http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=37713&mador=4&datee=1/10/99
Ha'aretz, January 10, 1999
What curfew?
By Gideon Levy
Who cares that for most of the past week, 30,000
people, about a quarter of the residents of
Hebron, have been prisoners in their own homes?
Who cares that a curfew has been imposed on Area
H2 of Hebron in the wake of a shooting incident,
the perpetrators of which are almost certainly in
any place in Hebron other than the area under
curfew? Who cares that Israel is continuing to
utilize the abhorrent weapon of collective
punishment against a large population that has
done nothing wrong?.In Hebron, as in Lebanon,
Israeli tactical reactions have become knee-jerk
affairs to the point of nausea. A shooting
incident? Attempted sabotage? The mechanical,
automatic response is a curfew, usually a lengthy
one. Eighteen schools and one hospital under
curfew. Why? Just like that.
When I asked the IDF spokesman at week's end
exactly why the latest curfew was imposed in
Hebron, he referred me to the laconic statement
he issued on the day of the attack on the two
women settlers from Kiryat Arba: "Two Israeli
citizens were wounded this morning ... The IDF
imposed a curfew on the area under its
responsibility in the city of Hebron and
commenced searches." No one asks, no one casts
doubt of any kind, utilitarian or moral.
The well-worn argument that a curfew is meant to
facilitate the efforts of the security forces to
apprehend the perpetrators doesn't meet the test
of reality, not least because in a few cases the
curfew continued long after the arrest of those
suspected of executing the attack that had
prompted the curfew.
Last October, for example, following the murder
of Danny Vargas from Kiryat Arba, the curfew
remained in force even after the two suspects in
the case were arrested. The fact is that a curfew
has goals of another kind: collective punishment
for its own sake, a desire to placate the
settlers and an effort to prevent friction in
periods of tension.
The problem is that this friction is averted by
punishing one side only, whereas the violence in
Hebron is caused by both sides. If a curfew, it
is legitimate to ask, why not a curfew on the
settlers too? Why shouldn't the settlers of
Hebron, Yitzhar or Tapuah languish under a curfew
after the assaults they perpetrate?
But the Israeli politician or military commander
who dares put the settlers under curfew has not
yet been born. Few Israelis would be able to bear
the curfew experience and probably fewer still
would be able to tolerate a lengthy curfew. But
in the midst of their holiest month of the year,
the residents of Hebron, most of whom are
religious, are languishing under just such a
curfew. It is radically disrupting their lives:
people are losing precious work days, missing
their appointments for medical treatment;
children are losing school days, weddings have to
be canceled. The postponement of a wedding in
Kiryat Shmona because of a katyusha attack
generated a wave of tears and reports; the total
disruption of life in Hebron generates a yawn.
Huddled in their overcrowded apartments,
Palestinian families with many children are
virtual prisoners living under conditions of
severe shortage. All they can do is stare through
the bars on their windows at their unwanted
neighbors, the settlers, who of course walk about
freely in their city, sometimes carrying out
vicious provocations against them or their
property.
Last week a group of evil-minded female settlers
attacked a Palestinian mother and her four
children for daring to return from a visit to a
medical clinic during the curfew. Other settlers
use the curfew to carry out punitive actions, to
trespass, or seize abandoned Palestinian
buildings and carry out illegal construction
work.
A curfew has been imposed on the Palestinians in
this torn city more than once because of settler,
not Palestinian, actions. Following the murder of
Issam Arafa, a young man shot by yeshiva students
in April 1997, the military's immediate reaction
was, believe it or not, to impose a curfew on the
Palestinians.
The same pattern repeated itself following the
massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in 1994
and after the killing of the Awadallah brothers
last September. The curfew that followed the
liquidation of the Awadallah brothers produced
two horror stories: Fadwa al Adam lost her
newborn infant, Naama, and Shirin Haddad lost her
baby, Kusai, because of the monstrous
insensitivity of soldiers - sanctifiers of the
curfew - who refused to let the mothers through
to hospitals.
The cruel absurdity of this collective punishment
has persisted throughout the 31 years of the
occupation, but its roots lie deeper. The
progenitor of the concept was Judge Gad Frumkin,
grandfather of former Shin Bet chief Carmi
Gillon.
In his autobiography, Frumkin tells how in 1921
he brought about the enactment of the "collective
punishment law" after having suggested to the
British Mandate authorities that they implement
collective punishment against Arab towns and
villages.
Ha'aretz correspondent Tom Segev, who will soon
publish a comprehensive study of the Mandate
period in Palestine, found in British archives a
vast amount of material attesting to moral
soul-searching by the British authorities - who
imposed more cruel collective punishments than
Israel, but at least suffered pangs of conscience
over them. In Israel no one bothers any longer to
raise the acute moral questions about collective
punishment. Where is its justice? What is its
usefulness
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