The Little Town

Background note: It has now been over a month since I departed the sprawl of Hebron to begin my next placement in the comparatively picturesque location of Bethlehem. In that time the situation for Palestine’s largest city has deteriorated rapidly. It began on June 12^th when three teenage settlers were reported to have been abducted near the settlement block of Gush Etzion. Accusations soon followed from the Israeli government that this was the work of Hamas, though it is important to note that no known Palestinian group has yet taken responsibility for the kidnapping. The occupation forces rapidly turned their mastiffs loose throughout the whole of the West Bank; storming through many Palestinian cities to arrest hundreds of Hamas members. Hebron has been the worst hit – in the 15 days since the kidnapping the IDF has deployed 2,000 additional troops and 10 new military checkpoints within the city.

A common sentiment by Palestinians in Bethlehem is that no such kidnapping has taken place; that the Israelis have are simply using this as a pretext to break the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and perhaps even to provoke a violent confrontation that will favour the IDF’s military strength.

To this I can only respond that I don’t know if these teenagers were kidnapped. No evidence has yet been released to confirm it although the Israeli government maintains it has unequivocal proof of Hamas’ involvement that it will release shortly. All that can be said for certain is that the IDF has so far killed 6 Palestinians and arrested over 560 in the largest military deployment in the West Bank since the Second Intifada.

(Author’s note: since publishing this a matter of hours ago the Israeli Army has reported that it has discovered the bodies of the three teenagers near Hebron. If it is indeed confirmed that these are the three kidnapped teens then I would like to wholeheartedly condemn this as an unconscionable act of murder) If anyone is in any doubt about the Palestinians’ historic connection with the Holy Land, a brief tour around the Old City of Bethlehem will serve to bring the reality into sharp relief. Bethlehem has had a human presence since the time of the Canaanites in the 15^th century BC and has stood as a silent witness to the conquests, machinations, feuds and general bloodlettings that we call human history (Not being cynical, honestly). The Old City consists of a large cluster of Ottoman era buildings packed in to an archaic street plan, reminiscent of an Italian hill-town. The city’s crown is undisputedly the Church of the Nativity; a Roman Basilica built over the cave in which a certain Jesus Christ was born. The building itself is one of the oldest still functioning churches in the world and is a physical testament to Bethlehem’s rich history. This scarcely seems to matter to the bovine masses of tourists that are ushered in by depressingly insincere tour guides to compulsively photograph every inch of the sacred structure before being whisked back to the safe confines of Israel. Few of these visitors will know that Bethlehem is a Palestinian city and still less that there are such things as Palestinian Christians.

Yet for all its complex historical and religious status, Bethlehem remains proudly Palestinian and carries with it all the agony and ecstasy that this entails. For myself coming to Bethlehem from Hebron was a baffling experience. Walking through the streets I could see things that would have been inconceivable in the latter: signs written in English, cafes selling beer and local women with their hair uncovered. More curious were the crucifixes carved above many doorways often accompanied, somewhat incongruously, by an inscription in Arabic. Piece by piece, over the month I stayed there, Bethlehem succeeded in dismantling my impressions of what a Palestinian city was.

In contrast to Hebron, Christianity is an inescapable part of life in Bethlehem. For much of its history, Palestinian Christians formed the majority of Bethlehem’s population, living in peaceful co-existence with the Muslim minority. In recent years, however, their roles have reversed with the Muslims forming the majority and the Christians now reduced to 28% of Bethlehem’s population. Various hate-peddling media outlets have attempted to present this as a clear cut case of Muslims attempting to drive out Christians from the Holy Land (‘O Muslim Town of Bethlehem’ as it was crudely termed by the Daily Mail). One Israeli I encountered in Jerusalem even claimed that the Christians support the occupation on the grounds that it protects them from religious persecution. These views, of course, join the considerable amount of rhetoric in Israel, Europe and the U.S which attempts to present the Israel-Palestine conflict as a battle of western civilisation against hateful Muslim extremists. In reality, Palestinian Christians tell a very different story.

Dr Munther Isaac is a Vice Academic Dean at the Bethlehem Bible College and has long been a champion for the cause of his fellow Palestinian Christians. In an interview he made plain his views on the persecution of Christians in the Holy Land: ‘If they say we are oppressed, that is a lie.’ The truth, he tells me, is that Palestinian Christians are leaving the country because of the punitive conditions of the occupation. Indeed, he emphasised that Christians continue to play an active part in the struggle against Israel: ‘We are not caught in between; this is our fight.’

There is certainly much to fight against here. The wider city of Bethlehem is surrounded on three sides by the Wall, which cuts into the centre of the city to encircle Rachel’s Tomb – despite being a site sacred to all three Abrahamic religions. Along with the settlements, checkpoints and military zones; the Wall serves to isolate free Palestinian movement to just 13% of the 660 km² that makes up the Bethlehem Governorate. Behind closed doors, there is also feeling of hopelessness in Bethlehem. During my time here I have had the privilege of staying with a Christian family in the centre of the city. The picture I received from them was in bitter contrast to those Palestinians I had met in Hebron. G— M— was the head of the household; a quiet man who often wore a resigned expression. During pauses in conversation, which were frequent, he would often stare at the floor as though brooding something.

His wife N—, a nervous but cheerful woman, told me their story. G— had studied Mathematics and Physics at Bethlehem University before taking up a job as a school teacher in Jerusalem. In those days, it was relatively easy for G— commute to work every day to support his family. With the outbreak of the Second Intifada, however, the M— family found themselves on the front line of the conflict. As the IDF tore through Bethlehem’s streets the whole family withdrew to a single room of their parents’ home, next door. N— still recalls the sleepless nights they spent there, praying theirs would not be the next home to be hit by the gunfire. After the fighting, a slower and more painful process began for the M— family with the construction of Israel’s wall. Every day G—would have to pass through the Bethlehem 300 checkpoint to reach Jerusalem but eventually he found the process so agonising that he was forced to find lower paid work as a librarian in Bethlehem University.

‘There is nothing here anymore,’ confided N—. Her children have little means of recreation and none wish to stay in Bethlehem or Palestine for that matter. They do not have a lack of examples to follow: most of the M— family have already left Palestine. With a broken economy and an uncertain political future it is not hard to see why. ‘Now, I am afraid all the time,’ Natalie told me and with the reports still coming in of Israeli arrests, her causes for fear show little signs of disappearing. ‘I think life was better before the First Intifada,’ she says. ‘When I was a child we would visit the beaches at Jaffa every week. Not anymore. There is nothing here,’ she pauses and shakes her head.

‘Really, nothing.’

The Question

Note: the following assessment is derived from my experience of Hebron and should not be misconstrued to represent every individual Palestinian. I have avoided naming the persons quoted here and will, at their request, remove quotations attributed to them if they object to their usage here.

‘So, where will they go?’

Every time a discussion began on the subject of ‘the situation here’ I would end up asking this question.

Where will they go?

Those I met seemed more than ready to discuss the conflict between themselves and Israel. What is more their opinions followed a fairly similar formula.

‘Israel,’ one told me, ‘does not want peace. They just take our lands.’

The latter is factually true. Whichever way you twist the map it is abundantly clear that the Palestinians have lost their land and have carried on losing it since 1948. As for the former, it is hard to deny this to Palestinians when you admit that the latter continues to take place and that Israel has consistently sabotaged the peace process it continues to trumpet its support for.

Then I ask what kind of peace they consider just. Here they are extremely clear.

‘We want to go back to Haifa and Jaffa. We want to be able to live anywhere in our country.’

And by ‘our country’ they mean Palestine. Not the rump state of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but the whole of historical Palestine; from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and from the Negev to the borders of Lebanon. This is the country that was taken from them – the land they had resided in for centuries with few restrictions. A land where Jews and Christians had largely lived peacefully with their Muslim neighbours. This is the vision they have. A two state solution does not fit in here because, as far as they are concerned, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was an invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign people. As a result they continue to regard the land beyond the West Bank as occupied Palestine.

Therein lies a problem. The 1948 War was an act of occupation which involved the forceful displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes within the  borders of what is now Israel. It was also a miracle of deliverance for a people brought to the verge of annihilation by the industrialised murder known as the Holocaust. In such a situation, the Jewish leaders regarded the establishment of a Jewish State as an absolute imperative for the survival of their people. Removing the Arabs was a necessary evil from their standpoint in order to achieve the vision of a state with a purely Jewish identity.

So what now? From the standpoint of many I spoke to in Hebron, the only way to achieve justice is to let Palestinians return to the 1948 territory; in other words to create a Palestinian state over the whole of Israel and the occupied territories. This would always prompt me to ask the question; where will the Jews go?

One individual responded bluntly: ‘To hell. I don’t care.’

Others shrug and point out that the ancient Jewish community in Nablus lives in peace with their Palestinian neighbours.

‘Can’t the others do the same?’

From what they say it is abundantly clear they would consider living in peace with Israelis within the 1948 borders. The slight snag is whose flag they would be under.

From the Israeli perspective it is clear; to consider one state is to sacrifice the intrinsic Jewishness of Israel. Israelis on both the Left and the Right would never consent to it. It would mean admitting that the two state solution is now impossible – that the Palestinians can never be safely packed away in the West Bank, that they must share the future.

Another problem, though, is that here we are speaking in terms of aspirations. When I asked my host brother whether he would happily live in one state shared with the Israelis, his response was revealing:

‘Yes, but this will never happen.’

This was a common sentiment, at least in Hebron. There was a perception that Israel will never tear down the wall, remove the checkpoints and cease demolishing homes; that this cruel reality was all they could look forward to in future. And for some the only way to change the situation is to fight back.

When speaking to one man who had lived through the misery of the Israeli penal system, without once seeing a jury of course, I received a chilling response on the matter of a peace solution.

‘If the Israelis come to me without their weapons,’ he said, ‘I will live with them in peace. But if they come with their weapons I will fight them, from the tallest to the smallest.’

He paused.

‘And I will start with the smallest.’

What is abundantly clear, however, is that the Palestinians want peace. Some even look fondly on the days before the First Intifada when there were no walls around their land. Above all though, they want a just peace – a peace that recognises how much they have lost and goes some way to giving it back.