12th, February 2009
Day 6: Hebron
Young boy' story
Organizers, waited for the participants outside the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, a boy of about twelve introduced himself as Ahab. Baha elicited Ahab's story. A couple of years ago a soldier beat him up the young unarmed boy. Upon Ahab's release, the soldier presented the boy with a paper and told him to bring it to the Civil Administration. So Ahab did. The captiain at the office asked Ahab what he liked to do for work and Ahab said construction. "How much money can you make in a lifetime of construction?" the soldier asked "We can give you twice that. Your family doesn't have wheat or flour."
Ahab knew exactly what hid between the lines. Collaboration. "My family has blood," he said. Welcome to the unpleasant realities of Hebron.
Ibrahimi mosque and Hebron
The home of the patriarchs remains in tension, the identity of Abraham's stars in the sky undecided. We passed through three guarded checkpoints within a hundred meters to enter the Ibrahimi mosque where lie the traditional tombs of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. As the last participants were enjoying the relative calm of the holy place and outside Ahab was telling his story to Baha, farther down the street a few participants felt Hebron's heat first-hand. Unlike any other West Bank city, Hebron houses Israeli settlers in the middle its Old City, alongside and on top of Palestinians. A police officer warned John, of San Francisco, not to go up one road for fear of threats or attacks from settlers who might point guns at him or attempt to run him over with their cars.
Personal reflection
Not far away, Franz, a hard-of-hearing participant from the Netherlands, entered a shouting match with a settler who claimed all the land from the sea to the Euphrates for the Jews and denied the existence of any injustice towards the Palestinians. Leah Kimber, the program's youngest participant, a twenty-year-old from Geneva, witnessed and was deeply affected by the encounter. "I've always been drawn to Israel," said Leah, who is of Jewish descent. She had plans to tour Israel, but after Gaza, she said, "I felt like I'd be supporting the war." Conveniently, her grandpa, Donald Fillinger, was planning on coming to the Olive Planting Program. "Out of the blue I was like, grandpa, I'm coming with you," Leah said. Five days later she was in Beit Sahour.
Her first few days here were surreal. "I felt like I was in a video game, like everything was a joke, it's all a joke. It's so beyond my reality." But then, today, "I saw Franz with the Zionist guy and what the Zionist guy had to say . . . I had to walk away and I burst into tears, this is real, this is not a joke anymore."
Hebron Rehabilitation Committee
With relief, then, we went to the Old City office of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. Since 1996, the HRC has been restoring and rebuilding 200-800 year old buildings and striving to make the Old City a place where Paletinians can live again. The HRC even offers free housing. "We can offer you free housing, electricity, running water, but we cannot offer you safety," said Walid Abuhallawa, the HRC's representative to the Olive Planting Program. For their work of hope, the HRC has won
prestigious awards, including the Aga Khan prize.
Lunch in the city of Hebron
Afterwards, we wound through the labyrinthine stone streets of the Old City, following our guide, Ayman Abuzuluf and bargaining for pashminas and Palestinian flags and perfectly oil-cured olives, up and out into the bustling New City for lunch. A classic, falafel and shwarme. Before heading back to Beit Sahour, we stopped at one of the glass blowing factories Hebron is well-known for. A mustached Hebronite sat well-dressed and calm as he pulled globs of molten glass from a fierce furnace and crafted globes and vases, modestly showing off his pieces to the crowds.
We returned to Beit Sahour and as Janet, Keenan, and Nancy, all from San Francisco, walked to the hotel, they noticed a large banner with the picture of a beautiful young woman waving outside a home. "We were standing there looking down the steps to an open courtyard and this man came up and said, 'You must come in. You must have coffee.'" The family was celebrating the release of their only daughter, who had been imprisoned for seven years for nothing more than being present at a protest at The Church of the Nativity toward the beginning of the second intifada. Rather than being bitter, the family was elated to have their girl, now twenty-six, back home. They wouldn't let the American women leave until they promised to come back to celebrate tomorrow.
So maybe, just maybe, we're all of us here. living together, Abraham's multitude of stars
