CPTnet
September 12, 2002
Beit Ummar Update: August 4 - 21, 2002

Sunday, August 4
As Dianne Roe and JoAnne Lingle approached Damascus Gate after church
services in East Jerusalem, they saw a disturbance and learned that a
Palestinian shot an Israeli security man who was sitting in a truck. Israeli
soldiers sprayed the area with gunfire, killing the Palestinian gunman, as
well as Palestinian bystander and wounding fourteen others in the crowd.

The CPTers then met with a friend from Ta'ayush, the Israeli-Palestinian
peace
group, and a woman from Global Exchange, discussing problems of Beit Ummar
farmers.

Monday, August 5
When the CPTers returned from Jerusalem, they learned the farmers were
meeting at the Beit Ummar Municipality with the Palestinian Minister of
Agriculture. The Minister told the farmers that he would be negotiating
with the Israeli Minister of Agriculture to facilitate the marketing of
their fruit and access to their fields.

CPTer Greg Rollins from the Hebron team called to say that he and CPTer Jim
Satterwhite were spending the night on the roof of a Palestinian home near
Al Mazen Hospital. The family had been told their house would be demolished
and they had one hour to remove their belongings. (The night passed without
incident; the house was not demolished.)

Tuesday, August 6
A nine-member Global Exchange delegation visited Beit Ummar. After lunch at
a restaurant in the village, a Palestinian told the delegation his family's
story of being refugees since 1948 from Iraq al Manchiya between Hebron and
Askelon. The Palestinian village where his family owned land was confiscated
by Israel and is now an Israeli city, Kiryat Gat.

In the evening, Roe and Lingle visited a friend who said that if Israelis
came in peace, they would be welcomed in Beit Ummar. He said, "I remember
when a large group from Gush Shalom (an Israeli peace group) came to visit.
They sat in the village by the mosque and we served them tea."

Wednesday, August 7
The CPTers met a five-member Italian delegation at the home of Mayor Rashid
Awad. Their village in Northern Italy will be "twinned" with Beit Ummar.
That same village will also be "twinned" with a village in Israel. The
partnership will include some service provisions from the Italian village to
the people of Beit Ummar.

Thursday, August 8
Roe, Lingle and a friend went to Halhoul, just south of Beit Ummar, to visit
a woman and her three daughters. The Israeli army assassinated her husband
and another man a few months ago. The widow said she is keeping busy working
with an organization that helps award scholarships to needy university
students.

Friday, August 9
CPTers hosted a seventeen-member delegation from the Society for Biblical
Studies at the home of a Palestinian family who lives in Beit Zata, a
northern neighborhood of Beit Ummar. The wife is an Israeli Jew married to
a Palestinian Muslim man; they have four children. Their house has a
demolition order and like other farmers, they have not had access to their
fields.

Saturday, August 10
A friend called and said soldiers had entered the village center, shooting
sometime after midnight.

Roe and Lingle went to Bethlehem to join a Palestinian-Israeli Rally in
Manager Square. When the CPTers arrived, they were told Israeli police on
horseback stopped 400 Israelis at the Bethlehem checkpoint, using water
cannons to beat the peace activists back.

After the rally, the CPTers headed to Jerusalem in a Palestinian taxi via
the only route permitted, a dangerous and winding back road through Wadi
Naar (the Valley of Fire.) Near Abu Dis, soldiers who were holding
Palestinians behind a gate forced the taxi to stop. When the CPTers tried to
intervene, the soldiers told them, "Get back behind the gate." They refused
and continued talking to the soldiers, asking for an explanation. A
Palestinian woman carrying a small child told the CPTers that her child was
sick and she had to go to the hospital. As the CPTers were pleading with
soldiers to be reasonable and to let them accompany the woman and her child,
they noticed Palestinians walking single file past the gate without soldiers
checking IDs or bags carried by the Palestinians.

Sunday, August 11
After church services in East Jerusalem, Dianne Roe and Lingle Lingle met
an Israeli friend at the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in West
Jerusalem. They talked about the possibility of Ta'ayush, an
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Organization, coming to Beit Ummar to accompany
the farmers to their fields during the grape harvest. They also met with
people from the Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (ICAHD.)

A friend visited the CPTers in Beit Ummar and told them that earlier in the
day someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the bypass road. Soldiers rounded
up many young Palestinian men and detained them for several hours but made
no arrests.

Monday, August 12
Roe and Lingle visited with the Beit Ummar mayor and his family in his home.
They talked with the mayor about Ta'ayush and gave him some material printed
in Arabic.

Tuesday, August 13
Lingle was invited by the Beit Ummar Municipality to visit schoolrooms that
are being rented in homes and other buildings due to overcrowding in the
elementary schools. The municipality is looking for an international partner
to help fund construction of classrooms.

Returning from a Jerusalem hospital where he took his young daughter for
X-rays, a friend said, " An Israeli soldier at the Gush Etzion junction was
very, very nice. He played with my daughter and gave her an ice cream cone."

In the evening, the CPTers met with an assistant of the P.A. Minister of
Agriculture. The CPTers told about their contact with Ta'ayush and asked him
to talk with people in Beit Ummar for a broad based invitation and welcome
for the organization.

Wednesday, August 14
Lingle and Roe went with a translator to meet the UNRWA Camp Services
Officer in Al Arub refugee camp, a short distance north of Beit Ummar. The
officer said there are 7000 refugees in Al Arub living on sixty acres with
no possibility of expansion. The families come from thirty-three different
Palestinian villages that were depopulated in 1948.

Thursday, August 15
On a visit with a neighbor, Lingle was asked, "Where is the Intifada? Israel
and America talk about the Intifada. There is no Intifada. Israeli tanks and
soldiers roll into Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem and Hebron, no one does
anything. The Isra