CPTnet
October 28, 2000
HEBRON: God, protect us
By Anita Fast

[Hebron team members have now spent three nights in neighborhoods
targeted for attack by the Israeli military. More details in the next
Update.]

I had been asleep for several hours when I was
sharply awoken by gunfire. This was not the
first time in the past month that I had been
startled by the sounds of heavy weaponry, but
this time I knew a fear that I had not known
before. My heart beat quickly, my breath was
short and quick. I listened with a new
intensity to the origin and destination of the
bullets. I prepared myself for the windows to
shatter or part of the wall to suddenly
explode. I could hear the young woman
sleeping beside me gasping and muttering in
arabic, "sleep, sleep, go to sleep."

I was not sleeping in the CPT apartment, with
soldiers on the rooftops around us, that
night. I no longer had the relative safety of
living in an area where I could be confident
that at least the majority of the bullets, and
definitely the most dangerous ammunition, were
headed in the opposite direction. I was
sleeping at my friend, Nisreen's, who lives in
the hills surrounding the Israeli-controlled
part of Hebron, and whose neighborhood has
been a target for Israeli bullets and
missiles. Just that evening, Nisreen and her
younger brother showed me the bullet holes in
their door and walls from a barrage of gunfire
several nights earlier. And as I listened to
the sharp crack of live fire and the deep,
breathy push of air as missiles cut through
the darkness, I didn't know whether, this
time, I would be their victim. And I felt
acute terror with all the other Palestinians
who lay huddled in bed wondering the same
thing.

Nisreen's mother came into the room, anxious
and frightened. She looked out the window and
said something in Arabic. Nisreen told me
that the Israeli soldiers were shooting into
Hart iSheikh, a neighborhood on a hillside
opposite from their home. The noise was so
close and so loud because the soldiers were
firing from Tel Rumeida, an Israeli-controlled
hilltop nearby. My breathing relaxed slightly
and I felt a guilty relief. Someone else's
home was getting bombed that night. Someone
else was having their windows shattered and
their walls raked with bullets. Another
missile streaked across the sky, and an
explosion, louder than any I had ever heard,
split the night. Nisreen caught her breath,
let out an almost inaudible cry, and
whispered, "God, protect the children."

God, protect us all.