Southward Bound

I never have been one to stay in a single place for any length of time, and as I reached the half-way point in Nablus my little feet got itchy again. I know the rising-feeling well, and also know that when it starts, I have no way of ignoring it; I can’t focus, and there’s only one way I can rest. I packed in my stale old teaching job in Nablus and headed south to Hebron, where the situation is hot and the weather is cold. For some reason, I had it in my mind that Hebron was lower than Nablus, but instead I’ve found we’re higher in the clouds, and the night time chills bite.

Hebron is believed to be the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world, and is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs – reputed to house the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives – which, for both Jews and Muslims, is the most holy site outside of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Unlike in Jerusalem, where the three major monotheistic religions have been able to coexist in relative peace out of respect for the sacred sites, in Hebron the fight over the land is harsh and has often turned violent, most notoriously in the Baruch Goldstein massacre of 1994, in which 29 Muslims were killed during prayer, and over 150 injured. Like the whole of the West Bank, Hebron is quieter now than it was a few years ago, but the tensions remain, and the internationals that work here help keep things from boiling over.

I had been thinking about stopping teaching for a while: I didn’t come here to teach English, but that’s what I got stuck with doing. It was fine, for a while, but the days quickly faded into repetition and the weeks dragged on. Just over a week ago I participated in a non-violence training course run by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and spoke to some people who had been working down in Hebron, which got my rambling cogs spinning. The truth is that Hebron is in a bad way, and needs people far more than Nablus does. Nablus has its problems, and the refugee camps need all the workers they can get, but there are no settlers in Nablus. Here in Hebron, they are right in the city.

The settlers – religious extremists and twisted zealots – are one of the biggest problems in Palestine. They are also perhaps the most spoilt members of Israeli society, receiving huge subsidies from the Israeli government and round-the-clock protection from the IDF. Their homes are built illegally on Palestinian land, but the wall is routed to protect their homes. They wreak havoc on neighbouring communities, destroy olive trees at night, and seem not to regard Palestinians or the Bedouin as human beings. What’s worse, they’re armed to the teeth. Protected, funded, and above the law, they are a huge threat to the peace in the West Bank, and a constant source of aggravation for the Palestinians. Our job here at the ISM is to watch, both the soldiers and the settlers, and provide witness to ensure that no crimes are committed, and if anything happens that it is documented and reported. There are a good group of people here, and I guess there needs to be. This will be a change from teaching, but at least my old itchy feet can rest easy awhile...