return to hebron, the orphanage

i suppose after the first big incident in hebron, it was important to me to go back. it wasnt quite somuch a face your fear kind of thing as much as i felt like the first time we just got out of there as fast as we could, and i would have liked to see more. In addition to this desire to go back, we had all been hearing about these orphanages there that are set now for demolition. CPT has been calling for other internationals to please come down and spend a night in the orphanages to try and deter soldiers from doing raids and destroying things, or at least slow down the demolition process. four of us set out to go and stay a night in one of these orphanages.

We got a cab, went through all the checkpoints, and arrived finally in hebron. Hebron is a much more conservative muslim city than bethlehem, and so the girls were all wearing long sleeves and pants. It was pretty clear as we were waiting for the CPT representative to come meet us that they dont get tourists very often. I remembered from the first trip how sad the old city is. Its a complex beautiful old medina, like fes or any other big city in the middle east. I had remembered placed like this in morocco and how full of life and buisiness they were. thousands of little shops, fresh food cooking and just full of people. The old city in hebron, because of the harrassment of settlers is just completley deserted. most of the shops are closed, and it is just weird to see something like that. it would be like entering a super mall in america but without any of the merchandice, just a few things to remind you that it was once there.

We did a Breif tour of the city and the orphanages with CPT. I dont know that they are my favourite group to work with. They are very passionate about what they do, and the truth is that between the extreemes in hebron (the settlers and the conservative hebronites) the peacemakers there need to be just as hardcore, but it just isnt quite my style. From what ive seen so far in the wet bank, if you just wait long enough trouble will come to you, there is no need to go looking for, or fabricate it. The things that you can see there are powerful enough. Im sure what im saying isnt making much sense so ill give you an example. As a part of the tour we went to go see a bakery that was making all the bread for the orphanages, the israelis had raided it, and destroyed everything inside. There was still bread scattered across the floor and everything was just completley trashed. I asked them when this had happened because it looked really rescent, and they said it had been a couple of months. I think after a couple of months it would be alright to just throw away the rotting bread, i know it was left there to give everything the impression that it could have been only yesterday that it happened, but to me these things just dont seem nessicary. The israelis raided a bakery, the scene was powerful enough on its own without the whole song and dance. The cpt lady also said she had been there for 5 years, but she didnt speak a work of arabic; what she meant by 5 years was a few weeks in the summer here and there, i just was turned off by all the exaggerations. Anyway, as i feel this method would not work in bethlehem, i respect that these are the kinds of people needed in hebron, because everyone there is fanatical, it would take fanatics to understand and to save them. they are VERY well respected in the area, and they do ALOT of good work, i ont want it to seem like im saying they dont. They walk all the children to school so they dont get beat up and really do their best to protect people there.none the less for the time being i dont want to be used as "cannon fodder" for them to make a point, and i think that is fair too.

The orphanages were much much larger than i had expected. To destroy them would be quite a feat. For some reason when i heard about it i just didnt realize quite what was entailed in all of it, but seeing it their desruction would displace hundreds and hundreds of kids who obviously have nowhere else to go, simply because they are funded by the Islamic Charitable Society, and anything having to do with islam must, accordint to the israeli government, be breeding little suicide bombers instead of doing any actual good. There is obviously no proof of this, you can find all their records, its pretty transparent that it really is a charity, but the israelis want to discourage tying islam to anything that could be successful there. When we got to the orphanage, there were also alot of places that had been raided. They had taken all the sewing machines, which produced much of the income and training for the girls. They showed us pictures people had managed to take during the raids, and told us what to do if soldiers were to come. They werent expecting anything to happen that night, and nothing did happen, but they were expecting in the next few weeks for the soldiers to come back for either more raids or with papers for demolition. It really is a sad situation for those kids.

We had a fun night despite the situation. We ate tons of hummus, got massages from some random guy, and Adam and i stayed up for most of the night speaking in arabic and smoking argilah with the guard and his buddies. The next day we went to the glass factory that hebron is famous for and bought some random stuff. The people were really nice and didnt make us barter for a good price or anything. Margie even got to paint and keep her own ceramic bowl. We made it out without any settler incidents, job well done!