Sample Area Visit Report: Beqa'a Valley

The Beqa'a valley has experienced increased settler harassment lately. Settlers from Ha Harsina frequently set up their own roadblocks on by-pass road 60, stoning Palestinian cars that fail to turn around quickly enough. They start brush fires alongside the road, pull up Palestinian irrigation piping, and uproot plants. Last week, in the middle of the night, settlers came with some sort of machine and severed more than fifteen mature grape vines and pulled up newly transplanted tomato plants.

Two or three times a week settlers have thrown stones at Abdel Jawad Jaber's house, breaking windows, damaging the water tank, and terrifying the children. On Tuesday, May 29th, a particularly large number of settlers stoned the house from all sides, injuring four adult family members. Settlers then stoned the Red Crescent ambulance, preventing it from proceeding on the main road. It came as close to the house as possible on back roads, but the wounded Palestinians had to walk across several fields to reach it.

Because this family seems to be particularly targeted, CPTers have stayed overnight with the family on several occasions. Because of the recent total closure, it is no longer possible to take a taxi directly to the Beqa'a. Getting there these days requires a lot of walking and luck in catching rides.

North of the Jabers, in the Jabal Sultan area, a single settler named Nati has set up a satellite encampment. Settlers had attempted to occupy this area in 1999, but the Palestinian landowners, including a consortium of municipal employees who purchased the land for building housing, took the case to court. The high court determined that neither Palestinians nor Israelis should build on, cultivate, or in any way make use of that particular tract of land. Israeli police and military acknowledge that Nati's presence is illegal, but have done nothing to remove him. The landowners are again taking this case to court. It is due to be heard on Monday, June 10th.

Sample Family Visit Report

The Da'na Family

Three CPT Hebron Team members, three British visitors and a translator met with the Samih Da'na family. Hiba Da'na, Samih's wife, welcomed the group into the Da'na family apartment building. (The Samih Da'na's are willing to have their names in our reports.) It, along with the homes of Samih's father and three of his father's brothers, forms a family compound on the edge of Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement just northeast of the Old (inner) City of Hebron. Hiba outlined the family's difficulties that include daily harassments – stone throwing, name calling -- from the Kiryat Arba settlers and the intrusion of Israeli soldiers, who come frequently through their home en route to an army outpost on the top floor of the four-story building.

As the group was hearing this report, Hiba's two children – a boy of six years and a girl, three – ran in and told her that some soldiers were coming. Soon, fifteen Israeli soldiers entered Hiba's parlor and ordered all of us into one room while they searched her home. After approximately twenty minutes, Samih arrived but the soldiers prevented him from entering his own home. The soldiers stayed perhaps another twenty minutes and left after securing their outpost. Samih then joined the group and recounted many instances of serious activities on the part of both Israeli settlers and soldiers. A teenaged nephew of Samih showed the group a scar on his leg where someone from the settlement had shot him a year ago through a bedroom window.

Samih took the group around the family compound. About 100 family members live on what is now a very small area, following the confiscation of their lands by the Israeli government to build Kiryat Arba. Last year when the Israeli army built the settler road along the rear of the Da'na compound and set up a new fence, the soldiers proceeded to bulldoze and uproot the remainder of the Da'na orchard, some 600 fruit trees and grape vines. The family are now replanting as much as possible but their land has been cut from twenty-nine dunams (1 dunam = ¼ acre) to perhaps two.

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