Author Archives: Peter Small

Opinion: The Middle East peace process must start in Hebron

By Peter Small | Sun 16th September 2007 - 10:40 am

The financial burden of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is secretly crippling the Israeli economy. But the price exacted by 40 years of occupation goes beyond a monetary debt – no more so than in Hebron.

40 years of West Bank occupation are causing Israel and Palestine to fragment. The Biblical imperative that settlers use to justify claims to the West Bank, the rejection by Israel of the applicability of the Geneva Convention – all this is now exacting a price Israel can no longer afford to pay, financially, socially or morally. As for the Palestinians – they have long been broken financially and politically and have nothing more to give.

And the moral bankruptcy is nowhere starker than in Hebron.

In this small city in the West Bank, some 5000 Israeli militia may not intervene to curb settler violence against the majority Palestinian population because they are there to protect these 500 settlers. Meanwhile Palestinians in Old Hebron may not use their own front doors to enter their streets let alone drive down them. Last month, when the Army gave orders to forcibly evacuate illegal settlements, soldiers refused to obey the orders. Law and order is as rare a commodity in Hebron as water in the Negev Desert.