CPTnet
1 May 2006

HEBRON UPDATE: 16-21 April 2006

Team members serving during this period were Art Arbour, Dave Corcoran,
David Janzen, John Lynes, Anne Montgomery, and Paul Rehm.

Sunday 16 April

Israeli soldiers were gearing up for an influx of visitors to Hebron for
Passover. The military closed the checkpoint turnstile by the Ibrahimi
Mosque was in both directions, and did not allow Palestinians were to emerge
onto Shuhada Street from Gate 4/5. Dave Corcoran, John Lynes and Paul Rehm
all reached Shuhada Street by different routes for morning school patrol.
The military eventually had no alternative but to let, reluctantly, the team
go home through Gate 4/5.

Monday 17 April

As on the previous day, the Israeli military tried to prevent CPTers from
entering Shuhada Street. Eventually Art Arbour and Lynes reached Shuhada
Street via Haret Jaber ("Worshippers' Way.") After the CPTers had finished
escorting children to school, Israeli soldiers predictably refused to let
them reenter the Casbah where the CPT apartment is located. Those at the
Mosque checkpoint directed them to Gate 4/5; those at Gate 4/5 directed them
to the Mosque checkpoint. This routine lasted a full hour before an officer
ordered the soldiers at Gate 4/5 to let the CPTers go home.

Meanwhile Corcoran, Rehm and an intern joined fifty other "internationals"
and Palestinians accompanying Palestinian farmers who were plowing their
fields below the settlement of Beit Ein, near Beit Ummar. Ta'ayush, the
Israeli peace group, organized the support. The Israelis and the farmers
were happy with the results; the farmers had not been able to plow their
fields for two or more years due to settler harassment.

Tuesday 18 April

In contrast to the previous day, school patrol passed without incident.

Lynes and Rehm patrolled in the area of Haret Jaber and Tel Rumeida. At
Rachel's Well, they encountered a couple of Jewish visitors in their
twenties and showed them "Abraham's Gate" in the Bronze Age wall of Tel
Rumeida. The group went to the Tel Rumeida settlement, where the two Jews
climbed to the roof of the settlement apartment.

Wednesday 19 April

During school patrol, a group of nine Israeli settler boys spat at Arbour
and Rehm in Al-Saleh Street, after which the boys broke into a Palestinian
house a few doors away. A confrontation with the owner ensued for a few
minutes and the oldest boy, about 15, ran toward Palestinian boys
approaching from the Mosque checkpoint. For once, the Israeli soldiers
reacted quickly, sending a jeep full of reinforcements within a minute.
Other soldiers ran from the checkpoint, preventing a clash and possible
injuries.

A teacher from the Ibrahimi Boys' School reported that the staff had not
received a salary since the end of February.

Lynes patrolled at Qurtuba School. On arrival, he found that the Israeli
military had prevented Ecumenical Accompaniers who normally patrolled at
Qurtuba from carrying out their duties that morning. Although the Qurtuba
patrol passed peacefully, the headmistress told Lynes of a girl who had
been terrified by a soldier pointing a gun at her head. She was afraid to
return home alone. Lynes agreed to escort her at noon.

At 11:00 a.m., Rehm and Corcoran attended a session at the Red Cross
headquarters for family, relatives and friends of the thousands of
Palestinian detainees imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, many without
charges. Some may not receive any visitors, and some are in "secret"
prisons. Families and friends shed many tears for their loved ones held and
tortured in Israeli prisons.

Arbour and Anne Montgomery traveled to Beit Ummar to meet a local family.
The family told them that Israeli soldiers had recently come into the
neighborhood every night, invading houses and arresting young men --forty in
the previous month. Every morning they stopped all the young students,
inspected their schoolbags, and forced the teen-age boys to lift their
shirts and empty their pockets. This humiliation happened twice a day, so
that "all the children are afraid, they have bad dreams and they can't
sleep." One son of the family had spent eighteen months in jail, had
returned to the University of Hebron for one semester, and had been
imprisoned again, without charge, for another six months. For the previous
two months his mother had not known where he was. She was upset because he
had "only the clothes on his back" when soldiers took him.

Road closures had seriously harmed the village economy. "No one could sell
a grape during the last four years," people told the team and families were
suffering greatly. Settlements have confiscated large amounts of land. The
neighbors of the family whom the team had visited will lose 100 dunams to a
new fence around the Israeli settlement of Karme Zur. Runoff from the
sewage lagoons of Gush Etzion, a settlement bloc, has polluted Palestinian
vineyards.

Thursday 20 April

At Qurtuba School settler youth attacked the Ecumenical Accompaniers with
stones, then pursued a member of the International Solidarity Movement
(ISM) who was videotaping them. Montgomery and an ISM woman attempted to
intervene, and also got hit with stones. No one was seriously injured.