CPTnet
February 25, 2003
HEBRON UPDATE: February 10-15, 2003

Monday, February 10, 2003
Art Gish spent the day visiting families in the Beqa'a Valley and walked on
the new settler road between Kiryat Arba and Harsina settlements. The new
road indicates that Israel has confiscated the land there.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003
The whole team spent the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice day visiting families in
the Beqa'a Valley. Gish observed Israeli soldiers preventing Palestinians
from walking on the new bypass road to visit relatives, even though the
military built the road on land confiscated from these families.

On the way home, the team came to a house in which a family of four adults
and twelve children had been locked in for the day. Soldiers had locked the
door with plastic handcuffs, and told the Palestinian family that the house
would be demolished if anyone broke the plastic lock. Soldiers released the
families at 5:30 p.m.

Wednesday, February 12, 3003
Barbara Martens, Rich Meyer, Sue Rhodes, and William Payne accompanied a
22-year old man to the hospital. He was limping and bleeding from a cut
above his eye after soldiers had beaten him. The team received three other
reports of soldiers beating Palestinians that day in the old city.

At 11:30 a.m. Martens and Meyer met a patrol of four Israeli soldiers, one
of whom was carrying a crowbar, and observed them forcing entrance to a six
unit apartment building in Harit iSheik. Martens and Meyer heard the noise
of breaking glass and other loud noises as the soldiers moved through the
apartment building.

Israeli soldiers prevented Chris Brown and Gish from leaving the Bethlehem
checkpoint to go to Jerusalem. Brown and Gish then walked through a field
to a Jerusalem street.

Thursday, February 13, 2003
Brown and Gish met with the staff of Sabeel in Jerusalem for worship. They
learned that one half of the Palestinians in the occupied territories are
now receiving food aid.

Friday, February 14, 2003,
A shopkeeper showed team members one house and nineteen shop doors in the
old city that had been welded shut by the Israeli military occupation
forces.

The team learned that the Israeli military used a bulldozer to push six
Palestinian cars over a cliff between Hebron and the Kiryat Arba settlement.

February 15, 2003, Saturday
Schools opened today after a five-day break for the Feast of Sacrifice. The
soldiers aggressively prevented the students from going to school. (see
February 17 release, "No School Today.") The military then closed the
Ibrahimi Boys' school.

Kristin Anderson, Meyer, Brown, and Gish saw two soldiers trying to scare
people off the streets in BabiZawia. Schoolgirls returning home from school
ran from the soldiers. As the soldiers walked past two schoolgirls, they
kicked rain water from the gutter onto the girls' faces.

Gish participated with about 3000 Israeli Jews and Arabs in a demonstration
in Tel Aviv opposing a war with Iraq.

February 16, 2003, Sunday
Children went to school with no interruption from soldiers.

The Israeli military demolished the Al Manara produce market for the second
time, using a bulldozer and a tank. Rhodes quickly helped prevent boxes of
cabbage from being crushed by the tank and bulldozer.

February 17, 2003, Monday
When Brown and Gish saw one of four soldiers aim his m-16 rifle at little
girls trying to go to school, Gish jumped in front of the gun and said,
"Aren't you ashamed of threatening little girls? Just let the girls go to
school." After about fifteen minutes of confrontation, the soldiers left
and the children went to school.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Day 96 of curfew

At 8:30 a.m., Gish saw a group of about fifty men standing in BabiZawia,
waiting to learn if Israeli soldiers would allow them to open their shops
today. The answer was no.