CPTnet
November 2, 2000
HEBRON UPDATE: October 23-27, 2000

Monday, October 23
Anita Fast and a British journalist visited one of the team's
Campaign for Secure Dwellings (CSD) translators who reported
that even when the curfew has been lifted in Hebron over the last
week, Palestinians have not been permitted to go to the Il
Ibrahimi mosque to pray.

A friend of the team said that on Saturday night, two bullets hit
her house, a neighbor's house had suffered greater damage and
that her mother was very scared. (See forthcoming release, "God
Protect Us.")

Dianne Roe returned from a visit to some CSD families in Beit
Ummar, a village north of Hebron. The village was still in shock
from the death of Beit Ummar resident Ibrahim Al Alamiya. An
IDF soldier shot him in the back of the head when he failed to
stop at a newly installed checkpoint between Beit Ummar and
Halhul on his way home from work in Hebron. Al-Alamiya was a
cousin to two of CPT's CSD partners.

While Roe was visiting, they received word that another man had
been shot at the checkpoint between Hebron and Halhul (which
lies between Beit Ummar and Hebron.) A few hours later, family
members with whom Roe was visiting came in and said that
someone in a passing car had shot a Beit Ummar man, Ali Al-
Aweida. He was driven to Jordan for treatment and may lose his
leg. Some who witnessed the event said settlers had shot him,
but others said that only IDF soldiers used the type of explosive
bullet that shattered Al- Aweida's leg.

The team heard heavy gunfire into the neighborhood of Abu
Sneineh in the evening.

Tuesday, October 24
Bob Holmes stopped to chat with a soldier about the current
situation. While they were talking, the soldier grabbed one of
two young Palestinian boys walking past, searched him and
produced a slingshot. The soldier began marching the boy and
his friend away and Holmes asked why he was taking the
second boy. The soldier searched the second boy, and finding
no weapon, let him go. The soldier then began marching the boy
who had the slingshot toward the settlement of Avraham Avinu.
Holmes followed and was warned that he would be arrested if he
continued to follow. The soldier took the boy behind a van and
Holmes heard him cry out. Holmes went around the other side of
the van and took a picture of the boy crouching away from the
soldiers. After the soldiers told him to leave, Holmes said he
would stay to make sure the boy was not harmed. The soldiers
walked the boy into the Avraham Avinu settlement and two other
soldiers prevented Holmes from following.

Later in the day, Holmes visited a family whose father had been
shot the previous night when the Israeli military opened fire on
the Abu Sneineh neighborhood. The house had about 20 large
pockmarks in it and half a dozen bullet holes in the windows.
The shots had been fired from a high powered machine gun
mounted on a tank at the Osama Bin Munqeth school (See
October 16 update) nearly 2 kilometers away.

When the shooting started, the family was gathered in the
kitchen at the back of the house and a bullet came through a
window, wall, the refrigerator and another wall. The father left the
kitchen to answer the phone in the living room. When the phone
continued to ring, the family investigated and found him with his
head blown apart. His son was called to come from next door
and ten shots were fired as he ran across the driveway to help.
His own bedroom had just been hit with three bullets
while he and his wife had been drinking coffee there.

Neither home faces the settlements and no one was shooting
from this location. (See October 31 release, "A Spiral of
Violence.")

Wednesday, October 25
Roe and Rich Meyer visited Tarik Sharif, one of the CSD
translators whose brother was shot while walking home two
weeks previously. His brother had just had three more bullet
fragments removed from his back. He has 23 more fragments
yet to be removed. (See forthcoming release, "Use My Name,
Mom.")

Thursday, October 26
Since curfew was lifted, Hebron cartographer Abdel Hadi
Hantash stopped in to give an update of events in the Hebron
District. Israelis from an agricultural settlement inside Israel
proper, with the aid of Israeli soldiers, attacked the people of Beit
Awa while they harvested olives. Israeli soldiers and civilians
made a similar attack on Beit Miersam, another village near the
green line. He reminded the team that one year ago he had said
there would be another Intifada if Israel continued confiscating
land. He had also said at that time there would be guns used
as well as rocks in the new Intifada, because of the anger
people in Hebron are feeling toward the international community
and the United States in particular. Hantash told the team to be
very careful when out walking in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

Holmes accompanied a British journalist to Al-Ahli hospital so
that she could get pictures of wounds caused by fragmentation
bullets. he doctors showed her pictures of wounds, some fatal,
caused by rubber-coated bullets and x-rays of people with
fragments of exploding bullets inside them--some of which
cannot be removed. They visited two patients who had been
shot and then went to film Tarik Sharif's brother and hear his
story.

Fast spent the night at a friend's house. Around midnight she
began hearing loud gunfire and did not know where the bullets
were coming from. She later found out that the bullets and
missiles were being fired from the soldier's camp in Tel Rumeida
toward the neighborhood of Hart iSheik (See forthcoming
release, "God Protect Us.")

Friday, October 27
Holmes visited a leader of Fatah in Hart iSheik and saw the fifty
bullets that had come through his windows the previous evening.
There are rumors in Hebron that the Israeli military is deliberately
targeting members of Fatah, Yasser Arafat's party, since the
man who was killed in Abu Sneineh on the 24th and the taxi
driver who was killed on October 21st were both associated with
Fatah.