A crane lowers one of the gates that will mark the border between Jewish and Arab Hebron. The IDF claims this is part of a plan to improve the lives of the Palestinians.

Ghost town
By Meron Rapoport
A first visit to Hebron after almost 20 years. A strange feeling prevails when one exits the gate of Kiryat Arba, descends in the direction of the Cave of the Patriarchs. It wasn't Shabbat, it wasn't a Muslim holiday, it was noontime, the weather was glorious, and the streets were empty. Along the road from Kiryat Arba to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, a kilometer and a half of road that winds among old houses and market streets, we saw perhaps two Palestinians walking.
"What's your impression?" asked the host, Aryeh Klein of Hebron, after a while, after he had shown me the Sephardi synagogue that was rebuilt from its ruins, and the museum of the 1929 massacre in the basement of Beit Hadassah, which is amazingly similar to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. "What do you think of Hebron?"
"It's like Pompeii," I replied.
"Why Pompeii?" he asked in surprise. "The Last Days of Pompeii?"
"No, like Pompeii - an ancient city, where you can see exactly how they lived, just that no people have remained in it."
It's hard to find a place in the territories where the signs of the intifada are more in evidence. During the five years of the intifada, the city changed its appearance. The central part of H2, the area of Hebron that was left under Israeli control according to the 1997 agreement, emptied almost completely of its residents. Before the agreement, 30,000 Palestinians lived in the "Israeli" part of Hebron, alongside about 500 Israeli citizens. The number of Israelis hasn't changed, but the number of Palestinians has declined to a few thousand.
A tour of the areas closer to the homes of the Jews in the city is like visiting a ghost town. (The term "Jewish neighborhoods" can be misleading; the Jews live in six or seven houses in the Avraham Avinu compound, in two houses in the Beit Hadassah compound, in Beit Romano, and in one house and about three trailers in Tel Rumeida.) Some of the streets, like Shuhada Street, formerly the main commercial street of Hebron, are completely off-limits to Palestinians, even on foot. In the rest of the area, in other words, in all of H2, which covers about 20 percent of the area of Hebron, Palestinians are forbidden to travel in vehicles. The only Palestinians seen in the streets walk close to the walls, like shadows. "Only several dozen Palestinians have remained here, no more," says an officer who is serving in the sector at present. "The rest were chased away by the settlers."
"What does it have to do with us?" wondered a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Unit, when asked about the IDF's responsibility for the fact that Hebron has been emptied of Palestinians. Soldiers who have served in Hebron understood perfectly. The Palestinians call what happened in Hebron "transfer." The outgoing commander of the TIFH (the Temporary International Presence in Hebron), the international patrol that entered Hebron after Dr. Baruch Goldstein's massacre of worshipers in the Ibrahimi mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs) in 1994, defined it as "cleansing" (in an interview with Arnon Regular in Haaretz). The settlers in Hebron, like Aryeh Klein, call it a gift from heaven. "The fact that there are fewer Arabs gives us more security," says the head of the Kiryat Arba local council, Zvi Katzover.
Whatever the definition, what happened in Hebron during the second intifada has not happened in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948: Entire neighborhoods in a populated city have been abandoned.
`No choice'
Hebron may be the most complicated place in the West Bank. It's the only place - with the exception of East Jerusalem, where Jews and Palestinians live together (or lived, to be more precise) on one street. The memory of the massacre perpetrated by Palestinians against the Jews of Hebron in 1929 (66 were murdered) hovers over the Jews who chose to settle in Hebron in 1968, in order "to erase the shame of the destruction of 1929," as explained by Ze'ev Hever (Zambish) - a member of the Jewish terror organization and a resident of Kiryat Arba - in Akiva Eldar's book, "Adonay Ha'aretz" ("Lords of the Land: The Settlers and the State of Israel"). The memory of the massacre perpetrated by Goldstein in 1994, when 29 people were murdered, hovers over the Palestinians in Hebron.
The military explanation of what has happened in Hebron is simple: "Since September 2000, the Palestinians have fired thousands of bullets on the Jewish settlement in Hebron, from the hills that overlook Abu Sneina and Harat al-Sheikh," explains an IDF officer. "No Jewish settlement has absorbed so much fire." Added to that were attempts at suicide attacks, stabbings and other attacks on the settlers in Hebron. That is why it was necessary to impose a curfew for months on end, a need to prevent Palestinians from approaching the Jewish area, a need to separate Jews and Arabs.
"We have a duty to protect the Jewish residents," explains a very senior commander who served in the sector for a long time. "And as a military commander, you slowly begin to close the city. In a case like this, everything is legitimate. It may seem illogical to close a city of 200,000 people for a month because of a warning about an attack, but a military commander has no other choice."
The truth is that the logic of this separation began even before the intifada. The separation actually began as a result of an attack by a Jew. After the massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin considered exploiting the opportunity to evacuate the settlers from Hebron. In the end he backed down, and the army did what it knows how to do: It punished the Palestinians. A curfew was imposed on the city, Shuhada Street was closed, the wholesale market adjacent to the Avraham Avinu compound was closed, and it hasn't opened since. TIFH, the international organization established after the mosque massacre in an agreement with Israel, says that was the first sign of the Palestinians' exit from the city center. In general, the story of the wholesale market serves as a good example of the way in which "security considerations" and considerations of the Jewish settlement in Hebron combine, and together push out the Palestinians in an orderly, legal and almost irreversible manner from the historic heart of the city.
The plot of land on which the wholesale market stands was purchased in 1807 by "Haim Hamitzri the Jew, who is in charge of the Jewish community in Hebron, at a cost of 1,200 grush," says the bill of purchase found in the Sharia (Muslim) court of Hebron. Haim Hanegbi, one of the founders of the radical-left Matzpen movement, and an outspoken opponent of the renewed Jewish community in Hebron, says that Haim Hamitzri was one of the ancestors of Rabbi Heiem Begaio, Hanegbi's grandfather, who was the last rabbi of the Jewish community in Hebron. The land of the marketplace was registered as Jewish hekdesh (sanctified property), and Begaio - together with another two Jews - was registered as its custodian.
During Jordanian rule, the Hebron municipality set up the city's wholesale market on this land, and leased the shops to merchants. The Israeli Civil Administration, established in Hebron in June 1967, considered these merchants protected residents, but that didn't interest Rabbi Moshe Levinger (one of the founders of the Jewish settlement in Hebron) and his followers: They had their eye on the wholesale market, and wanted to receive this "Jewish land," which bordered on the Avraham Avinu compound and could be used for expanding it.
It is not known whether these were among the considerations that led the IDF to decide, after the Goldstein massacre, to evict the protected merchants who had been in the market since its inception in the early 1960s. But it is clear that the settlers were not upset about the fact that the Palestinians were distanced from the Jewish homes. In 1997, in the context of the Hebron agreements, Israel promised to reopen the market, and there was even talk of building a wall to separate the market from the homes of the Jews, but in the end the Israeli promise to the Palestinian Author ity was not kept. "The security situation," as they say today in the Civil Administration, prevented that.
Writ on the wall
In March 2001, a Palestinian sniper fired from the Abu Sneina hill and killed Shalhevet Pas, a 10-month-old baby girl, at the entrance to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. Immediately afterward, the settlers broke into the buildings in the market, looted whatever could be looted, trashed and set fire to several shops. A short time later, a contractor hired by the Jewish settlement began to renovate the shops that had been damaged, without permission from the Civil Administration or the army. The next stage arrived very quickly. Colonel Dror Weinberg, commander of the Hebron Brigade at the time, gave the settlers permission to conduct a "day camp" in the buildings of the wholesale market. This day camp continues until today.
Weinberg, say military sources, is important to this story. He was the Hebron Brigade commander from the beginning of 2001 until his death in the attack on the "worshipers' lane" in November 2002. A senior member of the Civil Administration says today that Hebron Brigade commanders are chosen largely for their opinions - that is, for their right-wing ideology. Weinberg was an outstanding officer, a religious Zionist and definitely close to the settlers in Hebron. During his term, hundreds of shops in the center of Hebron, around the homes of the Jews, were also closed, which led to a total paralysis of the commercial life in the area.
"The greatest number of shop closings took place during Weinberg's time," says a senior IDF officer. "But you have to remember that it was also the peak period of attacks in the city." Only after a while, when the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding that the shops be opened, did the IDF remember to issue orderly injunctions to close the shops.
"Without injunctions, it was impossible even to protest the closing," explains a senior member of the Civil Administration. Soldiers who served in Hebron say that after the attack in Gross Square, during the same period more or less, bulldozers razed a row of stands near the wholesale market, and simply demolished them. Katzover says that Weinberg was undoubtedly the officer who was most attentive to the distress of the Jewish settlers. "There was nobody like him, and there won't be anyone like him," he says.
But even Weinberg, complains Katzover, wouldn't agree to uproot the olive grove near the worshipers' lane that leads from Kiryat Arba to the Cave of the Patriarchs. (The attack on the lane, during which Weinberg was killed along with another eight soldiers and three members of the civil defense unit of Kiryat Arba, occurred very near that olive grove. Today the grove no longer exists.) For Katzover, this is proof that even Weinberg took the needs of the Palestinians into consideration.
In any case, while brigade commander Weinberg had given permission, the Civil Administration understood that the day camp in the wholesale market was continuing with no end in sight. The settlers prepared the shops of the market to be used as residential homes, and settled there, without any permit, as squatters. In June 2001, a supervisor of the Civil Administration came to the site and pasted an injunction on the wall of the market that declared that the new residents "are holding the land illegally," and are ordered "to remove themselves from the land within 45 days."
Nobody in the army had any doubt that this was an invasion. In a declaration to the High Court, which was submitted in reply to a petition filed by the merchants in the market immediately after they learned the settlers had taken over their shops, the IDF declared that "the authorities are working to end the invasion and to remove the invaders from the site." A senior member of the Civil Administration tells of several meetings with the head of Central Command, the head of the Civil Administration, the chief of staff - at the time Moshe Ya'alon, and afterward Dan Halutz - and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, during which the matter of the wholesale market was discussed. All the participants, he says, including representatives of the attorney general, who attended the meetings, were aware of the fact that this was an illegal incursion, but the decision in the end was not do to anything, "in order not to cause a conflagration in the city."
Representatives of the Jewish community asked a military appeals committee to overturn the decision to evict the residents from the wholesale market. In January 2003, the committee decided to reject the request. "In our case, the appellant did not even bother to turn to the IDF authorities," wrote the chair of the committee, former Supreme Court justice Avraham Halima. "The appellant simply invaded the plot of land and seized it by force, and since then the invaders continue to hold the plot. This demonstrates that the appellant chose to do as he wished, even when such a step is not acceptable and cannot be acceptable in a properly administered country such as the State of Israel."
But even the fine words of former justice Halima did not really motivate the IDF to act. In January 2004, a year later, in reply to the High Court regarding an appeal that was submitted by attorney Shlomo Lecker on behalf of shop owners in a neighboring market that was also closed, the government representative wrote that the decision of the appeals committee "was brought before the defense minister, and in its wake it was decided that in principle, the Jewish settlers who invaded the market should be evicted."
The rest of the reply reveals that there is a difference between the "principle" and the facts on the ground. In discussions that Mofaz held with the IDF, the Shin Bet security services and the State Prosecutor, the state replied that "concern was raised that evacuating the shops now would come at a steep cost, including possible bloodshed, and would require more military forces and resources and would make things more difficult for the nearby Palestinian population. Therefore, the Defense Minister has decided to refrain from immediate eviction and from time to time, the most appropriate opportunity for evacuation will be examined, taking into consideration the complex military and security issues involved."
Harassing Palestinian children
Almost two years have passed since this reply by Mofaz to the High Court, and almost four and a half years have passed since that same naive supervisor from the Civil Administration pasted the injunction demanding the evacuation of the wholesale market "within 45 days." The families of the squatters are still living in peace, if not exactly in prosperity. But this is not simply a story about legal absurdity. This is a matter of expanding the boundaries of the Jewish settlement. Closing the shops, limiting movement, the daily attacks by settlers, the military backing afforded to the settlers - have made a significant contribution to the decision by many Palestinians to leave their homes in H2.
The petition containing Mofaz's promise to evacuate the market was rejected, one reason being that the state informed the High Court that "it may be possible" to open the shops in the market adjacent to the wholesale market, "in the event that the Jewish residents are evicted from the wholesale market." In other words, because of the continued invasion of the wholesale market, shops in the nearby market remain closed as well.
Incidentally, the head of the team formed by the chief of Central Command to examine the question of the reopening of the adjacent market was Brigadier General Danny Tirza, the man who planned the separation fence, working closely with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He is known as "Mr. Fence." Tirza is very familiar with the area. Katzover says he was a resident of Kiryat Arba for several years before moving to Kfar Adumim, a small settlement east of Maaleh Adumim. Tirza recommended that the market remain closed.
The closing of the shops and the prolonged curfew were both reasons for leaving. The ongoing harassment on the part of the settlers was another. Noam Toker, a Nahal Brigade soldier who served in Hebron in 2003, recalls the driver of the Jewish settlement, who when he saw Palestinian children used to drive his van onto the sidewalk in order to scare them. "He thought it was very funny," says Toker. In another incident, says Toker, "a mistake was made," and the soldiers allowed Palestinian girls who were returning from the Cordoba school opposite Beit Hadassah, to walk along Shuhada Street, just as the Jewish children were returning from prayers.
"The Jewish children sent a little girl to start up with the Palestinian girls, and afterward they attacked them with blows and stones at close range," says Toker. "I couldn't do anything to the settlers, because according to instructions I wasn't allowed to detain a settler, only to call a commanding officer to handle the incident. I could only help the Palestinian girls to quickly cross the roadblock to the Palestinian side of the city, where the settlers are not allowed to go."
The IDF Spokesman's Unit said in response that the Central Command has issued an order to the effect that wherever IDF soldiers identify use of violence against Palestinians or against the security forces, they must detain the perpetrators until the arrival of the police forces.
Apparently it is no coincidence that many of the soldiers who founded the organization Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence) served in Hebron. Yonatan Boimfeld, who served in Hebron twice, says that he received no explanation of their role in Hebron, or how they should treat the Palestinian residents who live in the city.
"They took us to Givat Ha'avot," says Boimfeld. "One of the leaders of the Jewish community in Hebron spoke to us. She said that we are soldiers and we obey orders, and they have nothing against us, but `the policemen in Hebron receive a bonus for harassing the settlers, so if you see us cursing them or harassing them, don't get excited.' That was the only briefing we received before taking over. Not a single commander spoke to us."
In July 2002, Elazar Leibovitz, a resident of Hebron, was killed in an attack in the southern Hebron Hills. The next day his funeral was held in Hebron, and it turned into a mass rampage against Palestinians. A 14-year-old Palestinian girl, Nibin Jamjum, was killed, a Palestinian boy was seriously injured, and several policemen, settlers and Palestinians were slightly injured by blows. An investigation conducted afterward by Captain Dr. Barak Gordon, a medical officer in the Judea regional division, revealed that settlers had prevented treatment of the injured Palestinians.
Gordon recommended "arresting and prosecuting the Jews who interfered and prevented treatment of the Palestinian injured." No one was prosecuted.
These disturbances during Leibovitz's funeral also destroyed the life of Nur Adin Sharbati. Sharbati sits in his rented home in the Palestinian part of Hebron, and shows pictures of his old, original home. Sharbati calls that house a "museum," but even if this definition is somewhat exaggerated, in the pictures one sees a particularly magnificent house: ancient carpets, beautiful oil lamps, a large library of rare and antique books, including, he says, Jewish books.
Only ashes and dust remain of all this magnificence. A day after Leibovitz's funeral, settlers broke into his home, which is adjacent to the Avraham Avinu compound, and destroyed everything they could get their hands on. Sharbati says the police asked him to leave the house that night, because the settlers were rampaging, and he would be risking his life if he remained at home. Sharbati claims that for some reason, just that night the army outpost on the roof of his home, which was placed there over 20 years ago, was not manned.
Since that night over three years ago, Sharbati has not returned to his home. During a visit to the ruined house, about two months ago, the comparison with the pictures that Sharbati had shown us earlier was depressing. Shards of glass remained of the beautiful oil lamps, piles of garbage blocked the entrance. Today Sharbati is a ruined and sick man. He speaks incessantly about the home he lost. His chances of returning to it don't look so good. About half a year ago, the High Court ordered the army to allow several of Sharbati's relatives, who lived in other wings of the 800-year-old house, to return to live there. The IDF built a concrete wall around the building, to the annoyance of the settlers in the adjacent Avraham Avinu compound. But to date, the family members have not succeeded in returning to the house. Every time they tried, the army refused to promise to protect them.
Meanwhile, the IDF has built an iron wall that separates the Casbah from the entrance to the Sharbati home, so that even if the family members want to take a chance and return to the house, they cannot do so. Sharbati has filed a suit against the army for damages, through attorney Zvi Shamir, but he cannot expect much from that quarter, either. The army denies that policemen warned him about an attack by settlers, denies that the outpost was abandoned that night. In any case, the bottom line is that Sharbati's house is destroyed, that he and his family are forced to live outside it in spite of specific promises by the government to the High Court that it would enable them to return, and that nobody has been prosecuted for destroying the house.

Babies as shields

"It isn't true that we see a crime and don't deal with it," says Commander Eli Zamir of the Hebron Police, who speaks of the settlers as "them." "But we have a serious problem here. They have understood where our weak point lies - and that's the use of children under the age of criminal responsibility, under the age of 12. They do that on purpose. The children throw stones, break walls. The children are the tactical arm, and even the strategic arm, of the adults." Their strategic goal, according to Zamir, is "to expand the area in which they live."

But if the children are a problem, the use of babies makes Zamir's blood boil. He says that he heard about this custom - of using babies - the moment he arrived in Hebron four years ago, but he understood its significance only when he was in charge of handling a conflict in which four mothers from the Jewish settlement placed their babies in front of them, as a shield from the policemen. "I watch television, and I have never seen any population on earth that uses babies," he says. "I don't understand by what right these mothers use 1-year-old babies, by what right they endanger them. I said here at the station: Find me the section in the law books that will enable me to prosecute them."

In the wake of this, he says, the State Prosecutor gave the police "tools" with which to deal with such offenses. But the settlers in Hebron, he says, have no fear of the authorities. "Young boys who have become accustomed to throwing stones at Palestinians on Sunday, at policemen on Monday and at soldiers on Tuesday, have learned to be brazen," he says. Part of the blame, claims Zamir, lies with the lenient attitude of the courts. He takes out the minutes of a discussion in Juvenile Court (without mentioning names, of course) and reads from it. This is a case of disorderly conduct, and the judge asks the accused girl to come for another session on a certain date. "I probably won't come," says the young defendant to the judge, "I work."

"In that case, I will be forced to arrest you," the judge tells her.

"I would like to change my mind," replies the defendant. "I'll appear on the date."

Zamir sees that as proof that if the courts were stricter with those accused of disorderly conduct in Hebron, the police would have an easier time.

The lives of the Palestinians in H2, on the other hand, are almost impossible. According to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in August this year there were 101 manned roadblocks in H2 (mounds of earth, cement blocks), and 18 manned roadblocks. The average time required for a medical team to reach patients in the ancient part of Hebron has increased from seven minutes to 17 minutes, and if coordination with IDF forces is required, the average time for evacuating a patient from H2 is 47 minutes. One of the reasons why pregnant women prefer to move from the Israeli area to the Palestinian area a few weeks before giving birth is so they won't be forced to give birth at the roadblock.

The IDF has recently built six extremely ugly iron gates at the entrances to the Casbah. Vehicles are not permitted to drive through the gates. "Merchandise can be brought in only on donkeys; we can't even bring in dune buggies to take out garbage," says Walid Abu al-Halawa, from the committee to rehabilitate Hebron, a semi-official Palestinian body that renovates buildings. (The IDF spokesman replied that garbage trucks and merchandise can enter the Casbah freely, in coordination with the IDF.) The committee encourages residents to return to live in their homes, by paying their water and gas bills. The Palestinian governor of Hebron has even forced business owners to return to the Casbah; if they do not, he will transfer their franchises to others. In any case, the committee to rehabilitate Hebron says their greatest fear is that Israel will in the end surround the city center with a wall and thus make the situation permanent.

There are grounds for their fears. In November 2002, immediately after the attack on the worshipers' lane, Prime Minister Sharon came for a visit to Hebron, and raised the idea of building a fence or a wall around "the expanded Jewish area" and annexing it to Kiryat Arba. The idea of annexing Kiryat Arba to Hebron with a joint roadblock was raised by Sharon when he was minister of infrastructure in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, prior to the signing of the Hebron agreement. Brigadier General (ret.) Danny Tirza, the same "Mr. Fence," was supposed to plan the roadblock in Hebron.

"Sharon proposed building a wall on both sides of the worshipers' lane, up to the Cave of the Patriarchs," says Katzover of Kiryat Arba. "We wanted something wider, less redolent of weakness, less redolent of a Berlin Wall." Katzover takes me to the site of the attack, right next to the fence of Kiryat Arba. In this area, he says, we bought buildings from Palestinians, and therefore we were able to create a much wider passage in the direction of the Cave of the Patriarchs."

One can believe him. Rumors about Palestinians who are selling their homes to Jews, via a third party, of course, are rife in Hebron all the time. The fact that it is very difficult to lead a normal life in H2 certainly pushes people into selling. "If we were to allow market forces to operate, more Arabs would leave," says Katzover. Apparently he is right. In Tel Rumeida, another focus of constant friction and harassment on the part of the settlers, the Al-Bakri family left its home, which is adjacent to the home of the Jews there, and a group of settlers entered it.

The settlers say that the father of the family, Zakaria al-Bakri, sold them the asset. Bakri denies it. The custodian of absentee assets and of government property in the Civil Administration ruled that the documents presented by the settlers were forged. In another place, they might have sent the dubious buyers to clarify the issue with the police. Not in Hebron. Bakri was forced to leave Tel Rumeida and the settlers enlarged their compound by one house.

Katzover takes me to an area "that the Arabs have already left," in the eastern Casbah, along the continuation of the worshipers' lane, nearer to the Cave of the Patriarchs. He says that after the attacks at the worshipers' lane, he suggested that the army destroy all the houses there, in order to create a wide corridor from Kiryat Arba to the cave. "They told me that there are ancient houses here," he says with disdain, pointing to houses that do in fact look very ancient, but abandoned and neglected. "These are ancient houses? These are wrecks."

The Central Command was actually willing to operate in the spirit of his suggestion, but then the State Prosecutor and the Civil Administration intervened, and in the end, the number of houses demolished was drastically reduced. It was also the Civil Administration that told Sharon at the time that it was impossible to build a wall around the expanded Jewish area in H2, which would require preparing crossing points to enable the thousands of Palestinians who live there to enter and leave their homes. The Civil Administration says the plan was shelved. That's not certain. A senior officer says that a few months ago, Major General Yair Naveh, the chief of Central Command, revived the plan to build a wall around the expanded Jewish settlement in Hebron. The IDF Spokesman's Unit did not reply directly to the question on this matter.

400 shops are shut

But even if there is no wall or fence, it is clear that what is happening now in Hebron is a reinforcement of the separation between the area surrounding the homes of the Jews (from Kiryat Arba, via the worshipers' lane, to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood and Tel Rumeida - in all, about half the area of H2) and the Palestinians. An example of that could be seen about two and a half weeks ago. On the descent from Beit Romano to the Hebron Casbah, the old military outpost, which was composed of a small tower and two concrete structures, was replaced by an iron gate that completely blocks the street, and alongside it an attractive concrete tower faced with artificial stone.

"Nice, isn't it?" an officer involved in the construction asked the visiting journalist. "It's decorative, we adapted it especially for Hebron. We give thought to the quality of the environment. Do you want one like it at home? We can bring you one."

"A little more, a little more," the construction people signaled to the crane operator who brought down from the sky, above the electric wires and above the wire that marks the settlers' eruv (the area where one can carry objects on the Sabbath), the two parts of the gate, which are made of concrete and iron. The crane operator moved things a little, and thus determined the new boundary between Jewish Hebron and Arab Hebron.

"Recently, a master plan was approved for protecting and improving the life of the Palestinian population in the area of the city of Hebron, which included the installation of cameras and additional security devices," said the IDF spokesman in his reply. The IDF, the Civil Administration and the police are presenting these steps as an attempt to make lives easier for the Palestinians, and to enable the opening of additional shops in the city center. At the moment, 400 shops are shut by military order (over 1,000 additional shops are closed in the Casbah, simply for lack of customers), and the intention is to open about another 120 shops in the near future.

The idea, they say in the Civil Administration, is to reinforce the protection of the Jewish settlement on the one hand, and to enable free Palestinian movement in places further from the homes of the Jews, on the other. Already now, they declare proudly in the administration, a Palestinian can go on foot from the Palestinian part of Hebron up to the checkpoint at the entrance to the Cave of the Patriarchs, without being stopped at regular IDF checkpoints.

But beyond the talk of making things easier for the Palestinians (some of which, at least, stems from IDF promises to the High Court and from pressure from the State Prosecutor's Office), and the increasing presence of left-wing Israeli organizations such as Breaking the Silence and Sons of Abraham, which conduct tours for politicians and public figures in the deserted city, it is clear that the intention is to work toward separation. Toward a permanent situation in which the expanded Jewish area is empty of Arabs, and the Jews do not enter the Palestinian area.

"A status quo has been created, with the Jews controlling Shuhada Street and the Palestinians controlling Shalala," says an IDF officer who is an expert on the region. "Some of the brigade commanders tried to break this status quo, but they were unsuccessful. The solution is to create separation. The (Jewish) residents of Hebron are opposed to any type of physical protection. That's why there won't be a wall there. They will put separation devices there, cameras and all kinds of technological devices, and they will place a wall of soldiers there. For every settler in Hebron there is at least a soldier or two. If in Jerusalem they had placed two soldiers for every citizen, there wouldn't have been so many casualties there."

At the moment, the entire system is preparing to evacuate the wholesale market. Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz are talking about the decision to evacuate the squatters from the wholesale market next month. That is in effect a promise given to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who toured Hebron together with State Prosecutor Eran Shender this April, and was horrified by what he saw. The Jewish community promised Nadav Shragai of Haaretz a struggle - no hugs. But security sources who have been in contact with the settlers say that they hear from them acceptance of the possibility that this time the evacuation will in fact take place.

"They saw in Gush Katif that the government can act if it wants to," says a security source in Hebron. And what are the chances that there really will be an evacuation? "It might happen," he answers cautiously. Attorney Lecker, the veteran of many battles in Hebron, is more skeptical. He is afraid that Mofaz's talk of "the difficulty" of carrying out the evacuation is another excuse of evading what Mofaz has been evading for the past four and a half years.

Katzover is skeptical today about Sharon. He thinks Sharon believes that the hilly areas should be maintained, including Kiryat Arba, and Sharon also promised to leave Kiryat Arba and Hebron in Israeli hands in a final status agreement. But what counts are actions, not words, he says. Katzover thinks that it is possible to live with the Arabs, for now. "I saw how the children said hi to me," he says after a joint tour in one of the half-deserted alleyways of Hebron. "If they say hello, that's a sign that they're afraid. There are Arabs who ignore you and don't say hello at all."

And they don't throw stones at you?

"There's no problem; anyone who threw stones - they entered his house, pulled him out from under the bed, beat him up - and he didn't throw stones again."

But Katzover believes that the present situation is also temporary. "In the end there will be a bloody war, we'll have our backs to the wall, and even the leftists will take up arms and chase out the Arabs from this piece of land to the other side of the Jordan River," prophesies the head of Kiryat Arba local council.
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