Stones of Hebron

There are two ways by public transportation to travel from Jerusalem to Hebron. The first involves taking the number 160 Israeli bus, which brings you to Kiryat Arba, the large settlement of Jewish Israelis to the east of Hebron, and then down to the Cave of the Machpelah near the Old City. The other way is to take a servees from Damascus Gate into Hebron itself. As I didn’t know where to catch the Israeli bus, and couldn’t understand the Hebrew explanation given when I called the phone number listed for the bus schedule, I went by servees the way I’d gone once before.

You catch a servees by simply walking into the area where they are parked. In Jerusalem this means entering the area just north of the Damascus Gate on the north side of the Old City. Someone will soon come toward you and ask in English, "Where do you want to go?" In my case, when I said I wanted to go to Hebron, there seemed to be an argument about who was going to take me. The man who I thought had won the dispute pointed me toward the sixth van parked along the side of the street, but when I arrived there the driver was elsewhere.

Quickly, the man who seemed to have lost the argument appeared and directed me to a van a little further up the street, which was almost full of people. I got in, and a few others came as well. Once the van was full with 15 passengers, we headed south, through the tunnels that carry traffic past the Old City and then out the road to Bethlehem. We skirted Bethlehem to the west and followed highway 60 south.

At the main intersection with the highway there was a checkpoint for traffic headed north into Jerusalem, but the vehicles going south were not being stopped. We proceeded through the tunnel to the west of Bethlehem and down the highway toward Hebron, which is about twenty miles to the south of Jerusalem. I tapped the passenger in front of me on the shoulder, and then passed my 12 Shekels to forward, as did the other passengers. The driver made change while he accelerated around trucks and blew his horn to alert oncoming cars, as he drove down the middle of the two-lane highway and passed slower vehicles, which had moved partly onto the shoulder.

Outside of Hebron the Palestinian traffic all turned off the highway onto an access road that was very rough at the beginning, and was then regularly offered the experience of driving over jarring speed bumps. Having my knees jammed into the seat in front of me was now an advantage, for it kept me in place as the van lurched over the potholes, braked before each speed bump, and then accelerated after bouncing over the rise in the asphalt.

As we came into Hebron, passengers called out to the driver and the van stopped to let them out. I watched as we passed the Happy Bunny restaurant, which has this name in English above its door as well as a neon lit picture of Bugs Bunny. This was where I had gotten out of the servees the first time I came to Hebron, because other members of the EA program live nearby. But today they were busy until later in the afternoon, so I was going to downtown Hebron instead. To do that I simply stayed in the van until the last stop.

I knew we had come into the city on what the Jewish map I had identifies as Yerushalaim Road, and the map showed streets connecting from the end of that road to the Cave of the Machpelah, where both Jews and Muslims believe that Abraham and Sarah are buried. But I didn’t know exactly where I was, after I got out of the servees, and all the street signs were in Arabic. I walked in the general direction I thought was correct, and after a few blocks saw an Israeli checkpoint blocking a narrow city street.

On the other side of the checkpoint the street looked completely abandoned, but Israeli flags were flying over it, so I knew this was the transition point between the Palestinian section of the Old City and the restricted access area in which 500 Jewish settlers live with about 1,500 Palestinians. I hesitated before trying to go in, as I also knew that the Israeli settlers living ahead of me were among the most violent on the West Bank. I watched, as several Arab women went through the checkpoint, and then I decided to try it. Because I was wearing my EA vest, which has a cross on the outside, I reversed it, and then walked up to the soldiers at the checkpoint.

They were clearly surprised to find an American walking leisurely out of the chaos of downtown Hebron, but I explained I merely wanted to see the tomb of Abraham (Avraham). They looked at my passport, and at me, and then waved me on. Walking a little more than a block brought me to another soldier, who was standing guard in a small shelter that was fortified with sandbags. I said, "Avraham’s tomb?" He pointed down the street, so I continued ahead.

I didn’t see another soul on the street for the next three blocks, until I came to where men were sweeping up dirt. As I approached, I could see some of the men were using shovels to pick up the gravel, and then dumping it into baskets held by other men, who carried the full basked to the side of the road before emptying their baskets with the other rubble lining the street.

As I came closer to the road cleaning crew, I looked up and saw the stone walls that King Herod built around the Cave of Machpelah in the first century BCE. These stone walls are magnificent and extremely well preserved. Some of the stones near the corner of the building are more than 20 feet in length, and about 4 feet high. It is hard to imagine that these massive stones were lifted into place more than two millennia ago.

Each row of stones is set back about half an inch, which gives the building a less ponderous appearance as the walls rise. The stones vary in length, so the vertical lines are irregular, and above the first several tiers of stone the higher tiers have alternating depths. Rich in colors of gold and tan, these stone walls in Hebron are a wonder to behold.

The inside of the building is less striking, partly because it is divided into a synagogue and a mosque. To enter the synagogue I went through two security checkpoints and then found myself in a hall lined with Jewish prayer books. The synagogue is in a courtyard, has a roof made out of stretched canvas, and is open on two sides. It is divided into a rear section for women and a front section for men, and was obviously set up for utility with little attention to aesthetics. A few men were praying, and several soldiers were standing guard at the end of the hallway.

Beside the synagogue Jews have access into the room known as Abraham’s hall. It is about twelve feet by ten feet, and in one corner 6 or 7 elderly women were seated in a circle, conversing in Hebrew. They didn’t seem to mind when I entered and took pictures of the painted walls and ceiling. The larger interior halls of the building and four smaller halls containing monuments for the patriarchs and matriarchs are under Muslim control, but Jews are allowed to enter this part of the building 10 days during each year.

Jews believe that this memorial site in Hebron marks the actual graves of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, his first wife. The tomb of Rachel, the second wife of Jacob, is located in Bethlehem. After the Israelis defeated the Jordanian army and took control of Hebron in 1967, explorations under the structure revealed a hidden stairway to an underground level, and two caves at one end of this lower level. Pottery discovered in these caves dates back almost 3,000 years, which would be to the time of David.

Genesis 23 says that Abraham bought a cave in this area, and 2 Samuel reports that David reigned for 7 years from Hebron before moving the capital of a united Israel to Jerusalem, which he conquered from the Jebusites. A thousand years later, there was a structure here to remember these events. Under Roman and Byzantine rulers during the first few centuries of the Christian era the space within the walls was divided between Jews and Christians, but after Muslims took control in the seventh century a mosque was built in the southern half of the enclosure.

The existing building within the walls built by Herod was probably constructed in the Crusader era by Baldwin II (1118-31). Christians and Muslims visited the underground area until the middle of the thirteenth century, when the Mamluk sultan Baybars excluded Christians, but after 1490 not even Muslims were allowed in this lower area. Saladin added four minarets to the walls, two of which remain, and Islamic inscriptions are evident today even in the Jewish area.

Before leaving the site, I stopped for a soft drink in the Gutnick Center, a square nondescript building alongside the ancient memorial to the patriarchs and matriarchs. In its small café, I sat and watched three settlers enjoy their pizza, each with a revolver strapped to his hip. No one bothered me, and the manager of the café was happy to direct me to the toilets, when it was obvious that I was looking for the public facilities. While I was in the Gutnick Center the only other visitors were three Israeli soldiers, who came to buy snacks from the café manager.

After leaving the Gutnick Center, I walked out of what I later learned is called the H2 area, which is restricted to Israelis and Palestinians living in the area, and the few school Palestinian children who have permission to enter in order to attend school. The Jewish settlements in the Old City are all in the H2 area, which was created to provide protection for these settlements. The H1 area of Hebron is the larger part of the city where most of its people live, and under the Oslo agreement the H1 area is under the Palestinian Authority. I was not surprised, therefore, to see Palestinian police, as I walked through the streets of the H1 section of downtown Hebron.

Later in the afternoon I walked back up Yerushalaim Road to the Happy Bunny, and then two blocks up a connecting street to the flat where the three EAs working in Hebron live. The two of them who were there, Ana Burden from Sweden and Thoms Mandal from Norway, prepared a lovely meal for me, and also gave me hospitality for the night. Eva Rasmussen from Denmark is also a member of the EA team in Hebron, but she was away. She is a medical student and works with a mobile health clinic.

The next day I walked through the same checkpoint in downtown Hebron with Anna and Thomas, who have the responsibility of escorting the students of Qurtuba School in the morning from the checkpoint at the beginning of H2 down the street to their school, and then home again in the early afternoon. Explaining why this is necessary requires a few more facts about Hebron.

A small Jewish community lived peacefully in Hebron among the Muslim Arabs early in the twentieth century. As more Zionists arrived in Palestine, which was then under British control, tensions arose between these new immigrants and the Arab population. Rumors in 1929 that Jews were killing Arabs in Jerusalem led to Arab attacks on Jews in Hebron. 67 Jews were killed, and those who survived fled the city. In 1931 Jews from 35 families, who had lived in Hebron, returned to the city, but the British moved them out in 1936 for their own safety.

From 1936 to 1967 no Jews were living in Hebron, but in 1968 after the war a small group of religious Jews settled illegally in the city and refused to leave. Instead of removing them, the government gave them legal status. In his memoirs, Moshe Dayan says the biggest mistake of his career was allowing the first illegal Jewish settlement in Hebron to remain.

Since that time Jewish settlers have taken more land illegally in Hebron and then, after Muslims have protested and at times attacked them, these settlers demanded protection by the Israeli army. The Israeli government has played this game with the settlers by criticizing them, at first, but finally making these illegal settlements "legal."

Under international law, of course, this confiscation of property by the occupying power, and laws passed by the Knesset in an attempt to validate these actions, are in violation of the Geneva Convention and thus illegal. Yet, the Israeli government has ignored international criticism, and today there are about 7,000 Jews living in Kiryat Arba, the Jewish settlement just outside Hebron on the east, and 500 settlers living in the Old City area of Hebron.

Protecting the illegal settlements has required land and checkpoints. Palestinian buildings have been demolished or closed to create a security perimeter around the four locations near the Cave of Machpela, where the settlers claim to be renewing the Jewish quarter of the city that was lost in the riots of 1929 and 1936. It should be noted, however, that none of the Jewish families living in Hebron in the 1920s has given support to these new Jewish settlements. The Jewish families living in Hebron before the wars were very much at home in Arab culture, whereas the Jewish settlers today not only lack appreciation for Arab culture, but seek to drive all non-Jews out of Hebron in order to reclaim the city for its "original" Jewish inhabitants.

One of the settlements in the Old City had been a Hadassah clinic, whose inhabitants were killed in 1929. In 1979 a group of Jewish families occupied the building and renamed it Beit Hadassah. After six of them were killed in 1980, the Israeli government used the outcry among Jews as an excuse to punish the Palestinians in Hebron by permitting Jewish settlements in the Old City. One adjoining building to Beit Hadassah was renovated, and housing in the Old on the other side of Beit Hadassah was torn down so a new housing complex for Jews could be built.

This background information is necessary to understand why "internationals" are required to guard Palestinians girls attending Qurtuba School, because the school is directly across from Beit Hadassah and the Jewish settlements built next to the old clinic. Sadly, the Jewish settlers regularly threaten and attack Palestinian students in the street between the two buildings.

The school used to have an enrollment of over 200 students, but today there are only about 90 girls between the ages of 7 and 16. When we arrived to provide protection, Anna and I stood in the street near the checkpoint, where the girls would walk on their way to school. They were coming either from the street leading up the hill next to the checkpoint, or through the checkpoint, if they lived elsewhere in the Old City. Thomas went ahead to stand directly across from Beit Hadassah, next to the steps that lead up to the school on the hillside above the street.

We arrived at 7:30 in the morning, which is why I had to come down the night before in order to "accompany" my EA friends, as they accompany the students attending Qurtuba Schoo. Amost at once girls appeared wearing jeans and a school uniform blouse with an attached skirt that came to about 6 inches above their knees. Most of the older girls also wore headscarves, and all of the students were carrying book bags of one sort or another. They seemed happy, and that morning there were no incidents. But also present with the EAs were two other international monitors from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) set up by the 1987 Hebron Protocol to the Oslo Peace Process. These two men had their cameras ready to record any problems that might occur, as they have no power to intervene but only make reports to the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and also the governments that sponsor TIPH.

Two Israeli soldiers were stationed at the checkpoint, and two more at the security post in front of Beit Hadassah. So, as someone there for the first time, it seemed that our presence as EA volunteers should have been entirely unnecessary. But only last week the children of settlers had thrown stones at the girls as they left the school, and the soldiers had stood by without stopping them. Both Anna and Thomas were there that day, trying to protect the Palestinian children. Thomas told me that Anna stood directly in front of one soldier, as stones flew past her, and yelled at him: "Do your job. Do your job. Protect these school girls."

The Israeli soldier did tell the settler children to stop throwing stones, but when the children continued the soldier did not do anything to stop the stone throwing. Like their parents, the settler children have learned that they won’t get into trouble for attacking Palestinians and "internationals," as both Israelis and Palestinians call monitors like us.

On the morning I was there, after the children were safely in their classrooms, Anna left to visit a village school where she might teach an English course, as Thomas and I went up the stairs to the school. Before entering the building I noticed that the main staircase up to the school was blocked off with barbed wire. Thomas explained that the Israeli army had done that to keep the school children from walking 50 feet further down the street in order to use the school’s main staircase, as this would take them past Beit Hadassah. But I noticed walking up the staircase the students now must use that it was constructed with stones that were irregular in shape and would be slippery and treacherous when wet.

Inside the school I met the principal, and Thomas and I were served hot tea. After chatting with the principal briefly, for her English was limited and my Arabic completely lacking, I spent the first part of the morning talking with Thomas, while we sat in the school courtyard, until recess, when the girls came out to play. They bought snacks from a little school shop beside the playground, used the outdoor toilets, and then ran around and hit and caught a ball. I took photographs, while Thomas displayed both his skills in hitting the ball and his wonderful rapport with the students.

After recess, Thomas and I walked into Old City and down to another Israeli checkpoint, where we had a cup of tea and a few sticks of sweetbread with the father of two of the school girls. His shop is just past the checkpoint, and literally the last open shop before entering a narrow street, where everything is closed because of the presence of Israeli soldiers. Empty and partially destroyed buildings were all around us, and as we drank tea we watched as the two soldiers at the checkpoint stopped Palestinian men and checked their identification papers. Our Palestinian host explained that two men he knew had to wait an hour that morning, before they were allowed to pass. Thomas and I saw five young men searched, as they stood with their legs spread apart, leaning forward with their hands against the wall.

As we were leaving, one of the soldiers asked what I was doing there. I told him I taught religion, and I had visited the Cave at Machpelah to learn more about it. Motioning with my hand toward the destroyed buildings around us, I said, "This is very sad." He replied, "I don’t like holding these men, but sometimes when I check their names with headquarters I’m told to." The soldier seemed decent enough, but as I watched him stopping men I saw that it was humiliating for the men to be challenged, made to wait, and searched.

We returned to Qurtuba School to escort the girls home, and found that the two monitors from TIPH were already in place, standing at the bottom of the stairs. As the girls began to come down the stairs, a van full of settler children drove up to Beit Hadrassah, and I heard one of the TIPH monitors say, "This could be trouble." Thomas and I moved between the van and the children, and the TIPH monitors began taking pictures. But only the driver and one child got out of the van, and fortunately for all of us there was no problem after all.

Thomas and I followed the girls, as they went down the street. Suddenly, on the ground level of this narrow and otherwise deserted street, doors opened and girls slipped inside. Before we left the street I had walked the day before without seeing a soul, I saw girls standing on the balconies of some of the houses, which I now knew were actually homes rather than abandoned buildings.

Some of the girls went through the checkpoint into the Palestinian part of the Old City, and then they were no longer our concern. But the girls who had to walk up the hill to their homes were likely to encounter settlers, as there is a settlement at the top of the hill. So we walked with them until the last two children reached their home safely, across from the settlement on the hill.

On the hilltop, one of the TIPH monitors spoke with the soldiers stationed across from this settlement, and soon three of them crossed the street and pulled away debris from beside the settlement in order to clear the path that leads to two Palestinian properties set back from the street. Apparently, the settlers regularly block this path, and the international monitors have to ask the soldiers to clear it.

Before I left Hebron, Thomas and I visited the Palestinian extended family living in the first house on the street next to Qurtuba School. Thomas knew that one of the men in this house had been attacked and beaten in the street the day before by four settlers, and we went to meet with him and, if he agreed, to put him in touch with the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem.

Two of the school girls were on the balcony of this home, so Thomas called to them in Arabic, inquiring if the man we were looking for was at home. When they said he was, we opened the metal door on the street level, and entered the home. A metal shopping cart was blocking one of the two doors, leaving only a narrow passageway into the home, which made it impossible for more than one person to enter at a time. There were no rooms on the ground floor, but only a steep staircase up to the next level.

We climbed up two stories, passing one apartment, and then reached the top floor of the building, where we met the man who had been attacked. Thomas interviewed him briefly, and took photos of the bruises on his face. Then Thomas called B’Tselem, and on his cell phone the man spoke briefly with one of the field officers of the organization, who said he would come to prepare an incident report.

As we were speaking with the man, his brother brought up his two-year old son, who had been attacked by settler children two days earlier. The boy’s right eye was swollen, and he had a bandage over the right side of his face covering a large abrasion. Thomas listened to his father’s explanation of the incident, took photos of the boy, and will write up his report for EAPPI.

Four small children had gathered from inside the house, and I went with them onto the flat roof next to the upper floor apartment, where they happily posed for photos. I found I was looking down at Beit Hadrassah and directly across at the four-story Jewish settlement built beside it. I could also see Qurtuba School immediately to the south, and rolls of barbed wire strewn behind the school to cut if off from the buildings above. Army barracks and outposts surrounded the entire neighborhood.

Thomas left the house to go to the checkpoint and met the B’Tselem field officer, and I stayed behind with the family. But the soldiers at the checkpoint would not let the B’Tselem field officer through the checkpoint, saying that as a Palestinian he had no right to enter H2, because he did not reside there.

I learned this, when Thomas called me to ask if the injured man would walk out to the checkpoint to be interviewed. Thomas spoke briefly with him on my cell phone, but it quickly became clear that he did not want to do that. So, I left and joined Thomas and the B’Tselem field officer on the Palestinian side of the checkpoint.

I learned then that when the soldier was asked if an Israeli staff member of B’Tselem would be allowed through, he said that would be fine. But when told that preventing the Palestinian staff member from passing through was discrimination, he simply shrugged his shoulders. The B’Tselem field officer had called an army command office to try to obtain authorization to pass through the checkpoint, and he told us that he had been in the H2 area only last week. "It’s just this soldier," he said, "who wants to give me a hard time." He planned to wait thirty minutes or so for the army command center to phone and give him permission to enter H2, before giving up.

Rather than wait with him, Thomas and I walked through the maze of streets that distinguish the Old City from the rest of the downtown. We passed dozens of parked taxis and vans, which will transport Palestinians throughout the metropolitan area and beyond, but not to any of the areas restricted only to Jewish Israelis.

I was looking for a ride all the way back to Jerusalem. The first time I was in Hebron, we left in the evening when there were no taxis available to go all the way to Jerusalem, which requires that a driver have a Jerusalem ID. That evening we took a taxi to Khadar, a transition point in the informal Palestinian transportation grid, which is located just before Bethlehem. There we were able to locate a taxi that could take us through the checkpoint and on into Jerusalem.

To avoid having to make the transfer at Khadar, Thomas and I walked further through the downtown area until we came to place where taxis and servees vans would make the complete trip. A man quickly said he was happy to take me to Jerusalem directly, either in a van carrying 15 persons or in a taxi. A ride in the van would cost 15 Shekels and require waiting for the van to fill, whereas the taxi ride would cost 20 Shekels and would leave immediately, as there were already three persons in the back seat and he was only looking for a fourth passenger.

It wasn’t worth waiting to save 5 Shekels, so I came back to Jerusalem by taxi. As we drove to the outskirts of Hebron, I was glad to see that the exiting traffic was not backed up, as it had been the day before when I entered the city and an Israeli checkpoint had been holding all vehicles leaving Hebron. We passed the tea shop just before at the intersection with highway 60, which does a good business when traffic is held up, and then began the hour long drive to Jerusalem.

The stones in the fields of grape vines and olive trees caught my eye, as we sped north. Massive boulders were piled up alongside the highway, and rows of stones dug out of the earth marked the fields every 50 feet or so, creating rectangular patterns within the orchards. Also, where the fields were on hillsides, stone walls lined the terraces in the vineyards and groves. Nonetheless, despite all the efforts to clear the fields of stones, the soil around the plants and trees in the fields was filled with the stones that are so characteristic of this land.

In Hebron, some of these stones have been used to build a beautiful memorial to the ancestors of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, to the patriarchs and matriarchs who are remembered with reverence by Jews and Muslims. But other, smaller stones, are used as weapons by Jewish children against Palestinian children, who must walk a gauntlet of hatred and fear in order to attend their neighborhood school.

I am writing as a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, which is sponsored by the World Council of Churches. The views expressed above are my own and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

Bob Traer, 19 April 2005

For other Letters from Jerusalem, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/lj.letters.2005.htm.

For photos from Hebron, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/photos.hebron1.htm and http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/photos.hebron2.htm. 

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