.stm
[4]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143376#.UOPlfKw91i8
[5]
http://www.hebron.com/english/article.php?id=711
[6]
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=297653
[1]
http://www.tiph.org/en/About_Hebron/Hebron_today/
[2]
According to a survey done by the UN's Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in 2007, 1 829 Palestinian shops located in Israeli
controlled H2 have closed since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.
[3]
http://www.tiph.org/en/About_Hebron/Hebron_today/
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