DAM reports from Hebron

Nov 17, 2009 14:01

Every time I read about the situation in Hebron I feel this curious mix of inspiration and despair. Despair about the levels of horribleness that humans can incorporate into their daily behavior, as in all the totally degrading, viscous, and deadly activities taken as normal and encouraged by the settlers in Hebron, and inspired by the ability of the Palestinians of Hebron to continue to resist and to still have community and support each other in such awful conditions.

http://againstmilitarism.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-architecture-of-apartheid/

The word “Revenge” is scrawled in Hebrew on a Palestinian school in Hebron. The windows are covered with screens and the play yard obstructed with more screens tipped with barbed wire, to obstruct the stones regularly pelted down by Jewish settlers. The space between the school and the neighboring building is blocked off with large, wooden slabs, to ensure that Palestinian school children do not encroach into settler territory. Nearby checkpoints and cameras placed on rooftops serve as constant reminder that these kids’ every movement is monitored and contained.

This schoolyard scene, on an empty weekend day, illustrates the separation and containment that has become written into the architecture of Hebron. In this city where 1,500 Israeli soldiers are stationed on any given day, the 170,000 Palestinians living here are kept under constant watch, their movements restricted while their safety is under constant threat. The Jewish settlers who have been moving in since the late ’70s, now numbering 800, are known for repeatedly attacking Palestinians while Israeli soldiers sit idly by.

dam

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