Tensions in Hebron reach boiling point

HEBRON, West Bank - At first glance life seems to have returned to normal in Hebron.

Shops are open for business, roads are clear of temporary checkpoints, and the constant military presence that took over the city during the lockdown throughout Operation Brother’s Keeper has retreated.

In the days and weeks after the operation was first launched following the 12 June kidnapping of three Israeli settler teens - Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gilad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrah,19 – Hebron was placed under near total lockdown as Israeli security services launched waves of house raids and arrests.

But once the bodies were found in a shallow grave outside Hebron on 30 June, and tensions intensified in Israel and the rest of the occupied territories, things seem to have eased in Hebron.

However, even as Palestinian majority towns and neighborhoods across Israel and later the West Bank erupted in protests following the 2 July killing 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and Gaza became the target of a separate Israeli military operation, barricades in Hebron were lifted.

Two weeks after the missing teens were found murdered, the city during the daytime is once again buzzing with life. The souk is colourful and lively, children and families are seen mulling around freely and the Israeli soldiers are noticeably fewer and far between.

But under the kaleidoscopic facade, Hebron remains tense. Small scale protests and raids still happen most evenings, but these kinds of skirmishes apparently frighten locals less than the fear of reprisals from their settler neighbours. 

Residents say that since the military partially pulled out, the local settler population has stepped up its aggression, leaving many Palestinians in Hebron feeling less than safe.

Abed Mohtaseb owns a souvenir shop just off Hebron’s Shuhada Street, a busy street in the city centre that has hundreds of illegal Israeli settlers living on top and around it.

His store exists in a sort of no-man's land, caught between a military checkpoint, Hebron’s old city and an illegal settlement. Mohtaseb sits outside his shop every day, directly across from an Israeli army base and checkpoint.

Hebron is the only city in the West Bank in which Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents live side-by-side in the heart of the city. Clashes between the Palestinian population and Hebron’s settlers have been common since the first Israelis began to settle in the ancient Old City, but residents say that tensions have never been this high before.

Settlers worse than soldiers

Even in less delicate times, Hebron’s settlers are known to have thrown garbage, dirty water and nappies down onto the Palestinian population and the tourists mulling below, but there has been a serious escalation in recent weeks.

“They are now throwing stones at people walking and attacking people in their cars,” says Mohtaseb. “One of the settlers attacked a 28-year-old Palestinian recently. He was taken to hospital, and when his mother saw him - and saw how badly he had been beaten – she fainted.”

The violence Palestinian residents are experiencing at the hands of settlers in Hebron is not unique to the city. ‘Price tag’ (vengeance) attacks have surged since the bodies of the three Israeli settler teens were discovered. Indeed, Israeli police reports released on Monday appear to confirm what many have been thinking for weeks - that Abu Khdeir’s brutal murder was a pre-meditated revenge attack.

Mohtaseb says that for the last few weeks, his whole neighbourhood has had to take extra precautions at every turn. Hebron’s Palestinian residents now avoid walking alone, or going out at night. Children who before ran freely through the narrow pathways in the old souk are kept close to home. Many parents say that fears of another kidnapping are never far from their thoughts.

“It was bad when it was just about the three Israelis that were killed, but now with Gaza, I don’t see an end to this,” Mohtaseb said. “Everyone is talking about Gaza now. Both sides, and everyone is angry.”

Small scale nightly protests continue to take place.  

“The clashes continue every day, near here where I work,” said Munjid who was afraid to give his last name. “At the moment people are angry about Gaza and what's happening there, there have been so many killed. Before it was about Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and before that all the punishment we were getting because of the settlers.”

While residents reeled under Brother’s Keeper, Mohtaseb says he now feels almost nostalgic for the relative predictability that a military presence brings.

“The soldiers are better than the settlers because the army is at least supposed to follow rules,” says Mohtaseb. “But the settlers, the government gives them the right to do whatever. Even the soldier, or the commander can’t control the settlers.”

His views are echoed around Hebron, with many residents finding themselves trapped between the predictability of a rifle, and the erratic fear of having boiling water thrown down from above or being jumped from behind.

“We protest in front of the soldiers every night, but it is the settlers that are the real problem here, they do what they want,” said Munjid.

“We can’t bring our protests direct to the settlements though. If we tried we would be shot for sure. Not by the soldiers but by the settlers. They would shoot us and the army would watch.”

While ‘price tag’ attacks are notorious for going unpunished, Mohtaseb says that Hebron is unique and that the complete lack of accountability here is worse than elsewhere in the West Bank. Even under regular circumstances, he says that the community lives under a state of lawlessness.

In 1997, under the Hebron Agreement which was a follow-up to the Oslo Accords, the city was separated into two different districts, H1 and H2.

H1 falls under Palestinian control, while H2 is under Israeli military control. It consists of some 700 settlers and 30,000 Palestinian residents. Mohtaseb and the rest of the residents in Hebron’s Old City, both Israeli and Palestinians, live in H2 under Israeli rule.

However, according to Mohtaseb, Israeli forces are only there to protect the settler community, not the Palestinians. When it comes to violence committed by Israeli settlers, Palestinians in H2 are particularly vulnerable.

Even before the controversial deal Hebron was a flash point. In 1994, American-born Israeli Baruch Goldstein marched into the city’s Ibrahimi mosque, which is of religious importance to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, and opened fire. 

The attack left 29 male worshippers dead and 125 wounded. Goldstein was subsequently beaten to death by the survivors and his act quickly condemned by the Israeli government, although he continues to be seen as a martyr by some settlers, especially in Hebron.

Standing with Gaza

It’s not often Mohtaseb would argue with soldiers, never mind speak with them, but a lively debate soon erupts as three soldiers approach his shop, where Mohtaseb is sitting with his son and two friends.

One of the soldiers approaches and asks in fluent Arabic if they had heard about the latest Hamas rocket to land near Jerusalem.

“Yes, it hit nothing” Mohtaseb said. “And there are [more than 170] dead in Gaza now.”

The two groups of men, immediately go on the offensive with their different arguments. The Palestinians point out that civilian deaths from the raids, now in their seventh day, are rising. The soldiers meanwhile counter that Hamas is to blame and that the group is using civilians as human shield. The group proceeds to talk each other in circles over the morality of Israel’s later Gaza operation and Hamas’ random rocket launches.

“How would you like to live in fear every night of a rocket hitting your home, and your children? We are defending ourselves,” says one of the soldiers.

“I live in fear for my children everyday - especially now,” Mohtaseb’s friend who did not want to give his name shoots back.

After about ten minutes the heated debate begins to die down as do tensions. It’s almost as though both groups have gotten something off their chests and are ready to retreat to their separate corners. 

“I have never seen them do that before,” Mohtaseb’s son said, staring off at the soldiers walking back towards their base.

“That was really bizarre, but they have to go get ready for the fight tonight I guess,” he added.

With no end in sight to the fighting in Gaza, many in the West Bank feel that they too will not be able to breathe a sigh of relief until the shelling ends in the strip.

“But the people in Gaza are strong, so strong, and different from people here [West Bank] I think. They are bombed from the air and the sea and they do all they can to resist and fight back,” said Munjid.

Some even speak of the onset of a third intifada that might shake all of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for years to come.

“Thing will get worse in all of Palestine, not just al-Khalil [Hebron]. All of Palestine,” Mohtaseb said. We should “enjoy the bad now because what is coming is much worse.”