Life under occupation

This is hard for all of us here to believe, but we're only wrapping up our first full day in Al-Khalil (Hebron).  It has certainly been a full one, and I can't possibly touch on everything we've done and learned--nor will I try.  Instead, I will focus on the military occupation here in the city.

Hebron is unique in that it contains Israeli settlers within the city itself (in addition to bordering settlements), so it is divided between Israeli (H2) and Palestinian (H1) control.  The area in which we are staying, and where the experiences I'll be discussing happened, is the Israeli-controlled Old City.

Simply put, the Old City is a bombed-out shell of what it once was.  Access for Palestinians is limited by checkpoints, road blocks, and Israeli-only roads.  Many Palestinians live or work on roads where only settler vehicles are allowed, or sometimes where even Palestinian pedestrians are forbidden except when traveling to and from their own homes, restricting visitors.  Soldiers stop young men and sometimes children at random to check their IDs or search their bags.  All of this is in the name of security, which seems to mean the security of the 200 to 400 settlers living inside the city.

After supper last night, I went with three other delegates and John and Drew, full-time CPTers, on a patrol.  CPT patrols the area to watch for soldiers who are detaining or otherwise harrassing Palestinians, and to be a visible international presence.  Surprisingly, we did not encounter any soldiers walking the streets.

Our first encounter with the soldiers was going through a checkpoint.  Being light-skinned, we were able to walk straight through; the soldiers ignored the blaring metal detector and buzzed us through the turnstyle.  Understand that this is not a checkpoint that separates some clear Palestinian section from a clear Israeli section.  Palestinians must pass through the metal detector and turnstyle to visit friends, go to mosque, work, and basically just to carry out their lives.

Though we had no problems getting through, I still found it extremely uncomfortable to walk trough a confined space while being watched by men with automatic weapons.  The feeling was not one of peace or of security.

A couple hundred meters past the checkpoint, we encountered a soldier on guard who asked us where we were from.  We told him we were from the United States, and he let us go.  This became a common experience; "American" seems to be a bit of a magic word for the soldiers.

On the way back, we stopped to watch a lone man passing through the checkpoint.  Where we had barely broken stride, he was forced to repeatedly walk through the metal detector, and lift his shirt and pant legs to demonstrate that he was not carrying a weapon.  "It's not nice," one of the soliders called out to us, "but it's my job."  While there are plenty of aggressive soldiers, a common attitude seems to be that they are merely doing their duty.  And since military service is compulsory in Israel, many of them probably don't even want to be here.

Checkpoints, however, are merely one of the most innocuous practices of the military.  Today, as we were finishing our lunch, we got a call from John and Drew asking for backup at a home invasion in progress--soldiers had entered a Palestinian home, without clear reason, and were detaining the family.  This, unfortunately, is far from unheard of here.

We hurried to the location, but on the way we passed a group of soldiers heading the other direction, who turned out to be the soldiers in question.  I noticed one of them was carrying a large pry bar.

We took time to sit with the student who lived there with his family while he recounted the story.  The soldiers had entered the home and held the family in one room while they searched the rest of the house.  Then they went upstairs and broke into the student's study room, refusing his offer to unlock it for them.  Drew and John arrived, along with a partner of theirs, and argued with the soldiers, telling them they needed either a warrant or a written order from their commander, as per Israeli law.  "I am the law," one of the soldiers responded.  Finally, after several minutes of standoff, they left.

The idea behind CPT was to have individuals willing to make the same sacrifices for peace that soldiers make for war.  Today, hurrying through the streets and hearing the story of the home invasion, I felt what I imagine to be something like what a soldier feels--I'll call it a proud urgency.  Someone needed our help.

I am averse to using military and war metaphors for peace work, but throughout the rest of the day I have been thinking about how this situation needs more soldiers--the CPT kind of soldiers.  There are 1,500 Israeli soldiers in Al-Khalil.  Imagine what 1,500 peacemakers could do.