CPTnet 9
October 2006

HEBRON UPDATE: 23-30 September 2006

Many Palestinian schools were participating in a "strict" strike until the
teachers were paid, so few students were going to school during the period
this update covers. They plan to stay at home until they hear through the
media that the teachers have received their back salaries.

On team during this period were Jan Benvie, Cynthia Burnside, Christina
Gibb, Donna Hicks, Barbara Martens, Abigail Ozanne, and Kathie Uhler.

Saturday 23 September

Cynthia Burnside, Christina Gibb, Donna Hicks, Barbara Martens, two visitors
and a neighbor went on school patrol at 7:00 a.m. The team had to go
through the stairwell and courtyards of a house because the Ibrahimi Mosque
and mosque gate was closed for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year
celebration. Only a few Palestinian students were on the streets. Israeli
soldiers would not let some Palestinian men go through the nearby Yatta Road
checkpoint, nor could they pass through the checkpoint at the foot of the
Ibrahimi Mosque across from the Gutnick Center. The team had to return to
the office via a circuitous route because the other ways were closed to
them.

Burnside, Hicks, Martens, a visitor, and a neighbor walked through the
neighborhood above the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) to the
cemetery above the road to the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba. On the way
back down, the team paused to observe a house on the street above the HRC
from which a new Israeli flag was. One of the team observed an Israeli
soldier looking out a window.

Sunday 24 September

Burnside, Hicks, Martens, and a friend of the team had to walk through the
Duboyya Street checkpoint, around the back of Qurtuba School, and down
Shuhada Street to reach the area where the team does school patrol, because
the mosque gate and the Ibrahimi Mosque were closed to the Palestinian
community again.

On returning to the Old City from H1, the Palestinian-controlled area of
Hebron, the team learned that an Israeli soldier had entered the Othman bin
Affan Mosque inside the Old City.

Monday 25 September

On school patrol, Hicks and a friend of the team noted that no teachers were
visible at Ibrahimi Boys' School, and that the gates to Al Fahya Girls'
School were locked. When Hicks joined the students outside the gates, an
adult was telling the students to go home. When Martens and Burnside were
walking along Shuhada Street, an Israeli settler riding a bicycle rode at
high speed directly towards them and at the last second veered away.

The CPTers met one of the team translators nearby who told them that Israeli
soldiers had searched her brother's house the night before. The soldiers
found some Islamist flags and had commented that if those were there, they
might find weapons some time in the future.

Around 1:00 p.m. near the teashop around the corner from the CPT apartment,
Burnside, Martens and a friend of the team observed two Israeli soldiers
with rifles pointed at a shopkeeper who had his cart in the middle of the
road. The soldiers stopped the gathering crowd from moving towards the Bab
iBaledeyya (Beit Romano checkpoint). The friend approached the soldiers
saying, "We are doing nothing wrong. We are not hurting you. Why are you
not letting us pass?" She kept moving forward and others followed behind
her. The soldiers moved backward. The crowd moved ahead ignoring the
soldiers' commands to stop or to step back. After a half hour, the crowd
and soldiers had reached the Bab iBaledeyya (Beit Romano checkpoint.)
Another contingent of soldiers was cordoning off the crowd wanting to go
into the Old City. No one was shouting. When some of the Palestinian youth
became more aggressive towards the soldiers, older men guided them away.
Suddenly, an Israeli soldier threw a percussion grenade towards the Old City
entrance. The crowd dispersed around 1:45 p.m.

Tuesday 26 September

Around 11:30 a.m. Hicks and Martens encountered Israeli soldiers in the Old
City. They were searching Palestinian men on their way to noon prayers,
creating a bottleneck coming into the Old City from the Bab iBaledeyyah.
Hicks called Burnside and asked her to bring a camera. Martens asked the
soldiers, "Why don't you simply allow these men to pass so that they can get
to their prayers in time? You would not like to be prevented from getting
to your prayers in the synagogue." The soldier did not respond. Soon,
another soldier told Burnside and a friend that the situation was "all your
fault." A soldier told Martens to move back. She agreed to do so if the
soldiers would allow the men to proceed without searching them. It took
about an hour for the searching to wind down and the crowd to thin out.

The squad moved through the Old City to the Natsheh Quarter, where they
locked themselves into three rooms of a house for several hours. Hicks,
Martens, a neighbor, and two press photographers found a mother and three
small children huddled on the steps in the courtyard. The soldiers had
entered the bedroom where a computer was. Martens pushed the top window
open from the stairs and took a picture before the soldiers locked the
window. The soldiers did not respond to repeated knocking on the window,
nor did they respond to knocking on the door. Two hours later, a family
member tried the door and found it unlocked. The family speculated that the
soldiers had quietly unlocked the door and used the key to exit via another
door. The family found a sofa set vertically up against the wall outside
which the soldiers had used as a ladder to get to the roofs and move on.

Hicks and a team translator visited the family whose home on the road above
the Hebron Rehabilitation Center had sported an Israeli flag over the
weekend. Seven Israeli military vehicles with twenty-five soldiers arrived
at the house on Friday afternoon while the mother and father were visiting a
daughter for dinner. Two daughters, three sons, and an eighty-year-old
blind grandmother were at home. The soldiers arrived with all the equipment
they would need to stay at the house and forced the family into the
grandmother's ground floor room. After the children called their parents to
come home, the family was able to leave Friday evening and go to the
daughter's home. They returned home around 9:00 p.m. Sunday after neighbors
phoned them to say the soldiers had left.

Wednesday 27 September

Around 11:00 a.m., Burnside, Hicks, a