Grim image of Israeli occupation

The Baltimore Sun

HEBRON, West Bank -- Yehuda Shaul stopped abruptly in the middle of a litter-strewn park in this West Bank city to point to a Palestinian school that he and other members of the Israeli army once commandeered so they could shoot at Palestinian gunmen. Shaul operated a grenade machine gun, a lethal though highly inaccurate weapon.

"Anything hit within a radius of 8 meters is killed. Anybody within 16 meters will be injured," he said. "When I first learned of my mission, I freaked out."

But the young soldier did as he was told, firing as many 100 rounds per night into a crush of Palestinian homes, not knowing whom he might have wounded or killed.

"It was like playing a video game," he recalled.

Part confession, part condemnation of Israeli military policy, Shaul's walking tour of Hebron is a rare journey into the troubled conscience of an Israeli army veteran and the grim realities of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

A bearish-looking 24-year-old with a head of shaggy black hair topped with a skullcap, Shaul is the founder of a group of former Israeli soldiers who have sought to prick the conscience of the Israeli public with their tales of military service.

Called Breaking the Silence, the organization first came to the public's attention in 2004 when it created an exhibit of photographs, videos and testimonies of the routine injustices, humiliations and harassment of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces. The exhibit, displayed in Tel Aviv and the Israeli Parliament, stirred widespread debate about the consequences of Israel's occupation.

Now the veterans are trying to focus Israelis' attention on Hebron, the historic burial site of Abraham - the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - and one of the gloomiest and most dysfunctional cities in the West Bank.

"When I realized something was wrong here, we decided to do something about it," says Shaul. "We ... have a moral obligation to speak out."

About a 45-minute drive south of Jerusalem, Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where a small community of Jewish settlers lives in the heart of a Palestinian city. Since 1997, Hebron has been divided into two sections. Some 150,000 Palestinians live under Palestinian control in an area known as H1. Israel controls about 20 percent of the city in an area known as H2, where 650 Jewish settlers live among 30,000 Palestinians near Hebron's Old City.

With the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, Hebron became the scene of a deadly mix of suicide bombings, shootings, stone throwing and other fighting between Palestinian militants, Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

"No one is innocent here," says Shaul, who spent 14 months of his three years of compulsory military service in Hebron. "Breaking the Silence exists to give testimony, to tell the story."

But Shaul says his time in the military taught him that the story always has the most tragic ending for the Palestinians, who suffer from curfews, checkpoints and other restrictions even when Jewish settlers are responsible for the violence.

"The Palestinians always pay the price," he said.

During a three-hour journey through the narrow streets of this ancient city, Shaul sought to highlight the hardships created by Israel's occupation of Hebron that often go unnoticed by Israeli society.

In Hebron's Casbah, the main marketplace, more than 2,000 Palestinian-owned stores have been shut down by the Israeli army for security reasons, turning what had been the throbbing heart of the city into a ghost town. On many of the shuttered shop doors, there are spray-painted signs that say "Arabs Out."

Shaul pointed to pockmarked Palestinian homes in neighborhoods where Israeli soldiers often came to crush cars, shoot out street lights and destroy property even when there were no Palestinian gunmen.

"We were told we should make our presence felt," he said.

Stepping up a rocky footpath, Shaul followed the trail used by Palestinians who are barred by Israeli forces from walking on Hebron's main street for security reasons. One twisted pathway led to the front door of Hashem al-Azzeh.

Al-Azzeh's home is on the side of a hill below the Jewish settlement of Tel Rumeida, home to about 15 Jewish families. Al-Azzeh described how his settler neighbors have cut his phone line, electricity and water and have regularly tossed rubbish onto his property.

His nephew showed off a mouthful of broken teeth - shattered, he says, after a settler filled his mouth with stones.

"They understand what they are doing. They are trying to expel us and turn Hebron into a Jewish city," said al-Azzeh, as he sipped tea in his living room.

Since 2000, hundreds of Palestinian families have left the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron to escape settler violence and the tight restrictions placed on the Palestinian population.

Some 2,500 people, mainly left-leaning Israelis, have taken the Breaking the Silence walking tours. In Israeli society, however, there are many ambivalent feelings about the troublesome Jewish settlements in Hebron. While much of the Israeli public is outraged by settler behavior, Israeli authorities have been reluctant to investigate criminal accusations made against the Jewish settlers by Palestinians.

As one of the most important cities in Judaism, Hebron has had a Jewish presence off and on for centuries. In 1929, Arabs killed 67 Jews, and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked, forcing the Jewish population to flee. After Israel seized the West Bank during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Jewish settlers returned to Hebron. But the relationship has often been fraught with violence, as it was in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, opened fire on Muslims at prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the site of Abraham's tomb, killing 29 Palestinians.

"The settlers themselves are considered outrageous," says Shaul. "But the idea of a settlement in Hebron is very mainstream because of all the history here."

David Wilder, a spokesman for the settlers of Hebron, denies the accusations made by Palestinians and Shaul as nothing more than propaganda, although he says his community is actively looking to expand its settlement.

This month, more than 100 settlers poured into a half-finished Palestinian building claiming that they had purchased it from a Palestinian. A Palestinian from Hebron, however, says he is the building's rightful owner. The Israeli government is investigating the purchase.

Breaking the Silence is one of many Israeli groups pressuring the government to evacuate the settlers from the building, afraid that their takeover will create more hardships for the Palestinians.

Not surprisingly, Shaul is no longer a welcome visitor among the settlers he once defended as a soldier.

Wilder, the settler spokesman, says the tours are responsible for inciting Palestinians against the settlers.

"I think in any country in the world he would be tried as a traitor," Wilder said.

That's certainly how Shaul was made to feel as he walked past a group of young settler boys who were busy planting a memorial garden for a Jewish couple killed in a suicide bombing in 2003.

The boys, no older than 7 or 8, put down their rakes and began cursing at Shaul. "You will burn in hell!" they screamed.

Shaul shook his head sadly and kept walking.

john.murphy@baltsun.com

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