The grim reality of the Israeli occupation

On the top floor of a commandeered Palestinian home in the West Bank city of Hebron, Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli soldier, stood at the center of a group of rapt German tourists and told them about the time he unleashed his grenade launcher on local gunmen. "I was trained with the grenade gun. That was my mission," he said. "But we were shooting at houses 800 meters away, so of course you hit innocent targets too." When Shaul talks about innocent targets, he means Palestinian civilians. Yet he is not afraid to tell stories from his 14 months service in the Israeli army in Hebron. "Could we fire grenades at areas where Palestinians lived? Sure. Why not?" he asked, describing many Israeli army actions breaking the army's own rules of engagement. "It was fun. It was cool. Could we shut 2,000 Palestinian shops with a curfew on a whim? Why not?" In the past nine months, Shaul and the Breaking the Silence group he founded have led more than 40 groups totaling 1,200 people around the divided city of Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers live at the heart of a Palestinian population of more than 100,000. The tourists pay nothing except for transport costs, but they are given a no-holds-barred insider view of the effect that Israel's Hebron settlements–and the hundreds of combat troops which protect them–have on the city's Palestinian population. "Patrols are invading houses around the clock, not to arrest terrorists but to show our presence," said Shaul. "So you break into houses in the middle of the night, wake everybody up. You do not treat Palestinians as equal human beings. It's like putting all your morality and all your education in a blender," he added. "After a minute there's nothing left." Breaking the Silence is hardly popular with the Jewish settlers in Hebron: "They support terrorists. They want to see Jews exiled and killed," said settler spokesman Noam Arnon. But its tours are increasingly popular in Israel's alternative tourism market–which has thrived as violence kept conventional visitors away. Among the new breed of tours are walks along the security barrier–Israel's controversial combination of concrete wall and chain link fence that snakes through the West Bank. Ir Amim, founded by Israeli lawyer Danny Seidemann, is a group that "believes Jerusalem–with its 470,000 Jews and 230,000 Arabs–is a city shared between Palestinians and Israelis," one of its guides, Sarah Kreimer, explained. Israel's politicians disagree, insisting the city be the "eternal and undivided" capital of the Jewish state. Ir Amim has conducted dozens of tours, offering a first-hand inspection of the wall to Jews from Israel and abroad, as well as diplomats and politicians. "When we take Israelis on the tour you literally see people change," she said. "You see a light in their eyes." Not all of the new tours are critical of Israel's policies. The Israeli Law Center, which does advocacy work for victims of Palestinian terror, runs week-long "missions" which plunge paying guests into Israel's "security reality." "We're pro-Israel, and we want to bring people in to see the hardcore stuff," said the center's director, Avi Leitner. "We show how military crossings and checkpoints work and we don't apologize. People have a great time." When Breaking the Silence introduced Israelis to Hossam al-Azzeh at his Hebron home, however, few have a great time. He shows his visitors a video of Jewish settlers stoning Palestinian schoolgirls while soldiers stand idly by. "Many Israelis are shocked," he said. "I have seen some start to cry."