In Divided Hebron, a Shared Despair

A Chain of Settlements

On a recent morning, a dozen toddlers zipped around Avraham Avinu's shady courtyard, where in 2001 a Palestinian sniper's bullet killed 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas. A nearby market, once the main Palestinian clearinghouse for vegetables, has been named for her by the settlers who control it.

The Jewish settlement is separated -- by a wall, razor wire and a worldview -- from Hebron's casbah and its Palestinian patrons, who have watched anxiously as the settlement project recently swelled beyond the city center under the protection of Israel's military, whose strategic goals frequently coincide with the settlers'.

"The town is divided, it is deserted, and in many ways like a prison for us," said Khaled Osaily, Hebron's appointed mayor from the secular Fatah movement. Most of the more than 1,800 closed Palestinian businesses in the Old City area shut down since the second Palestinian uprising began in the fall of 2000.

David Wilder, originally from New Jersey, is the spokesman for the Hebron settlers. He largely dismissed public relations until Goldstein opened fire. The government of Yitzhak Rabin considered evacuating the settlers but instead imposed the military curfews and closures on the Palestinians.

Wilder, who like many settlers here wears a pistol on his hip, does not agree with what he calls the Israeli military's "concept of using walls as a means of security, of building barriers and saying, 'Now you are safe.'

"The problem here is not so much that people can't make a living; it's a political one," Wilder said. "The Arabs want a presence here. If they have it, they own it, de facto. And if not, they don't."

On a hilltop less than a mile's trip along streets secured by Israeli soldiers sits a four-story house, which a group of settlers occupied the evening of March 19. Lignell and his observer team arrived less than an hour later. By then, dozens of soldiers had surrounded the home to protect its new residents.

Kiryat Arba, a settlement of about 7,000 people, sits just across a narrow valley. Wilder, 53, said the property represents a key link in the chain the settlers are trying to establish between the urban settlements of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. His daughter's family is one of 15 moving into the house.

Wilder said the settlers bought the home for $700,000, some of it donated by American supporters. But Israel's Civil Administration, the military government in the occupied territories, contends that the settlers did not arrange for the permits Israelis need to buy and move into property in the West Bank.

"These people think they can do what they want and then we will have to adopt their decision," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Activities in the Territories. "This is not the case."

As a military court considers their appeal, the settlers are renovating the building. New plaster walls partition off a series of family apartments, their doors still sawed-out holes covered by hanging blankets. Soldiers wander the airy halls.

The house overlooks the main roads leading from Kiryat Arba to the downtown settlements and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the caves beneath the Ibrahimi Mosque. The army used to set up a temporary post at the house on the Jewish Sabbath. Now, having set up a more permanent rooftop position, the army supports the settlers' right to stay.