RAMALLAH, West Bank, 15 May 2007 — Israeli government policy in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron has forced thousands of Palestinian residents to abandon more than 1,000 homes and at least 1,829 businesses and turned the area into a ghost town, human rights groups B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) charged in a 70-page report released yesterday.
“The abandonment of the area by the Palestinians is primarily the ‘foul’ results of the ‘separation policy’ that Israel is applying there,” the report charged. “The repressive measures imposed on the Palestinians in downtown Hebron are part of that policy. We are talking about an official and declared plan by the state of Israel to protect the Hebron settlers through physical and legal segregation between them and the Palestinians”, said the report titled “Where Silence Reigns: Israel’s Separation Policy and Forced Eviction of Palestinians from the Center of Hebron.”
Hebron was divided de facto in 1998, under the Wye River agreement, signed by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, which created H1, under complete Palestinian control, and H2, which is under Israeli security control. At the time, according to B’Tselem and ACRI, there were roughly 115,000 Palestinians living in H1 and 35,000 in H2.
The old town, the commercial center and the vegetable and meat wholesale markets were all located in H2. It also included several Jewish enclaves. The total number of Jews living in H2 numbered around 400 permanent residents.
The first severe measures against the Palestinians were taken in February 1994, after Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque. Many stores along Shuhada St., the city’s main commercial thoroughfare, and the wholesale market were closed. According to the report, this, and the strict division of prayer areas in the mosque itself, marked the beginning of the policy of segregation.
Since then, large parts of H2 have been declared off-limits to Palestinian pedestrians and motorists, and many shops and markets have been permanently closed by army order.
The turning point in the policy came with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000.
B’Tselem and ACRI researchers made a survey of all the Palestinian residential apartment buildings in H2 and found that at least 1,014 housing units, or 41.9 percent of all the units in the area, were abandoned. Of those that were empty, 659 (65 percent) had been abandoned since the beginning of the intifada.
As for commerce, the report found that 1,829 businesses, amounting to 76.6 percent of all businesses in H2, were shut including 1,141 (62.4 percent) shops which were vacated after September 2000. Of these, almost half were closed by Israeli Army order.
The researchers found several reasons for the emptying out of H2.
During the intifada, the Israeli Army imposed curfews on the Palestinian population. During the first three years, full curfew was imposed for a total of 377 days, including 182 continuous days.
The curfew led to economic destruction, loss of jobs, poor nutrition, psychological damage and severe blows to the educational, health and welfare systems. Consequently, many Palestinians left H2.
The Israeli Army also imposed severe restrictions on the freedom of movement for Palestinians, often illegally. For example, for six years, soldiers barred Palestinians from walking on Shuhada St., between the settlers’ enclaves of Beit Hadassah and the Avraham Avinu; even though the army admitted that it had not issued such an order. Even after the army made this admission, it continued to prohibit Palestinians from walking on the street. The four remaining Palestinian families living on the empty street were barred for several years from leaving their buildings from the front door and had to climb up to the roof and down the other side in order to leave their homes.
Israeli Army orders to close stores, the inability of Palestinians to drive or walk on the streets upon which the stores were located and stringent curfews in the early years of intifada destroyed the area’s commercial life which had not only served all of Hebron but the hinterland too.
According to the report, the army often carried out elements of these restrictive policies at the bidding of the Hebron settlers.
“In this context,” the report stated, “there developed over the years a phenomenon of systematic persecution, often with extreme violence, on the part of the settlers towards the Palestinians.
Among the violent means used by settlers against their Palestinian neighbors, the report cites physical assaults, throwing of rocks, poisoning of wells and throwing of garbage. It refers to “methodical and often violent harassment” by settlers of Palestinians in the center of Hebron.
