Morning Prayer
In early December 2019 a massive number of settlers visited Hebron to celebrate Sarah’s day. This led to the closure of the Ibrahimi mosque by the occupying forces preventing Palestinians from exercising their right to pray. In response, the Palestinians of Hebron have begun a weekly nonviolent action, in which every Friday morning, at the 5am prayer, thousands gather in solidarity at the mosque to pray.
Diya’ Al Natsheh, one of the founders of the nonviolent movement states that
“The protectors of the Ibrahimi Mosque’s group, started a year ago last Ramadan with a few youth volunteers youth (male and female) to help the worshippers and secure their properties inside the mosque.”
Additionally Diya expresses that:
“On December, we tried to find a way to encourage people to come, visit the old city and pray in the mosque, because after the massacre on February the Israeli military set-up checkpoints around the mosque and that really increased the numbers of settlers taking-over Palestinian homes. People felt insecure to come here, especially after 2014 when there were some incidents where Palestinians were accused of having knives, so they were shot or arrested. We want to protect the mosque with our presence, so we had to break the fear of people coming to visit and pray. We started to call more people to join and created different units; protective presence, property protection, health and others. The group started calling people to pray for the Friday’s morning “Al-Fager '' prayer at the Ibrahimi mosque.
We were happy when we saw that huge numbers of people were coming to pray in the mosque. The families started to cooperate with us calling all the relatives to come. It is a good competition between different families. Now it’s not only people from Hebron who come to pray for the morning prayers. It's from all different parts of Palestine."
To access the historical mosque, Palestinians have to pass at least two checkpoints. At checkpoints Palestinians can face ID checks, body searches, detainment, harassment, and other uses of force and restrictions of movement. Diya mentions how “Several volunteers will be around the checkpoints mentoring people on how to go through and aid in helping Palestinains in how to deal with being around the checkpoint and to make them feel safe and surrounded by their own people. The Israeli military will tighten “security” to restrict the prayer’s movement by checking their ID’s, bodies and delaying them. They will make you worry about your safety.”
Over time, the state of Israel has used its military forces to intensify its measures against the Muslim holy site. New checkpoints have been built, more structures to obscure what people can see and not see, and increased human rights violations and restrictions of movement. The Ibrahimi Mosque, located in the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron known as H2, has been divided between Muslims and Jews since the massacre on February 25, 1994 of Muslim worshippers as they were performing the dawn prayers on a Ramadan day by a Jewish settler. Settlers never undergo body searches or even go through metal detectors when entering the mosque. Military forces regularly ban the call of prayer impeding basic religious freedoms.
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The sense of Place and Identity in Hebron, Palestine
In Hebron, a city of 200 000, there is the Old City of 30 000, where there are religious sites coveted by Zionist settlers, these under military cover are slowly but surely helping Israeli policies of settler-colonisation. OCHA has recently produced an excellent summary of the deteriorating situation in Hebron.
Today, 5th Feb 2020, with CPT(Christian Peacemaker Teams) we went to a checkpoint in the Old City Hebron, within H2, an area of 30,000,under Israeli military control, to monitor Palestinian children, adults, and teachers on their way to school. They have to pass through these checkpoints - horrible cages with turnstiles, cold concrete, barbed wire and cameras.
We record the numbers of children and incidents of body and bag searches, delays and denials, and other kinds of abuse. The children have never known any different. This is a scene that the unaccustomed observer (especially) will struggle to empathise with or make sense of. We, the foreigners with passport privilege, free to leave this land at any time, can have no idea of the real impact of these checkpoints on the Palestinians.
This February morning, it was cold, and many children were going to school. After an hour, the last six boys were kept waiting for over 20 minutes and then the boys, waiting in the shade by the turnstile and no doubt cold, gave up and just turned back the way they came, away from school. No education for them today - effectively denied entry to their education by soldiers.
This was just one ripple of abuse, denial of human rights, among so many ripples spreading through the Palestinian community far and wide.
This checkpoint is a barrier between settler-free Palestinian territory, to the south of the Old City, under Israeli military control. and what might be called a settler-colonisation corridor, or H2 High Security Zone (H2HSZ) (about 2.5Km, from Tel Rumeida to Kiryat Arba), that runs in a heavily policed curve south of the Old City, following the line of Shuhada Street to the west, and up to Prayer Rd to the east. To the north of this corridor are further checkpoints separating the settler corridor from the Old City.
The geography is extremely complex. A balanced community has been invaded by a malignant poison and this corridor is a poisoned place, poisoned by Zionist nationalism.
Within the corridor lies Abed's shop, owned by Palestinians who have lived here for generations. It lies smack bang in the middle of this apartheid corridor.
Some Palestinians live and work within this poisoned place. The idea of a poisoned place has been written out before. For example see here:
By Edward Relph:
"I have written about these pathologies of place attachment [and poisoned places] ... This is the result when sense of place turns sour and becomes exclusionary. Much of what is positive in sense of place depends on a reasonable balance. At one extreme, when that balance is upset by an excess of placeless internationalism the local identity of places is eroded. At the other extreme, when that balance is upset by excessive commitment to place and local or national zeal, the result is a poisoned sense of place in which other places and people are treated with contempt."
In its extreme forms, ... it is revealed in ethnic nationalist supremacy and xenophobia."
It looks and feels to me, actually being here, as if the Palestinians living here have been exiled to a poisonous place, a place poisoned by settler-colonialism. But, nonetheless, they are desperately holding on to their home and heritage, trying to hold onto their identity and sense of this poisoned place.
It is especially difficult for non-Palestinians to understand what is going on, or the thoughts and feelings of Palestinians. There are two opposing dangers: first, that we remain too aloof and detached or unfeeling treating the situation as a novelty, almost a tourist attraction; and second, and by contrast, we could assume too much, 'as if' we could ever know.
One way for non-Palestinians to approach the situation could be through Palestinian culture: writing, poetry, art, cinema. To this end I've included here a poem that we read together this morning at our morning reflection the day after a 17 year old boy was brutally shot dead by the IDF, for throwing stones. We cannot over-emphasise the barbarity and fascist features of this extreme Israeli Zionist nationalist and expansionist programme.
Through the words of Mahmoud Darwesh, the first and last verses of a famous poem "Identity Card" written when he was only 24, and read by him in Nazareth in 1964, to a tumultuous reception.
Identity Card
by Mahmoud Darwish - 1964, aged 24
First read in Nazareth to a tumultuous reaction
Write down!
I am an Arab
And my identity card number is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth will come after a summer
Will you be angry?
Therefore!
Write down on the top of the first page:
I do not hate poeple
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper's flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!
Anger, of course, but violence may well breed more violence. A dilemma, since Identity seems to demand a forceful response. Youths throw stones and are shot: people demonstrate peacefully, and are shot. The State of Israel wants and needs violence, 'permanent war' to brutalise its own population, to cement an Israeli identity in thrall to a fascist hatred of Muslims and Christians in Palestine.
We should note that Israel's extreme nationalist colonialism is a form of ethnic cleansing and incremental genocide. And note that, after Eco, (see here) permanent war and institutionalised racism are two of the features around which fascism congeals.
These places that we monitor are, in a sense, poisoned places, poisoned by settler-colonialism, breeding and perpetuating xenophobia and fear and distrust on all sides, and note clearly that this cycle of hate is triggered, sustained and accelerated in occupied Palestine, by US/UK/NATO and even the Arab Gulf States which back Israeli-State invasion, settler-colonisation, and expansion.
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These are the incidents that CPT has documented during December and January. There are more incidents of human rights violations that have taken place in al-Khalil (Hebron) that other community members and human rights organizations have witnessed.
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February in Numbers:
Arrests: 2 Adults
Threat of arrest: 2 Adults
Detentions: 0 child, 0 adult
Assault: 1 adult
Use of force:
Teargas canisters: 62 canisters
Stun/sound grenades: 123 grenades
Rubber bullets: 57
Sponge bullets: 50
Injuries: 2 children
Death: 1 child shot by I.O.F.
Restriction of movement:
ID checks: 2 children,38 adults
Body searches (from a distance):
18 children, 187 adults
Body searches (physical, hands-on):
9 adults
Checkpoint closures: 80 minutes in total
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On the 26th memorial of the Ibrahimi Massacre, dozens of Palestinians visited the cemetery where 29 people were buried. They laid flowers on their graves and showed solidarity with their families. The photo shows a Palestinian old man grieving for his loved ones who lost their lives in the massacre. (February 25, 2020)
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“Hebron in Peace, Not Hebron in Pieces”, by these words Palestinians in Hebron are expressing their rejection to the Trump “Peace deal” The Deal of the century. Because peace cannot happen until it is preceded by justice. (February 25, 2020)
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After Mohammad Al Haddad, 17 years old, was shot dead by the IOF in Al-Khalil/Hebron, hundreds of Palestinian from several places in the West Bank, marched towards the Ibrahimi mosque for the afternoon prayer, to consolidate and symbolize their connection and unity with The Old City and the Ibrahimi mosque. (February 6, 2020)
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Hundreds of demonstrators marched toward Hebron Old City gate, this action takes place annually in the memory of the Hebron massacre in 1994 that led to the division of Hebron between H1 and H2. The action was organized by the National campaign to lift the closures in Hebron: "Dismantle the Ghetto". Israeli Occupying Forces "IOF" used stun grenades and physical force to disperse a peaceful demonstration, settlers attacked demonstrators by throwing rocks at them from behind the gate, hitting one Palestinian on the head. (February 28, 2020)
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Everyone has the freedom of worship (#Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9), but every Palestinian who is going to pray in Al-Ibrahimi Mosque was stopped by Israeli Border Police. Israeli forces ID checked and body searched Palestinians, this causes delays for worshippers on a daily bases. (February 17, 2020).
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