CPTnet
2 September 2006
HEBRON UPDATE: 8-16 August 2006
Tuesday 8 August
As Tracy Hughes and Dianne Roe left the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT)
apartment, they conversed with four soldiers resting beside the concrete
blockade that cuts the area off from Shuhada Street. Two of the soldiers
were from the north of Israel. Roe told them she has been in contact with
many of her friends in the north. One of the soldiers then told them he was
from Afula and his house got hit by a Hezbollah rocket. Roe told them that
some Palestinians in Hebron have offered shelter to people in the north,
whether they are Muslims, Christians, Druze or Jews. Another soldier said,
"If he offers shelter to a Jew, other Palestinians will kill him." Roe and
Hughes said that was not true and told of the visits between Jews and
Palestinians in Tel Rumeida. The soldier then said that the visitors
weren't "real Jews."
Michael Del Ponte and Hughes completed evening street patrol. Walking east
along the main souq (market), they encountered a team of six soldiers and
began to film and follow them as they walked up a flight of stairs toward a
home. The soldiers continued onto a rooftop military post. Not long after
this encounter Del Ponte and Hughes ran into the soldiers again in the souq
and exchanged greetings.
Wednesday 9 August
John Lynes observed an Israeli soldier roughly handling Palestinian youth at
the Duboyya Street cabin checkpoint. The soldier desisted on Lynes'
approach and released the Palestinians when he spotted TIPH (international
observers) in the distance.
Thursday 10 August
Christina Gibb, Lynes and Roe visited the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee
(HRC) to hand over pictures of a building near Beit Hadassah settlement
enclave. CPTers have observed settler activity there indicating a possible
Israeli settler takeover of the building.
Lynes led a tour group along Haret Jaber ("Worshippers' Way") and up to Tel
Rumeida.
Friday 11 August
Christina Gibb and John Lynes patrolled near the Ibrahimi Mosque before noon
prayers. As Roe was walking in the Old City, children told her that
soldiers had occupied a nearby building. (See 12 August release "CPTers
monitoring home invasion detained for five hours.")
Saturday 12 August
Roe, Gibb, an Italian filmmaker, and an interpreter went to Wadi Ghrous to
visit the Zalloum family. They talked with family members near the ruins of
two homes demolished ten years ago and met the newest member of the Zalloum
family who was born on the tenth anniversary of the demolition. The family
now lives in an extension of an uncle's house. Roe and Gibb noticed how
recent events such as the Iraq war, the killings in Gaza, and the massacres
in Lebanon have affected the children, especially in their views about the
US. The children are very angry with "Amreeka."
Hughes and Lynes did Shabbat patrol along Haret iJaber.
Sunday, 13 August
In the evening several bus loads of Israelis gathered at the Jewish cemetery
near Tel Rumeida to commemorate the 1929 massacre during which sixty-nine
Jews were killed. Lynes joined other international observers in Tel
Rumeida.
Gibb and Roe went to dinner at the home of the director of a local woman's
center. Dima, the daughter of the center director, spoke of prisoners'
hardships. Dima's husband has been in Israeli administrative detention for
a year. He had never held his son, whose first birthday was the following
week, and who was taking his first steps as the CPTers were visiting.
Monday, 14 August
Roe, accompanied by Lynes, waited several hours outside the Kiryat Arba
police station before police allowed her inside to recover the video camera
that police had seized the previous Friday evening. The investigator, on
the instructions of a senior police officer, did not return the cassette.
The officer told Lynes, "You are lucky I didn't charge you with obstructing
a military operation." The investigator told Roe that the case is not yet
closed.
Roe called Umm Tamer, a long time friend in the village of Beit Ummar. Umm
Tamer told her that the Israeli army had closed off access roads to Beit
Ummar and further restricted farmers whose lands border the Karme Tsur and
Gush Etzion Israeli settlements. She also said that every night the Israeli
army conducts home invasions and arrests young men from the village. She
was worried that her husband's son--who was due to be released from prison
Thursday--would have his detention extended. She said a soldier told one of
her neighbors, "We will do to you what we did in Lebanon."
Tuesday 15 August
Italian documentary makers interviewed Gibb, Lynes and Roe, and went on a
tour with Lynes.
Wednesday 16 August
Roe again called Umm Tamer, her friend in Beit Ummar, who told her that the
military had extended the imprisonment of their son another six months.
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