Settlers disrupt Breaking the Silence’s tour of Hebron

July 15, 2008 9:36 am henrymunsonjr Settlers, Hebron, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Anne Paq: Photostory, Breaking the Silence’s tour disrupted, EI, July 14, 2008

On 27 June, I took part in one of the regular tours of the West Bank city of Hebron and its settlements organized by the organization Breaking the Silence. Breaking the Silence is a group of Israeli army soldiers and veterans who work to expose the injustice of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Once more, the tour was disrupted because of the settlers.

Before the start of the tour, organizer Yehuda Shaul — one of the founders of Breaking the Silence and a former Israeli soldier who served 14 months in Hebron — warned the group that it was uncertain if the tour would proceed as planned. During the previous tour of Hebron, on 17 June, Israeli settlers attacked the tour group and threw boiling liquid at them, injuring a Spanish photographer. Nevertheless, Yehuda asked that we not answer answer to the settlers’ provocations no matter what happened.

At the first stop in Kiryat Arba settlement next to Hebron, a group of settlers, including children, were already waiting for the bus to arrive. As soon as we exited the bus, they quickly surrounded us and started to shout and prevented Yehuda from moving and talking about the settlement. Israeli police intervened but let the settlers continue their disruption.

One of the settlers was speaking through a loudspeaker so loud that it made it impossible to hear Yehuda. The tour was also prevented from visiting the grave of Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli settler who massacred 29 worshipping Palestinians and injured many more when he attacked Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. He is seen by many settlers as a hero and his gravestone celebrating the massacre has become a site of pilgrimage.

After the group returned to the bus to leave for the Old City of Hebron, the settlers sat on the road and stood in front of the bus to prevent it from moving. They blatantly disrupted public order and the police who stood nearby had no intention to fine them or intervene to allow the tour to proceed. In Hebron, there seems to be no law enforcement to keep the settlers in order, despite the impressively large number of soldiers and police available in the streets, greatly outnumbering the settlers.

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