Four young Palestinians kneeling against a wall and tied behind their backs with white zip ties are watched by an Israeli soldier with a rifle at the ready.
There is no shouting, running or altercations.
In the orange light of a retreating afternoon, a ghostly silence and calm reigns that plummet around a scene that has become an everyday anomaly.
The old city of Hebron (West Bank), under permanent military siege, continues to represent one of the paradigms of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The situation is described as “apartheid” by Amnesty International and systematically denounced by countless humanitarian organizations.
The war that broke out on October 7 has only deepened this perennial spiral of hatred, humiliation and restrictions, according to testimonies collected from neighbors.
Its life is marked by the presence of some 800 Jewish settlers, some very violent, who are protected by 2,500 soldiers.
On October 7, when Hamas murdered some 1,200 Israelis, the shock wave of war in the form of a military reaction against Gaza also shook Hebron.
The army decreed a curfew that the inhabitants managed to only partially lift two months later by going to court.
“The first 18 days they kept us locked up, without leaving the house.
We couldn't go to the store for milk, flour or vegetables... We didn't even have a gas bottle," says Yaser Abu Marhia, 52, one of those who filed a complaint with the help of a lawyer.
But Israel, he explains, did not recognize what it calls “collective punishment” – several of those interviewed repeat it this way – and for days it only opened some parts of the city for a while at seven in the morning and seven in the afternoon.
“You had to stay away from home for those 12 hours, even if you had gone out to get something in five minutes,” he complains.
Today, with the war in its fifth month, there are still military checkpoints that remain closed 24 hours a day.
There are four schools where a thousand students used to attend that have remained closed since October 7, denounces official Anan Dana in his office at the headquarters of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, on whose wall hangs a poster from the Spanish cooperation agency , directly involved in the rehabilitation of the old town of Hebron.
In other cases, such as that of a daycare center in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, only nine of the 40 students arrive due to the blockade.
“They use the curfew as they please on a daily basis.
The restriction of movement affects teachers who come from outside, who are the majority.
The education system is falling apart,” he comments.
View of the old town of Hebron.
Luis de Vega
On January 16, Haya Tanineh was heading to the school where she teaches.
She left her car as far as they are authorized to go, she walked towards one of the military points and, a few meters before, it occurred to her to take out her cell phone and record a video.
“They held me for three hours,” she explains, tired of spending two hours a day getting to work when before the war it took 30 minutes.
In 1997, Hebron was divided into two zones.
The majority of a population of about 200,000 inhabitants lives in the H1 area (85% of the city), whose security depends on the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
The direct victims of most of the restrictions are the 35,000 residents of H2 (15%), where the old town is located and whose security is in the hands of Israel.
His life takes place surrounded by a network of military checkpoints, barriers, barbed wire, concrete blocks, surveillance cameras...
Houses absorbed by Jewish settlements
One of the checkpoints that are closed to residents during the war is Shfila, overlooking a promontory between areas H1 and H2, on which the tombs of a Jewish cemetery descend.
There, Yaser Abu Marhia and his neighbor Sheher Abu Aisha, 64, point out in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, in H2, the mast on which an Israeli flag flies to explain where their house is located, almost absorbed by several Jewish settlements. .
Both observe and offer explanations from behind a fence and two military checkpoints, Shfila and Tamar, the latter in operation.
These are fortresses made of bars and concrete equipped with metal detectors and surveillance cameras.
With more than 300,000 Israeli reservists called up for war, some of those controls, Abu Marhia maintains, have been left in the hands of radical settlers who now wear uniforms.
These two men have not been able to get home by car for two decades, like the rest of the inhabitants of H2, unlike the Jews.
Yaser Abu Marhia shows on his phone photos of how soldiers and settlers use the land of his parking house.
“This is how we live,” he points out.
As he speaks, the voices of a man are heard behind one of the controls.
“I've been here for two hours,” he shouts without anyone listening to him.
Fawaz Abu Aisha, Sheher's brother and a 40-year-old civil servant, slides the index finger of his right hand over an aerial photograph of the city that acts as a map at City Hall.
His fingertip navigates from one red dot to another.
And he counts until he reaches 25. “Those are the military checkpoints surrounding H2,” he concludes.
This madness instituted for more than two decades has worsened in the shadow of the conflict in Gaza.
“Since October 7 we have suffered more humiliation, more restrictions and more curfew… The behavior of the military is more aggressive.
We live under a settler government,” says Badee Dwaik, a local human rights activist.
Painted with the star of David
The car has to make a detour of about twenty kilometers through the occupied West Bank to enter H2.
After passing through the settlement of Kyriat Arba, the asphalt leads through several military barriers to the old city of Hebron.
“In Gaza we will win,” reads one of the graffiti next to the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism, which appears on the walls of this historic center declared a world heritage site by UNESCO.
Here, some 800 Jewish settlers live shoehorned in and protected by some 2,500 soldiers, according to Badee Dwaik's estimates.
Israelis can move freely in the area, with and without uniform.
Some visitors, also Jews, come to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Ibrahim Mosque for Muslims), a sacred place for the three monotheistic religions, but controlled by Israel, like the entire old city.
EL PAÍS agrees after the soldiers ask the reporter what religion he professes and it becomes clear that he is not Muslim.
“I have only come to help my sacred nation,” explains Yusef, 60, a Jew and former soldier of the Red Army of the USSR who ended up naturalized in the United States, from where he traveled to Israel for the first time as a volunteer.
Asked about the tense coexistence generated by the occupation of Hebron, he answers: “In every generation someone always tries to kill us.
The Spanish Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin… They will all fail.”
Palestinian children play in the old area of Hebron.
Luis de Vega
Israel has taken advantage of the war in Gaza "to execute its settlement and Judaization plan, imposing a curfew on the population of the blockaded areas and isolating them," denounced the first days of the conflict Emad Hamdan, director of the Committee for the Rehabilitation of Hebron (HRC), a Palestinian institution that tries to safeguard especially the old city.
The residents of H2 live at the expense of “violence, nightly military raids on their homes, harassment, delays at checkpoints and various forms of degrading treatment.
The violent behavior of the settlers has also become routine,” the Israeli humanitarian organization BTselem describes on its website.
Israel uses facial recognition technology to reinforce “apartheid” against the Palestinians, Amnesty International denounced last May, something that has been done for at least two years.
In the surrounding area, children wearing the kippah run around with their backpacks on their swords as they leave school, leaving a picture of false normality.
A few buses and cars come and go along the streets leading up to Kyriat Arba.
The presence of Muslims, always on foot, is testimonial.
They can be seen entering and leaving through the metal turnstiles that communicate with zone H1.
The shops are closed tight.
At the top, a handful of Palestinian kids playing soccer gives an impression of everyday life.
Yaser Abu Marhia regrets the harsh conditions in which they live, but he does not in any way consider leaving Hebron, as some inhabitants end up doing in a trickle that does not stop driven by Israeli harassment.
And he repeats twice the phrase that his 90-year-old mother reminds him of, and that he makes his own: “I'm going to die here.”
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