[Note: the following release by Emily McNeill, who is interning with CPT's Hebron team this summer, has been edited for length.  The complete reflection is available at http://h2occupied.blogspot.com/2008/07/watching-their-flocks-by-night.html.

According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal.  Most settlement outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law.]

On Friday, 18 July 2008, Marius (another CPT intern) and I were on our way to Tel Arad, a Bedouin village in Israel that is not receiving any water from the Israeli government.  Just after we crossed into Israel, our ride, Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, got a call about an attack in the South Hebron Hills and we went to investigate.

Thirty settlers had arrived in cars at 9:30 that morning on a family's land near As-Samua  After attacking Mahmoud* and his family, the settlers took everything-the tent where the family lived next to their flocks, food, clothes, dishes, blankets.

Mahmoud had talked to a nearby soldier just after the attack.  The soldier told him the settlers were from Kiryat Arba and that he would call in police, but none ever came.  That afternoon, with Arik there to plead on Mahmoud's behalf, the result was not much better.  The soldiers and police listened to Mahmoud's testimony but asked how they could know a tent had even been there?  No destruction was left to photograph.  The police told Mahmoud to bring proof that he owned the land to the station on Sunday morning.  No one was hurt, a soldier told me, so we could go home.

But Marius, two ISM volunteers and I stayed with the family in case of another attack.  Arik had arranged for the Red Cross to bring a tent-which arrived just in time for us to erect it before sundown-mattresses, food, dishes, and toiletries.  Still, Khadija* told us as she pointed to her son's remaining T-shirt, they had lost many things the Red Cross had not replaced.

I sat up with Ahlam,* a sixteen-year-old daughter, until 2:00 a.m. while she watched the flock.  She stays out there three nights a week, never sleeping very much, and also goes to school in the village of As-Samua.  After she graduates, she hopes to study history at Hebron University.  Wrapped in Red Cross blankets, we sat on stones and looked at the lights of Esael, a settler outpost about a kilometre away.  "Are you afraid of the settlers?" she asked me.  I didn't know how to respond.  Slowly, in my broken Arabic, I said if we filmed them, maybe they wouldn't want to cause trouble.

I asked Ahlam if she had been there that morning when the settlers attacked.  She had, she told me, and ran for her life. It's normal for a few settlers to come and harass them, she said.  But she had never seen so many, and she thought at first they had come to kill her family.

Once again, I didn't know how to respond except to sigh, nod, and continue looking out at Esael.  For Mahmoud and Khadija's family, the past few days have made a hard life harder.  But for now, they are holding onto their land and their livelihood in an area where doing so is a powerful act of resistance.