CPTnet

15 December 2011
AL-KHALIL(HEBRON): Israeli military and intelligence officers stop Old City shop renovations

On 12-13 December 2011, three armed officers in plain clothes from an Israeli intelligence organization, accompanied by a squadron of Israeli soldiers, forced workers to stop renovations in approximately thirteen Palestinian shops near the entrance of Hebron's Old City.

The men in plain clothes started by inspecting the construction work going on in the shops near Bab il Baledeyya.  They asked questions of the owners, checking in particular the structures that had belonged to the Jewish community in Hebron prior to 1929. (For background click here.)  

When CPTers called an employee of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) on 12 December to tell him that the inspections were occurring, he asked them to get good photos of the plainclothes officers faces.  They later learned that the officers belonged to an intelligence branch based in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, and were probably there at the behest of the Israeli settlers in Hebron, whom CPTers have observed examining the renovation work on weekly Saturday tours in the Old City. 

A shopkeeper  who participates in B’tselem video project and was filming the inspection on 13 December told CPTers that that the settlers wanted the construction work to stop and particularly did not want HRC to do any renovation; they want to do it themselves “after they take them over or buy them.”  At the end of the inspection on 13 December, the soldiers ordered the newly re-opened shops and those in the process of renovation closed.  Many of the people present expressed a great deal of distress when they learned of the closure, because they had been working on the renovations for a month.

The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee has written a letter to the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO), asking why it has stopped the work, given that shop owners do not need permission from the DCO to renovate their stores.

More photos of the shop inspections are available here. 

In related news, 13 December marked the day that the Palestinian flag was first raised at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, a United Nations organization committed to preserving landmarks of cultural heritage, among other things.