CPTnet
September 14, 2001
Hebron Update: August 29-September 3, 2001

Tuesday, August 28
Curfew was lifted, but because of a two-day strike called to protest the
assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, shops in the Old City remained closed.
Journalist Kawther Salam stopped by to say that soldiers had exacted
revenge for the demonstration on the previous day (See releases,
"Children against the curfew" and "Curfew Babies") by breaking a man's nose
and invading the home of a 92-year-old woman. Salam asked Kathleen Kern to
write a letter in English to the military commander of Hebron. It read, in
part, "Yesterday, 27 August, I was following the army who were searching
the apartment of Afifa Herbawi. . .She is 92 years old. I noticed this
woman collecting stale bread from the garbage in the street. She soaks it
in water for a couple hours to prepare it for her daily meal . . .I stopped
being a journalist and broke down emotionally, crying in front of the
soldiers. I demanded that the soldiers kill me, because I don't want to
film or write any more stories like this in the 21st century."

Salam then went on to ask Command Weinberg to permit the Islamic Waqf soup
kitchen, closed because of the curfew, to begin operating again, since it
was the main source of food for 570 extremely poor families in the Old City.
Two young French women stopped by to discuss the mechanics of setting up a
CPT-style presence in the Ramallah area.

A translator for the team who lives in the Old City called to say that
settlers were stoning an area near the Israeli settlement of Avraham
Avinu. Greg Rollins, Dianne Roe and Angie Zelter, a guest of the team,
responded. They found that although the curfew had been lifted in other
parts of the old city, soldiers were maintaining a curfew on the building
that the settlers were stoning. Only two families remained in the
building. The others had left because of the curfew and settler
harassment. One of the families consisted of three children who had tried
to join their parents in H-1, but had been unable to leave after the
soldiers re-imposed curfew. They had no food left in the house.

Roe and Rollins attempted to visit CSD families in the Qilqis area, but had
to cancel the visit because heavy shooting broke out in the commercial
district of Hebron where the taxis were located.

Abdel Hadi Hantash, chief cartographer of the Hebron district stopped
by. He reported that two days earlier, soldiers uprooted 30 olive trees
near al Razih. One week earlier, they uprooted 150 olive trees in Al
Juba. In the military base of Nahal Nahagot the military laid bases for
settler mobile homes.

Wednesday, August 29
Salam's letter was passed on to the head of the Israeli Civil
Administration, Dov Tzedekah. He promised to lift the curfew, and said
that if it were reimposed, he would allow the Islamic Waqf soup kitchen to
operate for two hours every day.

Roe and Zelter responded to a call that settlers were in the market
harassing Palestinians. Zelter took a picture of a settler girl throwing a
rock at a 75-year-old man, whose headscarf quickly became soaked with
blood. An adult male settler then attacked Zelter. (See August 31 release,
"Settler attacks guest of Hebron team.")

When Zelter went in a police van to Kiryat Arba, one of the officers
stepped out of the van at the station and asked her, "Do you remember
me?" He took off his sunglasses. She then realized the officer had
arrested her at a demonstration against the Israeli takeover of Orient
House in Jerusalem two weeks earlier.

While Zelter and Roe were occupied at one end of the market, Polhamus and
Kern monitored incursions by settler women and girls in another part of the
market. Police took pictures of the women as they tried to push their way
past soldiers, police and shop owners. One teenage girl threw a stone at
Kern. Eventually, the soldiers forced the vendors to close their shops.

Thursday, 30, 2001 curfew was imposed at 3:00 PM
At 7:00 AM a friend of the team's called to say soldiers outside Beit
Romano had detained her brother. When Roe and Rollins approached one of the
soldiers to ask why they were detaining the man, the soldier's reply was,
"I have a right to do what ever I want." Half an hour later they let the
man go.

Shooting started at 10:00 AM. Trying to avoid being shot, many of the
vegetable salesmen in Baab Izzawwiyye simply left their stalls without
cleaning up their merchandise. During the shooting Israeli forces made an
incursion into H1behind Abu Sneineh, but Palestinian fire damaged one of
their Armoured Personal Carriers (APC), and they pulled out.

Friday, August 31, 2001 Day 2 of Curfew
Power in the CPT apartment was restored at 12:00 PM, and shooting started
at 12:45 PM. While Roe, Kern and Rollins were at lunch with friends, they
received a call from Polhamus at the apartment saying that soldiers had
just run barbed wire down the street in front of their place and down to
the vegetable market.

Some time just before midnight a bulldozer pushed half of the stalls from
the old vegetable market down the block to a trash heap.

Saturday, September 1, 2001. Day 3 of Curfew
September first was supposed to be the first day of school, but the
majority of the schools in H2 were not allowed open. At 10:00 AM, while on
their way to H1, Polhamus and Rollins came across soldiers denying
schoolgirls entry to their school only several yards inside H2. The
children had been waiting there since 8:00 AM. Twenty minutes after
Polhamus and Rollins arrived, the soldiers let the girls pass. The moment
they had finished, Palestinian boys began throwing rocks.

While walking to H1 later that day, Roe and Kern met a Palestinian friend
who said that he had been beaten up by soldiers that morning while taking
his daughter to school. Two teenaged settler boys had also attacked his
wife earlier in the day. Later that day Roe and Kern escorted the man's
daughter home from school, taking her by a roundabout route, lifting her
over coils of barbed wire in the process.

Sunday, September 2, 2001 Day 4 of Curfew
During the night soldiers stationed of the roof of a friend of the team,
spent the night harassing the friend, yelling at her and throwing bottles
of sand down into her place. They also broke the TV antenna on the roof,
cut the cable wire, and the water line.

In the afternoon a friend called to say her house was being attacked by
settlers throwing rocks and heavy slabs of concrete onto her roof. Kern
spent the night with the fam