Yedioth Ahronoth
by Boaz Okon

You enter Hebron from Kiryat Arba. If you are Jewish. You ride on the “Zion road,” as the soldiers call it, or “Wadi el-Nasra,” as it is known to the Palestinians. From there you slide down to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, through what the Jewish settlers call King David Street and the Palestinians call Shuhada (“martyrs”) Street.
But here the streets of the names do not mean a thing. They are an intangible decoration, deception and even a lie, because you travel on only one route: apartheid route.
If you look, you will see at the entrance to the “Zion road” a building that looks like a tent on a large lot. This lot belongs by law to the Jaabari family, and the building is “Hazon David.” It has been evacuated 34 times, but holds firm. On the road itself, cars move, but not Palestinian cars. At the end appears a sign in Hebrew, directing people left to the “Hebron heroes neighborhood.”
Then you approach Shuhada Street. Concrete barriers and barbed wire fences block alleyways that lead to and from the street. Other access routes are controlled by military posts. Most of the doors are welded shut. No one can enter or leave. Here and there Israeli flags hang. Slogans on the doors, next to military outposts, call for “revenge” or “death to the Arabs.”
But there are no Arabs here. There is no entrance, on foot or by vehicle, for Arabs. A soldier stands at the intersection leading to the street, and clarifies to the Arab that he should stay away from it. You ask with feigned innocence: “Why can’t he enter?” and the soldier looks at the empty street and says: “It’s a Jewish neighborhood.”
And you ask: “So what?”
And he answers: “He’s an Arab.”
You: “Why can I go to his neighborhood?”
The soldier wraps up the discussion: “Are there Jewish terrorists?”

To attack, disrupt and thwart
If the Arabs are not to be seen, one can see many soldiers and police officers. It is said that there are 600 Jewish settlers in Hebron, another 200 yeshiva students and another 500 soldiers, in addition to police officers and Border Policemen. They can actually be seen on Shuhada Street, and on the other streets, which are abandoned and closed up. Once 35,000 Arabs used to live in Area H2, which is under Israeli control. Today there are only 20,000.
But on the abandoned streets of the old city center, they are invisible.
A bit before, at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the landscape suddenly changes. The road is divided into two by metal police fences. In one part, only Jews can walk, and the other part is allocated to Arabs. There are open shops, perhaps five. Arab shops. But they serve only Jews, because the Arabs cannot enter this side of the street.
If you continue a bit further, you will reach an area of abandoned buildings, surrounding a U-shaped plaza. It is all deserted, but one soldier stands there next to a military post. “I’m from Golani,” he explains.
“And who lives here?” you ask, and point at the buildings, where dozens of families must have lived.
“The mute woman,” he answers.
Only one woman lives here, and her husband, who is married to five other wives, and the children of the woman. Besides the mute woman, her husband and their children—no one is permitted to enter.
Next to the soldier hangs a military instruction sheet, marked “classified.” The heading stands out: “I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them; neither did I turn back till they were consumed” [Psalms 18:38]. Underneath it states that the goal is to attack, disrupt and thwart terrorist activity, and to enforce “law and order, with the aim of providing security for the residents of the State of Israel.”
And you think: This is not exactly law and order, and residents of the State of Israel are nowhere to be seen here, but the goal appears to have been achieved, because the enemies have been consumed. Besides the mute woman, of course. They left, say official spokespersons, “for urban reasons.” This is what one calls a planned method, which makes life intolerable.
The sign knows this, because it states that “one family (the mute woman’s family) is permitted to pass to the casbah through the gates. At the outpost, there are pictures of the family members who are permitted to enter.”
The soldiers explain something about security considerations, and you think that providing security in Hebron must be a kind of neurosis, which becomes particularly dangerous when it penetrates the minds of soldiers who think that they arrived at by rational means.

Ladders and porches
You continue to walk: The camels’ marketplace is closed and looks like a large garbage bin, hemmed in by ruined shops, with a drawing of IDF soldiers on a tank appearing on one of the walls. Opposite is the Muslim cemetery. There one can actually see busy movement: It is crossed by people. Arabs. The cemetery has become an alternative route of travel, instead of Shuhada Street.
The gold market is also closed. Hermetically closed to Jews and Arabs. The well-known Beit Hadassah overlooks it.
Separation is in the air. It stabs the eyes not because of graffiti such as “revenge” on an Arab school, or “for the evacuation of settlements—we will kill Arabs.” It enrages the heart not because of stories told by the Breaking the Silence organization, about a game played by soldiers, where each one chokes a Palestinian to see who can last for longer.
I know they say it is irregular. That they are punished to the full extent of the law. But that is not the main point. Separation is felt mainly because of the desolation. “A ghost city,” is was called by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. First you take the physical location, and then you take the soul.
Separation damages the person’s self-identity. It expresses an unbridled ability to humiliate, and is an infuriating expression of obtuseness.
Whoever continues to walk on the apartheid route loses, slowly but surely, control over his human feelings. Apartheid becomes a habit, and over time, a disease. The return to dignity and humanity becomes impossible.
But we are dealing with symptoms. Here a story about an ambulance that was not allowed to pass, there abuse of a Palestinian patient. A handful of well-intentioned people occasionally petitions the High Court of Justice, and demands that Arabs be permitted to pass in a certain section, or request that an old woman on Shuhada Street be allowed to enter her home through the street, not “climbing on roofs, ladders and porches.”
Another petition objects to the policy of “mappings,” which is a code name for the permission to enter any home where Arabs live, without special cause, any hour of the day, but mainly at night, and keep a record of people who are present and a general examination of the house’s content.
Letters were also issued in condemnation of the policy of practicing arrest, meaning the arrest of an Arab without cause and his release half an hour later, at the end of the exercise.
But we focus on the cases of overt cruelty, try to obtain “humanitarian exceptions,” and do not realize that the prohibition of entry to Arabs, the separate roads, the separation between certain people and others, all these are the great crime.
Arguments against the principle of separation have long since arisen. In 2004, the Hebron municipality petitioned the High Court of Justice, along with several dozen residents of the city, to cancel the closure of main roads by iron gates and concrete barriers. The petitioners did not mention the word apartheid, but they based themselves on a long series of clauses included in international charters, which forbid discrimination between different residents. They also referred to Supreme Court rulings.
Since then they have been waiting for a ruling, and the IDF replies to different inquiries that “the position of the IDF is that Shuhada Street should remain closed for security reasons.” As if the street were closed to all comers.

Every soldier—an interpreter
We continue, and reach the checkpoint in Tel Rumeida, the Gilbert checkpoint. At first, it is a roadblock of soldiers, who motion to you to stop. They permit you to go after about 15 minutes. Then a Border Police roadblock. You say, “we are going to Abu Haikal’s house,” which is located about 100 meters away.
And then it become apparent that there are other separations.
A Border Policeman says: “This is a closed military zone.”
“What does that mean?” you wonder.
“There’s an order,” says the friendly policeman, and adds: “The brigade has the order, I don’t have it in my pocket.”
“So why can they cross,” you ask, pointing at a group of people wearing black skullcaps in holiday suits.
And he says: “Entrance is permitted only to Israelis.”
We: “We’re also Israelis.”
He: “No, only to Jews.”
We: “We’re also Jews.”
He: “Forget about it, you’ll make a provocation.”
We: “We’ll walk with hands in our pockets.”
He: “If we let you go up, they (points at the house of the settlers) will make a provocation.”
Our escort calls the police. They say: “It’s Area A.” Then, “a closed military zone.” We ask for the order, and turn back. Then comes a phone call: You can enter now.
That’s how it is, when separation becomes a norm, it receives a nickname, “fortification plan,” or “protection zone,” which are the words of the State Attorney’s Office for the invisible, but very tangible, sign that hangs over Shuhada Street, and announces: “No entrance for Arabs.” In their own street. […]

Hebron comes to you
And now, a riddle remains: After all, we know what is happening in Hebron. Or at least, we are able to know. Nonetheless, we pretend, and remain with the Hannah Arendt-like question: how long does it take the average person to overcome his innate aversion to sin and crime, and what exactly happens when he reaches this point.
You can delude yourselves and say: We won’t go to Hebron. I only went there because Limor of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said to me: “It can’t be described in words.” And Michael from Breaking the Silence agreed to accompany us.
But it won’t help you. The apartheid route only starts there. It reaches the entrance to your own home. Even if you close your eyes as tight as you can.