CPTnet
2 October 2006

HEBRON UPDATE: 9-22 September 2006

Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members serving in Hebron during this period
included Cynthia Burnside, Christina Gibb, Donna Hicks, John Lynes, and Char
Smith

Saturday 9 September

John Lynes and Christina Gibb were on school patrol until after 8:00 a.m.,
because groups of boys had to head home after their school did not open due
to the general strike.

At 2:00 p.m., Gibb and Char Smith, along with a team translator, visited a
neighbor whose house faces Shuhada St. The only access to their home is
through an empty house nearby. From the second floor, access is by two
ladders to the neighboring rooftop, through a hole knocked in a concrete
wall, and then down the steep inside stairs, into the house. Until they
were able to knock the hole in the wall up on the roof, they had had to use
yet another ladder, and slide and scramble down the other side. One of the
women at home described how she had given birth to her son (now five) at
home, without doctor or midwife, at the height of the intifada, when they
were trapped there under curfew. Some of her family members were next-door,
but unable to get to her. A shooting had occurred nearby, and Israeli
settlers were rampaging in the street. Israeli soldiers had not allowed an
ambulance or doctor to come to her.

At 4:00 p.m., Gibb and Smith visited the family on Tel Rumeida, whose wall
the night before an Israeli settler had vandalized.

As they were leaving, they got a call from an international asking for
assistance in the area between the Dubboya Street checkpoint and the Israeli
settlement enclave of Beit Hadassah. Gibb and Smith went down the to the
street, where they saw a crowd of Israeli settlers and soldiers. They found
their colleague surrounded by soldiers and police halfway along the street.
When Gibb tried to "get in the way" between them, the soldiers pushed her
back roughly, and the police then walked the international down to Beit
Hadassah where their vehicles were parked. The soldiers would not say what
was happening.

Gibb and Smith walked on to the checkpoint, where a group of internationals
had gathered. They discovered the police had taken their colleague to the
Kiryat Arba police station. A coworker followed in a taxi. When Gibb
telephoned late in the evening, the two had just gotten home, after three
hours at the police station. They told Gibb that a settler woman had
attacked and kicked the international, and then filed a complaint that the
international had scratched her. Apparently, the settler has done this
before, so the police did not treat the accusation seriously.

Monday 11 September

Lynes and Burnside walked an uneventful school patrol and took three
internationals on a tour of the Old City, to Wadi Nasara, between the
Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, and then up to Tel Rumeida.

Tuesday 12 September

While on school patrol, Gibb, along with Smith, counted about eighty
children coming out of the Old City and crossing Shuhada Street to get to
their schools, compared with about 100 last school year when the teachers
were not striking.

Wednesday 13 September

Gibb, Burnside, and Smith visited Beit Ummar to deliver some photographs to
the municipality. They met with Mayor Farhan Alqam, just released after
fifteen days in jail. (See release of 26 September CPTnet release "BEIT
UMMAR: Mayor Farhan Alqam freed.")

At 10:00 p.m., a colleague telephoned to say that he had just heard that
soldiers were rounding men up near the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC)
offices. A few minutes later team members saw soldiers on a neighbor's
roof. Burnside, Gibb, Lynes, and Smith, together with a visitor, went out
to investigate. (See 16 September CPTnet release: "HEBRON: Nighttime
round-up Palestinian men.") The team monitored the situation until all the
men were released around 1:30 a.m.

Thursday 14 September

Gibb and Smith went out on school patrol, but found all schools shut and no
children or teachers on the streets. They found out later that the
Palestinian education authorities had implemented a new five-day school
week, with no school on Thursdays and Fridays.

A Peace Cycle team from Britain had planned to visit Hebron in the morning,
but soldiers delayed them for several hours at checkpoints on their way from
Bethlehem. They arrived late in the afternoon with time for only a brief
tour.

Friday 15 September 2006

Between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., Burnside and Smith monitored the
checkpoint below the Ibrahimi Mosque near the Gutnick Center. Soldiers held
seven to ten men for twenty-five minutes. When Burnside and Smith asked the
soldiers why they were still holding the men, the four soldiers quickly
gathered up the ID cards and let them go. One soldier asked Smith, "What
are you doing?" She told him, "I'm checking to see that the people are able
to go to the Mosque." They met a Palestinian woman with her grandson who
indicated that Israeli authorities had handcuffed his father and taken him
away.

Saturday 16 September 2006

During morning school patrol, Cynthia Burnside and Donna Hicks walked from
the Mosque gate down through the Tariq ibn Ziad Street junction where many
children were heading to their schools even though the teachers' strike was
still going on. Christina Gibb and Char Smith patrolled the road linking
the Gutnick Center to Shuhada Street where a group of ten Israeli settler
boys repeatedly spat at them, threw small stones, and taunted them. A stone
hit Smith on the hand. An Israeli soldier moved the boys on. At one
moment, some Palestinian boys came near the group. Gibb and Smith moved
between the two groups, and the soldier again moved the settlers away. The
patrol remained on the street until the boys coming out of Ibrahimi Boys'
School headed home when school was called off.

Around 5:00 p.m., Burnside, Gibb, Hicks, and a neighbor walked to the Wadi
Nasara where Israeli settlers from Kiryat Arba sometimes gather on Saturday
afternoons. On returning to the Old City, they met a group of Israeli
visitors touring with an Israeli military escort. When Hicks greeted a
young man with "Shabbat shalom," he made a rude gesture. Another visitor
tried to have a conversation with Burnside and the neighbor, but a soldier
prevented him from doing so.

Monday 18 September 2006

Around 11:00 a.m., Gibb took a telephone call from Al Fahya Girls School
asking that someone come to photograph the latest vandalism. Hicks and a
neighbor responded. Vandals had gotten in the m