Hebron: the Occupation’s dark heart.

Shuhada Street. Once the commercial heart of the city, now a heavily guarded ghost town. The shops have all been forcibly shut and many of the inhabitants moved.

‘Excuse me, but would you mind not pointing your gun at my knees?’

The bearded American chuckled and slouched back further in his chair. Caressing the stock of his M16 he gestured: ‘Hey look, this red flag means the chamber is empty; so you’re safe’.

‘How can you expect me to know that? I’ve seen better gun discipline on the last drive of a Christmas Day pheasant shoot.’

OK, that last line may have been merely trepverter — but coming barrel-to-knees with a heavily armed settler in Hebron was one of the more memorable encounters I’ve had. In terms of ideological barriers it was about as normal as sitting down for tea and cigars with Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

But this was Hebron: the dark heart of the Israeli occupation.

We’d met Aboud, a local Oud player and sometime guide, out in the main part of the city where Hebronites carry on life with some semblance of normality, and the only police to be seen were bossy PA cops with Palestinian trims and reflective film-star sunglasses. Hebron, Aboud explained, had been left out of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and thus did not fall into any of the three Areas A-C into which the West Bank was carved up. It is a totally unique political reality.

One end of Shuhada Street. Some Palestinians do still live on the street, and are known by face to the IDF guards. Whether the checkpoint is open or not is a matter of the soldiers’ mood.

Arriving in the centre of the city, Aboud produced a map made by B’tselem, a widely-respected human rights organisation that conducts work here monitoring the changing nature of the occupation and documenting instances of abuse. Their record of Hebron’s shifting cartography shows a settler-occupied area cutting a swath across the heart of Hebron’s old city, itself a stunning mishmash of Ottoman and Mameluke architecture. Palestinian locals are banned from using vehicles on many roads, and even from using some on foot at all — meaning that in some places a five minute journey is extended to half an hour as an alternative route has to be taken.

Getting the lay of the landscape with B’tselem’s maps.

For occupation in 21st century Israel is all about the devil in the details. Whether this is arbitrary road closures and extra checkpoints, or Kafkaesque bureaucracy (without an Arabic translation), or the myriad other unseen ways in which Israeli control is exercised — taxi drivers refusing to serve a Palestinian village but going out of their way to reach the top of the neighbouring settlement, limits on access to utilities, or a doctored and barely-functional version of Google maps — most of the time, this occupation is not one of violence but of confusion, low-level humiliation, and paperwork.

In the heart of the old market area, this is illustrated starkly by the metal grilles that are installed at the height of the first storey. They protect the local market-goers from objects thrown from the higher levels by settlers: rubbish, bottles of urine, even a bicycle last week, Aboud point out. From above our heads came the happy sound of children at play — young settler boys, peyotes and tzitzes flailing, playing basketball on a court gifted to the community. Down below, the market sellers scratch out a living, but their mood is sombre, huddled. Since the forced closure of Shuhada St — the mercantile lifeblood of the city– during the 2nd Intifada, many others have packed up or gone bust as the heart of Hebron slowly died. Today, nearly half the shops are shuttered.

Shuttered shops in the souk — many owners have gone out of business or simply left.

Aboud pointed out a few houses that sit right on the edge of the settler area. Those windows and doors pointing into the settlement district have been barred by the IDF and cannot be opened. In some cases this has led the inhabitants to be forced to enter their homes through laddered steps up to a window — a case of occupation worming its way right into the home.

As we arrived at the foot of the Ibrahimi mosque, our bearded American friend reappeared. Alongside him was a young Palestinian guy, switching easily between Arabic and Hebrew as he bantered between the soldiers lounging on the checkpoint and the last few Palestinian shopkeepers still holding out for passing trade at the Eastern end of Shuhada Street.

‘Palestinian Shin Bet agent’, Aboud whispered. This was an unexpected development.

It makes total sense, of course, for Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, to hire Palestinians. They speak Arabic natively and can integrate into parts of society far more easily. It turns out that recruitment in the southern West Bank is surprisingly active; Aboud himself was once approached. ‘They invited me to play Oud together, drink coffee, chat, that kind of thing’, he remembers. ‘They were trying to find out enough information about me to be able to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse: family arrangement, job, financials, housing situation, etc. I knew from the start what they were doing but it was quite tricky to extract myself from that situation.’

A small settler tour led by the man with the walking stick. Settlers here are often exempt from military service, yet still provided with heavy weaponry, as seen here.

We pass through the mosque itself, gazing into the vaulted cells at the burial mounds that supposedly sit above the remains of prophet Abraham and his dynasty. In places, the plastering does little to cover up the deep bullet holes that are a painful reminder of the events of Purim 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a Doctor in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba gunned down 29 Muslims at prayer in a horrific terrorist attack. Until the Second Intifada, the settlement housed Goldstein’s body in a shrine, in celebration of his attempt to ‘liberate’ Hebron from the Arabs.

Bullet hole in the mihrab (front of prayer room pointing to Mecca) from the 1994 terror attack.

As the resting place of Abraham, Isaac and Sarah, this is a city of fundamental importance to the Jewish faith — as evidenced by the raucous propaganda posters populating the settlement area. It is one of the oldest urban areas in the Palestine region, and the Jewish inhabitants will not give up their claim so easily.

Settler history.

‘I’m from Leeds originally’, volunteers one settler who I have made it clear I don’t particularly want to talk to.

‘So why do you live here then? Wouldn’t Tel Aviv beach be nicer?’ I ask.

‘Maybe. But I have to. Where have you come from today?’

‘Ramallah’.

‘Get out’.

At work in the last Keffiyeh factory in Hebron

While Hebron is justifiably characterised as the poster child of Occupation, perhaps, though, this is a disservice to a lively city set in one of the most beautiful areas of the region, the South Hebron Hills. While every high vista reveals the red roofs of a settlement or the squat concrete towers of the Occupation’s military-industrial complex, elsewhere keffiyeh factories still hum and some of the region’s last remaining ceramic artisans continue to practice their art — in spite of everything.

This guy worked at the glass blowing factory. His job was to smash up used beer bottles for use in the factory. I think he quite liked the job.