CPTnet
September 3, 2002
BEIT UMMAR UPDATE: July 13-August 3, 2002

Saturday, July 13
Dianne Roe and JoAnne Lingle left Hebron to restart a two-month presence in
Beit Ummar. Their taxi had to turn back at the bridge between Hebron and
Halhoul because of shooting from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Back in
Hebron, the CPTers found a taxi willing to go a roundabout way through
several Palestinian villages and roadblocks to get them to Beit Ummar. The
trip, which used to take less than ten minutes took over an hour.

Sunday, July 14
Four members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) staying in Beit
Ummar went to Jerusalem with CPTers Roe and Lingle. Because they
couldn't travel on the Israeli bypass road they had to take four taxis,
walking part of the way through fields and dirt roads.

On the way home, the CPTers were unable to get a service taxi (public taxi)
and had to hire a private taxi, which was able to travel on the bypass
road. At the settlement, Gush Etzion, junction (just north of Beit Ummar),
soldiers asked Roe and Lingle where they were going. When told they were
going to Beit Ummar, the soldiers said they could pass; however, at the
next checkpoint of al Arub Refugee Camp, the soldiers told the taxi driver
that he would have to turn around and that only Israelis could go beyond
that point. The CPTers went through the fields and got another taxi to Beit
Ummar.

Tuesday, July 16
Shortly after CPTers Greg Rollins and Jerry Levin from the Hebron team
arrived for a visit, IDF soldiers began shooting in the village center. An
electrician from the Beit Ummar Municipality called
to say the soldiers had shot out the transformer and were also shooting
rooftop water tanks. He asked CPTers to meet him while he repaired the
transformer.

The CPTers heard from a friend that Sunday night about thirty-two young men
(mostly from the same family) were rounded up from their homes along the
Israeli bypass road #60. Soldiers kept them in a cage-like structure until
3 AM, told them they would be tear-gassed if they made one sound and
threatened to detain other family members.

Wednesday, July 17
Six men from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) came to visit the
CPTers. They said they had rented a house in Beit Ummar and plan to have a
presence there for four two six weeks.
Israeli gun fire began at 1130PM and lasted several hours.

Thursday, July 18
At 515PM, Lingle and Roe witnessed four to five IDF soldiers, followed
by a jeep, shooting while walking up the main street that enters the center
of Beit Ummar.

ISMers, who were in the village center, called and said they saw two
Palestinians shot by the soldiers.
One ISMer and a Palestinian man accompanied an ambulance to Hebron with the
injured.

Friday, July 19
At 12AM, IDF soldiers began shooting. An Israeli tank entered the village
at 1AM. Soldiers stayed in a Palestinian home for more than two hours but
did not make any arrests.

A friend delivered her first child, a baby boy, during the shooting. She
had hoped to get to a hospital but was unable to do so. A midwife helped
with the
delivery. However, because there was profuse bleeding, the family called a
doctor.

Saturday, July 20
CPT Jim Satterwhite came from Hebron. Satterwhite and Lingle went with a
translator to Al Arub Refugee Camp to visit the uncle of a former student
of Satterwhite's. They also visited the family of an 18-year-old
Palestinian whom a soldier shot in the head and the lip on May 28th with a
rubber-coated steel bullet. The youth was returning from school when he
said the soldier told him to stop. However, when he did so, the soldier
still shot him. Since it was not possible for an ambulance to come on the
Israeli bypass road, the injured youth had to be taken by car on back roads
to Beit Anoun, outside Hebron, where an ambulance met them and took him to
a hospital in Hebron.

After leaving Al Arub refugee camp at 530PM, Lingle and the translator
heard shooting from the soldiers' post at the Beit Ummar junction. At 7PM
more shooting
came from the soldiers' post.

Monday, July 22
Roe and Lingle were visiting with a family on the outskirts of the village
when they saw armoured personnel carriers entering the village from the
south at about 315 PM. They learned shortly afterward that the Israeli
military had declared curfew, and had rounded up men in the center of the
village, including relatives of the family they were visiting, in the
mosque. Roe walked to the village to investigate, while Lingle
remained with the family, who feared that the soldiers would come for them.

As Roe entered the village center, curfew was lifted and she joined members
of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) while they inquired about a
young man who was not released with the others. Four hours later, they
received word that he had been released.

Tuesday, July 23
Roe and Lingle met with Beit Ummar farmers at the municipality. When
farmers tried to go to their fields near the settlement of
Karme Tzur, Israeli soldiers and armed settlers told them to leave(See
August 9 Urgent Action: Allow
Palestinian Farmers to get to their Land.)

Later Roe and Lingle met at the home of Abu Jabr Asslebi. Abu Jabr showed
them documents confirming his ownership of an eleven dunam (three acre)
parcel of land between the Palestinian villages of Halhoul and Beit Ummar.
All of his plum harvest, which would have been about a ton, fell from the
trees and rotted on the ground because soldiers and settlers would not
allow him access to his land. He expressed fear that his failure to work
on his land will mean that the settlement of Karme Tzur will annex it
permanently.

Because soldiers were shooting in the village, center around 715PM, Lingle
and Roe returned to their apartment via a back way.
Wednesday, July 24
Lingle accompanied a Palestinian family to Maqqsad Hospital in Jerusalem
for their baby's surgery.

Roe met with lawyer Manal Hazzan, Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Hebron
District Land Defense Committee, Beit Ummar Mayor Rashid Awad and farmers
to discuss the farmers' land. Attorney Hazzan of The Association for Civil
Rights in Israel (ACRI) told farmers to monitor the Israel army's actions,
get license plate numbers, etc. The ACRI will represent the farmers in
cases against the Israeli military.

Thursday, July 25
CPTer Satterwhite and Lingle met with a representative of the U.S.
Consulate in East Jer