CPTnet
28 November 2006

BEIT UMMAR: Who is in charge here?

On 13 November 2006, JoAnne Lingle and Sally Britton met with Farhan Alqam,
Mayor of Beit Ummar, an agricultural village near Hebron. He told them that
twice in two weeks soldiers awakened him at 1:00 a.m., blindfolded him and
drove him to an area where they ordered other families out of their houses.
The Mayor told the soldiers they were treating him like a spy.

The soldier replied, "Shut up. I have my orders. I do nothing but my
orders."

The soldier explained that stones had been thrown from the houses toward the
soldiers' guard post. When the Mayor asked why the father of two sons
killed for throwing stones would allow stone throwing from his house, the
soldier replied, "I saw it."

The Mayor replied, "Why then did you not go after them? Why did you wake me
up?" The soldier replied that the Mayor needed to stop the children from
throwing stones. The Mayor responded, "When you are killing our kids, you
can't stop stone throwing. I can speak to them, but they have their own
authority."

The soldier then told him he would give the residents of Beit Ummar two
choices, "I will arrest, hit, kill," or the kids could stop throwing stones.
Then he told the Mayor to "think about what I have told you."

The Mayor responded that the soldier should think about what he had told
him: "Don't come into our town, and they won't throw stones at you."

The soldier told the Mayor if the stone throwing continues, "I keep coming
in the middle of the night. No sleep; no work."

Lingle commented that one cannot wear the Palestinians down. The Mayor
smiled and said that giving up means death, and "no one likes to die."

He then told the CPTers about the new Route 60 under construction between
Gush Etzion and Halhoul. In Beit Ummar, the 160-meter wide road plus the
wall next to it will confiscate more than 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of
fertile land. Some farmers will lose all their land; and Palestinians will
not be permitted to travel on or cross it. The Mayor signed an objection on
12 November, saying, "The aim of the road is to destroy. There is no need
for the road."

"Even in our town, they don't allow us to live as we wish," the Mayor said.
He cited the wholesale market the Red Cross helped to reopen. The Israelis
closed the road to it with concrete blocks. The Mayor said, "What use is a
market without a road?" He said that bulldozers have even closed back ways
to the market, severing water and electrical lines. Once destroyed, Beit
Ummar workers may not repair the line without Israeli permission, which is
difficult to get. Water running onto Route 60 from the broken water pipe,
causes accidents. And even though the water is lost, Beit Ummar must pay
Israel for it."