Hebron – Threatened Friendliness
By: gjermundgranlund
Tags: Abraham, Hebron, occupation, settlers, the fourth Geneva convention
Category: Uncategorized
| Aperture: | f/7.1 |
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| Focal Length: | 18mm |
| ISO: | 200 |
| Shutter: | 1/500 sec |
| Camera: | NIKON D70s |
Hebron in Arabic is Al-Khalil. The friendly. Jews, Muslims and Christians used to live here side by side as neighbours for many hundred years. In the city where Abraham’s burial place is believed to be. Abraham, the patriarch of three religions Al-Khalil.
There is friendliness in Hebron today as well. My first impression of walking in the old city was how easy it was to talk to people, and how nice they were. I have no complaints about the Bethlehem area, but they do receive a lot of tourists, and obviously that affects the way they relate to people like me with my blond hair and big camera. This doesn’t seem to be the case in Hebron. Both in terms of practicing the Palestinian dialect and talking photos it was very different. Very enjoyable!
But there is a darker side to Al-Khalil which is not very friendly. In the old city there are now more than 400 very fundamentalist Jews living on the top floors of the buildings. They belong to religious parties that are considered terrorist organizations in both America and in Israel.
In the picture you see that the street has a metal net above. This is to protect the children going to school in the morning, or women buying vegetables at the marked, from being attacked by the settlers living on the top floors. It protects them from getting a big stone in the head that could possibly kill them, but not from the humiliation of getting dirty dish-water or urine all over you.
This is an important side of the conflict. The Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states that the occupying power is not allowed to transfer parts of its own civilian population in to the occupied territorie, and and that it is to provide procection for the people already living there. This is not the case in the West Bank in general or Hebron in particular. There is no excuse for the way Israel acts towards the Palestinian population. This is not about politics, not about religion, it’s about respecting human rights. I don’t know why people can’t see that.
2 comments on “Hebron – Threatened Friendliness”
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Your description of Hebron as friendly to people of all faiths, while very optimistic, is unfortunately flawed and naive. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre
I believe you are motivated by good intentions, and your desire to help the Palestinians is admirable. But do not deceive yourself. The Palestinians have meted out more than their fair share of violence and brutality.
Thank you so much for the comment. It is interesting to have my blog post labeled as “flawed” and “naive”. It sharpens my thoughts about how I am perceived by other people. It seem like you believe that I try to cover up the massacre that happened in Hebron 80 years ago, since I didn’t mention it. Well, I don’t. It was a horrific act of violence.
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I am pleased to read that Wikipedia also mentions how many Jews were actually saved by their neighbours. 435 human beings. It is nothing naive about that!
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To me it seems like you fail to differentiate between the past and the presence, and between a group of people and individuals. So if Palestinians have committed acts of violence (“more than their fair share,” insinuating that there is a tolerated amount of violence..) they deserve to be treated badly? Or if a Palestinian’s grandfather killed a Jew i 1929, it justifies atrocities committed to a Palestinian child in 2009?
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I would like to know more about how you analyze what is going on in Hebron. And I hope that you keep on reading my blog, and comment when you disagree!