CPTnet
18 June 2005

Hebron Update: 9-15 June 2005

 Thursday 9 June Donna Hicks and John Lynes went to Tel Rumeida in the
afternoon. The Israeli soldier at the Dubboya Street checkpoint was ready
to let them pass when a patrol came up and one or two of the soldiers
objected to the CPTers passing through. The CPTers were able to move
through the checkpoint and go up the street towards the Tel Rumeida
neighborhood where they observed Palestinian children playing on the street
and adults passing through with shopping bags. When Hicks and Lynes
returned to the checkpoint at the fork in the road going up to the Israeli
settlement enclave, a soldier told them they could not pass down the hill to
the Duboyya Street checkpoint. Hicks said they had passed up the hill
thirty minutes before and was puzzled why they couldn't go back down. The
soldier replied there were 'new' orders, in the sense that not all the
soldiers had known about them, and that CPTers were not allowed to pass down
the hill to Duboyya Street. Hicks and Lynes returned to the Old City
another way.

 Friday 10 June Around 7:45a.m. Jerry Levin, Lynes, and a guest went to the
Bab iZaweyya market area after having received reports from Palestinian
vendors of confrontations between the Palestinian Authority police and
Israeli military as the market was setting up. The only military presence
was a lone Israeli police jeep parked at the southern end of the vendor
carts stretching along the street almost to the border between H1 and H2.

Hicks, Bill Baldwin, and Lynes visited Tel Rumeida in the afternoon.
Soldiers at the Duboyya Street checkpoint would not let them pass, so they
were obliged to make a difficult detour. In Tel Rumeida they were welcomed
to a meal by the Palestinian family living directly across from the Israeli
settlement enclave. On their return they were allowed past both
checkpoints.

Rusty Dinkins-Curling and a guest visited Palestinian families in the Beqa'a
Valley in the afternoon. One of the family members expressed frustration
over the ongoing land confiscations and abuse from soldiers and settlers.
The week before, engineers had come to his house and said he couldn't work
more than one meter from his house. The family patriarch urged the guest,
whose family is from Lebanon, to go to his parents and tell them he was
serious about wanting to learn Arabic and that not learning to speak the
language of his people was neglecting his cultural heritage. This neglect
was one of the things that caused the problems they are having now.

 Saturday 11 June Lynes, Hicks, and a visitor went to Tel Rumeida around
noon. The visitor was allowed through the Duboyya Street checkpoint. Lynes
and Hicks went another way and met the visitor. They observed a group of
young Israeli settler women walking down from the Israeli settlement
enclave, singing. The Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint below the
settlement enclave would not let the CPTers and visitor go down the hill to
the Duboyya Street checkpoint. One of the soldiers commented that the
Israelis in the Hebron settlements were not "ordinary Israelis." The three
came back another way.

When they reached the Old City gate at the Ibrahimi Mosque, they observed
two Israeli border police yelling at a Palestinian man they had detained.
The man was standing in a corner next to the military post which controls
movement through the turnstiles. They were yelling at him to stand in a
particular way with his hands in a particular position. Hicks, Lynes, and
the visitor stayed to observe, but stayed so close to the Israeli border
police post that the police conveyed, after a lengthy back-and-forth, that
they would be subject to arrest if they did not move back from the military
posts. The visitor, who had moved away, told the CPTers later that a police
jeep had pulled up to take them to the police station, but it left when a
group of internationals came to the mosque for a tour.

When Hicks tried to clarify with the border police officer why Hicks had not
moved, he said his officers had been obstructed in doing their work, and
that CPT was free to observe from a distance but not to get in the way of
his officers. He said he had taken Hicks' and Lynes' passport numbers this
time, and they were not to interfere with the work of his officers again.
Lynes told him politely that he did not take orders from armed persons.

Dinkins-Curling and Baldwin went to Wadi Al Ghroos where they were invited
for tea and lunch with one of the families under a grove of trees just
outside their house. The matriarch expressed her determination not to be
driven off the land. "Still here," she said. Then she pointed to Kiryat
Arba, an Israeli settlement on the east side of Hebron, and to the ground
around her feet, "Still here." She continued, "I die (pointing to herself)
and he die (pointing to her husband) they still here (pointing to the grand
children all around them.)"

Sunday 12 June
Hicks, Baldwin, Lynes and Dinkins-Curling went to Jerusalem to attend
church. When the shared taxi van pulled in near Damascus Gate Israeli border
and civilian police officers stopped it. Several of the passengers,
including CPTers Baldwin and Lynes, were questioned. The police officers
said that the driver did not have the proper taxi license. When questioned
by Hicks, the police said the check of the drivers had nothing to do with
the Shavu'ot (Jewish Pentecost) holiday.

Monday 13 June
Baldwin met with a Palestinian resident of Tel Rumeida who said that Israeli
settler children had thrown stones for only fifteen minutes, more or less,
that day.

Tuesday 14 June
In the morning Levin led two visitors to Tel Rumeida. An Israeli soldier at
the Dubboya Street checkpoint greeted the three warmly and wanted to share
his cheesecake with them. He talked of how "most soldiers are not bad, and
that most Palestinians are not bad either." Israeli soldiers at the
checkpoint at the top of the hill, at the turn to the Israeli settlement
enclave, would not let the three pass. They returned to the Old City by a
different way.

Around noon Hicks and Lynes escorted two visitors on a tour of Hebron. On
their way down Shalala Street, the main street between the Bab iZaweyya
market area and the Old City, they observed Israeli settler children on a
roof-top at the back of the Israeli settlement of Beit Hadassah throwing
stones at a group of Palestinian boys. Israeli soldiers on the ground
persuaded the Palestinian boys to back off. Israeli so