Israeli curfew silences an ancient West Bank city

Israeli curfew silences ancient West Bank city

Hebron |Reuters | Gulf News 14-07-2002

Abdullah Nazar's array of fruit rotted beside him in an alleyway as he gazed mournfully out at his local market square rendered off-limits by an Israeli army curfew.

The order has brought Palestinian life in one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited places to a halt.

Hebron is one of seven West Bank cities reoccupied by Israel with the stated aim of rooting out Palestinian suicide bombers, but 50,000 residents feel collectively punished.

"Time is standing still. It's very hard for us, stuck here, useless, getting ever poorer hour by hour," Nazar muttered.

The young man's watermelon and lemons withered away under a Middle Eastern sun. Stalls lay jumbled about the desolate, refuse-strewn square, some overturned and splintered by what the Palestinians said was Israeli vandalism.

Rows of shuttered shops stretched in all directions.

"Peace Tours and Travel Co." read one sign - the vestige of an era when tourists flocked to Hebron to see the tombs of biblical patriarchs revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.

"We can't do much about the fruit spoiling because we can't be on the street to sell it," said Nazar. "It was getting harder to sell even before the curfew because a lot of it was drying out during delays at army checkpoints on the way into town."

Locals recoiled from the mouth of the alleyway back into shadows whenever an Israeli armoured combat vehicle or jeep roared by on patrol, every 20 minutes or so.

"If they catch us on the street, they will shoot at us or beat us," said Fedi Abu Aldaabat, 20. He rolled up tattered pants to reveal a swollen, circular welt on his thigh he said was caused by an Israeli rubber bullet fired the day before.

Palestinian activists rose up for independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip 21 months ago after talks on a Palestinian state hit an impasse, a few years after Israel turned the main towns over to local administration under interim peace deals.

The reoccupation of cities in the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, has locked down around 700,000 Palestinians, crippled Palestinian National Authority public services and stifled commerce.

Israel's uneasy "national unity" coalition of left and right is debating ways to ease the distress of Palestinian civilians.

That showed scant sign of abating yesterday when Israel said it was delaying indefinitely a meeting with Palestinians later in the day focused on easing security and economic restrictions on Palestinians.

Israel said the decision was due to "technical" reasons and because it needed to be sure Palestinians were undertaking reforms.

The sides agreed earlier this week to hold meetings after breaking the ice at their first high-level talks in months.

In Hebron, the curfew has been occasionally relaxed for a few daylight hours to let people stock up on staples, but was re-imposed in full at mid-week, international monitors say.

Israel announced yesterday it was lifting the curfew in the city and three other West Bank areas for several hours to allow locals to restock.

International monitors reported no resistance to the army clampdown and roundups of hundreds of alleged activists.

"The general mood is apathy," one said.

Once raucous with traffic and trade, the largest city in the southern West Bank has fallen virtually silent.

The few people seen outdoors include young men scurrying home with tanks of water loaded on carts, timing their trips to neighbourhood wells to dodge Israeli patrols.

Some boys play soccer in secluded side streets. Indoors, card games and Arab television are the only respite from boredom.

The city's only ambient sound aside from passing Israeli patrols comes from the amplified sermons and prayers at mosques.

One large mosque in the Old Town drew 200 for Friday prayers this week, about a fifth of the pre-curfew turnout.

"I'm risking my life walking through the streets to observe my religion," said Mazen Al Qawasmi, 30, a red prayer rug over his shoulder. "People farther away don't risk it any more."

Qawasmi, a shoemaker - unemployed along with over half the Palestinian population under Israeli closure - was a teenage stone-thrower in the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation from 1987-93, and spent three years in Israeli jails.

He says he steers clear of conflict now because he has a daily struggle providing for his wife and four children.

But he keeps a photograph above his bed of a former cellmate in combat garb who became a prominent activist and died, he said, when the Israelis rocketed his car last year.

"Inshallah (God willing), we will persevere through our ordeal until the end of the occupation," said Qawasmi.