CPTnet
August 18, 2003
HEBRON UPDATE: July 30-August 13, 2003

Wednesday July 30, 2003
No curfew

JoAnne Lingle and Jerry Levin went to the Beqa'a Valley, where they met
with a Palestinian-American professor from Atlanta, Georgia, who had
invited CPT for lunch. They went to the family home overlooking the big
Israeli Army barracks alongside an Israelis-only road leading from Harsina
to Kiryat Arba. On the way up, he showed the CPTers the new settler fence,
which recently had been erected from the top of the ridge to within a few
hundred yards of Highway 60. An old gravel road next to the fence, now
graded and widened, is off-limits to Palestinian vehicles, blocking them
from easy direct access to other Palestinian areas.

Once there, the CPTers saw broken windows on the side of the house facing
the street. The work of settlers, the professor told them. He added that
soldiers never stopped the settlers from throwing stones. He also showed
how the family has replaced a glass partition leading from a sun room to
the interior of the house with a permanent plaster wall to keep out bullets.

Thursday July 31, 2003
  No curfew

Around midnight Greg Scott told soldiers banging on a nearby door that the
building was empty. The soldiers told Scott and, later, Sue Rhodes that a
light was on. Both told them that it had been on for more than a month.
Nevertheless, the soldiers smashed in the door, went inside and turned out
the light. In the morning, the owner came by and replaced the frame and the
door.
.
Friday August 1, 2003
  No curfew

Scott and Levin stationed themselves outside the Ibrahimi Mosque during
noontime prayers. While there, they encountered the Palestinian-American
professor whom Lingle and Levin visited Wednesday. He said that the border
police at first refused to let his father and him cross the special
security zone to where the Mosque is located. But the man said that when he
loudly complained to the officer in charge that he was an American citizen,
as well as a Palestinian, the officer escorted both men to the mosque.

At about 9:00 pm, Lingle and Rhodes met a soldier guarding the Beit Romano
checkpoint who asked them to talk to him. During the conversation he said
that weekend curfew had not been imposed in H2, and that he hoped it would
make things easier for the Palestinians.

Saturday August 2, 2003
No curfew

Four soldiers showed up at the bottom of the stairs leading to the CPT
apartment at about 9:15. One said that settlers told them that Palestinian
police were visiting CPT. Lingle expressed her amazement that the soldiers
would have been told such a story, since Palestinian Police have not been
allowed to operate anywhere in Hebron for more than a year. A soldier
suggested that the report was an "illusion," and he apologized for the
intrusion.

A joint CPT-Ta'ayush action to escort a Palestinian farmer to his vineyard
in the Beqa'a Valley so that he could spray his grapes was canceled. The
local Israeli Army official had permitted him to go to his fields, but said
later that he would withdraw the approval to spray if CPT or Ta'ayush
showed up. Later in the day a caller confirmed that the spraying did take
place, but time ran out, so the farmer was not able to finish the job.

Sunday August 3, 2003
No curfew

In the morning Rhodes and Lingle and the latest CPT delegation, led by
ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition), traveled north to see
portions of the wall the Israeli military is building in a section of the
West Bank. At the town of Mas'ha near Qalqiliya, which in turn is near
three Israeli settlements, they witnessed preparations by an Israeli
contractor to bulldoze though the property of a Palestinian farmer. As a
result, the home will be on the Israeli side of the fence. So, when the
wall is completed, the family will only be allowed to go to the other side
if and when it is able to secure a permit from the Israeli Army. Friends
from the West Bank will not be allowed to visit.

At 12:30, Scott was in the main street through the Old City's market when
soldiers suddenly appeared and told shop owners to close down immediately.
They did not give a reason for the sudden change. But one soldier said
quietly to Scott that he would explain later, if Scott would meet him that
evening at the Beit Romano checkpoint.

At 2:00 Scott went back to the market street to see if it was still closed.
It was. A soldier told him to go home. Instead Scott walked up to the
Ibrahimi Mosque to observe the closure there. At 3:00, soldiers let people
into the market again. At 8:30, at the Beit Romano checkpoint, Scott
learned from the soldier he had met earlier that the authorities had
ordered the shops to close so that an Israeli MK (Member of the Knesset)
could visit the former home of his grandfather, who, he said, had lived in
the Old City before World War I.

The soldier said the closure was not the right thing to do, but probably
was for the better for both settlers and Palestinians. He expressed his
personal frustration at the politicization of the fighting between Israelis
and Palestinians. He said the fighting was a social problem caused by
Israel, an evolving nation, colliding with a third world nation. He told
Scott that it is not CPT's job to bring peace to Hebron. That, he said, is
a job for Israelis and Palestinians.

Monday August 4, 2003
  No curfew

Six soldiers stopped two Palestinians near the CPT apartment for a couple
of minutes, while they closed down a shop across the street from the
apartment. The shop, they claimed, was too close to the fence separating
the Poultry Market street from Shuhada Street, which is used exclusively by
settlers.

Scott went up to the Jabal Johar neighborhood to photograph the latest
attempt by Kiryat Arba settlers to re-erect an encampment on the site of
the ambush of soldiers and armed settler security guards last November.
Scott saw one small mobile home and about ten people on the site.

Tuesday August 5, 2003
No curfew

At about 5:00, settler kids threw rocks through the fence below the CPT
apartment at some of the youths working in the poultry market. Six soldiers
came up quickly and shooed the settler kids away. Lingle and Levin
monitored.

  "See," the squad leader said to Levin, "we keep the peace. But it is not
easy. Hebron is a place of hate." Another soldier told Levin that he had
been in Hebron for si