Hebron

Today we’d arranged to meet with the participants in the Kramim military preparatory program, a tour and a half-hour conversation, a route from the Cave of the Patriarchs to the Cordova girls’ school.

At about 11:30 we’d received via Raya Ye’or a phone call that settlers are rioting at ‘Abed’s souvenir shop opposite the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Hagit Back’s report describes the incident and includes photographs.

To our great sorrow, ‘Abed’s suffering and the destruction at his shop allowed us to display the full ugliness of the occupation and its damage.

And the tour in fact began opposite the Cave of the Patriarchs with a short presentation by Hagit.  The 45 participants and the soldiers serving as escort know quite a lot about the conflict, the Oslo agreements, Areas A, B, and C.  They received a map of Hebron from a female settler which is, of course, completely different from the one we provide.

We walked from there to ‘Abed’s shop.  We weren’t able to spend enough time there because the governor of Hebron was on his way and Border Police soldiers providing security made us leave.

The questions we’re always asked by each group are always the same questions:

1.      Our right to the land

2.      Our holy sites, our existential cradle

3.      Who has the rights to this site, we or they

4.      In fact, we captured the area from the Jordanians.

5.      And then, of course, about the organization, who we are, whom will we vote for.

6.      Why don’t you care about your own people.

And on and on, and also spiteful questions, do you also worry about water and electricity for the settlements.

And so we walked to the school while some agreed with us, some disagreed, and only at the end did they manage to make me lose control when one young woman said she’d seen one of our films in which we sat a Palestinian woman down and demanded she say that soldiers had harassed her.  Such lies really drive me mad.  I told her to view our website and find that film, and that she shouldn’t worry – it isn’t there.

Lessons for the future:  For a similar tour on Shuhada Street we need more women because small groups form and they have loads of questions and it’s important to respond and to talk.

We’re to go to the preparatory program for an additional meeting.

And we’ve already begun to talk about next year’s program.