CPTnet
November 17, 2000
Hebron Update: November 8 - 11, 2000

Wednesday, November 8th - Day 39 of curfew in
Hebron

On her way to Bethlehem for an Arabic language
lesson, Kathleen Kern sat next to the cousin
of a 14 year old girl who was shot in the head
the previous Saturday. (See November 4 Update)
He told her the radio reported that George
Bush had won the presidential election in the
United States. He was excited to hear that she
had voted for Nader.

Bourke Kennedy and Dianne Roe saw a group of
Palestinians standing outside the Israeli
settlement of Beit Romano, looking very upset.
They found out that a group of three teenage
settlers had seized a 7 year old Palestinian
boy and taken him inside the settlement.
Soldiers went inside and brought the child
back to his grandparents and then scattered
the crowd

A group of six settler boys, about nine years
old, threw stones at apartments as they walked
up Shuhada Street on their way back from
school, and called the residents foul names.
When Andrew Getman reprimanded them, they
threw stones at him, too. Getman followed
them, taking pictures and spoke to nearby
soldiers about what was happening. They urged
the boys to move along.

A friend of the team, who lives near the
border between the H-1 (Palestinian-
controlled) and H-2 (Israeli controlled),
called the team to chat. She told them that
they must do something about the curfew in H-
2, because it was destroying families and the
economy.

One of the team's translators stopped in to
tell them that the curfew was again "over
until they [the Israelis] change their minds."
She also told them that Alia hospital had been
"bombed." The operating room was destroyed by
automatic weapon fire.

One of the upstairs neighbors told Kern that a
war would be preferable to life for
Palestinians now. "Better to die all at once
than one by one," the neighbour commented.

Roe and Kennedy spent the evening in Tel Aviv
with Bat Shalom, who are now focusing on
countering military violence against
Palestinian citizens of Israel.

There was a long period of automatic weapon
fire and heavy shelling in the evening.

Friday, November 10 - Day 41 of curfew in
Hebron

Curfew was imposed again on H-2 in the
morning. Kennedy, Getman and Kern went to Baab
iZawwiye, the center of Hebron, to find out
what had happened during the night. Many shops
and homes in Baab iZawwiye and the
neighborhood of Hart iSheik suffered heavy
damage. A friend at the al Andalus mall told
them that a high ranking officer in Fatah
(Yassar Arafat's political party) had been
assassinated in Beit Sahour the previous day
when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired into
his car. Two women who happened to be on the
sidewalk at the same time were also killed.

Kennedy and Kern went to visit Alia hospital
and saw a room on the fourth floor that had
been shot into by the Israeli military the
previous evening. There were bullet holes in
the windows and pock marks in the walls where
the fragments of the bullets had hit. The
bedside curtain was also full of holes from
the bullet fragments. A nurse introduced the
two women to the patient who had been in the
room at the time receiving treatment for
another injury. A bullet had hit him in the
shoulder as he lay in bed.

One of the team's translators came by to
accompany team members to Hart iSheik. In a
long conversation before they left, team
members discussed the current situation with
her and the possibilities of change. Kern
asked if it was meaningful to her when
Israelis went to jail rather than serve in the
army. She said "Yes it is very meaningful to
us." She then told the story about how she had
walked to Baab iZawwiye a few days earlier and
came to a clash point where young men were
throwing rocks and Israeli soldiers firing
sound grenades and rubber bullets. As she
turned to go, one of the soldiers shouted at
the young men in Arabic: "You stupid people!
Can't you see there are women trying to pass!"
The boys stopped throwing stones and the
soldier waved the women through. The
translator also expressed a desire for
"normal" Israeli and Palestinian women to meet
each other.

Kennedy and Getman went with the translator to
Hart iSheik and visited with people whose
houses had been damaged by gunfire the
previous night. They met a baker who told them
he was doing 10 percent of his normal business
because of the curfew and the closure. While
they were talking with him and a group of
nearby young Palestinian men, soldiers shot
into the area and a bullet hit a nearby wall.
The CPTers were encouraged to duck. As they
walked through the neighborhood, people pulled
them aside to observe the damage caused by
bullets and missiles to cars and houses.

Rich Meyer and Roe went to Kiryat Arba,
because they heard there were some immigrants
from Burma who made aliyah there and a Burmese
pastor from Jerusalem had expressed interest
in talking to them. The guard at Kiryat Arba
was calling around to find out where they
lived when a settler passed through in a pick
up truck and offered Roe and Meyer a lift to
the place. After they told the driver they
were living with Palestinians in Hebron,
everyone in the truck got very quiet.

They were dropped off at the house of a
settler from India in the Givat Ha Harsina
settlement. The Indian settler took them to
the Burmese family, and Roe called the Burmese
pastor on the portable phone and gave it to
the man, who talked with him for about 10
minutes. While they were talking, the settler
from India asked about CPT's work. He told
them, "The Palestinians may seem nice, but
there is no truth in them. You can be friends
for 10 years, and then at a party he will stab
you in the back." When Roe and Meyer offered
to introduce him to some nearby Palestinian
families, he politely declined.

As they walked down from Harsina into the
Baqa'a valley, they visited with some friends
there who are concerned that they no longer
hear from Israeli friends. One of them spoke
about the soldiers who have been protecting
their homes when settlers come to demonstrate
on the bypass road near their houses. One of
the officers accepted coffee and grapes from
the family and got into a conversation with
them. The Palestinian friend of CPT asked, <