RSS Feeds
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it    
Occupation magazine - Life under occupation

Home page  back Print  Send To friend

Three Stories of Resistance on Martin Luther King Day in Hebron
Kathleen Kern
AL-KHALIL/HEBRON
18 January 2012


Undeterred by heavily armed border police at the Qitoun checkpoint that CPTers monitor because schoolchildren and teachers must walk through it, the teenager who sells ka�ak (a chewy sesame bread) argues with soldiers every morning until they finally unlock the gate to the checkpoint and let him and his cart through.� On Martin Luther King Day, however, they were ignoring him, so he finally walked back over to the gate, picked up a rock, broke the padlock, and pushed his cart through.� The Border Police pushed him back and locked the gate. �Another day, another time, they could have beaten him up or arrested him as has happened many times to young men his age in Hebron, and he must have known that, but he was literally determined to go about his business.�



A couple hours later, we got a call from Hani Abu Haikel, a friend we have known since 1995. �He and his family have had eight cars destroyed by Israeli settlers in the last three years.� The Israeli military no longer permits them to park cars in their driveway. �Hana Abu Haikel, his sister, parks her car in H-1, under nominal Palestinian control, a steep walk down the hill from their Tel Rumeida neighborhood.� Yet even there, the settlers found it and, according to an eyewitness, accompanied by an army jeep, they burned this car as they have burned all the others.� So Hana has gone on a hunger strike by her burned car.� Her family has filed 500 complaints against soldiers and settlers since the settlement moved next door in the 1980s.� This time, she said, she will not file a complaint and she will not eat until she gets some guarantee of justice.
�
Late that afternoon, we got a call from a neighbor who told us soldiers were stopping all the young men in an open plaza around the corner from our apartment in the Old City.� Most were simply walking to their homes at the end of the day, when soldiers ordered them to spread eagle themselves against a wall.� One soldier in particular seemed hyped up and angry, as though each young man, just by being visible, was presenting a challenge he must subdue.� Some of the young men seemed resigned to the harassment, some angry, but one young man pretty much laughed through the whole process. �When the soldier placed his arms against the wall, he let one arm drop; when the soldier replaced it, he let the other one drop and he repeated the repositioning process with his legs.�� When the soldiers started taking pictures of the young men, some resisted by covering their faces.� But the young man who was laughing simply smiled and said, in English, �Cheese.�� My colleague Michael and I, who had been quietly and apprehensively working on strategies of intervention, burst out laughing.


As part of our job, we publicize the abuses of the Israeli occupation here in Al-Khalil/Hebron, but sometimes we do not write enough about what the people here do to claim what they are entitled to.� The ka�ak seller has the right to peddle his wares in his own city without walking through a checkpoint controlled by soldiers from another nation.� The Abu Haikels have the right park cars in their own driveway and expect that the authorities will prevent settlers from destroying them rather than protect them while they are doing it.� Young Palestinian men have the right to walk through their own neighborhoods without soldiers treating them like criminals.


That is what Martin Luther King Day is all about.
rh
Links to the latest articles in this section

Occupation forces injure mourners following funeral of slain infant Mohammad Tamimi
Nabi Saleh village assaulted - toddler shot in the head died in hospital
Palestinians in the snow: thrown from home into the snow, throw snowballs and get arrested