The Tomb of the Patriarchs

Yesterday Shorok, Jiries, and I went to Khalil al-Rahman, which is known in English as Hebron. It is about 15 kilometers south of Bethlehem, and there are about 130,000 Palestinians living there. There are also around 500 (some say 800) settlers living in the middle of Hebron in a settlement called El Deboya, and they are protected by 10,000 soldiers. In the early 1970s the settlers began taking over Palestinian homes; it was the first settlement established in the West Bank. Since the settlement is placed in the middle of the town, Hebron is divided in the center. This makes it extremely difficult for the people to go from one side of the city to the other (because the business center is on the opposite side of the residential area); they have to take a road that is actually outside of Hebron to get to each side. Israeli policy in Hebron city center has led thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and some 1,829 businesses have been shut down since 1994, a report by the Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights has charged. Hebron used to be the commercial center of the West Bank.

We drove into the middle of Hebron and parked the car at the beginning of a narrow street. We walked about 100 meters before we saw the first Israeli military post guarding the settlement. The houses that Arabs used to own and live in are now occupied by settlers. You can see to the right the central marketplace is closed completely and the farther down the winding path we went the more deserted it was. All of the houses are abandoned, except for the homes of the settlers, which are guarded by heavily protected windows and barbed wire. The Israeli flag hangs shamelessly from the outside walls. Shops on both sides are either abandoned or open with the owner sitting in front to prevent the settlers from taking their store.

There are almost no people walking in the street; the Hebronites don’t dare venture down that way, so there are only a few tourists who come to see the miserable living conditions. One of the most extraordinary things I witnessed yesterday was the nets put up above the market shops by the Palestinians to catch the disgusting garbage that the settlers throw out their windows onto the street. As I walked under it I could feel dripping liquid land on my arms and in my hair, it was sickening, and I still can’t believe how human beings would knowingly treat each other so horribly. How is this related to security? Is it not blatantly provocative?



Notice the Israeli flag on the left side of this picture:


Settler’s windows:

Settlement school guarded by soldiers:


Another settlement was built on the outskirts of Hebron; it is called Qiryat Arba with about 10,000-20,000 settlers on Hebronite land. The settlers from Qirat Arba and El Deboya are the most radical of all settlers, and most of them come from the U.S…. New York, to be specific. The Israeli government offers them free houses, tax free cars, tax free furniture, free schooling for the children, secure jobs, and the most important, an M-16 gun to shoot to kill. These settlers have both American and Israeli passports so they are free to do whatever they want, and they cannot be tried in the U.S. if they kill someone here in Palestine. A good example of this kind of person is Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish American Zionist who I will talk about shortly. The marketplace abruptly ends at a large security gate, which is set up to monitor who goes into the Israeli area. We went through the gate and answered a series of questions by the Israeli soldier about where we were from and what we were doing. On the other side of security was Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi, which according to the Muslims and Jews is the tomb of the patriarchs and their wives: Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Leah, and Jacob. The Israelis also believe that Adam and Eve are buried there. It is a holy place for both religions, and before the 25th of February 1994 the place was open for Muslims and Jews to pray together.


According to Zionist ideology, this place, along with all other sites in the Holy Land, are for the Jewish people only. A young Zionist physician from the United States living in the settlement in the middle of Hebron planned an attack to implement the Zionist idea of an exclusive Jewish site. Dr. Baruch Goldstein was known by the Muslims because he had been a frequent worshipper at Haram al-Ibrahimi. One early morning on February 25th 1994, in the month of Ramadan (the holy month of fasting for Muslims) at 5 a.m. during the first prayer of the day, he passed through two Israeli army checkpoints at the main entrance to the mosque with his machine gun and a few grenades. While the Muslims were bowing down to pray, he began to throw grenades and sprayed bullets at them, killing 29 and injuring 125 before he was killed by some of the surviving worshippers. The IDF did nothing to stop him when they heard the bullets. For the Arabs, this was seen as a planned attack that Goldstein did not plan alone. After this terrorist attack of an Israeli against unarmed worshippers, the Palestinians were placed under 30 days of curfew, the fruit and vegetable market was shut down, and the "system of separation" was developed inside the mosque between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Jewish people took 2/3 of the mosque, and the Palestinians were left with a small section with heavily guarded soldiers at the entrance.
Inside the mosque near where the massacre happened:

After we went through the first security checkpoint, we had to go through another right outside of the mosque, and the soldiers demanded to see our passports and asked us if we were Christians. I didn’t really see how that was relevant, but I answered them anyways. The soldiers were undoubtedly there to provoke the Muslims and to make it difficult for them to get in and pray in their own section. Who exactly are they supposed to be protecting? Our citizenship/religious adherence clearly wasn’t very important, because Shorok didn’t have any identification to show them and she didn’t answer any of their questions and they didn’t say a thing about it.

Another thing, the settlers took the body of Dr. Baruch Goldstein and buried it in Qiyrat Arba, and made it into a shrine. Every year on the anniversary of the massacre settlers go to his gravesite and celebrate what he did for Israel.

Security going to the tomb

Settlers

The Tomb of Abraham

Inside the mosque

Where everyone keeps their shoes while they are in the mosque

The spot where the sheik talks

Inside the mosque with Shorok

Looking down into the cave where the tombs are:

Men in the market

Palestinian road blocked because of the settlement:

Man with a shop right near the settlement; for this reason he doesn’t get many customers

The very same oak tree that Abraham supposedly rested under at one point. It is somewhere in this mass of trees, but the church that owns the property was closed so we didn’t get a chance to look at it:

Hebron street scene


Shuhada Street (which means martyr street), a Palestinian road, that has been blocked off because of the invasive settlement


Today I spent the day with 3 Americans from the US Department of Agriculture. They are visiting the Palestine Wildlife Society for a 10 day marathon of events. Today they met with us as well as the Palestinian Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Tourism, the Environmental Quality Authority Minister, and a few other state officials. It was extremely hot and the electricity kept cutting out in the middle of everyone’s presentations. We drove to the desert right outside of Hebron and it was even hotter there. In 5.5 hours we are going to a Wildlife Monitoring Station in Jericho, so I really need to get some sleep. I will write more about the wildlife adventures soon, and also about the beautiful wedding I went to at the Church of the Nativity yesterday. Goodnight!