On Sunday, October 29, Ahmed Azza was given permission to leave his neighborhood for the first time in three days. He passed the surveillance camera trained on his front door and the group of Israeli soldiers stationed on the hill above and walked eight minutes to the checkpoint at the end of his street. He placed his belongings on a table to be searched, made mandatory eye contact with the facial recognition camera, and crossed through the rotating metal barriers into Hebron. Ten hours later, he was given a one-hour window to return home before the checkpoint closed and he was locked out—or in—for the next two days.
Azza lives in Tel Rumeida, Hebron, the most tightly controlled neighborhood in the West Bank. Since 1997, Tel Rumeida has formed part of H2, a section of Hebron controlled by the Israeli government. Around 35,000 Palestinians and 850 Israeli settlers live in this area, where Israeli soldiers impose a system of segregation that heavily restricts the movement of Palestinians. It’s enforced with a network of surveillance that includes at least 21 manned checkpoints, on-the-spot searches, and watchtowers, plus a vast array of CCTV cameras dubbed “Hebron Smart City.”
According to critics, the aim of this system is to make life as difficult as possible for Palestinians, slowly forcing them to leave their homes and make way for Israeli settlers.
(continue reading)
