A day trip into history and politics - Part 2
After spending a couple of hours in Bethlehem, we caught another 'service' (minibus/taxi) down to Hebron about 40 min further south - plus another 40 min since the driver got lost. We decided to get out after we passed the same spot for the third time! It wasn't entirely the driver's fault as he usually did the Bethlehem-Ramallah drive and there had been a series of street closures since he was last in Hebron.
Now, here's a city with some history, and flash point potential. The city houses the tomb of Adam & Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives, which makes it sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. That has to be a recipe for trouble if ever I saw one. And, well, you guessed it, the place has seen a bit.
The most 'recent' trouble started in 1929 when Arab nationals revolted killing and evicting Jews from the city. After the city was seized by Israel in 1967, ultra-orthodox Jews began moving back in, so that the old city is now quartered into Jewish and Muslim sections with checkpoints and walls all over the place. In fact, we headed up a Jewish street wanting to get back into the old city (Muslim Quarter) about 50m to our right but had to backtrack about 1km because all the streets were blocked off (see pics). In 1994, a Jewish extremist killed a number of Palestinians while they were praying at the mosque (that holds the tombs) in revenge for the 1929 killings - what's 65 years to hold a grudge eh? Some ultra-orthodox Jews actually celebrate the massacre. Anyway, as you can imagine, there's an underlying tension the pulses through the city.
The Old market (souq) is a good example of the tensions. You'll notice in the pictures there's wire netting above the market. This is to stop the rubbish that the settlers, who live in the buildings above, throw down into the market. The market is virtually empty as a result. One stall owner tells of how the settlers above his store routinely throw rubbish, water, bleach, and worse (think toilet) on his stall. I wouldn't call this a working cohabitation!
Through the end of the souq is the Ibrihimi Mosque/Synagogue. There is tight security here and we have to go though metal detectors and check any firearms - luckily we weren't carrying any. The site has a mosque on one side and a synagogue on the other - separate entrances for Muslims and Jews of course.
After looking through the mosque we followed a local palestinian to the top of his house so that he could show us the division between Jews and Palestinians in the area. The most striking thing was that the area is like a ghost town. Like the souq, there is abundant evidence of a once thriving market area, where now there are only closed shops. Palestinians still live in this part of town, but vehicular access is banned as it's between two Jewish settlements. Commerce has moved out of the old city into surrounding suburbs.
We ended the day on a lighter note by visiting a ceramics factory (Hebron is famous for ceramics and glass). I found a nice salad bowl - not sure how I'm going to get that home, but I'll worry about that later.