CPTnet
May 25, 2004
HEBRON UPDATE: May 12-18, 2004

Wednesday May 12, 2004
No curfew

In the morning, Israeli soldiers at the Beit Romano checkpoint stopped
Kristin Anderson and Diane Janzen and demanded to see their IDs. Later in
the day, Anderson and Janzen observed other Israeli soldiers preventing
Palestinians from walking over the Highway 35 overpass that connects Halhoul
to Hebron.

Thursday May 13, 2004
No curfew

Maia Williams and Kathie Uhler made CSD (Campaign For Secure Dwellings)
visits to four families in Beit Ummar.

Friday May 14, 2004
No curfew

Joanne Lingle phoned a friend who lives in Idna. She told Lingle that the
Israeli Army closed the village for several days and had been entering daily
to search homes. Recently, the woman reported, soldiers had detained thirty
young men from the village and held them for questioning.

Mary and Tony Lawrence, returning from Bab iZaweyya, encountered Israeli
soldiers detaining a young Palestinian woman and her mother at the Beit
Romano checkpoint. The soldiers had taken their IDs and wanted the young
woman to go into the newly installed circular cement guardhouse so that a
female soldier might search her underneath her coat. but the woman refused.

 By the time Lingle and Janzen arrived at the checkpoint to replace the
Lawrences, the women were gone, so Lingle and Janzen walked on towards Bab
iZaweyya. After they went a short distance, they encountered the recently
detained young woman and her sister. They complained that the Israeli
soldiers still had the IDs. The CPTers walked back to the checkpoint with
the two women, whereupon the female soldier returned their ID cards.

Saturday May 15, 200
No curfew

Jerry Levin met a delegation from Eastern Mennonite University at the Hebron
municipality and began to lead them on a tour of the Old City. As they
started walking toward the Old City, a procession of about forty Palestinian
nonviolent protesters (some carrying signs and banners) walked past them,
headed south toward Bab iZaweyya. The demonstrators were commemorating the
56th anniversary of the "Naqba," (the "Catastrophe), the forced exiling of
750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 war.

As the protestors walked quietly past the municipality, two small Israeli
jeep-like army personnel carriers sped down Ein Sara Street in order to
catch up with the procession from behind. When the jeeps caught up, about
six soldiers burst out of the two army vehicles and began dispersing the
procession. They first charged the procession pointing their guns, stun
grenades, and tear gas launchers at the marchers, and then charging into the
crowd of jeering yelling onlookers, who were crowded along both sides of the
street.

After about fifteen minutes the soldiers succeeded in ending the
demonstration, got back into their jeeps, and sped back up Ein Sara Street.
About twenty fist sized stones, thrown by onlookers, hit the army vehicles
as they roared away. But the soldiers did not stop.

Sunday May 10, 2004
No curfew

Uhler returned from a week in Beit Ummar where she made eleven CSD visits.

Monday May 17, 2004
No curfew

Williams, Anderson, and Janzen joined TCAS (The Center for Agricultural
Services) to observe to the completion of a re-terracing project on some
Palestinian land in the Jalaja region adjacent to Route 60. The farmer
living there told them that Israeli settlers on horseback often made
repeated attacks on his fields to destroy his crops and terraces. Members of
TCAS told the CPTers that settlers have successfully forced a halt to some
of their projects in other parts of the valley.

Tuesday May 18, 2004
No curfew

Early in the afternoon Levin, Williams, and Uhler and three CPT guests on
their way to pick up a CPT translator received word that she would be
delayed. She was at the police station in the Ibrahimi Mosque special
security zone trying to get her thirteen-year old nephew released from
detention. Over a cellphone she told the CPTers that a couple of hours
earlier Israeli police spotted him on the roof of his home with binoculars.

When the CPT group joined the translator at the police station, she told
them that her nephew had only been bird watching; but the Israeli soldier
who saw him with the binoculars, she said, accused the boy of watching them.
The police released him later in the afternoon at 4:30.

Levin and Chris Brown, conducting a tour, started through gates leading from
Shuhada Street into the Old City. They encountered an Israeli soldier
shouting at a Palestinian youth whom they had forced to squat on the ground.
After being asked for an explanation, the soldier said the youth shouted at
him, "saying bad things." But only a few yards away from where the soldier
had been berating the Palestinian youth, a smirking Israeli youth was
strumming a guitar and singing Hebrew songs at the top of his lungs. When
Brown and Levin pointed to the loud singing Israeli and asked, "why aren't
you stopping him," the soldier in response simply laughed.

Then the soldier asked if the people Levin and Brown were showing around
were journalists, Levin said, "No. They are peacemakers. Are you a
peacemaker?" The soldier replied, "Only God can bring peace, but I am a
peacemaker."

I