Despatches from Hebron

Karl Ulven is watching two Israeli soldiers confront two young Palestinian men on a street in central Hebron. The soldiers are rhythmically slapping thin wooden sticks at their sides as they demand to know what the Palestinians are doing out in this dusty, sealed-off part of town where only Jewish settlers are allowed to roam freely without permits. The soldiers' swagger is visible. Ulven, standing silently to one side, is simmering.

He's a tall, sandy-haired, 37-year-old police officer from Norway who is spending a year as an observer with Temporary International Presence in Hebron, a multilateral European orga nisation. He is wearing TIPH's standard-issue uniform - light grey shirt and trousers and red armbands. He carries no weapon, just a laminated identity card on a chain around his neck with this statement on the back: "All civil and military authorities are requested to allow the bearer to pass freely in accordance with the Agreement on TIPH."

It's more a plea than a request. TIPH's mission since 1994 has been to monitor conditions in this turbulent West Bank city, where Jewish settlers have established a series of enclaves in the city centre over the past four decades with the Israeli government's support. Ulven is supposed to look, listen and report - nothing more. But at the moment, you might say, he is expanding his mandate. He steps up to one of the soldiers. "Why do you have a stick in your hand?" he asks. "You look highly unprofessional."

"I don't understand English," the soldier re plies, then turns away.

"It's just that you look very stupid with that stick in your hand," Ulven persists.

The soldier smiles sheepishly, but doesn't respond. He talks to his partner, then to the Palestinians. Then he breaks the stick in half and throws it away.

Later, Ulven confesses to me that he gets frustrated when he sees the contempt with which Israeli soldiers and police routinely treat Palestinians. "As a police officer when I see this kind of behaviour I sometimes feel ashamed." In Norway, he says, he is used to taking action when he sees wrongdoing. Here he can do nothing.

"Do you have a flak jacket?" he cheerfully asks, as he loads his own into the back seat of the battered Toyota RAV4 and attaches a red TIPH flag to the roof. "No? We should get you one."

Then we're off. At the wheel is Øyvind Færevik, a fellow Norwegian, also 37, who speaks Arabic and works with asylum-seekers back home in Oslo. Patrols are the basic function of the TIPH mission - two-member teams roam the streets of central Hebron seven days a week from 7am until 9pm.

First we make the rounds of various gates at the edge of the city, closed down by the Israeli army in order to control routes in and out of town. Then we head downtown. Many roads used to converge on the marketplace. Now all are sealed off except for two checkpoints marked by brooding concrete towers. No Palestinian vehicles are allowed.

Our next stop is Patriarch’s Hill, where settlers recently occupied an unfinished four-storey building overlooking the road connecting Kiryat Arba to central Hebron. The settlers claim to have purchased the building legitimately from its Arab owner, but did not obtain official permission. This is how the settlers have operated for four decades – create facts on the ground, then shame the government into ratifying them. Few governments have ever said no. The matter is now in the courts.

Ulven and Færevik cruise the area, take photos showing that the settlers and the army are sealing off Palestinian access to the area around the building. A new fact is being created. Then it’s off to the nearby police station, where a half-dozen Palestinian men are standing outside in the blazing sun queuing for access. Sometimes they wait here for hours, according to Ulven. “For your convenience you may use this telephone to call,” states the sign above a phone on the outside fence. One man says he has been dialling for an hour. “The Israelis just don’t care,” says Ulven, with a disgusted look. “It’s a disgrace.”
At lunchtime, Ulven and Færevik head back to the TIPH compound, located on a hill at the southern edge of the city. There are 58 Europeans in the mission, supported by a hundred or so locals. They generally come for a year, living in shared apartments and taking their meals in a rooftop dining hall. The locked gate to the compound is crowned with razor wire monitored by a guard behind a shatterproof glass window. Inside, the courtyard is protected by a wire net. The security measures were increased after Palestinian rioters stormed the compound in February 2006, enraged by the publication of offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. TIPH was the most readily available European target for their wrath.
The unarmed monitors fought off the rioters with fire extinguishers and barricaded doors, then fled to Jerusalem under an Israeli army escort, a source of supreme humiliation. “It was a little bit of a paradox because we’re here to help the Palestinians,” concedes Mats Lignell, TIPH’s current spokesman. “That’s the European granola approach: ‘But we’re here to help! Why would they attack us?’”

Khaled Osaily, the city’s politically moderate mayor, tells me that no one much minds TIPH but Palestinian expectations are low. “They could be more active,” he says of the organisation. Israeli officials profess more satisfaction. “We think they give a sense of confidence and security to Palestinians who live in the area,” says Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. “The situation in Hebron is complicated and difficult. But did anyone who sent them really think they were going to be a saviour?”
Glenn Frankel, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post, teaches journalism at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website