Shuhada Street

Posted Mon, 12/29/2008 - 23:04 by Open Shuhada Street

Shuhada is the main street of Hebron. Palestinian access to it has been restricted since 1994 following the massacre of 29 Palestinians by an Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein.

Click on one of these links to learn more about Shuhada Street and Hebron.

Materials supplied by Breaking the Silence.

Videos Showing the Occupation of Hebron

This video gives some of the history of Shuhada Street and describes protest attempts to open it.

 

This video shows how an elderly Palestinian woman has to exit her home over rooftops because she is not allowed to enter Shuhada Street.

 

This video shows settler children taunting and stoning Palestinians. It also shows the police doing almost nothing to stop this violence.

WARNING: It is extremely disturbing to watch.

 

Shuhada Street Timeline

1994-April Shops on A-Shuhada closed and vehicular traffic prohibited as reaction to Goldstein massacre
1997 A-Shuhada opened to traffic (Hebron Protocol)
1998 A-Shuhada closed to traffic
2001 A-Shuhada closed to pedestrians
2004 Israeli High Court proceedings on movement restrictions in Hebron
2005 State replied that a-Shuhada open (except for vehicles), admitting that it had closed streets without warrants.
When Palestinians walked on a-Shuhada, showing soldiers a map of the streets legally open, the soldiers insisted that the street was closed to Palestinians.
2006 After receiving a letter of complaint, the State claimed that a-Shuhada had been closed by mistake.  Three days after soldiers allowed Palestinians to pass, they closed the street again with verbal orders.
2007 The night before a Supreme Court discussion of the case, the army unsealed the welding on the front doors of homes on a-Shuhada, giving the families special permission to pass.  The street remains closed to everyone else.
2008-April Joint Israeli-Palestinian Non-Violent Protest to Open A-Shuhada Street

 

Frequently Asked Questions about Hebron and Shuhada Street

 

The settlers say they only have 3% of Hebron. They say they’re not allowed to go to H1 or most of H2. Given that they are restricted from the vast majority of the city, why shouldn’t Palestinians be restricted from the tiny portion of H2 that the settlers claim?

Hebron is a city deep inside the Palestinian territories. Israeli settlements in any of these territories are illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The issue is not that the settlers have only 3% of the city, but rather that they are controlling part of an occupied city.

H1, an area which consists of about 80% of Hebron, is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. H2, the remaining 20%, is controlled by Israel. Israeli settlers, who make up less than 1% of the population of Hebron, control 20% of the city, which is not only incredibly disproportionate but also illegal.  

In order to allow the settlers to live in a small part of H2, the Israeli army exerts control over a much larger proportion of the city in order to secure a buffer zone for the settlement. While the settlers themselves do not travel around most of H2, the Israeli military does patrol the entirety of H2, thereby placing restrictions on Palestinian movement throughout this part of Hebron. If Israeli settlers were allowed to walk in all of H2, the Israeli military would likely control an even larger percentage of the city in order to keep them safe.

Although H2 is a relatively small portion of the city, it is Hebron's true city centre where the industrial and commercial zones, as well as the most important landmarks, are located.  H2 is an important passageway between the northern and southern parts of the city. Therefore, restricting movement in H2 significantly affects the freedom of movement of all residents of Hebron.

 

The Israeli military says that Palestinians are allowed to walk anywhere other than Shuhada Street. Is it really such an inconvenience to have one street closed to pedestrians?

It is not for the Israeli military to decide whether it is convenient or inconvenient for the Palestinians, yet this attitude of entitlement and legitimacy is the by-product of prolonged foreign occupation of a local population. The Palestinian residents of Hebron are not considered or consulted regarding whether or not the closure of their streets is in their security interest. Rather, the Israeli army makes decisions on their behalf and thus dictates the way Palestinians are allowed to live in their city. Shuhada Street is Hebron’s main street; traveling on it and crossing over it are essential to vibrant life and commerce in the area.

 

Wasn’t Shuhada Street closed as a response to terrorism?

No. Shuhada Street was initially closed to Palestinian shops and vehicular traffic in 1994 after the Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 and injured 150 Palestinians when he opened fire in the Ibrahimi Mosque (Tomb of the Patriarchs) during prayers. The army cited fear of Palestinian revenge attacks as its rationale for closing the street. This main artery of the street and the former sight of the market place was reopened to traffic (but not commerce) in 1997 in accordance with the Hebron Protocol. In 2000, Shuhada Street was closed completely to traffic and partially to pedestrians. The street was effectively "sterilized" in 2002 by closing it off to all forms of all Palestinian movement.

 

 

How does the closure of Shuhada Street work legally?

It doesn’t. In 2004, Palestinians appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court about restrictions on their movement in H2. In November 2005, the State replied that Shuhada Street is open to all regular traffic, only closed to shops and vehicles, admitting that there were legal problems during the preceding years with the closure of areas all over Hebron without warrants. (Since 2005, the State has produced warrants to impose various restrictions of movement on 21 areas around the city.) In reality, areas marked on State and military maps as open to various forms of traffic and commerce are actually closed. A 2005 'Children of Abraham' video demonstrated that soldiers regularly prevent Palestinians from walking in areas that are indicated as open to traffic, and that some areas without any indications of closure on the maps are actually sealed with barbed wire and concrete blocks. A letter of complaint received a reply from the military in December 2006 stating that the street had been closed by mistake. The next Friday, the street was opened and on that Sunday, Palestinians were allowed to cross but only after being detained for two hours in both directions while international volunteers escorting them were arrested for disturbing the peace. The street was closed de facto by military orders and it was later revealed, via soldiers’ testimonies, that soldiers received orders to prevent people from wanting to be there. In 2007, the Supreme Court discussed the case again but the night before the decision was made the military unsealed the welding on the doors to homes on Shuhada Street and gave the families special permission to come out of their houses. They declared that by oral warrant from a General in the central command, the street is generally closed to Palestinian movement because all business and homes are closed anyways, therefore, there is nothing to see there.

 

Isn’t the policy of separation necessary to protect Jews from terrorism?

There is a real fear of terrorism which is supported by hundreds of successful and attempted Palestinian attacks on Israeli settlers, soldiers and police officers in Hebron. The separation policy responds to this fear by insisting that it is a necessary measure for protecting the Israeli settlers as long as they are inhabiting the center of the Palestinian city of Hebron. However, this security policy of separation reflects the political reality in the city, and not vice versa. As long as there is a policy that allows for Israeli settlement in Hebron, infringement of Palestinians' civil and human rights necessarily follows. Our focus is on bringing Palestinian life back to Hebron and we believe that there is no way to ensure a dignified life for Palestinians if the foreign presence in the city remains in control.

 

Who gets to pray in the Tomb of the Patriarchs and when?

The Tomb of Patriarchs is divided into a Muslim and a Jewish section. On most days, each group is allowed to pray in its designated area, although access to the tomb is difficult for Palestinians, as they must pass several checkpoints before reaching the Ibrahimi Mosque. For ten days a year, each group has access to the entire site while the other group is not allowed to enter.

 

If the settlement isn’t there, will Jews (and other non-Muslims) be able to access the Cave of the Patriarchs?

For 700 years, non-Muslims were denied access to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. They were only permitted to pray as high as the 7th step of a staircase on the Southern wall of the building. There is a justified fear that if Israel were not in control of the religious site non-Muslims would again be denied access. We believe in freedom of access to holy places all over Israel and Palestine for adherents of all religions. In any future agreement, we would call for the Palestinian Authority to allow open access to the Tomb of the Patriarchs as we would call for Israel to offer open access to holy sites within its borders.

 

 

Would Jews be allowed to live in Hebron if it were under Palestinian control?

It would be ideal if under some future agreement neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority would restrict residence in cities or neighborhoods based on ethnicity or religion. The decision about the make-up Palestinian cities in the Palestinian territories would be made by the Palestinian Authority.

 

Are the Israeli settlers of Hebron representative of the whole movement?

The Israeli settlers in Hebron are the extreme in the movement in terms of their disregard for Israeli law. The policies that protect and allow the expansion of their settlements are the same as those throughout the entire occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Why are there both Israeli police and Israeli soldiers in Hebron?

In the occupied Palestinian territories, there are two systems of law in operation. Israeli martial law is imposed on the Palestinians in the territories because they are under military occupation. The Israeli settlers in the occupied territories are under the jurisdiction of the much more advanced Israeli civil legal system, which applies also to Israeli citizens living in Israel. The Israeli soldiers in Hebron enforce martial law on the Palestinian population and the Israeli police in Hebron are mandated to enforce Israeli law on Israeli citizens in the city. Neither of the two separate legal systems, which are enforced by a single government over two different populations that live in the same physical space, have the interests of Palestinian security or legal stability in mind.

 

The Israeli Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal for Palestinians, but regards itself as an Israeli court being used by Palestinians rather than the high court for all the residents of Israel and Palestine. Two illustrative examples:

  • Stone throwers: An Israeli child throwing stones in Hebron is considered a criminal offense and falls under the Israeli legal system. Children under 12, however, are channelled through social services rather than through the court system. A Palestinian child throwing stones in Hebron is considered a security offense. The police investigates and then the case is tried in military court. Palestinian children are generally held in custody until sentencing, considered a danger to society. Children regardless of age can end up in jail.
  • Protesters: Israeli and Palestinian protesters detained at the same demonstration undergo two very different legal proceedings. After arrest, Israelis must be brought before a judge within 24 hours in order to extend the detention. Palestinians arrested for the same offense can be held for eight days before seeing a judge.

 

How many soldiers and police officers are there?

There is a single battalion of 500 soldiers stationed in Hebron. There are about 140 border police, who control the Tomb of Patriarchs, and 30-50 police officers in the city.

 

For 600 Israeli settlers and 200 Jewish students in the city, why are there so many soldiers in Hebron?

Enforcing security regulations in a dense, urban area in the midst of a hostile population requires significant force. Because of the lawless nature of the inhabitants of the Israeli settlements in the city, these soldiers and police officers are sometimes engaged in protecting Palestinians and Palestinian property from settler violence as well.

 

Who provides municipal services in H2? For Palestinians? For Israelis?

Officially, all the municipal services in H2 are provided by the Palestinian Authority.

Roads are maintained by the municipality or the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee; in closed areas, special coordination is allowed for Palestinians to enter to do maintenance. All residents’ electricity is provided by Israel; for Palestinian residents, the electricity comes from Israel via the Palestinian Authority. Israeli settlers get water piped in through the settlement of Kiryat Arba while the Palestinian residents of H2 receive their water through the Palestinian Authority, which purchases it from Israel. Garbage collection is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, but during the most violent periods of the second intifada Israeli settlers collected their own garbage.

 

Why focus on Hebron?

By building a focused campaign around a single issue in a particular locality, we hope to define achievable goals that will set a legal and political precedent for change in other areas of the occupied Palestinian territories as well. In Hebron, we are able to build a broad coalition of organizations and individuals who adhere to a range of political ideologies in order to work together for equality in the city. Hebron has great significance for the Israeli settlement movement and any changes on the ground in Hebron will have broad ramifications throughout the territories.

 

What are activists doing on the ground?

Israeli, Palestinian and international organizations are actively involved in improving the situation of Palestinian human rights in the city. These organizations are increasingly working in coordination with one another.

  • B’Tselemdocuments human rights abuses in the city, primarily through its Camera Distribution Project, in which Palestinian families in H2 use video cameras to record attacks on them and their property. The project is cultivating a network of families who have more resources to protect their rights, as well as materials that can be used to prosecute rights violations in the legal system.
  • The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee engages in legal work, the preservation and restoration of infrastructure, and community development.
  • Breaking the Silenceconducts educational tours of Hebron, raising awareness in Israeli society and internationally about human rights violations in the city.
  • Children of Abraham engages in joint Israeli-Palestinian agricultural work and protests, and coordinates solidarity visits to support the Palestinian families of H2.
  • The Tel Rumeida Popular Committee is developing a community and media center in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of H2. It has begun to broadcast HEB2 TV as an opportunity for Palestinian residents to document and express the realities of their daily lives.
  • Yesh Dinand the Association for Civil Rights in Israel engage in legal work in Hebron, including bringing cases to the Israeli Supreme Court to challenge military and political policies and prosecute Israeli violators of Palestinian civil and human rights.
  • The Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel offers persistent international presence as a deterrence to human rights violations in Hebron.

 

 A History of Jewish Presence in Hebron

 

Hebron/Al-Khalil
In Hebrew, the root meaning of the word Hebron carries connotations of friendship; in Arabic the name means the friend, referring to Abraham, who is known as the friend of God.
 
Biblical Narrative
Cave of Machpelah: On arriving in the land of Canaan, Abraham settles in Mamre, near Hebron, which is also called Kiryat Arba. When his wife Sarah dies (Genesis 23), Abraham purchases a plot of land including a burial cave from Ephron the Hittite. Identifying himself as a stranger dwelling in the midst of the local population, he insists on paying for the land rather than receiving it as a gift. Referenced in the Koran as a courageous monotheist, Abraham (Ibrahim) is a central prophet in Islam, considered to have built the Kabaa in Mecca. According to the Abrahamic faith traditions, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah (and possibly others including Adam and Eve) are buried in the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs) in the center of what is now the city of Hebron. This burial site is considered sacred in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Book of Joshua: Joshua gives Hebron to the Israelite tribal leader Caleb ben Jephunneh as a reward for his scouting the land in the book of Numbers. It is later designated a city for Levites to dwell in and is named as one of the six Biblical cities of refuge for accidental murderers.
King David: According to the books of Samuel and Chronicles, David is anointed king in Hebron and reigns there for seven years before moving his capital to Jerusalem.
 
Buildings at the Cave
Herod, King of Judea under the Romans, built the fortress-like structure over the Cave in the first century BCE. A Byzantine church was built there in the 6th century CE, which was destroyed by the Persians and then rebuilt as a mosque in the 7th century. Crusaders converted the mosque into a church in the 11th century, forbidding Muslims from entering. Saladin added the minarets in the 12th century, converting the building back to a mosque, and Mamlukes prohibited non-Muslims from entering the mosque starting in 1266. The Ottomans refurbished the buildings over the tomb.
 
Jewish Presence in the City
A Keraite Jewish community existed in Hebron in the 11th century, and Jewish travelers including Maimonides and Nahmanides reported on visits to the Tomb in the early middle ages. Jewish presence (including a cemetery) in Hebron is mentioned again in the 13th century, and the Jewish population of the city expanded under Ottoman rule and following the late 15th century Jewish expulsion from Spain. The Avraham Avinu synagogue was built in 1540, but the community remained small and dependent on support from abroad. The Arabic-speaking Jewish population of Hebron (20 households in 1538; 430 people in 1922) lived side-by-side in relative harmony with the much larger Muslim population (749 households in 1538; 16,074 people in 1922) of the city for centuries.
Various yeshivot (academies of Jewish study) were established in Hebron during the nineteenth century, culminating in the establishment of the Slabodka (Hebron) Yeshiva of Lithuania in 1925. Jewish individuals and institutions purchased and built on land in the city in the 19th century, including the wholesale market (1807), a guest house which later became a yeshiva and synagogue (Beit Romano, 1870), and a clinic (Beit Hadassah, 1893). A Chabad community was established in the city in 1840.
With the late 19th and early 20th century rise of political Zionism in Europe and Palestine, the primarily Sephardic Jewish population of Hebron remained a non-Zionist community, part of the old yishuv (Jewish settlements in the land of Israel), and did not arm itself during the Arab-Jewish conflicts of the 1920s.
 
1929-1967
After a 1929 massacre in Hebron of Jews by Palestinians in which Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were destroyed, 67 Jews were killed, many wounded, and many others saved by Palestinian friends and neighbors who hid them, the Jewish community of Hebron relocated to Jerusalem, finally evacuated by the British in 1936. The single remaining Jewish inhabitant left the city in 1947; during the 1948 war, the city was controlled by Egypt and from 1948-1967 Hebron was under Jordanian control. Under Jordanian law, in force between 1948-1967, Jewish private property in the West Bank was transferred to Jordanian governmental control.
 
Establishment and Development of Jewish Settlement in Hebron Since 1967
A group of settlers led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger requested permission from the Israeli army (IDF) to celebrate Passover in Hebron in 1968. After the holiday, they announced their intention to establish a Jewish settlement in the heart of the Palestinian city. The government allowed settlers to remain in Hebron, relocating them to an IDF base, and then establishing in 1970 the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba for permanent Jewish homes. Since the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt, Jewish Israelis have established settlements throughout these territories, with a total 2006 population of 484,562 (or 282,400 excluding the settlements around Jerusalem, which the Israeli government annexed following the war and does not consider occupied territory). These settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention as efforts to transfer the population of an occupying country into militarily occupied territories of another nation; they are also often illegal under Israeli law. The settlements in the city of Hebron (described below) are part of this larger settlement movement, and are unique only in that they are the sole permanent Israeli settlements in the heart of a Palestinian city in the West Bank.
 
Even after the building of Kiryat Arba, Israeli settlers sought to establish permanent Jewish settlement in the city of Hebron itself, and from the late 1970s to the present, Jewish settlement inside the city has expanded repeatedly, supported by Israeli government decisions and permits, military expulsions of Palestinians from their homes and shops, and the protection of the Israeli military (IDF). In 1975, Israeli soldiers looked on as a woman living in Kiryat Arba buried her infant in the old Jewish cemetery in the Hebron, reestablishing Jewish burial there. Women from Kiryat Arba entered Beit Hadassah in 1979, men visiting weekly for shabbat but not living in the building. The government did not consider it a settlement and allowed the women to live in the center of Hebron with their children. In 1980, a soldier and yeshiva student resident of Kiryat Arba was killed by Palestinians in Hebron, the first such death in the territories since 1967; in a similar incident, six yeshiva students were killed later that year. Accompanied by violence against Palestinian residents of the city, Israeli settlers then established a permanent presence in five buildings in Hebron historically owned by Jews; the government did not force them to leave but instead authorized their presence and their building of homes and institutions in what are now the Avraham Avinu, Beit Hadassah, and Beit Romano complexes through the 1980s. Some of the descendents of the original Jewish owners of these buildings strongly oppose the post-1967 Jewish settlement in them.

The Jewish settlement at Tel Rumeida began as a set of caravans in an archaeological site in 1984, with permanent building in the early 2000s (permits for the buildings were issued following the shooting death of a rabbi there in 1998). Similarly, the Jewish settlement in the wholesale market (evacuated by the Israeli government in 2006 and 2007) was established in 2001 after the death of an Israeli infant from Palestinian sniper fire. Israeli settlers have claimed and occupied other private Palestinian lands and buildings in the city as well, some of which are repeatedly demolished or evacuated by the military and then reoccupied by the settlers.

 
Restrictions on Palestinians
With each act of violence in the city on either side and each settlement expansion, restrictions have increased on the Palestinian residents of the city. In 1994, U.S. emigrant and Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein, dressed in his IDF reserve uniform, entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque during Muslim prayer and opened fire, killing 29 worshippers and injuring 150 before being killed by survivors. After this attack, the Israeli government instituted an official policy of separation between the Jewish and Palestinian populations of the city, enforced by restrictions on Palestinian movement. These restrictions began with the closure in 1994 of A-Shuhada Street to traffic and commerce, disallowing vehicles and shuttering shops along this main artery through the commercial center of Hebron. Since 1994, separate sections for Jewish and Muslim worshippers have been designated in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, with each group given full control over the building for 12 days a year.
In 1997, the Hebron Protocol (part of the Oslo Accords) divided Hebron, population 117,093, into two areas: H1 for Palestinian control and H2 (approximate population 35,000 Palestinians and 500 Israeli Jews) for Israeli control (the precise borders of these two areas were influenced by the burial location of a 19th century Chabad resident of the city). Opening A-Shuhada Street to traffic (though not to commerce) was part of the Hebron Protocol, but it was closed again to vehicles in 1998 and then to pedestrians in 2001. Following the onset of the second intifada in 2000, Palestinians in H2 were under curfew for more than 377 days in three years, sometimes not allowed to leave their houses for weeks or months at a time other than a few hours every few days to stock up on provisions. During that time, the IDF reoccupied H1 as well, but by the end of the decade had gradually transferred more control there back to the Palestinian Authority. H2 has seen increasing restrictions on travel and commerce, including the closing of streets in a widening buffer zone around the Israeli settlements to vehicular and foot travel, and the forced closing of hundreds of businesses (most by military order and some because of the lack of economic opportunities in the deserted Palestinian inner city). With such severe restrictions on movement and commerce, accompanied by the regular harassment of soldiers and settlers, H2 has seen massive abandonment by its Palestinian population, with at least 42% of housing uninhabited and 77% of businesses closed.
 
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