Two prefabricated buildings were recently established by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian neighborhood of Tel Rumeida in Hebron without authorization, causing concern over access to Palestinian institutions immediately adjacent to the new structures.
According to the Peace Now organization, which campaigns against the settlement movement, the two caravans were set up several weeks ago on a plot of land west of the Jewish cemetery in the neighborhood, and adjacent to a mosque on one side and a Palestinian girls’ high school on the other.
The organizations said that access to the school and the entrances to the mosque for Palestinian residents are now at risk.
The Civil Administration, the Defense Ministry department that manages civilian affairs in the West Bank, said the two caravans had been set up “without authorization and in contravention of the law.”
It added that “enforcement,” — meaning removal — would take place “in accordance with the operational situation assessment and the guidance of the political echelon.”
Peace Now alleged that the caravans were located in what is defined as the H1 area of Hebron, under full control of the Palestinian Authority, and where the entry of Israeli citizens is supposed to be prohibited.
A spokesman for Hebron’s Jewish community insisted, however, that the land was inside the H2 area of the divided city, under Israeli military control, and was part of the same plot as the Jewish cemetery.
Peace Now acknowledged that the land was owned by Jews prior to Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.
But it said that the original map appended to the 1997 Hebron Agreement, which created the H1 and H2 designations, placed the plot inside the H1 area.
Meanwhile, the map featured on the Civil Administration’s website shows the site of the caravans to be inside H2, and the department’s position is that they were established within the boundaries of the H2 area, albeit without authorization.
Hebron was divided into two sections under the Hebron Protocol signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat in January 1997.
H1 includes 80 percent of the city and lies under full Palestinian Authority control. The H2 zone includes the Jewish settlement of some 800 residents, along with another 200 yeshiva students, according to the Hebron Jewish community.
Some 200 Jews live in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, alongside several thousand Palestinians, although the site of the new prefabricated structures is separate from the Jewish area of the neighborhood.
“The settlement in Hebron represents the ugliest face of Israel’s control over the occupied territories. Nowhere in the West Bank is apartheid more apparent,” said Peace Now regarding the latest development in the city.
“The Netanyahu-Smotrich government has no restraints. The establishment of a new settlement within a dense Palestinian area in Hebron, particularly in an area under Palestinian control, is a provocation that undermines Israeli political and security interests,” the organization continued. “Its establishment constitutes a violation of both a signed international agreement and Israeli military law.”
Yishai Fleisher, a spokesperson for the Jewish community in Hebron, insisted that the new caravans were within H2, albeit right on the border with H1, and described the allegations as “a provocation from the Euro-sponsored anti-Israel organizations Peace Now.”
Fleisher also claimed the Civil Administration had not opposed the establishment of the caravans when they were originally erected.
“We’re living in a tiny enclave in Hebron. We’re going to continue to develop the land that we have control of at this time, and hopefully more land in control [sic] at a later time,” said Fleisher.
“With God’s help, we are continuing to live in our ancestral city of Hebron, which we’ve lived in for the last three and a half thousand years; it’s the oldest Jewish city in the world.”