Israeli Army Attempts to Close Shops in Hebron’s Old City

On 10 August, Israeli soldiers controlling the area of Beit Romano –one of the Jewish settlements in the old city of Hebron– ordered the closure of a Palestinian shop located in front of the settlement’s Midrash school. The order came in retaliation to the weekly demonstrations organized by Youth Against Settlements, who demand that Shuhada Street be allowed to reopen.

Last week Israeli soldiers warned the Palestinians, Israelis and internationals attending the protest that if they had continued these actions, the army would have closed several shops in the area.

Since the Hebron agreement in 1997 dividing the city in two areas, the old city of Hebron was deeply affected by Israeli policies of house evictions, settlement construction and violent repression. These last events mark the Israeli effort to destroy the resistance movement growing in the area.

The previous day, Jewish settlers marched in the streets of Hebron’s old city. The following day, early in the afternoon, Israeli soldiers announced that they would have to close a local shop for so-called “security reasons”. Two other Palestinian owners supported the first one against the soldiers, who then declared the area a closed military zone.

The Palestinian owners contacted a lawyer of the Rehabilitation Committee in the old city of Hebron. Around fifty people gathered in the area trying to prevent the soldiers from closing the shops. Some members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and 25 participants in the AIC field seminar sat in the square as a protest. The owners tried to remove the iron gates of their shops in order to leave them permanently open. The Israeli soldiers came and physically attacked one of the owners, who reported some injures on his head and who was later taken to the hospital for medical treatment. The army surrounded the area and started welding the shops` gates. Two other international demonstrators were hit and beaten. One of the Palestinians shouting slogans against Israeli occupation was arrested. Another international was arrested and later released.