{"id":11755,"date":"2022-12-05T09:32:49","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T07:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=11755"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:21:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:21:24","slug":"sudden-journeys-israels-intimate-separations-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/sudden-journeys-israels-intimate-separations-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudden Journeys: Israel\u2019s Intimate Separations\u2014Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the third and final installment of Sudden Journeys, Part 1<\/a>\u00a0and Part 2<\/a> of this series.<\/p>\n

From Hebron to Jenin and the North, and back to Jerusalem<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Jenine Abboushi<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the morning of the second day of the Eid of the Sacrifice, I stepped out of a service taxi into Hebron\u2019s deserted streets. Though guided by no road signs, the driver knew the way to our destination, through zigzagging turns and, to me, unfamiliar Israeli urban expansion. We passed by Hebron\u2019s vineyards, which I conflated with the southern reaches of Tyre (Lebanon), as well as with parts of the Moroccan oases. The landscapes of harsh, forgotten poverty bring these worlds together.<\/p>\n

In one part of the souq, families have to enter their homes through their windows (hoisting groceries and small children), as the Israelis have long sealed off access to these houses\u2019 front doors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Up to the Ibrahimi Mosque, Hebron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the top of the hill, I walked down to an empty, forsaken market strewn with holiday debris. A lone shop selling parakeets and flowers was open. There was also a fellow making falafel, busy slicing tomatoes and arranging fuchsia-colored pickled turnips on a long-board table in front of his shop. An old man wearing a dishdasha, who told me he had lived in the old city all his life, appeared and was intent on leading me further into the barricaded souq. Instead of turning the corner to get from the mosque to the cemetery, he pointed out that funeral processions must now circle the town for five kilometers to reach the cemetery, which is next to the settlements. He instructed me where to climb up high in this Old City, sometimes maneuvering through barbed wire, to get a view of the riches seized by the Israeli settlements. For decades now, settlers have built a ghetto by their own hand, quite literally confining themselves and everyone else, with over 100 barricades and 18 checkpoints in the small area of the Hebron souq, which is an ancient trade center, and was recently made a UNESCO world heritage site. Israel confiscated a large percentage of Hebron\u2019s land, subjecting destitute townspeople to captivity and daily abuse in their historical homes and lands.<\/p>\n

The medieval Ibrahimia mosque, built on what the Israelis believe is the burial site of the patriarchs, is now barricaded from the inside, having lost 60 percent of its interior to Israeli settlements. The Israelis have seized entire homes. And it is these Israeli-occupied Palestinian homes and businesses in Hebron\u2019s old city that best showcase the neurotic nature of Israel\u2019s colonization \u2014 that is, if only the nature of these brutal arrangements were properly communicated to the world. In one part of the souq, families have to enter their homes through their windows (hoisting groceries and small children), as the Israelis have long sealed off access to these houses\u2019 front doors. Indeed, the Palestinians of Hebron are hidden, left for generations now at the mercy of the Israelis surrounding them. Last month, Israelis danced inside the Ibrahimia mosque, boots on rugs. Following this disgraceful frolic, they burned the mosque\u2019s Qurans, discarding the charred pages and bindings. The willful deception of limiting blame to settlers and \u201cIsraeli extremists\u201d for Israel\u2019s systemic brutality and theft is exposed yet again by Netanyahu\u2019s appointment of Itamar Ben Gvir, resident of Kiryat Arba, a large Israeli settlement in Hebron, as the country\u2019s national Security Minister.<\/p>\n

Much of the world seems to grant Israel freedom from historical irony, thereby supporting and sustaining its annihilation project against Palestinian society. Israeli expansion and rule in Hebron, cut off from the world by both physical and virtual (media) blockades, is not an exception, but rather the model of Israeli policy in Palestine. And the Israelis are creating many more Hebrons. Benefiting from the near absence of international concern, the Israelis busy themselves sequestering the Palestinians into tiny, densely populated territories, seizing most of the land of Palestine and its water, but all the while failing to develop a workable way to get rid of its people.<\/p>\n