CPTnet
HEBRON: A REBUILDING, A BIRTHDAY, AND THE OCCUPATION
By Jamey Bouwmeester
April 21, 1999

On Saturday April 17th, Sara Reschly, Michael Goode, and I joined
Israeli, Palestinian and international activists in the fourth
consecutive weekend of rebuilding the home of Hassan Daoud south of
Hebron, whose house was demolished last August by the Israeli Army.
Our goal on that day was to finish the basic structure of the new
house by erecting a roof of corrugated steel over the cinder block
walls.

Throughout the morning a lone military jeep watched us from a distance
as we waited for a portable generator. When it arrived we began to
hand steel sheets up to two men from the Daoud family. They screwed
the sheets down onto steel girders to form a roof.

Almost as soon as work began more jeeps and more soldiers arrived on
the scene. Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions spoke to the officer who seemed to be in charge. The rest
of us simply kept working while about 20 soldiers looked on. By the
time the last sheet had been bolted down, there were six army jeeps
and two civilian police jeeps parked in front of the house, altogether
about 30 or 35 military personnel armed with M-16s. They seemed quite
unsure what to do about us. One or two of them seemed embarrassed by
the guns slung over their shoulders.

Some of the soldiers collected the passports and I.D.s of everyone
present. Two of the police officers began to take pictures of the
activists and the family members; they paid special attention to the
two men working on the roof. Michael, Sara, Jeff and I caucused
and decided that if any of the family members were arrested we would
find a way to accompany them, even if it meant being arrested
ourselves.

In a few minutes our passports were returned and we were ordered to
leave the area. We decided immediately that we would not leave until
the family members and other Palestinians were safely away. Jeff and
the other Israeli's present stalled while the family quietly made
it's way across the hills to the homes of neighbors. With our
Palestinian co-workers safely out of immediate danger, we climbed
into our vans and left.

On the way back to Jerusalem, we decided to pay a visit to the tent of
Atta and Rodeina Jabber, to celebrate their son Rajeh's first
birthday. The Jabbers had two houses demolished last year. The
police followed us from the site of the rebuilding and as we
disembarked one officer challenged Jeff in Hebrew. "We ordered you
to leave one demolished house and you drive right to another!" Jeff
was livid. "It's a BIRTHDAY PARTY!" he shouted back at the officer,
"A birthday party for an infant who?s had his house demolished twice.
See, here's the present I'm bringing him!" The officer was cowed by
Jeff's outburst and seemed ashamed, but continued to argue in order
to save face. Jeff turned to the group, ignoring him, and said,
"Come on, we don't need to waste time with these people."

We all walked to the tent where the Jabber family and their guests
were having cake and soda. The police stayed at the bottom of the
hill with our vans. Atta asked me why we hadn't invited them up to
the party. "Because they haven't learned to play nicely with others
yet," I replied. We didn't have to wait long for them to prove me
correct. While we sang and laughed in the tent, they fined our driver
NIS 210 ($50) because he stepped out of his van to speak with the
other driver without first turning off the engine.

Later in the evening, the CPT team returned to the tent, along with a
three person CPT RAB delegation to celebrate the birthday. We ate
Maq'lube (a traditional Palestinian meal) on the roof of the Jabber's
demolished house and watched the sun set beautifully over nearby
Harsina settlement.