Walking in Palestinian Shoes

Hebron’s Youth against Settlements (YAS) activists took us to walk their own tortured paths for a city tour on a miserably cold day.

Our bus dropped us and our luggage off at the foot of the hill they are forbidden to pave up to their Center. YAS guys dashed around to help haul our bags the half-mile over rutted paths made muddy from the previous day’s rains. Their bare-bones concrete center is overtopped and surrounded by an Israeli-flagged settlement compound patrolled by Israeli soldiers. But despite that intimidating presence and the winter cold, we were warmly welcomed and served a lunch of savory stewed chicken, cauliflower, rice, Sprite and Coke, and a caramelly dessert treat.

Then we set out to explore the labyrinth of Israeli barriers against Palestinian movement in this divided city. The first barriers were fences posted KEEP OUT around an archeological site where Palestinian homes and yards had once been.

To take a paved road down to the city center, we tried a checkpoint where Palestinians are sometimes allowed to pass, sometimes not; but this day it was internationals who were forbidden. So we turned back across the half-mile to the Center and beyond to a zigzag of broken stairs and rocky trail down.

That brought us to what had been Hebron’s main market street, now nicknamed Ghost Street, where many homes and shops have been boarded up to protect new Israeli settlers. We walked along the mostly empty road beneath plastic tenting and metal mesh that Palestinians have put up to protect their market from urine and trash from the settlers’ upstairs apartments.

The 15 of us visitors were nearly the only customers, so we bought what we could of the beautifully handcrafted coin purses, rugs, pillows, and dresses.

With the streets repeatedly blocked off by Israeli checkpoints and soldiers, we climbed up and down apartment house stairs for rooftop views of a hard-to-reach Palestinian cemetery, then a new Israeli military installation right by Hebron’s oldest mosque, with a downtown settlement planned on its other side, where Hebron’s fruit and vegetable market once thrived.

We had to rush to make the start of the monthly birthday party the Palestinian community puts on for its children, to brighten their difficult lives with presents and sparklers for February’s celebrants. A Scottish volunteer had to escort us through the now-dark streets that only Israelis and international passport holders can walk or drive - then up, up, up winding paths and crumbling stairs to the Center.

Our Palestinian hosts tried to counter the bitter cold with a trash-bin fire of greenwood gathered from the grounds. To eat the chicken they barbecued for our dinner, we gathered around the small fires or by the space heater on an overloaded electrical outlet for recharging our cameras and laptops. Everything has to be hand-carried up the footpaths.

But we were well-entertained - and grateful (on my 75th birthday) that our mostly-over-55 group had made it through the day with only one fall and a skinned nose among us. Our chilled bodies took to the private homes that hosted us overnight a deep understanding of Palestinian life here.