Nothingness is the shadow of God.
“Nella calda oscurità del giorno,
non vi fu altro che la condanna.
Precoce, vendicativa, tenace.
Questa arrivò repentina,
mentre echi di libertà lontani,
troppo sbiaditi per emergere,
si schierarono nell’abisso.
L’orizzonte rifletteva una bellezza perduta,
il deserto d’inganno sussurrava
destini di antichi popoli,
troppo deboli per avversare.
Passi incerti danzavano nell'ombra
sulle note stanche di un tempo che fuggiva.
Ho sognato un'ultima volta
la casa del nostro tempo.
Era grigia e scura come la mia anima.
E tra le pieghe del silenzio, solo dolore.”
- Piero Corvo
A Long Road to nowhere
Al Khalil, known by its Hebrew name Hebron, is located a few kilometers from Jerusalem in the Judean mountains. That August day we decided that the time had come: the time became ripe for us, we were ready to see, but we would never be able to fully understand. The places we crossed along the worn road were of a timeless, ancient, and creative beauty, yet so melancholic. We left behind us dust and dryness, erasing the road we travelled towards the city, as if there was only one direction to follow.
Hebron is located in the West Bank territories militarily occupied by Israel following the Six-Day War, which are considered illegal under international law. The city is one of the places where the reality of the Zionist occupation materialises in the starkest way. Here, the State of Israel has established, de facto, a strict military protectorate, which subjects the Palestinian citizens living there to continuous and unceasing restrictions of freedom and oppression of rights.
A history that repeats itself cyclically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking different forms but without changing the ancestral and radical hatred between the two peoples.
Once again, walls separating lives
We were almost at the end of our trip to Palestine. Although we had witnessed that disputed 'Land', the occupation and segregation of civilians in the city of Hebron manifested itself in a brutal way. We entered through one of the many Israeli check-points surrounding the old city located in the Israeli-occupied H2 zone. We found out later that it was the main entrance to the city.
The check-point where we entered was in fact flanked by the Hebron Mosque, the only one in the city. The structure is the second holiest site in Judaism as it is considered the tomb of the Patriarchs of Israel Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But the same place is also revered by Muslims, who call it the Mosque of Abraham or the Shrine of Abraham. The Mosque is a symbol of the 1994 Massacre. A former Jewish Defence League officer entered the holy place with a rifle and murdered dozens of Palestinians gathered in prayer.
After the massacre, in 1997, Hebron was divided into two zones: Hebron 2 under the control of the Israeli army and Hebron 1 entrusted to the Palestinian Authority. There are about 800 Israeli settlers occupying zone H2, compared to the 30,000 Palestinians living there.
In this place, no Palestinian is safe
The sense of anguish began to pervade us as we passed through what are nothing more than cages, gates of a prison-city. We began to look around, spotting armed Israeli soldiers at every street corner, vigilant and ready to become oppressors of life and lives around us. A young Palestinian boy shyly approached us, asking if we wanted to visit Hebron with him, for what little he was allowed. Everything was silent. Suddenly, all around us, scenes of innate beauty appeared. Children played in the street with a deflated ball, some men went to prayer, a boy rode by on a donkey.
We began to walk along the road within the walls, listening to the words of the boy who, step by step, showed us the uninhabited houses, barred windows, barbed wire fences, shops closed as a result of military law, fenced schools and the high walls separating Palestinian and Israeli areas.
Hebron sees, in fact, Palestinians and Israeli settlers cohabiting in the same buildings or in neighbouring houses. The settlers' Israeli flags identify their living areas; Palestinian houses, on the other hand, are recognisable by the barbed wire surrounding them and the bars on the windows. The guide told us that Israeli settlers are in the habit of throwing rubbish and stones on the street or on the houses below the Palestinians, who are forced into daily humiliations, guilty of continuing to resist and fight to stay there, in the land of their origin, where their roots lie. Again he told us, with subtle irony, how a driving licence is not needed in Hebron, just as cars are not needed, because there are no roads you can drive on, at a certain point you have to stop, it’s Israeli territory.
A violent strategy to provoke an exodus
A ghost town, inhabited by an oppressed people that is there but in fact seems not to exist. So Hebron began to whisper its pain to us in silence, and only in the moments that followed that day would we be able to perceive it. As we approached another checkpoint, shadows in the distance could be seen, women and children, waiting in line for their turn to be checked, undressed, inspected again and again. We watched these scenes carefully, trying to take a few photos while hiding from the gaze of the soldiers and from the cameras positioned above each turnstile and in the city streets, on which automatic rifles are installed.
At one point, near an olive tree, our guide stopped and turning around told us that we could go no further from there. At the same moment, a young Israeli soldier, with his weapon pointed at us above a wall, ordered us to leave, and quickly. That olive tree seemed to mark the border, that limit that had been imposed on us, ordered. An invisible limit, yet so real. We were not Palestinians, but we obeyed that command, without asking ourselves whether it was right to do so and wrong to oppose it. We obeyed naturally, as if obeying was a natural duty in Hebron. We turned and walked backwards, as if in a maze with no way out, like rats looking for escape routes.
An unforgettable day
We thought nothing else could happen, we felt alienated, it was not the reality we were naturally used to experiencing. It was a reality that no man should ever have to experience. On our way back, soldiers headed out of the control booth to block the passage. The threat? Three children. The soldiers started to undress one of them. Shocked, we approached and noticed that one child was wearing a T-shirt on which there was a drawing of a gun. Nothing was more paradoxical than the scene that unfolded before us. The child, clutching his white T-shirt in his hand, continued to argue in vain with the soldiers. There was indeed no dialogue possible. There is only one photo of that moment.
That day, that child was stripped of his dignity forever. The design of that weapon became a real threat and those young armed soldiers had a duty to defuse it. Reality turned upside down again. In that place, no one and nothing existed for real. On the contrary, what had the appearance of being real was drawn, as on that shirt.
Written by Ludovica Crescente
Piero Corvo - Hebron: ghost town
Hebron, State of Palestine. 2022.
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