“Hebron is like Gaza right now,” says Hayat, an Israeli Arab, the hotel receptionist, when asked what is the best way to get from Jerusalem to Hebron. “The best thing is to take a taxi, or not go at all,” she continues without even blinking.
Overdo?
On paper, at all. The offensive in Gaza already causes more than 21,000 deaths, almost two hundred more in the last 24 hours, according to the Strip’s Ministry of Health. And in Hebron in the last week there are no known fatalities, although yesterday a young man died from an Israeli shot in nearby Dura, the Palestinian Authority denounced.
In Hebron there are no bombings, nor are 85% of the population forced to evacuate, nor is there a lack of electricity, nor do they suffer everything that Gazans already suffer from the war.
Hebron, however, seems to be a scene that sees war approaching.
Yesterday the Israeli newspapers warned of a multiple and intentional accident in their hills. Yesterday, when La Vanguardia entered the city, an Israeli intervention in one of its avenues cut off traffic in one direction of the road and forced people to drive in the opposite direction. The atmosphere is tense and can be felt in every corner of the second most populated city in the West Bank after Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital.
Because Hebron is not Gaza, but its neighbors walk through deserted streets full of rubble and dirt where the majority are children and young people who play, work, beg for money, wander up and down with no known destination, alone or in groups, without any adult next to or nearby.
At the Media Luna hospital they do not want to specify “due to confidentiality” if in recent days, weeks, there are more people treated for the protests but the ambulances only take a few minutes to go to the center. A nearby baker, Salem, explains that he works twelve hours a day, that everything is calm now, but that the problems arise at the roundabout that leads to the two streets that run towards the old city and around midday.
And it is around that time that the ambulances are heard.
In Hebron the majority of adults and young people dress in black. In the tourist old city of the Mamluk period (13th century), a world heritage site, the stores are closed, few walk around, the Israeli forces guard the entrances tirelessly, even blocking the street, also at noon.
Maruan Sharapati, in his twenties, with short hair, with a goatee and glasses that give him an intellectual air, lives on a street parallel to that roundabout, in one of the most conflictive streets in the city that can only be accessed after passing a high fence. metal that acts as a wall, a robust revolving door and concertinas that decorate all the edges. It is the same street through which Jewish settlers’ settlements are accessed and he explains that the clashes at their doors are repeated, if not every day, then every few days, especially on Fridays, which are holidays; that soldiers respond with fire; that Hamas has more support in Hebron but for now they do nothing. “But you never know,” he adds.
According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, support for Hamas in Hebron is stronger than in the rest of the West Bank and there are several other groups in the area active beyond Hamas. Hamas picks up the gauntlet when, in a recent statement, it calls on the West Bank “to intensify operations and confrontations with the enemy.”
At the entrance to Sharapati Street there are black, burned cement blocks. The same thing that happens to a nearby container. And the same thing that happens to the floor of the roundabout that separates his street from its continuation through which, he says, he flees on the run if there are riots.
Here everything is closed, here everything is rubble, “and this has been the case since October 7,” he explains. And Hebron is not Gaza, because it is also the main industrial zone in the West Bank: it concentrates a third of its wealth production, particularly for its marble and glass factories, today not so much footwear. “Rich Palestinian towers,” as they are called here, abound on its outskirts.
Ahmed, close to turning 18, walks with two friends through the streets that surround the historic alleys of Hebron. Two are dressed in black and one is out of style in white. They say that the riots “with stones and fire”, since October 7, since the Gaza war began, are worse and are getting worse against the Israeli army.
Ramadan, the taxi driver who makes it possible for this newspaper to enter and leave the city through the only possible access “of the four or five that there used to be,” summarizes on the long way back to Jerusalem that “if Ramallah is relaxed, Hebron, No. The people, the roads, the settlements, everything is complicated in Hebron,” he concludes.
Hebron is not Gaza, but it is infected with Gaza while in the strip there are no signs of the Israeli offensive slowing down.
