CPTnet
9 March 2009
AT-TUWANI RELEASE: Israeli court releases CPTers arrested for accompanying Palestinian landowners


At 2:30 pm, on Monday, 9 March, a Jerusalem court released two Christian Peacemaker Teams members (CPTers) whom Israeli police arrested while the CPTers accompanied nineteen Palestinians trying to access their land near the Bedouin village of Um al-Kheir.  The CPTers were charged with trespass and obstruction of construction work, despite the fact that they were at least ten meters away from the work zone and the Palestinian landowners had invited them to their lands.

Israeli police arrested the CPTers on Sunday, 8 March, at 11:30 a.m., when Palestinian landowners from Um al-Kheir asserted their right to visit their land.  The villagers observed workers using road-building equipment on Palestinian-owned land near the adjacent Israeli settlement of Karmel.  When the Palestinians and CPTers approached the work area, an Israeli settlement security guard began to shout, demanding that they leave.  When they remained on their land, the guard contacted the Israeli army and police.  At 12:00 p.m., Israeli police detained the Palestinians at the scene for forty-five minutes.  They arrested the CPTers and transported them to Kiryat Arba Police Station outside Hebron. 

Neither the army nor police asked the Palestinians for papers to ascertain the true ownership of the land.  Um al-Kheir villagers report that the work they observed is expanding Karmel settlement and stealing their land and livelihood.