December 30, 2001

Denied Access to Hebron

Sometimes a bad thing happens because a good thing happened before it. Yesterday the group of international peace activists had a great experience, opening a checkpoint and allowing residents to cross freely. They could actually move around just a little bit better. Things like that are rare. The incident was heavily covered by the media here. I saw it all over the news on TV stations in Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt. Friends called from Jordan to say they saw it on TV there too. Lots of newspapers carried the action and photos. And our activities are not secret. They are open to all media and freely displayed on various Internet websites.

So today the soldiers and police were informed ahead of time that a group of international activists were heading to Hebron. And we were stopped well short of our goal. We wanted to go to Hebron to hold a little carnival for the kids, to tour the area, and to paint some barricades. No chance of that.

We were only half way to Hebron when we were stopped at a checkpoint. And after our arrival they declared the area a "closed military zone". The entire way from our checkpoint to Hebron! It must have been 10-15 miles of closed military zone. And they decided to make it a closed zone for two weeks. The funny thing about this closed zone was that everyone else was allowed to pass through except our group. We had a huge group. Five large buses. A French group, Italians, and ours. There were various MEPs (Members of European Parliament), but that didn't sway the soldiers at all. Closed to us.

We waited there for three hours, but we didn't make a bit of progress. While we were outside waiting some guy accused me of being an Israeli reporter. He whispered and told people not to talk to me. I felt like the kid that no one wanted to play with. He later apologized when he found that I was just a mild-mannered peace man. And none too skilled with the pen. The real reporter who had written some bad things about our group was up the hill not too far from me. (Remember the man dressed in all black in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" who burned his hand? This guy looked just like him.) So we drove back to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. A small part of the group decided to go back to Hebron in taxis and they did make it through. They were able to play games with the children for an hour, so that was great.