Hebron Turned Into 'Ghost Town'

Taken from The BBC, 14 May 2007

Human rights groups say Israeli curbs on Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hebron have forced thousands of them to leave homes and close businesses.

B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said Israel had in effect expropriated central Hebron to protect some 650 Jewish settlers there.

Israel had breached the Geneva Convention prohibiting forced transfer, which was a war crime, the groups said.

The Israeli military says curbs are to maintain order and protect life.

"The policy of separation founded on ethnic criteria has caused a massive exodus of Palestinians from Hebron's city centre," the joint human rights report said.

"Israeli activities have been carried out on the basis of a preferential policy toward settlers that has turned the centre of Hebron into a ghost town."

Military closures
The groups said about 1,000 Palestinian homes, more than 40% of homes in the centre of Hebron, had been vacated because of Israeli closures in the centre of the city.

Two-thirds of these were vacated during the course of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in 2000.

More than 75% of shops were shut down, the joint B'Tselem/ACRI survey said, 62% of them since 2000 and a quarter of them as a result of military orders.

"They created conditions that made the Palestinians move," B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. "The army can't now say that they didn't know this was going to happen."

An Israeli military statement said the report had failed to reflect the complexities of Hebron, and that the restrictions were imposed to protect both Israeli and Palestinian residents.

"In this complicated reality the military commander is required, and is in fact obliged, to take such actions on purely security grounds," a military statement said.

'Lies, distortions'
The report said the army generally did not intervene when Palestinian residents were subjected to attacks by militant settlers, which also caused people to leave.

"Dozens of settlers attacked my house at once, and they burned things inside the house," former resident Mufid Sharabati is quoted saying.

"We called the Israeli police and the army, but nobody helped us."

Settler spokesman David Wilder denounced the report as lies and distortions, and said Palestinians left because of curfews imposed because of attacks on settlers.

"We have never tried to throw anybody out, and we have not tried to keep anyone here," he said.

Hebron is the only place in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where a small community of Jewish settlers lives in the heart of a Palestinian city.

Under an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Israel evacuated 80% of Hebron in 1997, remaining in an area around the Old City where 650 Jewish settlers live among about 30,000 Palestinians.

All Israeli settlements built on land captured in the 1967 war are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

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This is an excellent column from the Haaretze Editorial

No life on the other side

It is difficult for Israelis who move freely throughout their country to understand Palestinian life in the West Bank, which becomes more difficult from year to year, from one agreement to the next. After it was decided to remove West Bank roadblocks to allow for movement that does not endanger Israeli security, it turned out that additional surprise roadblocks had been established.

In the last month alone, 546 roadblocks were counted, in addition to various procedures, magnetic cards, enclaves that non-Jews are prohibited from accessing and roads that only settlers are allowed to use - conditions that generate a frustrating uncertainty for the Palestinians.

Even a government that, due to its weakness, is not currently capable of working to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians cannot free itself of its obligation to manage the occupied territories in a way that enables people to live there. The Palestinian population cannot wait patiently for the final Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War or the results of the Labor Party primaries, because in the meantime it is living in the cruel reality described in the World Bank report released this week. The particularly harsh report shows that Israel continues to take into consideration only the settlers' needs, while abrogating even the minimal needs of the Palestinians.

The report reveals that, despite its commitment, Israel is continuing to make Palestinian movement difficult, is not prepared to open a passageway - no matter how well-secured - between the West Bank and Gaza, and in effect is blocking Palestinians from accessing some 50 percent of the West Bank. This canonization of the West Bank destroys the Palestinian economy's chance of recovering from its crisis. A large segment of the restrictions stems from the desire to control the area more easily and efficiently, and to make the settlers' lives easier. In the meantime, the settlements continue to grow and blossom, despite previous agreements, while the Palestinians rot in increasing poverty.

The Ehud Olmert government and the Hamas government refuse to implement the steps the United States has suggested to both sides, despite Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' position on the matter. This refusal involves neither intelligence nor purpose, just an ongoing and frustrating failure. The gradual improvement, monitored by the Americans, would be an attempt to prevent an outbreak of violence in the region. The proposal was viewed by the Israeli government as a command, rather than as the act of a helpful friend. Therefore, there is no choice but to agree, regretfully, with the findings of the World Bank report that Israel is preventing the rehabilitation of the West Bank economy.

The personal struggle between the Supreme Court president and the justice minister was no reason for Dorit Beinisch to sling arrows in all directions during her speech at the judicial swearing-in ceremony. A speech replete with general accusations only detracts from the status of the Supreme Court, about which Beinisch is so concerned. The court president, who was angry about the "insolent" demand of the judicial selection committee to examine a complaint against a candidate, spared only the judicial system from the rod - a system that views all censure as inappropriate, thereby unifying all its critics.