CPTnet
10 May 2006
HEBRON UPDATE: 22 April-5 May, 2006
Team members for this period were Art Arbour, Dave Corcoran, Christina Gibb,
John Lynes, Paul Rehm, Cassandra Dixon and Anne Montgomery.
Saturday, 22 April
About a dozen Israeli settler children ranging in age from eight to fifteen
started throwing stones at Palestinian children on their way to school along
Shuhada Street. When Art Arbour and Paul Rehm intervened, the children
threw stones at them too. Israeli soldiers came quickly, but had great
difficulty controlling the settler children. They eventually got them to
move on.
Arbour, Dave Corcoran, Christina Gibb, John Lynes and Rehm took part in a
demonstration in At-Tuwani against the proposed low wall along Route 317.
See 24 April CPTnet release, "Israelis and Palestinians arrested
demonstrating against planned security wall."
Lynes met a nineteen-person tour group from ICAHD (the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions) in the Bab i-Zawiyya, the commercial center of
Hebron. Israeli settlers threw sand on them from above as they walked below
the Beit Hadassah settlement towards the Old City.
Monday 24 April
Representatives from Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres)
visited the CPT apartment to introduce new staff.
Tuesday 25 April
Dave Corcoran and an intern visited the office of the Hebron Rehabilitation
Committee.
Staff asked CPTers to visit houses close to Haret Jaber ("Worshippers' Way")
which Israeli settlers had entered.
After Gibb and Lynes completed morning school patrol at Qurtuba School,
soldiers at Duboyya Street checkpoint retained their passports for over two
hours. One soldier told them, "We don't need to give a reason."
At noon, soldiers prevented women teachers from going around the Duboyya
Street checkpoint into H1--the section of Hebron once controlled by the
Palestinian Authority. Soldiers confiscated one teacher's ID. The others
stood firm for about an hour and refused to show their own papers. Finally
another patrol came and their officer negotiated. Soldiers returned the ID
and the other teachers presented their own ID's and were then allowed to go
around the cabin. The whole process was nonviolent and good-humored with
some joking between the soldiers and teachers.
Wednesday 26 April
After school patrol at Qurtuba School, Israeli settler boys in Shuhada
Street hit Lynes and Montgomery with stones.
Arbour and Montgomery attended a press conference at the Alternative
Information Center in Jerusalem where Montgomery and representatives from
other groups in Hebron spoke about recent Israeli settler attacks on
Palestinians and human rights workers. Representatives of about fifteen
media organizations heard them call upon Israeli police and military to
uphold the law and take steps to restrict settler violence.
Thursday 27 April
After school patrol at Qurtuba School, Israeli settler boys threw stones at
Arbour and Corcoran in Shuhada Street.
Gibb and Lynes visited houses close to Haret Jaber as the Hebron
Rehabilitation Committee had requested on Tuesday 25 April. They arranged
to sleep at one vulnerable house on a forthcoming Friday night when settlers
from the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba might cause trouble.
Friday 28 April
At midday, Gibb and Lynes went to observe the Ibrahimi Mosque and Gutnick
Centre checkpoints when people were going to and from the Mosque for Friday
prayers. The CPTers realized that on Fridays CPTers ought to patrol the
area between 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m.
Corcoran and Gibb visited a Palestinian family at Beit Ummar. Because the
unemployment level is high in the village (due to restrictions placed on
travel over the last few years) people have had to borrow money to make
ends meet. The Security Fence/Annexation Wall near the Gush Etzion
settlement will deprive the village of more farming land and subsequently,
income.
Saturday 29 April (Shabbat)
On school patrol in Shuhada Street, Dave Corcoran and Christina Gibb
encountered a group of Israeli settler boys kicking a Palestinian boy on his
way to school. Corcoran rushed over to protect the Palestinian boy. The
settler children spat on Corcoran and kicked him. They then attacked
another Palestinian school child. Corcoran again intervened. In the melee
he dropped his mobile phone. Settler boys immediately kicked it around
before stealing it.
Mairead McGuire, Nobel Peace Prize Winner from Ireland, (in Jerusalem for
two weeks to support Mordecai Vanunu) shared lunch with the team in their
apartment.
In the evening a party of Israeli tourists, heavily escorted by soldiers,
took a conducted tour through the Casbah. The soldiers removed and
detained several young Palestinians to make way for the Israelis. One
Palestinian mother saw the soldiers hit her twenty-one-year-old son and push
him against a wall. She asked Gibb and John Lynes to discover where they
had taken him. Shortly after the end of the tour, the soldiers released
him.
Monday 1 May 2006
Corcoran, Gibb, Lynes and an intern went to Um Salamuna, a south Bethlehem
village overlooked by an extension of the Israeli settlement of South Efrat.
They went with members of the village council to help a Palestinian farmer
tend his land. The farmer is about to lose 300 dunums because of the route
of the new Israeli Wall, despite a 1981 Supreme Court ruling that the land
belonged to him. He can no longer stay in his house at night because of
settler harassment. The visit was one of the first events planned by the
South Bethlehem villages to protect their land. World Council of Churches'
Ecumenical Accompaniers and representatives from the Holy Land Trust and
from an American Presbyterian tour group also took part.
Tuesday 2 May
Gibb and Lynes led a tour group of Canadian Mennonites north along Shuhada
Street. The Israeli military prevented them from passing through the
Duboyya Street checkpoint to reach their waiting bus. After an hour the
group arranged for their bus to pick them up at the summit of Tel Rumeida.
The military gave no reason for their prolonged refusal to let the Canadians
through.
Wednesday 3 May
Lynes and Corcoran attended a brainstorming day hosted by IWPS
(International Women's Peace Service) in Hares. Participants agreed on the
need for more focus on the media, and telling the world what is happening in
the West Bank now.
Thursday 4 May
Cassandra Dixon, Gibb and Lynes went to a meeting organized by TIPH (the
Temporary International Presence in Hebron, an official body of
international observers.) Other internationals working in Hebron also
attended. TIPH's gradual return to Hebron was warmly welcomed by the
Palestinians living there. Since many members of TIPH are Scandinavian,
Muslim youth made them a target of attack in February, after the
controversial Danish cartoons mocking Islam appeared in European papers.
Dixon and Lynes deliberately walked by the three story building, close to
the Avraham Avinu settlement, which Israeli settlers occupied in April 2006.
(See 12 April CPTnet release "Israeli settlers seize another Palestinian
building.") They saw journalists and signs of military and police activity
in anticipation of a court order for the eviction of the settlers.
Friday 5 May
In the afternoon the team watched the settler occupied three-story
building. Israeli police and military arrived in several buses, each with
twenty to thirty people. They set up barricades but did not appear to enter
the building. Settlers brought blankets and food and were allowed through
the barricades into the building at suppertime. Journalists were present
but no settlers left.
Gibb and Lynes stayed at night in an unfinished Palestinian home near Haret
Jaber. During the night settlers deliberately created a disturbance by
striking exterior metal doors and shutters, but they were not able to enter.
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