Living Near a Settlement

A morning in Hebron: visiting a Family living near Harcina Settlement

At 9.30am, my team mate Michael and I met our translator in downtown Hebron.

We haggled with a taxi driver for a price and travelled out to the northern end of the Givat Harcina Settlement to visit Mazen. Mazen rings our local contact in the United Nations regularly and is very nervous about attack from the settlers. We felt it would be good to visit. Our translater rang ahead to see if it was ok to call.

Through our translator, we explained the EAPPI programme to Mazen, and our presence in Hebron. Michael mentioned that he had been at an action with Israeli activists at nearby Buria Hill, where teenage Israeli settlers set up an outpost. Mazen asked if we had any news about the outpost. He said he took part in his first activist action there with Ta’ayush(an Israeli/Palestinian activist group) and Youth Against Settlement(a Palestinian nonviolent resistance group). He had never dared before.

Mazen’s house, and 2 other neighbours, are somewhat isolated just near the back of Harsina settlement. There has been more consistent trouble from the settlements since, after the beginning of the 2nd Intifada, the settlement fence was extended outwards. Now a rear gate of the settlement faces almost directly onto Mazen’s front gate.

Mazen showed us pictures on his phone of graffiti (in Hebrew, which said: “Kill The Arabs.”), and the smashed intercom. Inside the high walls and barbed wire of the compound (in place since 1992), where 4 families live, there were traces of a Star of David spray-painted on the path. Mazen also pointed out panes of glass that had been replaced, having been broken by stones.

Mazen had reported all this to the police, who said that nothing could be done as the people involved were under age, however, Mazen has seen adults also involved.

Mazen has also been in touch with the Red Cross, who gave him their 24 hour number. TIPH had also once, and had a look around, but they said that they don’t usually operate in that area. (TIPH are the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, observers from a number of countries present in Hebron since the Baruch Goldstein massacre of 1994.)


The road leading to Hebron has been closed for 7 years, forcing Mazen and the neighbouring families to take a long roundabout on a dirt track. Mazen asked what people in our countries thought, and what we thought the future held.
We asked Mazen if he would like us to came back and visit. He said we could call on Fridays, as he worked as a truck driver. As we left to go, his teenage boys shook our hands tightly, and said in English “We thank you very very much for coming, please come back again.”