PRAYER SHAWLS AND RIFLES
Con Coughlin joins some
Jewish settlers for a walk through hostile territory
Hebron, 'IT'S all really, very exciting,' proclaimed Douglas, the Glasgow-born Israeli Fron- tiersman, as we threaded our way through ancient Hebron's crowded mediaeval cas- bah; and indeed, amongst the frenetic activity of a typical Saturday market, there was much to admire.
Upon the worn crusader paving-slabs were piled boxes of ripe West Bank veget- ables — courgettes, peppers (red, green and yellow), and aubergines so plump they were in danger of splitting their skins. On old trestle tables the vendors displayed an array of sweets, spices and herbs, each of them promising a taste as exotic as the smell. By the butcher's shop a group of keffiyah-clad Arab men noisily debated the best cuts to be had from a newly slaught- ered and skinned camel, whose angular frame hung awkwardly from a single, strong hook attached to the shop roof. But Douglas was not there to admire the view, nor had he come to purchase any of the traders' wares. Armed with an Amer- ican M-16 assault rifle and accompanied by two equally heavily-armed compatriots, Douglas was a man on a mission.
Together with Nablus further to the north, Hebron is about as Arab a town to be found anywhere on the West Bank. Its people, its commerce, its culture, its very fragrance are unquestionably Palestinian and, 18 months into the intifada, the Jews are decidely unwelcome. Even the Israeli army, for all the harsh criticism it has attracted for its tactics in attempting to suppress the revolt, thinks more than twice before entering the Hebron casbah, and only then in large numbers. As for an ordinary Jewish civilian, he is more likely to be found dead than alive.
For committed Zionists like Douglas, however, to give in to such blatant Arab Intimidation is literally more than their lives are worth and so every day, irrespec- tive of the pitch the disturbances may have reached, a small group of Israelis — albeit well-armed Israelis — take a stroll through the casbah, as though there were nothing more natural than for a Jew to be wander- ing through a busy Arab market at the height of a bloody, nationalist uprising. And so there we were, at Douglas's insistence, walking through the crowded casbah on a sunny spring Saturday morning in Hebron. With that inverted sense of logic that so frequently manifests itself during armed conflict, Douglas explained that Saturday was a special day for the Arabs because it was a particularly special day for the Jews.
Saturday is, of course, the Jewish sab- bath, the day when religious Jews attend the synagogue, perform various mitzvahs and refrain from labour. The Arabs attach particular significance to attacking or even killing Jews on Jewish holy days, Douglas insisted, citing as an example the Arabs' decision to launch the 1973 war during the feast of Yom Kippur. 'Oh yes, it is very exciting today,' said Douglas. 'If they kill me now they go straight to heaven to join their Allah. But that's no good. They've got to get used to the idea that I'm going to stay around in one piece.' For a would-be Jewish martyr, Douglas was a rather unprepossessing character. He declined to give me his family name ('Why should I put myself top of their hit-list and, besides, you media chappies are always twisting everything') although I gleaned he left Glasgow to emigrate to Israel in the 1970s and then moved to Hebron as a settler in the early 1980s where he lives with his wife and four children. Now in his late forties, slightly balding, bespectacled, short of stature and slim of build, he could have been a Milton Keynes had programmer on a day-outing had it not been for the gun. But for all the bravado, the danger was real enough. As our little ragged band of settlers, their prayer shawls and rifles hanging incongruously from their shoul- ders, filed through the narrow passageways it was impossible not to be moved by the sheer intensity of the Arab hostility. Shop- keepers ceased their conversation and arti- sans their chores as we approached. Groups of young Palestinians, the shabab more usually to be found throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, brushed loutishly against us, just enough to aggravate but not to provoke outright. Halfway through the casbah we passed a memorial to the site where in 1983 Aharon Gross, a yeshiva student, was stabbed to death by Arab assailants. In retaliation six settlers stormed the campus of the nearby Islamic college disguised as Palestinians firing machine guns and throwing gre- nades. Three students were killed and 33 wounded.
I could sense Douglas looking for the slightest hint of trouble: the familiar cry, `Alluah akbar, kill the Jews' followed by the mad rush of knife-wielding Arab assailants intent on spilling more Jewish blood. As it happened the only confronta- tion of any note occurred when we emerged unscathed at the end of the casbah to be confronted by a furious Israeli army officer. 'What are you up to? Are you mad? Don't you know this is a closed military area?' he screamed in Hebrew. `We've just been for our Sabbath stroll,' Douglas replied in English. 'And anyway, I thought the army was here to protect us, not to harass us.' To pre-empt any further dispute, we swept past the soldiers and continued on our way. Our next stop was the Jewish cemetery, where lie the victims of successful Arab attacks dating back to the British Mandate and where Douglas took great delight inspecting the latest Arab anti-semitic graf- fiti. Several swastikas had been daubed on the tombs together with various slogans in Arabic. `Ah, this must be the PLO lad- dies,' Douglas explained. 'The PLO uses black paint and the Islamic fundamentalists use green, the colour of Islam.'
Indeed, the more time I spent with this group of modern-day zealots, the more it seemed their whole raison d'etre was sustained by these crude yet direct chal- lenges to their very existence. Certainly they seem to delight in their isolationism.
As far as the 7,000 Israeli settlers living among and around Hebron's 70,000 Arabs are concerned, they have been betrayed by the 'Arab-loving Israeli government'. The Israeli army is a 'bunch of boy scouts' and the West Bank commander, Amiram Mitz- na, the man castigated in the West for allowing his soldiers to shoot, beat and break the bones of rioting Palestinians, is `Yasser Arafat's bride'. Their contempt does not end with their compatriots. The West in general is corrupt and the US in particular 'evil and disgusting' because ten per cent of Americans are homosexual, and that's a sin.
The fact that the Arabs are not more frequently involved in bloody confronta- tions with the settlers says a lot for the patience of a people who have survived over hundreds of years the passing of successive generations of foreign occu- piers. Throughout the 18 month intifada the clashes between settlers and Palesti- nians have been peripheral.
But the Prime Minister Mr Yitzhak Shamir's plan to hold elections in the territories, however inadequate it may appear to Mrs Thatcher, will undoubtedly meet fierce resistance from the settlers who view it as the first step towards an indepen- dent Palestinian state and the further betrayal of their Zionist objectives. The Palestinians will not tolerate any settler tactics to disrupt the elections, so that a marked increase can safely be predicted. In Hebron, that should give Douglas and his kind all the excitement they can handle.
Con Coughlin is the Sunday Telegraph's diplomatic correspondent.
Previous page
