Armed men on the hilltop
Annika Hampson visits the Tel Rumaida settlement in Hebron and discovers a microcosm of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
On a hilltop overlooking the marketplace is the Tel Rumaida settlement, one of the tiny but particularly provocative settlements built around Hebron's Old City. This little settlement is a microcosm of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. All in all, there are five Israeli settlements and approximately 450 settlers in Hebron, with 2,000 Israeli soldiers to "protect" them. Since 1972, when the first settlement was established in Hebron (with the support of Shimon Peres!), the city's history has been punctuated by outbreaks of violence. It is the presence of these settlements that has turned Hebron into a front line of the Intifada.
The most recent incident was on 16 November of last year, when 12 settlers and the soldiers escorting them were killed and 14 wounded in an ambush by Islamic Jihad militants. Reflecting the endless cycle of retaliation and retribution that has characterised the Intifada, Islamic Jihad head, Ramadan Shallah, said the ambush was in retaliation for the killing of Jihad militant, Iyad Sawalha earlier in the month. This brought the simmering hatred to a boiling point, yet again, and resulted in a renewed outpouring of bullets, blood, anger and frustration, in a city where these are in endless supply.
The Israeli soldiers down in the marketplace of the Old City seem nervous despite the curfew. Tall concrete bollards, rolls of barbed wire and sinister metal watch-towers have transformed the once bustling marketplace into a desolate space, reminiscent of a film set for a war movie with loitering press photographers replacing the camera crew. The streets are empty, and the green metal shutters of the shops firmly padlocked. Faded graffiti has the appearance of having been unsuccessfully scrubbed off reads "Kill the Arabs". Alongside the Star of David, these messages express the settlers' deep hatred for their neighbours and their determination to stay.
Tel Rumaida lies on the other side of the checkpoint, at the top of a winding road lined with Palestinian houses. Snipers, who ensure that no one breaks the strict and almost continuous curfews, have occupied the roofs of some of these houses. Shells from a tank positioned at the entrance to Tel Rumaida periodically fly over the Palestinian houses and into the old marketplace, where, in places, little remains but piles of blackened and broken stones and tangled iron. The road is deserted, yet the familiar sounds of family life rises forth from the barricaded houses.
A tanned South African soldier, slouching on a wooden chair, marks the entrance to Tel Rumaida settlement. He has been in Hebron since October, and looks as though he would be more in his element drinking beer on the beach. He says about 30 settlers live in the cul-de- sac, in which there is little more than two large trailers reinforced with a wall of sandbags and the concrete skeleton of a half-constructed apartment block. Three Arab houses, still occupied and surrounded by high fences and heavy metal wire, lie within the confines of the settlement.
The presence of Tel Rumaida, along with the other settlements in Hebron, is justified in religious terms. The settlement, claim its residents, is built on the site of the Tomb of Jesse and Ruth. However, at a time when the Israeli government is facing a deep economic crisis and widespread Israeli public opposition to what many see as the racist fanaticism of the settlers, itself viewed as a factor in the suicide bombings within Israel, the ongoing and very costly support given to the settlers supports arguments that the outposts are clearly political.
Opponents of the settlements argue that the long-term aims of Israel's settlement policy, which has been on the Israeli political agenda since 1967, are threefold: expropriating Palestinian land, undermining the establishment of a viable and democratic Palestinian state and isolating the Palestinian areas of Municipal Jerusalem from the West Bank. In the last 35 years, successive governments have pursued an expansionist settlement policy culminating in the Seven Stars Plan in 1991, which outlined a policy of unfettered settlement activities throughout the occupied territories.
The Seven Stars Plan reflects Israeli hard-liners' aspirations of destroying forever any possibility of Palestinian territorial or demographic continuity, and thereby making the two-state solution a practical impossibility. The plan envisions a proliferation of both urban and rural settlements throughout the West Bank in either settlement blocks, predominantly around Jerusalem, or settlement zones leaving three Palestinian Bantustans centred on Jenin and Nablus in the north, Ramallah in the central region and Hebron in the south.
Since Oslo, despite the Israeli government's unilateral pledge to implement a de facto settlement freeze, housing in Israeli settlements has grown by over 52 per cent and in the 12 months preceding Operation Defensive Shield alone, 40 new settlement sites were established, bringing the total number throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to well over 140 and possibly as high as 190 (the Yesha Settler Council claims there are 152 settlements, of which 18 are in Gaza).
Israel's web of seized land under exclusive Jewish control adds up to 41.9 per cent of the West Bank, while only 1.7 per cent of this is actually built upon and occupied by settlers. Their goal was, and still is, preventing the Palestinians from establishing a viable state. Every settlement, every outpost, every empty shipping container or water tank perched on a hilltop, is meant to drive home to the Palestinians the hopelessness of their aspirations for an independent state on their own land.
The hilltop overlooking the marketplace in Tel Rumaida shelters only a couple of trailers today and the marketplace is inoperative because of the security situation. Since the last incident, additional soldiers were dispatched to the site to "protect" the settlers. Nobody seems to ask why they came here in the first place and turned the quiet Palestinian neighbourhood into a conflict zone. If more permanent housing is constructed, Tel Rumaida would soon become a full-fledged settlement, and its settlers could be expected to call for a permanent occupation of the surrounding Palestinian neighbourhoods. Those who are currently busy building the settlement would probably replace Shimon Peres et al at the negotiating table, and argue how difficult it is to "uproot" established settlements and how important it is to find creative solutions to accommodate facts on the ground. The two-state solution, in the meantime, would join the long list of failed attempts to solve the conflict defying both reason and the international community.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 16 - 22 January 2003 (Issue No. 621)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/621/re3.htm