CPTnet
24 August 2005

HEBRON UPDATE: 13-19 August 2005

Saturday, 13 August 2005

As part of a Shabbat patrol, Bill Baldwin, John Lynes and Rick Polhamus
walked along Haret Jaber (Worshippers' Way) out to Wadi Ghroos, looking at
homes the Israeli military had demolished over the past few years.

A shopkeeper in the Old City market told Polhamus about how hard things were
for the shopkeepers: "For two days I have had no customers. My three
children are going back to school. How can I pay for their school fees and
their clothes?"

Sunday, 14 August 2005

Lynes and Polhamus visited the Western Wall (the "Wailing Wall") in
Jerusalem. Security seemed tight because of the Jewish fast day of Tisha b'
Av--which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temples in
Jerusalem--and because of the planned evacuation of the Israeli settlers
from Gaza. Muslims under forty-five were forbidden to enter the Old City,
but everything seemed peaceful.

Monday, 15 August 2005 Polhamus questioned some soldiers about why they were
patrolling the Old City. One soldier responded that they were "keeping busy
to keep our commander off our back."

At the first gate to the Old City above Beit Romano, Polhamus helped unload
a truckload of two types of boxes from the International Red Cross for poor
families in Hebron. One type of box contained rice, lentils, peas, beans,
sunflower oil, coffee, tea and sugar. The other type of box contained tins
of chicken, beef, and tuna, macaroni, flour, olive oil, tahini, tomato paste
and soap. Later, CPTers saw Palestinian boys delivering similar boxes to
people in Tel Rumeida.

Dianne Roe, Christina Gibb, and Lynes visited CPT's former neighbors who had
moved out of the Old City about two years earlier. They now live on the
hillside between Tel Rumeida and Beit Hadassah settler enclaves. In the Old
City they had to strategize how to avoid military checkpoints. Now they must
watch out for settler violence.

Tuesday, 16 August 2005

Roe and Baldwin went to Tel Rumeida to visit the Abu Haikel family and had
no difficulty passing through checkpoints. Roe was especially interested in
the adult children, who are gifted artists. One son showed some portraits
he has completed recently. He told them that his father and grandfather
were also artists, working in stone.

Wednesday, 17 August 2005

Polhamus watched Israeli police taking fingerprints of Palestinians at the
Beit Romano checkpoint area. They told him they were doing so for a police
database of all male residents of the Old City.

JoAnne Lingle, Lynes, Gibb, and two friends from the U.S. visited a
Palestinian family next to Avraham Avinu Israeli settlement. The IDF had
closed the road in front of their building. Now the family has to walk a
long way and through a revolving gate in order to go to the market next
door. On the previous Thursday, Israeli police and soldiers came looking
for the sixteen-year old daughter. They accused her of yelling at a
soldier. The mother, alone at home with her two daughters, was afraid and
called her husband. When the husband arrived, he talked to the Israeli
police, who left without arresting the daughter.

Thursday, 18 August 2005

In the morning police continued to fingerprint Palestinians at the Beit
Romano checkpoint.

Settler children began to throw stones at Baldwin, Gibb and Lynes in Tel
Rumeida until an Israeli soldier forced them to stop.

Friday, 19 August 2005

Baldwin and Lynes patrolled in Tel Rumeida. They just missed a
confrontation between soldiers and settler children. The latter had been
throwing stones at visiting Israelis.

*******

During this period the Hebron Team included Bill Baldwin, Christina
Gibb, Jerry Levin, JoAnne Lingle, John Lynes, Rick Polhamus and Dianne Roe.