"Whose Land Is This?"

Hebron symbolizes a bitter Arab-Jewish conflict

Even as the U.S. was renewing its effort to get Israel and Egypt together on an autonomy agreement for the occupied territories, tensions were running high in a West Bank town that has become a symbol of the problem. Situated in the Judean hills 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem, Hebron is an ancient site revered by both Jews and Muslims. Jews believe it was the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Muslims also revere Abraham as a prophet and call the town Al-Khalil (Friend of God) after him.

After Hebron was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, a Jewish settlement, Qiryat Arba, was established on its outskirts. Now Jews are pressing to settle in the heart of Hebron, where a small Jewish quarter existed until many of its inhabitants were massacred during riots by Palestinian Arabs in 1929. Israeli squatters have taken over one building and are threatening to move into others. But the two communities--4,000 Jews and 50,000 Arabs--seem unable to coexist in peace. TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Dean Fischer and Correspondent David Halevy recently visited Hebron. Their report:

"I'm waiting for God. The Bible says, 'To you I will give this land, to you and to your seed, afterward to the end of time.'" Her blue eyes blazing, Miriam Levinger, incongruously clad in an army fatigue jacket, blue skirt and blue bedroom slippers, stood outside the former Hadassah clinic in the old Jewish quarter of Hebron. Behind her, in a stone building surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by Israeli soldiers, Jewish women who joined Mrs. Levinger in her "occupation" of the building nearly a year ago hung up laundry under the basement arches.

The squatters in Hebron are followers of Miriam's husband, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) movement. Levinger, who lives in Qiryat Arba, spearheads the extremist drive to populate the West Bank with Jewish settlers. He and his followers believe it is the "divine right" of Jews to settle anywhere in the land of biblical Israel.

Levinger was the founder of Qiryat Arba. Shortly after the 1967 war, he led a group of his followers, posing as Swiss tourists, to Hebron, where they squatted in the Park Hotel until the Labor government of Premier Levi Eshkol gave them permission to settle in a nearby military encampment. Once their presence was established, the squatters pushed for permanent quarters. In due course, Qiryat Arba, a fortress-like project of high-rise apartments, shops, synagogues and schools, was built by the government at a cost of $50 million.

Bowing to renewed pressure from the settlers, Israel's Cabinet last month approved a resolution allowing for Jewish settlement in Hebron and in other Arab towns, but the Cabinet has been split on how it should be carried out. Impatient with the delay, Levinger's people are now threatening to occupy vacant houses in Hebron. Premier Menachem Begin has said the squatters are violating the law, but he has not ordered the army to evict them. On the contrary, army reservists stand guard outside the occupied Hadassah clinic round the clock to protect the squatters. Some of the soldiers dislike the duty. Said one reservist: "I vomit twice a day because I have to be here to protect these crazy bastards."

In fact, settlers from Qiryat Arba regularly intimidate Arab residents of Hebron, secure in the knowledge that the government will not crack down on them. Scarcely a week passes without some incident of vandalism or vigilantism. Grape vines of Arab villagers are cut. The tires of Arab-owned vehicles are slashed and windows smashed. Gun-wielding Israelis invade the houses of Hebron residents, threatening and terrorizing them. At the Haram al-Khalil Mosque, built on the site where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are believed to have been buried, Jews disrupt the prayers of devout Muslims.

Early this year, a Jewish seminary student was murdered in Hebron's casbah, presumably by Arab assailants. Following the murder, the Israeli army clamped a ten-day curfew on the center of Hebron. But it was a discriminatory curfew. While Arab residents were confined to their homes, Jewish settlers, armed with rifles and pistols, strolled through the streets.

In one particularly ugly incident, some 20 armed men stormed the house of two stonecutters, Abdel Aziz Idris and his brother Hussein. Every window in their house, which they had built themselves, was broken. The Idris children and Abdel's pregnant wife were beaten before an Israeli army patrol arrived to rescue them. The Idrises do not know why they were targeted. "We enjoyed good neighborly relations," says Abdel Idris, "but after the murder of the Israeli youth, we were told again and again, 'If you won't leave your home, we shall beat you up.' " Counters Zeev Friedman, the newly elected head of Qiryat Arba, who lives only 250 yds. away: "This is part of a struggle between two families--Jews and Arabs. We cannot accept an attack on us without a response."

The Begin government's rush to create new settlements in the West Bank has drawn fire in Israel as well as abroad. Earlier this month, 20,000 Israeli farmers demonstrated outside the Knesset, demanding that the government spend less money on settlements and more on 11 the country's economically depressed agriculture. Other Israelis criticize the settlement policy as a de facto annexation of the occupied territories. The West Bank, argues Meir Merhav, economics editor of the Jerusalem Post, "is to be carved up by a grid of roads, settlements and strongholds into a score of little Bantustans so that [the Palestinians] shall never coalesce again into a contiguous area that can support autonomous, let alone independent, existence."

The Palestinians point to the settlements policy as proof that the current autonomy talks are a sham, and that their refusal to participate is justified. "Whose land is this?" asked Hebron's Arab mayor, Fahd Qawasmi. "The Israelis announce this is their land. The U.S. says settlements are illegal. But the American government gives more and more money to Israel. Israel then builds more and more settlements. And they want me to be a party to the autonomy negotiations!" -

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