A Fake Arrest
2007 July 23
After lunch, a Palestinian colleague, who works for the City of Hebron, decided to lead a tour group, including ten Palestinians, up Main Street. The only problem is Main Street has been barricaded and closed to Palestinians for the past six years.
Soon, a notorious settler woman whom I recognize, drove her car slowly into the midst of the tour group. She began stalking my Palestinian colleague, trying to intimidate him. When she waved an Israeli policeman over and demanded, presumably, that they arrest him, I told him to let me act as if I were leading the tour. I was hoping to let him fade into the group.
When we stopped in front of the large Zionist settlement in the center of Old City Hebron, the settler got out of her car and began taking intimidating close-up photos of each person in the tour. So the border police arrested one of the Palestinian tourists. They made him get in the back of their jeep.
I walked over to try to intervene on his behalf. “Hello. My name is Lorin. Can I be of help here?”
“Tell us where the tour is going to exit Main Street.”
“Why?” I was confused.
“We need to know where you will leave the settler area and enter the Palestinian area of the city.”
They spoke to me politely, in English. They continued, “This man is not under arrest, or interrogation, or anything. We just want to know where to drop him off so he can rejoin his tour.”
The police jeep then followed us slowly back along Main Street. As soon as we exited, the “arrestee” was released to us. In other words, the police only pretended to arrest him, apparently to appease the settler. We have, in recent years, encountered a growing number of incidents like this where the police, and the soldiers, are becoming less hostile to the Palestinians, and more alienated from the Zionist settlers.
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