CPTnet
July 1, 2002
HEBRON: Homes, school damaged by Muqata explosions

By Kathy Kamphoefner and Jim Satterwhite

On Friday night, June 28, after a five-day siege, the Israeli army set off
two large explosions that demolished the Muqata, the headquarters of the
Palestinian administration and police in Hebron. Israeli military
bulldozers leveled the remains on Saturday, June 29.

On Saturday morning, CPTers Diana Epp-Fransen, Kathy Kamphoefner, Jerry
Levin, and Jim Satterwhite visited several homes and a school next to the
Muqata to see what damage the siege had caused in the surrounding
neighborhoods.

Residents reported the explosions, one around 1100 pm and one at 315 am,
blew open all the windows in their houses. Each home the CPTers visited
had at least one windowpane broken in each set of windows. Several
families also were without water and electricity during the siege.

Levin and Satterwhite visited several apartments adjacent to the south side
of the Muqata belonging to the extended
family of Fannoun Al-Tamimi. All of the apartments visited had sustained
extensive damage. In some cases, the blasts had ripped off outside
shutters and hurled window frames into the rooms along with the window
glass.

The home of Zuhair Fannoun Al-Tamimi suffered more damage. Bookcases were
knocked over and books lay strewn throughout the room. In addition to
shattering windows, the explosions had also blown open the doors to the
living room cabinets and warped them so they wouldn't reclose.

Epp-Fransen and Kamphoefner visited homes and a school on the east side of
the Muqata. One old-style Arab house with three-foot thick walls and domed
ceilings belonged to the Majdi Sharabati family. When CPTers told Majdi
they had come to report on the damage, he asked, "The physical damage or
the psychological damage?"

In his new aluminum windows, all the shutters were blown off track and one
was bent badly. The explosion had cracked all the inside supporting walls
from the ceiling downward. The worst of the cracks ended above a doorway
between the two front rooms of the house.

On Friday night, one of the five children, five-year-old Odi, was sleeping
on the floor of his parents' bedroom when flying window glass cut his
forehead. The glass also tore the bedroom curtains. Majdi said none of the
family had slept for the four days of heaviest shooting. "Where can I
sleep?" He said. "I can't sleep--not from the noise, but from worry. What's
next? What will happen to my children? The whole house can be destroyed.
That doesn't matter, but what about my
children?"

The explosions blew open every window in the house belonging to Abdel Hafez
Zaru. One of their walls also had a new crack running about six feet across
it. The grandmother, Im Majid, said, "Tell Sharon and Arafat, enough is
enough. God forbids this. They have banished peace, but we want peace. Stop
raining violence on the people. That's enough bloodshed on both sides. No
more." Her son told the CPTers she wanted to join the CPT Hebron team, but
she is too old.

The last house Epp-Fransen and Kamphoefner visited belonged to the family
of Ya'oub Shakir Sharabati, who have five children. The house had recently
installed new windows and screens with aluminum frames. Every one was blown
out, frames and all. Some of the screens and draperies were also torn.
Ya'oub's brother was visiting the family from Abu Dhabi and and said he
wished he could return as soon as possible. "This is all politics and
business," he said. "And for us, it's been a very dirty game for thirty
years. Poor people always pay the price for the politicians."

The two CPT women then visited the Tayser Abdelhafez Maswadeh Basic School
for Girls, built by donations from the Japanese government, which directly
faced the Muqata. Every window in the entire building, both inside and
outside, was blown out, frames and all, and lay in the center of the
library, science lab, and all the other classrooms. [See ww.clubphoto.com
for photos. Login as "cpt."]