ISRAEL/PALESTINE: Hebron is a microcosm of all that is wrong between Israelis and Palestinians, writes Nuala Haughey
Tel Rumeida is the heart of the Biblical city of Hebron, the first dwelling place of the Patriarch Abraham and later the first capital of King David.
Today this mound in the Judean hills is home to seven Jewish settler families who stake their claims here based on Abraham's title deed and on God's promise to bequeath the land of Israel to Abraham's descendents.
Above a site where archaeologists in recent years unearthed artefacts and remains of the ancient city dating back to Abraham, these settlers are now building an apartment block.
Situated in the midst of existing Palestinian homes, the high-rise building will replace the current double-decker row of mobile homes installed on the slope of the hill by Jewish settlers in 1984.
Tel Rumeida is one of four small settlements located in an Israeli-controlled enclave in the Old City district of Hebron, the largest industrial city in the occupied West Bank, which settlers began to move to in 1968 after Israel occupied the Palestinian territories.
Hebron's Old City settlements are home to about 500 religious Jews, who are considered among the most militant and zealous settlers in the West Bank, as well as 300 yeshiva students, and some 35,000 Palestinian Arabs.
In the past week, the recently departed head of an independent international observer group in Hebron said Palestinians were being driven out of the Israeli-controlled area of the city by attacks from settlers as well as Israeli army heavy-handedness, including house demolitions and curfews - which lasted once for more than 100 days. "In a sense cleansing is being carried out," the Norwegian Jan Kristensen told Ha'aretz newspaper. "In other words, if the situation continues for another few years, the result will be that no Palestinians will remain there. It is a miracle they have managed to remain there until now."
To Hebron's Palestinian population, Kristensen was merely stating the obvious; to its settlers, however, his remarks only confirmed their views that the observers from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) are biased against them and they should leave.
"It's blatantly untrue," says David Wilder, the straight-talking New Jersey born spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron.
"Nobody has put a gun to anybody's head and said you have to leave. He \ speaks about curfews and house demolitions, but he doesn't say why that has happened."
Wilder acknowledges that many Arabs have left the Israeli controlled part of the city in recent years, but he puts the blame firmly on Palestinian violence, which leads to Israeli army crackdowns.
On the walls of his Hebron office are photographs of numerous settlers murdered during the current Intifada. Among them are a 10-month-old baby killed by a Palestinian sniper in March 2001 while being pushed in her pram by her father, and a rabbi who was stabbed to death five years ago in his home, one of the mobile homes in Tel Rumeida which have sandbags outside for protection.
Since 1997, Hebron city has been divided into two parts. H1, which accounts for 80 per cent of the city of 130,000 Arabs, came under Palestinian control after Israeli withdrawal.
H2, which comprises the Old City and contains the Jewish settlements, is under Israeli military control. The narrow streets of the once charming Old City in the H2 district are now eerily empty, with tattered Israeli flags fluttering from lampposts. The once vibrant Palestinian food market has been converted into accommodation for young Jewish families.
The pretty pale stone Palestinian-owned shops with their green awnings are firmly shuttered closed and daubed with graffiti in Hebrew declaring death to Arabs.
Palestinians who live in H2 must cross Israeli checkpoints to enter H1 to shop or go to work or school. Settlers and Palestinians walking on the street keep a wary distance.
The B'Tselem human rights group reported last year that 43 per cent of Palestinian residents of the three main streets of the Old City, where the settlers also reside, have left their homes since the outbreak of the Intifada, which began in September 2000. At least 2,000 Palestinian businesses in what was once the commercial heart of the city have closed, as well as three schools which had 1,835 pupils, it says.
A few feet from these mobile homes is the family home of Hna Abu Hekl (45).
The Palestinian hairdresser shares the handsome stone clad two-storey villa with her 13-year-old daughter, her elderly parents and her sister's young family. It has a pleasant large garden planted with lemon and orange trees and grapes, as well as grills and bars on its windows to protect against attacks.
Just outside their front gate is an Israel army post, where a young soldier in a green tent with a rifle draped across his shoulder nonchalantly tells us visitors that to reach Abu Hekl's home, we must pick our way awkwardly through the garden of a neighbour's abandoned Palestinian house instead of simply entering through the nearby front gate.
Abu Hekl said she is only allowed to cross on foot into H1 to her shop in the morning, at lunch-time and the evening. Three months ago, settlers attacked her father and he needed 10 stitches in his head, she said. Her daughter was recently held in heavy rain at an Israeli checkpoint for an hour.
These experiences are common, according to B'Tselem which has documented the almost daily physical violence and property damage carried out by settlers against Palestinians in H2.
"Settlers throw stones at them, curse them, damage their property, and take over their apartments," the group says, adding that Israeli security forces do not protect Palestinians against settler violence and almost never enforce the law against the lawbreakers.
Wilder says the other side of the story is the ongoing Palestinian attacks on Jews in H2. For example, two months ago a terrorist started shooting at settlers in Tel Rumeida.
"Do I like the fact that after that happens children go out and throw a rock? I don't tell my children to throw rocks. But as much as I don't like it and I might even try to prevent it, you've got to understand that we've been shot at for two years."
Wilder, who says he has been shot at in his home, added that if he wanted to convince a journalist that he was under attack, he too would put grills on his windows.
He rails against being called an extremist and says the West Bank, which Palestinians want for their future state, rightly belongs to Israel.