Hebron, Palestine.
While the world shuts into lockdown due to some virus, imagine how Palestine has felt for the past 72 years. Imagine, growing up and into a world of closed out segregation to your own human rights, to grow up knowing that you will never be able to travel to see towers and bridges. To grow up with only dreaming and watching the things we currently love doing but only on tv or when we close our eyes. Palestine is not only suffering from this virus but also from decades of occupation and genocide. They have suffered from being jailed their entire lives and from limited dreams.
We came across some kids with a handmade skateboard with some kuddy Walmart looking trucks. The board looked also like it could be a Tony Alva trainer board of some sort.
The. kids were beyond stoked to ride a skateboard that actually looks and feels normal. Although they really couldn’t get the board down right away, they attempted to manual and slide doing the same movements they knew how to do with their trainer boards. By the end of the hour, they were turning and jumping for the first time in ever.
In the distance of the first photo, you can see a Israeli soldier watching all of us and the kids very closely.
On the bottom of the hill was a base, so whenever we raced down with the kids the soldiers would approach a bit but not quiet and grasp their guns a bit tighter. There was a time when one of the kids couldn’t slow down and passed the sounders imaginary line.
First and for most I would like to thank our journalist friend who gave us a rundown on what is happening in Hebron, its history, and what it may become. A lot of this article is words that he educated us with, and I credit and source him for many of these stories and facts that we have learned and heard.
WHY the Main Street that connects North & South of Hebron is called Shuhada st. :
“You would be walking on this street heading to work and you just get shot. You aren’t really killing yourself but you get killed by them. The victims get killed by the Israeli soldiers”.
It can also mean:
“Witness. Due to this street witnessing a lot of killings.
Some call the street Shuhada because it witnessed a lot of killing or because a lot of people were killed in Tellermada and then the blood was coming down to the street.
The street used to carry everything back in the day being the “Times Square” of Hebron.
The Farmers Market.
The Flee Market
The Camels Market
The Bus Station
The Gas Station
People used to come from everywhere in Palestine to visit this street. From Gaza, from Jerusalem, haifa, Yafa, and Bethlehem to buy their goods because Hebron had the best quality and the cheapest prices.
Baruch Goldstein. An American New Yorker physician, religious extremist went into the Ibrahimi mosque during ramadan while people were praying the Friday morning prayer Fajr and with open fire shooting people in their backs. He killed 29 people and wounded 125, with so many being under the age of 12.
After the massacre, the Palestinians were punished. Being a victim, you were punished because YOU let the bullets enter your body. Its all your fault.
Many people believe that the massacre was planned due to the consequences and after math that it withheld. After the massacre happened on February 25th 1994, clashes happened all over the city. Friends and family members were getting killed causing so many deaths and messes in the city.
They decided to make a city curfew which only lasted three years. And then shut down the Palestinian territory for a week. Not allowing them to shop, go open their stores and locked them into their homes. Sometimes they open the curfew for one hour. During the curfew, some people escaped for refugee, running to their families but many couldn’t leave.
After some times in 1997, Palestinians weren’t allowed to walk or drive in the street of Hebron. So Yasser Arafat representing the Palestinians signed an agreement called the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron. Where Area- H-1 (which is 80% of Palestinian territory) would come under Palestinian control while Area H-2 would remain under Israeli control. Also known as Black and White. Palestinian control or Israeli control. According to the agreement, Palestinians can have freedom of movement and to be able to drive and walk and reopen their stores and go back to their homes on this street.
What ended up happening was Israel took out the division. In the agreement it states the Israelis and Israeli soldiers cannot come to to Shuhada street. But they took out that fact and decided to not obey by the agreement or coordinate with the Palestinian police. They feel like they don’t need to or want to. They go out in and destroy Palestinian homes. Invade hospitals and schools. Invaded peoples homes and raiding them at night arresting the men in your family with un authorized home searches destroying their houses and flipping them upside down.
Palestinian police cannot work in H-1 without letting the Israeli gov know, creating the security coordination which says if a Israeli solider says 0-0 to the Palestinian cops they have to unarm them selves and go back to their offices allowing Israel to do a raid with no problems.
For a more visual description of this, watch: Road to Apartheid Documentary.
On the top of the hill there are three major settlements. They don’t pay taxes or serve in the military and many of them are payed by the USA from the Brooklyn Jewish community to create a mission to frustrate the Palestinians to attempt to make their lives horrible and push them out. They carry M16s and teach the kids how to use them too raise the kids to hate Palestinians and make them think that Palestinians just want to kill them.
A kid settler approached me and asked:
“Why do you want to kill me”
“Why would I want to kill you, you are the age of my niece and Nephew.”
“My father told me Palestinians want to kill me”
“No, we are talking now why would I kill you you are just a kid”
“My father beats up Arabs all the time and doesn’t go to jail”
As a Palestinian if you live in H-2 you get no access to an ambulance. If you want to buy even a kitchen. Knife you need to get a credential allowing you to do so.
An Israeli activist states “Palestinians breathe occupation, The details of a Palestinians life depends on them. If a solider shoots up bullets in the sky he can close down the entire city. They created barriers, all they need is just one soldier to close down the barrier not allowing entrance or exiting”.
Second main entrance next to Shuhada st has 1800 Palestinian shops shut down. 513 of them are welded shut. 1017 homes closed down where Palestinians are not allowed to enter. (Blue house with the strip.) Bait Hadasa. A settlement home that used to be a shared Palestinian and Jewish Palestinian factory. When the British mandate came in, they closed down the factory and made it to a community clinic treating everyone, but later the Israeli government came in and sonly allowed Jews to get treated there. Now a settlement home. All Palestine homes above are no longer occupied by Palestinians. Actually, Palestinians do not live in higher levels. Palestians live below and the settlers live on top.
On jewish holidays, AIRBNB rents out settlement homes to guests mainly from the USA to rent out old settlement Palestinian homes in order for Jews to exhibit the festives paying 300 dollars a night to help pay the Israeli government thinking they are protecting Judaism but they are actually killing Palestinians.