CPTnet
January 15, 2005

HEBRON UPDATE: 22 December 2004-31 December 2004

22 December 2004
 Members of CPT fasted in solidarity with the Middle East Council of
Churches' "Day of Peace" observance.

23 December 2004

Jerry Levin gave a tour to a group from the U.S that included members of the
Bruderhof community through the Old City. He tried to get permission at a
guardhouse to walk the group up Shuhada Street and then back into the Old
City via the Beit Romano checkpoint. But the soldier on duty, who phoned a
superior for orders, told Levin the group could not proceed. Not only that,
the soldier said that he had been told to tell the group that they could
not return to the Old City via the route they had come.

24 December 2004
Dianne Roe, Kathie Uhler, and John Lynes journeyed to Sis and Jerry Levin's
home in Bethlehem for dinner and to attend early evening church services.

25 December 2004
Uhler, Roe, Lynes, the Levins attended Christmas morning services in
Jerusalem's Old City. Then, while having midday Christmas Dinner at CPTers
Paul Pierce and Kathy Kamphoefner's house in East Jerusalem (who also are in
charge of the American Friends Service Committee's Jerusalem office)
they learned that the Israeli authorities had arrested Mordechai Vanunu the
night before. He had attempted to attend a Christmas carol sing at the
Nativity Church in Bethlehem. After phoning him at St. George's Anglican
Cathedral, where he has been given sanctuary, and finding out that he was
okay, the group decided to visit him there and conduct the carol sing he
missed the night before. This event was the first time Mordechai, who joined
in heartily, had participated in a carol sing.

 28 December 2004 Israeli police pulled over the bus in which Tom Fox
shortly after it left Damascus Gate. Soldiers scrutinized the IDs and
travel documents of all adult male Palestinians. The process took an hour
and fifteen minutes. About fifteen of the Palestinians were found to be in
violation of Israel's travel ban into Jerusalem it has imposed on West Bank
Palestinians.

29 December 2004
Levin took a group from Bethlehem to the Beqa'a Valley, then to At-Tuwani,
and finally to Hebron. Lynes hosted three separate groups two from the U. S.
and one from France. Carpenter showed a delegation from Operation Dove (an
Italian Christian group accompanying schoolchildren in At Tuwani along with
CPT) Hebron and then guided them to At-Tuwani.

30 December 2004
Lynes and Fox set out for Jayyous to participate in a demonstration at the
"annexation" wall the next day. Roe and Uhler attended the "Women Sum Up
2004" event in Tel Aviv. While there, they connected with Sara, the mother
of Israeli citizen Tali Fahima, who is being held in an Israeli prison for
shielding a man in the Jenin refugee camp who leads a militant group, the Al
Aqsa Brigade. Israel has assassinated most of the other militants in the
camp.

 31 December 2004 Lynes and Fox took part in a nonviolent demonstration that
had been organized to protest the latest confiscation of Palestinian
farmland by the Israeli settlement of Zufein. The land lies on the Israeli
side of the "annexation" wall. At least fifty Israeli soldiers, arrayed
against the demonstrators, allowed only three Israeli peace activists (who
earlier in the day had planted olive trees to replace those destroyed by
settlers) to physically link up with one Palestinian farmer at an opening in
the wall. The rest of the demonstrators on both sides of the wall could only
look on.

Roe and Uhler attended a photography exhibit, titled "Hebron, My Home" in
Tel Aviv coordinated by Agence France Presse.Teenagers from both Israeli
settler and Palestinian communities in Hebron's Old City had taken the
photos.