Inoltra: [JerryLevin] From The Inside Looking Out: Report-59: What Will They Take Away Next?--

[Luca Pulitini <lpulitini at yahoo.it>]

Nota: allegato messaggio inoltrato.




From: "jlevin0320" <jlevin0320 at yahoo.com>


Jerry Levin
CPT
Hebron, West Bank
CPT's Hebron Land Line: 011 972 (0) 2 222 8485
Jerry's Cell Phone: 011 972 506 512 075
Sis's Cell Phone: 011 972 547 471 956
Sis's Bethlehem Land Line: 011 972 (0) 2 274 3861
jlevin0320 at yahoo.com

2455-E Arlington Crescent
Birmingham, AL 35205
Phone/Fax: 205 933 8007
Jerry's Cell Phone: 205 422 9599
Sis's Cell Phone: 205 266 1464

>From The Inside Looking Out: Report-59
--What Will They Take Away Next?--

What follows is the fifty ninth in a series of micro-reports,
commentaries, and or analyses that I am sending routinely from the
Occupied Territories and other areas in the Middle East. If the
information or ideas seem helpful, please feel free to forward them
to others. It would be a privilege to add their names to this
mailing list, if so requested. I can be reached at:
jlevin0320 at yahoo.com. As always I will be grateful for any feedback.
Also my more recent experiences in the Middle East have been
collected in a new book, "West Bank Diary." If you are interested in
obtaining a copy, please contact Hope Publishing House, Pasadena, CA
at 1-800-326-2671 or via e-mail at: hopepub at sbcglobal.net.

(Hebron, West Bank, Palestine September 21, 2005) Just as soon as
the retreat from Gaza was more or less concluded shortly after the
middle of last month Israeli military units in the Hebron area were
replaced by troops whose reactions to CPTers and other
internationals has been at times noticeably milder than during all
the increasingly turbulent and violent years following Oslo and the
second uprising. So pronounced and pervasive has been the difference
that one suspects that the troops' restraint are due to
deliberate "good cop" indoctrination mandated from above designed to
disarm or at least deflect the hearts and minds of us international
activists and communicators.

So these days we have encountered soldiers and border police
shouting cheerfully, "Good morning," as we pursue our daily round of
school patrols and other sorties, while others have been cheering us
on our way with the ubiquitous "Have a nice day." [See From The
Inside Looking out report #5, August 24, 2002: "Have A Nice Day" for
an earlier account of the have-a-nice-day phenomenon]. Some of the
above, after learning who we are and what we are about actually have
encouraged us, softly saying, so as not to be overheard by their
comrades, "It is good what you are doing." Others, however, while
mouthing the usual pretext for their repressive exploits, "it is our
duty to protect the settlers from terrorists," at the same time may
try to telegraph a more subjective attitude by adding grimly "I am
not permitted to tell you my personal opinion." (Chauvinist soldiers
never seem to have that problem,)

But others do find a way to make it clear that, although they fear
the "terrorists" that it is their "duty" to ferret out, they are
angered by the provocative wildly orthodox wildly nationalist
settlers of the Old City who make doing that job more difficult. One
soldier who during several earnest conversations he initiated
implied circumspectly that he doesn't like his duty to be protecting
Hebron's settlers.

He knows my name. He also knows from our conversations that besides
being CPT my professional history has been in journalism. Despite
his leanings, he nevertheless astonished my wife, Sis, and me
recently when we ran across him at a major checkpoint trouble spot
leading into the Old City. The background to the episode is this. I
had just finished filing a series of straight CPT hard news reports
with my byline. They were later expanded and incorporated into one
of my subsequent personal From The Inside Looking Out report [#58,
September 8, 2005: "Because We Are All Palestinian]. The stories had
to do with problems female teachers and students had encountered at
the beginning of the new school year at that checkpoint and another
one like it at the other end of the Old City.

As we started to walk by him the soldier asked, "You are the CPT
reporter?"

Wondering what he might be getting at, I answered, "Yes, but I'm not
the only one."

Then he said something that was quite revealing about the kind of
attention the military authorities give to not only what CPT does in
Hebron but what we write as well. "Yes, I know" he said, "but you
are Jerry and I read what you wrote about the women at the check
point."

Not knowing what to expect next, what shoe might drop next, but
assuming some kind of argument or even rebuke, I asked, "And?"

And…here's the surprise. He replied, "What you said was very
objective."

Hearing that, Sis felt encouraged to tell him, "His reports are
translated into Hebrew." She was referring to the translations of
>From The Inside Looking Out that our friends at Checkpoint Watch
have been putting out over their website.

The soldier's reply to that bit of information was, "That is
important."

Good Cop.

Bad cop? You don't have to look very far.

I am reminded that more than twice as many Israeli soldiers
protested the retreat from Gaza than those who have been refusing to
serve in the West Bank. And now that the army is out of Gaza it is
being moved into the West Bank in order to increase its capability
of enforcing an occupation that is still effectively whittling away
parts of western Palestine: absorbing some into Israel behind
the "annexation" wall or into settlements still perching ulcer like
atop hilltops in Palestinian territory. And while these below the
radar subtractive activities are taking place, the Israelis are
making tiny so-called concessions that are designed to convince the
rest of the world that all is increasingly benign on the western
front.

When it's not.

For instance they talk about reducing the amount of access
limitations to Israeli city, towns and villages in the West Bank,
when the fact is that just around the Old city of Hebron there are
more than ever before. More than 100!

Occupation officials are also pointing to other developments in
Hebron where last week the Israeli military gave the Palestinian
Authority the go ahead to move traffic-halting road blocks at the
Bab iZaweyya intersection a quarter of a mile closer to the Old City
to a point on Upper Shalaileh Street marking the border between the
Palestinian Authority administered H1 area and Israeli tightly
controlled H2. H2 is the area where the four arch orthodox arch
nationalist settlements are located. Besides getting the go ahead
from the Israeli army to move the road blocks, Palestinian security
forces also completed a month long move of most of the portable
vegetable stands blocking Bab iZaweyya and Upper Shalaileh Street to
a newly constructed market area a block above and running parallel
to Upper Shalaileh Street between Bab iZaweyya and the H1/H2 border.

Not only are the H1 merchants and shoppers pleased to be free of the
congestion, which was particularly worrisome to women and girls, but
so are the drivers of cabs, jitneys, trucks and private vehicles,
who for the first time in several years can drive unimpeded all the
way down to the newly moved road blocks. The Palestine Authority was
also allowed to permit the placement of portable dry goods stands
along either side of Upper Shalaileh Street half the distance
between the road blocks and the Beit Romano checkpoint a quarter of
a mile a way, so long as there is room for Israeli jeeps or land
rover type vehicles to make their way easily along it.

A high ranking Palestinian Authority security officer told me that
besides relieving congestion in H1 another benefit of the roadblock-
moving concession that he proudly said the PA was able to get from
the Israel military would be more shoppers venturing down into the
Old City. And for a couple of days following, Old City shop keepers
seemingly cheered by those changes on the ground could be seen
sprucing up their spaces - cleaning, painting and repairing, while a
few long shuttered shops opened for the first time in several years
supposedly in anticipation of better days.

Talking to shop keepers in the Old City, however, I get a different
story. What is good for H1 merchants, I was told, is not necessarily
going to be good for H2's Old City merchants. One said, "The
Palestinian Authority and the [Hebron] municipality don't really
help us."

And, in fact, life in the Old City does continue grim and marginal.
Business has not picked up. Another shopkeeper who depends on a
tourist trade that has been squeezed almost completely dry since the
uprising said, "Moving the road blocks still does not help enough.
Many days I still don't take in a shekel."

"Sure some people are cleaning up their shops, and others are
opening up again," I was told by still another shopkeeper, "but not
because the Israelis say to the PA that they can move the
roadblocks. Ramadan is coming and we are getting ready for better
business we hope to see when more people come through to the
Ibrahimi Mosque to pray." Then he adds wearily, "Maybe they will
come if the Israelis don't get in the way."

With respect to the Israelis getting in the way, CPT has been
getting a rash of complaints about Israeli patrols stepping up their
practice of invading Old City homes, ordering residents out of
upstairs rooms and then installing themselves there in order to peer
out threateningly "for terrorists." The intrusions last from a few
hours to overnight. And in one case important personal items were
taken. Despite the fact that one soldier involved admitted to CPTer
Dianne Roe that articles were taken, and despite official complaints
being lodged, nothing has been returned.

By the end of the week the H1/H2 border changes, although a source
of wonder to many Hebron residents also continued to be a subject of
dubious concern. One long time occupant of the Old City squeezing
between the relocated roadblocks said, "I can't get used to this. I
haven't seen cars down here for years." But then reflecting on the
on going effects of the occupation on the Old City's dwindling
population and business life, she added, ""We have been given this,"
she said pointing to the cars and taxis where they hadn't been in a
long time. "But" she wanted to know, "what will the Israeli's want
to take away in return? They always want more."

To cap off these contradictory events, the Good Cop phase with
respect to the way CPT and other Internationals are being hailed
these days by the Israeli military may be coming to an end.
Internationals located in Tel Rumeida have been ordered to stop
participating in school patrols set up to escort teachers and
students on their way to and from Qurtuba Girls School from long
running violent settler harassment. And just this morning while on
School Patrol as I was about to ask an Israeli soldier pawing
through the backpack of a nine or ten year old Palestinian boy on
his way to school, the soldier suddenly stopped, turned full face to
me, and with a sarcastic sneer waved at me even though I was only
about eight feet away. Then he turned back and continued with a leer
to look through the kid's belongings. A few minutes later, fellow
CPTer Christina Gibb also on school patrol told me that while she
was at another check point she was suddenly confronted by a soldier
on duty who angrily said, "It's all the internationals fault. It is
you have made the Palestinians hate us."

To receive CPT Hebron's weekly reports, news alerts and other
messages concerning its violence reduction activities, send your
request to be added to its E-mail list to cptheb at palnet.com. And to
discover more about Christian Peacemaker Teams, please visit the
website at: www.cpt.org.










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