Loading ...A ghost city revived: the remarkable transformation of Hebron
When the Israeli army barricaded the entrance to Usama Abu Sharek’s home in Hebron, he and his family were forced to climb over walls or clamber through windows on their way in and out of their 500-year-old property.
The barricades were to allow hardline Jewish settlers to reach their houses without having to encounter their Palestinian neighbours. But by then the Abu Shareks were the only Palestinian family left in their immediate vicinity of Hebron’s Old City anyway.
Others had grown weary of the ever-present soldiers demanding to see their papers, banning them from walking on certain roads, or bricking up windows and welding shut doors that faced on to streets used by settlers. Some were constantly fearful of arrest, or abuse – verbal and physical – from a small number of biblically driven and deeply ideological settlers who had taken up residence in the historic heart of Hebron. Other families abandoned their homes so they could reach their jobs without navigating military checkpoints, or so that their children could go to school without being called “donkeys” or “dogs”, or so their friends and relatives could visit them.
Source: www.theguardian.com