Notes from Nof Yam: (Yes, we're back up!) West Bank 1: Hebron

Long hiatus here at the notes while we had the Spring Crunch at school (concerts, musicals, grades, etc.) directly followed by Summer Vacation (sweet, sweet nothing at all). However, there are about 5 or 6 backlogged things to share, with pictures and sound, so I'll pick up where I left off, which was last May and the first of three trips into the West Bank.

There is a parent at school who is something of a community activist. Born in Scotland to Jewish parents, he makes his home in Israel and works in telecommunications, but his side job is giving English tours of Palestine. What makes his tour business unique is he cooperates directly with the Palestinian communities to let tourists see a side of the Middle East that they would ordinarily not see.

Here is a picture of the West Bank in the spring, taken from the freeway. It is hilly, like Jerusalem, and unlike most of Israel. I believe these are olive groves on the side of the hill, owned by a local farmer:

A zoomed-out picture of the same hill. Note the road coming toward the camera.

This is that same road, but it's blocked to normal freeway traffic by concrete barriers. This is because it's a segregated road for Palestinian cars only -- it actually tunnels underneath the highway we're on and connects the Palestinian villages together on a single road network.

...and there it goes. No cars on this road can get to Tel Aviv, and our car won't get on this road either. This is an example of one of the many barriers used to separate Israeli and Palestinian citizens. I will try not to get political on this blog because I don't understand the situation well enough, but hopefully the pictures will be objective enough.

Check out this verdant valley. In the summer, as I remember, most of this landscape is a chalky red and brown, and not much grows. In the spring, it is a different story.

This is a vendor hawking a variety of things in Hebron. You can see nuts, grains, pots and pans, souvenirs, and a ton of what looks like Lufa! Many stores like this are independent vendors who sell nearly everything.

Okay -- when the Israeli settlers came to Hebron to set up shop, they did so with armed escorts. The housing they occupy is directly above the main market area. Using some logic, I'm pretty sure it's where the vendors themselves used to live. There is netting above the market ceiling, which was put there by the vendors to keep trash from dropping from above.

This is our guide with a couple of the local kids. He had some great jokes which I can't print here.

Here's an interesting picture -- a Palestinian kid hanging in the foreground, with the rooftop security station in the background. There is reportedly an IDF guard in that nest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Try to spot the security checkpoint. There were two more of these on the crests of two other hills, visible from the same spot.

I think this contains a fire hose, but it looks more like it belongs in the Museum of Modern Art.

Our group in the garment district.

The internal stairwell of a local dwelling. Very small, very sturdy. Stone cools quickly, plus there was nothing else to build with back in the day.

A neighborhood a little further North, near Bethlehem. There is some extraordinary mural art in some of the neighborhoods we saw.

In Hebron, there is a site called the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is a highly venerated site For both Jews and Muslims (for Jews, it is the second-holiest site in the world after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). Both Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah are buried here, and there is both a mosque and a Jewish section in the same building. The access is complicated, but Muslims and tourists may both visit here, though it is surrounded Israeli Defense Forces. Read more about it here.