is aei
Cauldron Of Hate
Despising anything Israeli, Hebron's angry Arab residents
want Jewish settlers out of their midst now!
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
fter 27 years of occupa-
tion, one massacre, and
more than three weeks
of curfew, Hebron is a
cauldron of hatred set deep in
a pit of despair.
Just getting to and around
the town is a saga of multiple
cars and identities; of under-
standing that although Hebron
is closed to outsiders, the rules
on the ground (like the curfew
itself) can be flexible, just as the
young men who enforce them
can be capricious.
"They don't want the press
here because they don't want
the world to hear our story,"
said Jihad al-Jabri, a cousin of
one of the massacre victims, 37-
year-old Salman al-Jabri.
We have been sitting in the
crowded salon of Salman al-
Jabri's father, Awad al-Ayyam
Jabri, who has taken in his
A
dead son's wife and 10 children.
One of those children, 7-year-
old Sari, was praying at his fa-
ther's side when he was killed.
His uncle lifts Sari's T-shirt to
reveal a small round wound on
his chest. But the child resists
attempts to expose a second
wound on his shoulder, as
though he regarded it as a sign
of shame.
"I didn't even see my boy be-
fore they buried him," said
Awad al-Jabri, whose red-
rimmed eyes bespeak the grief
he alludes to only in that one
sentence. "We heard the shoot-
ing and tried to get down to the
mosque, but the soldiers
wouldn't let us past."
"Perhaps we're lucky about
that," added Mohammed al-
Jabri, another member of the
large Jabri clan, the most in-
fluential family in Hebron. "One
1994 J30
of our neighbors was shot out-
side the mosque while trying to
rescue the injured."
The Jabris live in a neigh-
borhood sandwiched in between
Kiryat Arba and the Cave of the
Patriarchs, site of the Feb. 25
"There's no
difference between
the soldiers and
the settlers." •
Jihad al-Jabri
massacre carried out by Dr.
Baruch Goldstein. Driving there
proves to be a tricky business.
The town's main street is lit-
tered with stones, rusting bar-
rels and other remains of the
"battles" that were fought there
each time the curfew has been
lifted for a few hours to allow
people to buy food.
A small area in the heart of
town has been "liberated" by a
handful of 10-to-13 year-olds
who won't let anyone onto their
turf, period. They turn particu-
larly menacing when our host
tries to reason with them, and
he finally raises his hands in
surrender and gingerly turns
the car around.
The alternate route brings us
to a road block where the sol-
diers are equally unpleasant
but finally let us pass — though
only after one of them spits on
the road in contempt.
That, the Jabris tell us, is not
uncommon behavior.
"There's no difference be-
tween the soldiers and the set-
tlers," said Jihad al-Jabri an-
grily. 'The soldiers are supposed
to protect us, but they're con-
cerned only about the settlers"
— who regularly pass through
this neighborhood on their way
to pray at the Cave of the Pa-
triarchs. In fact, the Jabris were
familiar with "Baruch," as they
refer to Dr. Goldstein, from ear-
lier incidents.
"Tor years he and his friends
have been shooting at houses
and breaking windows around
here," said Mohammed al-Jabri
"He was even here earlier on
that same Friday morning and
shot someone by our small local
mosque. But there weren't
enough people there for a full-
blown massacre, so he contin-
ued on downtown." (A shooting
was indeed reported on the out-
skirts of Kiryat Arba early on
Feb. 25, but the details of the
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