On 2 June, two boys, residents of the Beit Hadassah settlement in Hebron’s Old City, ages 14 and 15, threw multiple stones at Palestinians walking in the market below. Some of the rocks were as large as 5 inches. One nine year old Palestinian boy was struck with two stones causing a head injury that splattered the sidewalk and storefront with blood.  An ambulance arrived to rush the boy to the hospital.

On Monday May 23, Israeli intelligence entered At-Tuwani, escorted by about fifteen soldiers. In the operation the Israeli military invaded a local leader's house, demanded that villagers stop their nonviolent resistance and threatened violent retaliation if the Palestinians persist asserting their rights to the land. Christian Peacemaker Teams has released a video about the 23 May incursion in At-Tuwani village by Israeli military and intelligence. Click here for full CPTnet story of the incident, published 27 May. 

On 10 May 2011, fourteen-year-old, A.* was returning to his home near Bab il Baladiye, the entrance to the Old City, with two friends.  Some younger boys were throwing rocks at the Bab il-Baladiye checkpoint and when soldiers emerged from behind the wall to deal with the stone throwers, they grabbed A. 

According to A., for the next six hours, he remained blindfolded in the soldier camp, wrists bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs.  One soldier kicked him and kept yelling at him to admit he had thrown stones, which A. steadfastly denied.  Around 3:00 in the morning, a soldier who spoke Arabic arrived, told the other soldiers that A. had NOT been among the boys throwing stones, and brought him to the Palestinian police station, where A.'s uncle worked.  He slept there until his mother came to pick him up at 7:00 a.m. the next morning.

 “Their independence is our Nakba,” proclaimed a banner seen by a Hebron CPTer on a day off in Bethlehem.  What Israel considers the beginning of their state in 1948 was the “Great Catastrophe” for the Palestinians.  The Nakba was the loss of more than 400 villages to the invading Israeli armed militias.  Palestinians fled to other parts of Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.  More than 750,000 lost their homes, set up camps, and waited for the day when under international law they would return to their homes.

At 4:30 p.m. on 27 May 2011, CPT received a call that settlers set fire to olive orchards on the Abu Haikel property in Tel Rumeida.  One of the Abu Haikel sons took the CPTers to the scene of the fire. As some of the trees were still smoldering, a Palestinian fireman from the Hebron Municipality continued to monitor the scene.  The fireman reported that soldiers had taken all of their new fire hoses and given them old hoses to use. Later, when the CPTers asked the soldiers to return the new equipment to the last remaining fireman, they did not respond.

At approximately 7:00 on 21 May 2011, CPTers heard an explosion and shortly afterwards received a call from a frantic shop owner who said a man had been hit near her shop.  When Esther Mae Hinshaw and Kathleen Kern arrived on the scene, they saw a man, semi-conscious, who had been hit in the head by a sound bomb (a grenade-like device used by the Israeli military for crowd control.  The sound it makes when detonated is so loud that people by instinct move away from the noise.)  As Kern followed calls urging her to come toward the entrance of the Old City, a sound bomb fell approximately six feet away from her, and closer to a young woman who became temporarily deaf and subsequently showed signs of shock.

When an Israeli soldier patrol came through shortly

On Monday, 23 May, Israeli intelligence entered At-Tuwani, escorted by about fifteen soldiers. In the operation the Israeli military invaded a local leader's house, demanded that villagers stop their nonviolent resistance, and threatened violent retaliation if the Palestinians persist asserting their rights to the land. 

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has released a video of Palestinian testimonies about the recent settler invasion of the village of Tuba. On 16 May, shortly before midnight, Israeli settlers invaded Tuba, damaged property, and stole and injured several sheep belonging to the Ali Awwad family. Click here for the CPTnet article posted 16 May. 

CORRECTION: The original CPTnet account of the incident erroneously indicated that two sheep had been killed by settlers. In fact, two of the sheep were so badly injured that the family had to slaughter them the next morning.

"I consider the presence of CPT really something great. They support the Palestinians and the nonviolent resistance," says CPT South Hebron Hills partner Hafez Hereini in the new video, "An Introduction to CPT Palestine." 

Produced, filmed and edited by journalist Catherine Rabenstine, the nine-minute film features CPT's Palestinian partners who nonviolently resist the Israeli military occupation in Hebron/Al Khalil and the South Hebron Hills. Rabenstine also interviews CPT Palestine members who describe their work and their partnership with Palestinians practicing "sumoud," or steadfastness, in raising their families, going to school and laboring daily in the face of enormous systematic violence imposed by the Israeli Occupation.

Twitter account users may now access updates from the CPT Palestine teams  in Hebron and At-Tuwani at @cptpalestine.