CPTnet
May 10, 2004

HEBRON UPDATE: April 27-May 4, 2004

Tuesday, April 27
No Curfew

Chris Brown, Cal Carpenter and Jerry Levin went on school patrol. On the
way back to the apartment, a Palestinian boy in the market told the group
that the previous night Israeli settlers had been throwing stones down into
the market streets. He pointed to stones and a metal bar in the street that
they had thrown down from Avraham Avinu.

JoAnne Lingle saw soldiers detaining several Palestinian men at the Beit
Romano checkpoint at 11:00am. Two Palestinian journalists were taking
photographs. An Israeli soldier had taken the journalists ID's and was
yelling at them. The soldier threw one of their ID's in the dirt and said
"You are Palestinian, pick it up". He refused. The soldier then shouted,
"You are Palestinian, I will F--- you!"

 Lingle called Levin and TIPH as the situation escalated. The soldiers were
pushing the journalists and ordering them to stand against the wall. Six
more soldiers arrived. The soldiers ordered the CPTers to leave. They
refused. The soldiers forcibly removed the journalists' cameras. Finally, an
Israeli military commander arrived and talked to one of the journalists. He
returned their IDs and cameras and told them they could go.

Wednesday, April 28
No curfew

Carpenter traveled to Jerusalem for a meeting of the Peace Teams Forum and a
visit with the person in charge of monitoring settlements and the wall at
the U.S. Consulate.

Brown, Lingle and Levin traveled to Kafr 'Ein, a small Palestinian village
near Salfit. They arrived at noon and met with villagers and the mayor. At
10:00 pm they began keeping watch outside a home in the village that has
been repeatedly harassed by the Israeli army. The army is looking for a son
of the family who has not been in the village for two years. The night
before the CPTers arrived, the army searched the home and made the family
move all the furniture outside. CPTers kept watch from 10:00pm to 2:00am.
No Israeli soldiers came.

Thursday, April 29
No curfew

Carpenter, Uhler, and Maia Williams attended a meeting of OCHA (Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). The theme of the meeting was "The
humanitarian situation in Hebron for the last six months."

Uhler and Mary Lawrence traveled to Beit Ummar to document a home demolition
that had taken place in the morning. The home belonged to Ibrahim Alamiya, a
CSD partner. He had been building for ten years. About one hundred Israeli
soldiers came in the morning without warning and would not allow him to
remove anything from the home. Alamiya struggled with the soldiers and one
of them hit him on the eyebrow with the butt of a gun. Uhler and Lawrence
sat with Ibrahim and other men from the village who had come to offer
condolences.

Levin, Brown and Lingle spent the morning observing at a boys school in
Qarawat Beni Zaid, down the hill from Kafr 'Ein. Israeli soldiers frequently
come and harass the Palestinian children at this school. Soldiers have shot
and killed several children in the school yard.

During the night, Brown, Lingle and Levin stood watch in Kafr 'Ein again. At
2:45am, an Israeli military jeep came through the village. Brown and Levin
remained outside the home they were watching and Lingle remained inside with
the Palestinian family. The jeep returned and honked its horn several times
but did not stop.

Friday, April 30
No curfew

Brown and Lingle returned to Hebron from Kafr 'Ein. On the way to the CPT
apartment, they saw Israeli soldiers detaining a group of Palestinian men at
Beit Romano checkpoint. They called other CPTers to monitor the situation.

Williams, Carpenter and Lawrence arrived at Beit Romano and gave the
Palestinian men water and observed the detention. The men said that they had
already been detained for one and a half to two hours. The CPTers stayed for
about two hours until the last of the men was released. Soldiers had held
him for over three hours. He related that an Israel settler had killed his
sister settler and since that time the Israeli military authorities had
denied him permission to travel because they see him as a security threat.

Saturday, May 1
No curfew

Sunday, May 2
No curfew

Monday, May 3
No curfew

Brown and Carpenter went on school patrol with the French visitors from an
NGO (Non-governmental Organization) working in Nablus.

On the way to Bab iZaweyya, Carpenter and Brown saw some Palestinian men
detained at Beit Romano. The men said they had been there a half hour. When
Carpenter and Brown returned from shopping, they saw that soldiers had
released the men and that TIPH was monitoring the checkpoint.

Tuesday, May 4
No curfew

Levin and Uhler went to the Abdul Jawad's home in the Beqa'a valley and
noted that a Israeli soldiers' tent has been set up on top of the hill
behind Abdul Jawad's home. The Palestinian family said Israeli soldiers are
curtailing the movement of the families in the valley. When the men go to
work in their fields, soldiers come and tell them to go home.

Levin and Uhler also visited Omar Ashrab's home near Beit Hanoun to document
the new machsoum (dirt barrier) that blocked street access to his home. His
home is on the edge of the Harsina settlement and settlers have confiscated
some of his land for settlement expansion. Settlers built a new road on
Saturday, April 30, that links two roads inside the settlement fence and
cuts off connection with a road now on the outside (Palestinian side) of the
fence.

Lingle gave a tour of the Old City to two members of Operation Dove, an
Italian violence reduction group, who came to Hebron.