CPTnet
18 October 2006

HEBRON UPDATE: 8-14 October 2006

On team during this period were Jan Benvie, Donna Hicks, Barbara Martens,
Abigail Ozanne, Kathie Uhler, and Jerry Levin

Sunday 8 October 2006

The Israeli army closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in anticipation of the many
Jewish visitors expected to come and celebrate the Succoth holiday.

Barbara Martens and Abigail Ozanne on early morning patrol encountered two
soldiers in Shuhada Street. One, smiling, said he wanted Ozanne's CPT cap.
To get it, Ozanne said, he would have to quit the army. Then the other
soldier said, "This is what I do! I kill Arabs! I f--- Arabs!"

As the morning ended, a Palestinian associate reported that settlers had
broken into three shops bordering the Bab iBaladeyyeh (Beit Romano)
checkpoint. They had smashed their way in through the back walls of the
stores. He also reported that Israelis have been sneaking into and operating
a stone quarry at night, located near the village of Dahariya. He said that
the invasions constitute illegal land confiscation and have been reported to
Israeli police. He added that if the authorities do not act, the affected
Palestinians plan to take their complaint to Israel's high court.

In the afternoon, Israeli Border Police imposed a limited curfew in a small
area outside the Israeli controlled area of Hebron (H2) leading from the
Dubboya Street checkpoint to a tomb sacred to Orthodox Jews about a half
mile away inside the Palestinian-administered area of Hebron (H1.) The
curfew accommodated Israelis heading there for an annual gravesite
observance. A Border Police officer, getting in Ozanne's, face yelled that
the CPTers should move back. As Israelis, escorted by Border Police and
Israeli soldiers, passed through the checkpoint into H1, some waved at
bystanders as they paraded up the street. However, one settler woman danced
about and made rude gestures towards the Palestinians watching the
procession go by. Israeli soldiers had to disperse a small rock throwing
protest by taunting young Palestinian men that broke out as the last of the
settlers were passing through the checkpoint back into H2.

Monday 9 October 2006

The Ibrahimi Mosque was again closed to Palestinians due to the annual
Succoth observance.

Tuesday 10 October 2006

During afternoon patrol, Jan Benvie and Ozanne observed soldiers detaining
nine young Palestinian men at the Yatta Road. A soldier told Benvie that
what they were seeing was simply a routine ID check. About a half hour
later, the soldiers had detained five more young Palestinians and ordered
them to stand facing the wall with the others. Ozanne recognized one man as
a Palestinian-American from Minnesota who has been visiting his family, and
spoke to him as well as the others. A Border Police officer told Ozanne
that she should not talk to the detainees. In addition, he said that the
men had only been detained for about twenty minutes, but some of detainees
claimed they had been waiting for an hour and a half. About fifteen minutes
later, the soldiers released all of them.

Wednesday 11 October 2006

Jerry Levin and Ozanne, on morning patrol, learned that contrary to
expectations, the Ibrahimi Mosque was open even though Succoth was still
underway.

In the afternoon, Benvie and Levin encountered a contingent of Israeli
soldiers detaining about twenty to thirty mainly young Palestinian men
against a near the Ibrahimi Mosque. While the detention continued, some
visitors in the mosque parking area snapped pictures of the incident.

Benvie and Levin, continuing their patrol, walked up Shuhada Street toward
the Dubboya Street checkpoint. As they passed by the Beit Hadassah
settlement, they were pushed, kicked, and shoved by four sneering pre-teen
settler children. Several adults, including an Israeli soldier silently
looked on.

Thursday 12 October 2006

In the early afternoon, Ozanne, Levin, a photographer friend and a
translator, hearing reports of new road building activity in the Wadi
al-Ghroos area, went to investigate. At the junction of the road leading
out of the Wadi to the main road, they discovered several Israeli army
vehicles guarding some flatbed trucks unloading four-meter-high by
one-meter-wide concrete barriers. A soldier standing guard said the
barriers' final destination was the rear of a Border Police Barracks located
at the side of the Wadi al Ghroos access road. The soldier added that the
Palestinians who owned the land had given permission for the building the
road. But when the CPTers walked to the road in order to follow it to the
installation site, the Palestinian on whose land the road had been built
told them he had not given permission and that the road which runs by his
house was now separating his home from his field and reducing the field
considerably. As they neared the construction site, a Border Police officer
told the CPTers that they could not go any further, warning, "You will be
too near the barracks and someone there might shoot you." Then he explained
that the concrete barrier was being installed in front of the barracks'
windows so "No one can shoot in." But when asked if anyone had ever tried
to shoot through the windows, the soldier shrugged.

Eventually the CPTers got a closer look but were not allowed to take
pictures. Then they visited some nearby Palestinian women and children who
had been watching the encounter. An older woman complained angrily about
the dust that the trucks and military vehicles had been stirring up as they
rumbled by the house. She said it was making her and the children sick.
Recently, she said, she asked one of the soldiers in a jeep to not drive by
so fast, because it endangered the children "What was the soldier's answer?"
the CPTers asked her. The woman replied, "He didn't answer; he
accelerated."

The CPTers asked the women about living conditions in the area. The worst
part of it, they said, was the closure of the roads leading to Palestinian
homes. A young mother holding her twenty-day old baby said that when she
was in labor the previous month, the authorities would not allow an
ambulance to pick her up or even allow a Palestinian car to drive her out.
She was in such great pain that she could not walk, so her husband carried
her a half-mile to a point beyond the roadblocks where they were able to
find transportation to the hospital. She gave birth in the car. Also, a
year and a half earlier, before the birth of her first child, the road