CPTnet
November 1, 2003
HEBRON UPDATE: October 16-22, 2003

There was no curfew during this period in the Old City. On Wednesday, a
Palestinian gunman shot and wounded two settlers in Tel Rumeida. The gunman
was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers who then imposed curfew on
Palestinians living near Tel Rumeida.

Thursday, October 16
The Israeli army taped notices to shop doors in the Old City market,
announcing that Palestinian shops near the Beit Romano yeshiva were to
remain closed for six months.

Friday, October 17
Chris Brown, Diane Janzen, and Greg Rollins joined Rabbis for Human Rights
and Palestinian groups accompanying Palestinian farmers harvesting their
olives in the south Hebron hills. When they arrived at the site, they found
that Israeli settlers had stolen the olives from over fifty trees. Rabbi
Arik Ascherman volunteered to return on Sunday to help the Palestinian
farmers file a complaint with the Israeli police about the theft. Settlers
took photos of the Palestinians and CPTers harvesting. They also
photographed the license plates of the trucks used to transport the workers
to the fields.

Saturday, October 18
Large groups of Israeli settlers and Jewish visitors were walking on Shuhada
Street because it was the first day of Sukkot.

The Team learned that on Friday the Israeli army bulldozed land near the
settlement of Haggai to make a military outpost. The land belonged to the
Palestinian villages of Dura and Al Rihiah. They laid a street and a water
line and set up electric poles.

Rollins, Brown and Janzen set out to accompany Palestinian farmers
harvesting olives. Israeli settlers had stolen most of the olives so the
harvesting was canceled.

On the way to Jerusalem CPTers Kathy Kamphoefner and Paul Pierce were in a
van with a Palestinian family. At the tunnel checkpoint, a soldier saw that
the mother did not have a Jerusalem ID and made her get out of the van and
walk back to Bethlehem, carrying her baby. The father and the three other
children went on.

Monday, October 20
Members of the team heard shooting shortly after 1:00am.

On school patrol the team noticed that the cement road blocks on Yatta road
had been moved back one block to their position prior to the Jewish
holidays. This reopened access to several streets that had been blocked
during Sukkot.

Janzen and Mary Lawrence went to Qurtuba school to speak with the
headmistress about the attack on her students by settler children during
Sukkot. Since a new detachment of soldiers had arrived in Hebron the CPTers
decided to try to walk up past Beit Romano (which the military had forbidden
CPT to do for the previous few months. They passed through the checkpoint
without incident. On Shuhada Street a soldier asked then where they were
going. He then directed them along the road past the Beit Hadassah
settlement (a stretch of road to which soldiers had denied CPTers passage
for months) and up the second set of steps to the school.

Rollins and Brown accompanied farmers harvesting olives near the Palestinian
village of Idna. A farmer showed them the area where the Israeli army during
exercises had accidentally set fire to Palestinian orchards, burning more
than 700 trees. The farmer had not received any compensation from the
army. (See October 30, release, "Accidents that Happen.")

Wednesday, October 22
Lawrence was in Bab iZawwiyeh around 1:15pm when she heard gunfire that
lasted about three or four minutes. When the shooting was over, Lawrence
returned to the apartment. Shop owners in the Old City had closed their
shops in anticipation of curfew, they assumed the Israeli military would
impose because of the shooting. The team learned that a Palestinian gunman
had shot two settlers and had been killed by the army. A Palestinian family
from Tel Rumeida called saying that they were afraid of settler violence.
Janzen and Lawrence went to Tel Rumeida to stay with the family overnight.
(See October 27 release, "Crime and Punishment.")