Photo by RNS/Reuters
Israeli riot police fire tear gas over the Western Wall.
incident remain obscure.)
Since the massacre, the
Jabris want nothing more to do
with anything Israeli. They will
not testify before the state in-
quiry commission. They will not
accept the compensation that
the government has offered the
victims' families. So deep is
their bitterness and suspicion
that they're even convinced the
army will lift the curfew only to
make the situation worse.
"We risk our lives each time
we sneak out to surrounding
farms to get milk for the baby,"
said Mohammed al-Jabri, re-
ferring to Salman al-Jabri's 8-
month-old daughter. "But we
know, and they know, that
when the curfew is lifted, some-
thing will happen, and they'll
only clamp it down again."
What will happen?
"Something terrible. And
whatever it is, the army will
blame us. That's the rule: we're
always at fault, and the settlers
are always right. I tell you: Life
will never go back to normal in
Hebron. They'll have to take the
settlers out."
Those feelings are echoed
throughout Hebron. A short dri-
ve away, 21-year-old Mo-
hammed Salam Jaz al-Jabri,
from another branch of the fam-
ily, is recovering from bullet
wounds in his legs: one from a
standard, the other from a dum-
dum bullet.
"Two kinds of weapons were
shot in the mosque," he said. "I
know that not only because of
the bullets removed from my
legs, but because shooting was
going on while Goldstein was
changing his magazine, and
shooting was coming from two
directions." But he will not tell
that to either the Israeli or the
Palestinian inquiry commis-
sions.
"If people still won't be safe
here, if we have no freedom,
what's the point?" he asked.
And although he is going to
Amman for further medical
treatment, his family will not
claim any money from Israel to
pay for it.
"You can't compensate us for
what happened except by en-
suring that it won't happen
again," he reasoned. "And the
way to do that is by ridding He-
bron of the settlers."
"You must understand, it's
not just that a settler was re-
sponsible for the massacre that
day," explained Nabil al-Jabri,
a son of the mayor who surren-
dered Hebron to the Israeli
army in 1967 and a one-time
member of the Palestinian del-
egation to the Washington
peace talks. "Their presence
here, and the army's policy of
protecting them, are the cause
of continuous confrontations
and the loss of life."
Like the resident's of Hebron,
the city's leaders see no point in
bringing their grievances to the
Israeli government. "They know
what's going on," Nabil al-Jabri
said. "After weeks upon weeks
of continuous curfew — with all
the factories, shops, and schools
closed — they know they're de-
stroying the city's infrastruc-
ture. The fact is that we've lost
50 people, and we're the one's
being punished for it."
Nabil al-Jabri, who was in
the Cave of the Patriarchs just
hours after the massacre and
again three days later, is also
pessimistic about the results of
any inquiry, Israeli or Pales-
tinian.
"I don't think we'll ever know
the truth," he said. "The place
was cleaned up with unseem-
ly haste. They even filled in the
bullet holes in the floor, so that
you can't tell which directions
the bullets came from. And no
one I've spoken to can say that
he personally saw Goldstein be-
ing killed. How do we know that
he wasn't murdered by one of
his own accomplices?"
Still, establishing the truth
for posterity is less important
now, for Nabil al-Jabri and his
colleagues, than coping with the
agony of the 90,000 residents of
Hebron.
"Our people want to express
their grief," he added wearily,
"but the Israelis have created a
closed bubble in which all the
elements just keep on crashing
against each other, and nothing
moves away."
Even we have a brief prob-
lem doing that as we are
stopped at a checkpoint on our
way out of town. "We are
tourists," our driver cheerfully
told the soldier, who peers skep-
tically into the car but soon re-
veals his willingness to go along
with the claim.
"Have you enjoyed the coun-
try up until now?" he asked, and
we flash idiotic grins in reply.
"This is not a very pretty part
of Israel you've seen here." ❑
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