Monday, February 22
CPTers worshipped in the "Tent for Lent" in downtown Hebron. The team will
continue setting up the tent twice weekly through Easter Sunday.

CPTers, Doug Pritchard and Dianne Roe visited Waheed Zalloum.
Zalloum's home, demolished in 1996 after CPTers sat on the roof, has been the
site of several CPT arrests. Pouring tea for his visitors he said, "My
children have no hope that Israelis and Palestinians can ever understand each
other. How can I prove to my children that there may be peace one day?"

He added, "A few months ago an Israeli jeep came here again and we said we
wanted to rebuild and they said, 'If you do, we'll destroy it.'" When the
CPTers told him about the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
work, he
responded, "God addressed all peoples in the Holy Books. God did not create
racism. The Koran says we are to love all people. You are very good people
when you come to visit us like this. I pray God will bring true peace all
over the world."

As CPTers prepared to leave, Zalloum said, "When I see you smiling faces
here, that is enough. Even if you don't find any space in our houses, you
will find more than enough space in our hearts."

While CPTer Art Gish was patrolling near the mosque, several Israeli settler
boys stopped him and called him a Nazi. He asked why they called him a Nazi.
They responded that he was a Nazi, that they would kill him, and that he
should leave. He said, "But Hebron is for everyone." They said, "No, Hebron
is only for Jews."

Just before sunset, a large group of yeshiva (Jewish seminary) students
marched, sang and danced up the street, carrying a
Torah scroll from the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs and
Matriarchs) to Beit Romano, the yeshiva being constructed in Hebron on top of
what was formerly a Palestinian elementary school. Gish and Michael Goode
watched from some distance as police and soldiers
monitored the march, part of Purim celebrations, but did not note any
disturbances.

Tuesday, February 23
CPTers honored Land Defense Committee
cartographer Abdel Hadi Hantash with a dinner at noon.

Gish, Pritchard, Goode, and Pierre Shantz went with Atta and Fayez Jabber to
the Al-Atrash family to help make their tent more habitable at night.

Wednesday, February 24
Gish and Pritchard transferred 10,000 pounds of sand from one pile to another
with buckets for a project at the
Yussef Al-Atrash home all day. Zuhoor and the girls made stuffed spinach
pastries for the CPTers, who were joined later by Joanne "Jake" Kaufman and
some international visitors. F-15 and F-16 fighter jets flew overhead all
day.

Abdel Hadi Hantash dropped by to inform the team that Jordanian land mines
have been found in Surif village. Israel is using the land mines as an excuse
for closing off more land. He asked if CPT knows of organizations that could
clear land mines.

Thursday, February 25
Hantash reported that Israeli settlers threatened Palestinian farmers trying
to work in their fields west of the settlement of Karme Tzur north of Hebron.
The Palestinians and Israelis clashed.

Two people, one of them a journalist, were arrested one km from the settlement
of Ma'on in the southern part of the Hebron District, as they tried to
document the bulldozing of land. Israeli settlers began to put caravans, or
house trailers, on the land confiscated from Palestinians.

Hantash said that on Wednesday four Palestinians were arrested near Tarkumia
in the west of Hebron District for trying to plant olive trees on their land
which Israeli soldiers claim is state "land."

Friday, February 26
At noon the Hebron Solidarity Committee held a one hour protest at the
Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs and
Matriarchs. The date was chosen to mark the fifth anniversary of the
Goldstein massacre in which 29 praying Palestinians were murdered.

The protesters carried signs and gave statements that called for the end of
the Israeli Occupation and the removal of the settlers from Hebron. CPTers
maintained a presence at the demonstration in order to be ready to intervene
in the case that violence broke out (see CPTnet release: Hebron Solidarity
Committee: A Different Pilgrimage).