Hebron becomes the center of Palestinian violence

HEBRON, West Bank — The knives and guns have come back to the heart of Hebron, where 80 families of hard-core Jewish settlers live in a walled garrison beside the ancient tombs of the biblical figures Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, surrounded by 200,000 Palestinians.

On Friday night, Israeli authorities said a Palestinian sniper shot and wounded two Jewish teenagers who had come to worship at the Cave of the Patriarchs.

“They’re attacking Jews again because they want to kill Jews,” said Uri Karzen, a leader of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. “What is the specific reason they are attacking us now? You’ll have to ask them.”

The area around the tombs is tightly controlled by the Israeli army; the holy site itself is divided between Jews on one side and Muslims, who pray at the Ibrahimi Mosque, on the other.

The place has been the site of infamous massacres, cited to this day by both sides: the 1929 Palestinian mob that killed 67 Jews and the 1994 mass shooting by American-born Israeli Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Arabs before he was beaten to death.

Karzen said he was warming chicken soup on his stove last week when rounds from an automatic rifle struck his building.

“We’re not going anywhere. The Arabs have to understand this,” Karzen said. “We’ve seen it all. Bombs, guns, stabbings.”

Nickolay Mladenov, the new U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, visited Hebron for the first time last week and said he found the tension between Jews and Arabs striking.

“What we see today is a whole generation that has lost hope that a two-state solution is possible,” he said.

[Twenty years later, as Rabin is remembered, little hope for peace]

On Thursday, White House officials said that President Obama has concluded that a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is beyond reach during his presidency.

Instead, the president will press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will meet with him Monday, to take steps to preserve the mere possibility of a two-state solution.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry spent nine months last year leading fruitless negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Since then, incitement has escalated; Israel and the Islamist militant movement Hamas fought a 50-day war in Gaza; and in the past month, Palestinian assailants have launched a wave of fresh attacks, against not only soldiers but also elderly rabbis and Jewish couples pushing strollers.

Recent polls say that most Palestinians think a two-state solution is now impossible, and a growing number of them support a return to armed resistance against the 48-year Israeli military occupation.

[What drives the Palestinians who attack Jews with kitchen knives?]

The current storm of violence began in late September in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. The sniper fire on Friday evening in Hebron represented an escalation over previous attacks carried out by assailants wielding knives or using their cars to ram into Israeli soldiers and civilians. Israeli troops swept into the surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods Saturday, searching for the fleeing gunman. No arrests have been made.

“I’m scared to death of everyone,” said Hani Abu Haikal, who sells coffee on the street in the market of old Hebron but lives at the edge of the Jewish settlements.

To get to work, Haikal said he passes five Israeli checkpoints in 500 yards.

“The Israeli soldiers don’t want you to come close enough to touch. They say, ‘Throw me your ID!’ They’re scared of the telephone. I would never reach into my pocket. He will shoot you.”

An Israeli police commander in Hebron said his forces were preparing for an escalation. “The magnitude of the hatred surprised us,” police deputy commander Yisrael Tal told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week. “The police officers are on constant alert and try to figure out all day long where the next threat is going to come from.”

There are frequent clashes at the checkpoints into the Jewish settlements, which occupy only about 3 percent of Hebron, while Israeli forces control about 20 percent of the city. The Palestinian Authority maintains law and order in the rest.

Earlier last week, Palestinian police in plain clothes were milling in the crowds outside one checkpoint, whispering into their mobile phones and stopping young Palestinians from throwing rocks. After about an hour, the undercover police withdrew, giving no reason, and the Palestinians began to hurl stones at the Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

“This is the center of the conflict,” said Baker Tamimi, owner of a fabric shop beside the Jewish settlements. “Israel has pulled out of all the Palestinian cities except Hebron, so this is where they will fight.”

Israel and the Palestinian Authority see Hebron as a center of influence for the militant movement Hamas in the West Bank. Hamas has been egging on violent resistance on its Web sites and via the media but has been careful not to have its leaders at the forefront.

There have been more than 20 Palestinian attacks in Hebron center over the past three weeks. A dozen Palestinians have been shot dead or wounded by Israeli civilians, security guards and soldiers; some of their bodies have not returned. Palestinian officials charge that some of the killings were street executions, the victims posed no lethal threat and could have been arrested.

The Jewish settlement in the old city feels like a ghost town most days, with children mostly kept indoors, the shops shuttered and young settlers with automatic weapons mingling with Israeli soldiers. Palestinians without residency permits are not permitted to pass through the checkpoints.

“We requested more security. It’s a semi-closure,” said Yishai Fleisher, an Israeli radio show host and spokesman for the Jewish settlers in Hebron.

After midnight on Tuesday, Israeli soldiers raided the Hebron radio station Al-Hurriah and shut it down for broadcasting incitement to violence. The soldiers confiscated computers, mixers, recorders and trashed the offices.

Station manager Osman Halawi said the station was shut down not for incitement but because it broadcast on its Web site video that suggestedIsraeli forces planted a knife on a Palestinian after he was shot.

Kamel Humaid, head of the Hebron Governate, said, “I don’t differentiate between closing shops, attacking radio stations, destroying houses or killing people.” He said it is all a part of Israeli aggression and called on the international community to protect Hebron.