CPTnet
HEBRON: HEAVY IDF SHELLING: A One-Sided War
13 July 2001

Friday the Thirteenth opened with heavy shelling in Hebron, beginning at
12:00 midnight and lasting several hours. The first firing came from upper
hills, though it is not known who shot first. Sniper fire came from the
Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Sneineh. The Israel Defense
Force (IDF) fired continuous rounds of
mortars and gunfire, exacting a heavy price from Palestinian civilians in
the wake of the killing of a Kiryat Arba settler and wounding of another.

This morning, CPTers Kathy Kamphoefner and Jim Satterwhite visited the
areas which underwent the heaviest gunfire to document the damage. Several
houses in the el-Numra neighborhood were damaged by IDF gunfire, tank fire
and mortar bombs-- both by direct hits and by shrapnel. A tank came into
the H-1 [Palestinian-controlled] area from the Kiryat Arba settlement,
according to residents, and began firing at the Palestinian Authority's (PA)
border point about 1:00 am. Houses on both sides of the border marker
experienced heavy gunfire. The house just inside the PA-controlled area is
a double house, belonging to the families of Fawzey and Ruah Dana and,
Manaafiz and Ala' Dana, Nafez Dana and Wudu'a Manass Dana and family reside
in the adjoining house. The glass on the front of the building was
shattered in the blasts. Most of the beds in the house were strewn with
shattered glass. Shades and curtains showed bullet holes. Wudu'a was shot
in the waist and is in the hospital. The houses were without water, as
holes had been shot in the roof-top tanks. Electrical power to most of the
Hebron area was out today. The IDF had shot out an electrical transformer
in front of the houses. A fire truck arrived and sprayed water on the
transformer at 12:30 pm, as it was still burning. A truck in front of the
houses had been destroyed by an explosion.

In a pet shop belonging to Tala' Qawasmi, CPTers observed many bullet holes
and two aquariums had been destroyed, leaving fish to die on the floor.
Next door was a house just in front of the PA border marker, belonging to
Rubeen Zeyyad Sherif, housing 22 persons. Most of the windows on the front
of the three-story houses were destroyed by bomb blasts, which began about
3 am. Walls were pock-marked with from rifle fire. Glass shards were
everywhere. The family's water tanks were empty due to bullet holes.
In the neighborhood behind these houses, other families also experienced
considerable gunfire. In Noor Al-Jabari greeted the team members by
holding up a 4-inch shell, and saying, "Made in the USA." Al-Jabari said no
one in the house had slept last night.

Kamphoefner and Satterwhite next visited families in the Harit Is-Sheikh
neighborhood right above the center of town. The scene was similar, where
a tank had fired on the homes in the vicinity of the PA border check-point,
inside H-1. Eid Qawasmi reported his house and nine family
members received gunfire from Tel Rumeida on the opposite hill. Shooting
in this area began at 12 midnight.

Further up the hill, mortar fire left large holes in the two-room house for
9 persons belonging to Osmi Adel Mahmoud Abdel-Khader. Abdel-Khader's car
was shot several times and its rear windshield was shattered.

In the one-room house belonging to Jahad Abdel-Rahman Abu-Zir, his wife and
seven children, the front windows were broken out and bullet holes were
found in the walls. Two twin baby girls, now four days old, Alla and Iyya
were sleeping in one corner of the room during the shooting. In the
street, the front of Abu-Zir's car also took five shots.

The car of Hamdi Adel-Ghani Khaleeli was also damaged by bullets. His
family of 10 persons, including a two-month old son, spent the night in one
inner room of the house to avoid injury. He reported that the entire house
shook for much of the time, due to the intensity of the bombardment. Water
tanks in the area were empty due to bullet holes, he reported.

What was striking about all of these incidents was that the IDF returned
the night's sporadic Palestinian sniper fire with continuous automatic
weapons fire and the tank bombardment of Palestinian residential
neighborhoods. We have seen this pattern of collective punishment quite
often in this occupation.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite
Churches. CPT P. O. Box 6508 Chicago, IL 60680 tel. 312-455-1199 FAX
312-432-1213, E-Mail cpt@igc.org WEB www.cpt.org