CPTnet
22 May 2006

HEBRON UPDATE: 13-19 May 2006

Team members during this period were Dave Corcoran, Angela Davis, Cassandra
Dixon, Christina Gibb, John Lynes.

Saturday 13 May

During morning school patrol a few Israeli children threw stones at
Palestinian children, but the confrontation was not prolonged.

Christina Gibb and John Lynes walked the length of Haret Jaber
("Worshippers' Way.") Some soldiers thanked them for being present.
Settlers' reactions ranged from hostility to tolerant disagreement.

During noon school patrol near the Gutnick Center checkpoint two Israeli
boys clashed with about twenty Palestinian boys returning from school. One
of the Israelis hit one of the Palestinians and a fight ensued. Lynes tried
to intervene. A Palestinian boy grabbed his cane. Soon the Border Police
restored calm.

Dave Corcoran and Cassandra Dixon went to a demonstration against the wall
in A-Ram organized by Gush Shalom. Police used tear gas to turn the
demonstrators away when they reached the wall.

Sunday 14 May

Morning and noon school patrols were uneventful.

Monday 15 May

Gibb and Dixon went with Rich Meyer to visit a team translator in Beit
Ummar. He had trained as a flight controller, but had worked at Gaza
Airport for only a short time before the Israelis closed it down. Since then
he had farmed the family land, some of which was now under threat of
expropriation.

Next they visited a Palestinian truck driver and his wife, a teacher, just
north of Al-Aroub. The driver had a leg injury two years previously and
would soon have further surgery to remove the metal pin. The family still
experiences harassment from settlers, but said they no longer feel their
house was in danger of demolition, despite a previous order to that effect.
Her sons have had trouble with soldiers at the checkpoint on the way to
school.

Tuesday 16 May

An elderly friend of the team visited the CPT apartment and reported that
his two sons were still in prison. They received Twenty-two-month sentences
and had now served about ten months. He had not been allowed to visit them.
He needed to pay a fine for them and wanted someone from CPT to accompany
him when he had the money.

During the morning Dixon and Gibb, accompanied by a translator, met with the
principal of a local girls' school. She said that the current enrollment
was 219, down from over 300 several years ago. Some parents have arranged
for their girls to go to other schools so they will not have to go through
the checkpoints, but some have also transferred in to the school for the
same reason, depending on where the family lives. The school's teachers
have received no payment for nearly three months.

Lynes joined a bus tour group organized by "Breaking the Silence," for
descendants of Jewish families who lived in Hebron before 1929. ("Breaking
the Silence" is a group of Israeli veterans who have served in Hebron and
now tell fellow-Israelis how settlers and soldiers have been behaving).
First they visited Qurtuba School, meeting the principal. Next they visited
Israeli settlements at Tel Rumeida, Beit Hadassah and Beit Romano,
surrounded by police and military. They encountered vocal disagreement from
settlers--all recorded by watching journalists and photographers. The group
then entered the old vegetable market, now occupied by settlers and normally
inaccessible to CPTers. They finished at the synagogue at the Cave of
Machpelah/Ibrahimi Mosque for worship.

Thursday 18 May

During the morning Israeli military threw a percussion grenade into a
Palestinian home in the Old City. It landed close to a sleeping woman and
her child, but no one was injured.

During the afternoon Davis and Lynes entered Tel Rumeida to see part of the
original city wall. Israeli children threw stones at the CPTers.

Friday 19 May

Lynes and Davis went on patrol to observe the treatment of Palestinian
worshippers leaving the Ibrahimi Mosque after noon prayers. As in the
previous week, the Israeli military detained up to fifty men returning home
from the Mosque.

Gibb went to Ramallah for the Open House at Ramallah Quaker Meeting to
celebrate the opening of the Friends International Peace Center there.