Lines in the sand: Hebron

This series was written in 2012. It was published by Crikey, one of Australia’s last great independent publications. My editor was the wonderful, generous enabler, Jason Whittaker, who let me write whatever I wanted, however I wanted, long after my used-by date had come and gone. This piece remains behind the paywall there. But given recent events, and the coverage around them, I thought it might be worth republishing here. The rest of the series is available on the main page of this Substack. All have been very lightly edited, and I shall be writing a new summation over the next couple of days. Rereading these things has been a trip.

I meet Shehada at his home early in the morning and we set off with his friend and neighbour, Isa, in the direction of Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city. It should by rights be a half-hour drive: Hebron is less than forty-five kilometres from Ramallah, as the crow flies. But with Jerusalem, and therefore Israel proper, lying smack-bang between the two, the only way to get from one to the other without crossing over and back again—which the boys, in any case, are not entitled to do—is to take a wide berth around the city to the east, so that Jericho and even the Dead Sea become briefly visible, before curving back to the west towards Bethlehem. It adds nearly an hour to the total driving time.

To make matters worse, Shehada accidentally mounts the nearest curb the moment we get into the car—he’s been up all night, he says, helping his uncle with the tiling—causing the bull bar to fall off. Moments later, the radiator starts smoking, and the car’s only been running for a minute-and-a-half. By the time we’re finally back on the road, a good portion of the day has gone. A good deal more of it goes with it every time we pull over to check on the zip-ties that we’re using to hold up the bull bar. As we’re finally approaching Hebron, the car mounts one final, all-out protest, and we’re forced to pull into the nearest mechanic and have him replace the brake pads. It turns out we’ve been driving without the ability to stop since we turned onto the road between Jericho and Hebron nearly forty-five minutes ago.

But to the extent that Hebron is an experience like no other—the ...