CPTnet
24 August 2007
HEBRON UPDATE: 23 July-9 August 2007

Team members during this period were Janet Benvie, Elizabeth Garcia, John
Harris, Esther Kern, John Lynes, Lorin Peters, Dianne Roe, Kathie Uhler,
Mary Wendeln, and intern Reinhard Kober.

Summary

CPT Hebron continues to monitor the situation at "the occupied house" near
Kiryat Arba settlement that Israeli settlers took over in March 2007 and
conduct regular noon and afternoon patrols of the Mosque area. Team members
have also visited regularly the Ja'abari fields near Kiryat Arba settlement,
and nearby Wadi Ghroos.

Palestinian boys in the neighborhood painted the lines for a soccer
(football) court outside the team's doorway and practiced every evening. A
member of the team stayed with Abu Hatem every day at his shop to document
or intervene if the Israeli army implemented a shop closure. CPT has been
photographing damaged Palestinian shops on Shuhada Street. The Israeli army
prevented Palestinians from visiting their shops, even to document
vandalism. Israeli settlers have damaged many shops and have squatted in
some of them located in the old wholesale market of Hebron.

Groups: the team gave tours of the Old City and presentations on CPT's work
and the local situation to groups from the Fellowship of Reconciliation in
the USA, and the Middle East Children's Alliance (from the Bay area of
California). From 6 to 9 August, the team hosted a CPT delegation of twelve
people.

Monday 23 July

Esther Kern and Reinhard Kober accompanied a Palestinian woman past the
occupied house near Kiryat Arba to visit family members. Israeli settlers
in the house have threatened her in the past.

Lorin Peters and a Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) spokesperson led a
tour group, including ten Palestinians, along Shuhada Street. As the group
entered Shuhada Street from Gates 4 and 5, settler activist Anat Cohen drove
her car slowly into the middle of the group, stayed right beside the HRC
spokesperson, as if to intimidate him, then flagged a police car. Peters
took over the leadership of the tour in order to divert attention from the
HRC representative. Cohen then parked her car and began photographing
individuals at close range. After the group left Shuhada Street, the police
called one Palestinian over and asked him to get in the back of their jeep
van. The police followed the tour group and released the Palestinian back
at HRC headquarters.

Palestinian neighbor Zleekha Mutahseb and some of the young boys painted the
street with lines for the soccer games.

Tuesday 24 July

Late in the afternoon, Jan Benvie and Kern discovered that the Israeli army
and Border Police had blocked off Beersheva Road (leading southwest from
Hebron), to allow settlers to celebrate Tisha B'Av at the Tomb of Othniel
Ben Kenaz. Benvie and Kern observed three vehicles (with Palestinian number
plates) being loaded onto a pick up truck and brought to the end of the
street, near the Bab iZawiyya marketplace. The Border police arrested two
young men and fastened their hands together with cable ties, leading them
away. At 7:00 p.m., the settlers came through the Dubboya Street checkpoint
and marched to the tomb without incident.

Wednesday 25 July

The Israeli police arrested several Israelis from B'nei Avraham (Children of
Abraham) who were making a solidarity visit to Palestinians in Tel Rumeida,
a neighborhood near the CPT apartment. The police released the men a short
time later.

Benvie and a journalist from The Palestine Monitor walked through the Old
City and up Shuhada Street and visited Issa Amro, a friend of CPT, at his
new house in Tel Rumeida. While they were walking up Shuhada Street, they
observed Israeli soldiers giving new papers to the residents who live near
the CPT apartment.

Soccer practice took place in the evening with Kern observing. All went
well until just before the boys left for the evening, when Israeli settlers
threw stones on the soccer players from Shuhada Street.

Thursday 26 July

Elizabeth Garcia, Dianne Roe, and Kathie Uhler visited the family of the
mayor of Beit Ummar, Farhan Al Qam (Abu Musa), who has been in Israeli
prison for two months. His wife said, of his arrest two months ago, that
the soldiers came in the middle of the night and made the mayor and his wife
stay outside while they searched the house. The CPTers also met Abu Musa's
mother, and his younger brother. The Israeli authorities have not allowed
family members to visit Abu Musa and have not pressed any charges against
him. The court has postponed his trial date several times.

On the way from the mayor's house to visit another family, Roe, Garcia, and
Uhler saw many Israeli soldiers gathering near the cemetery. A family who
were tending plants in the cemetery said this gathering was usual and that
soldiers regularly invade Palestinian homes at night.

Friday 27 July

Benvie, Harris and Kober went to Shuhada Street with Mutahseb to photograph
and video damaged shops belonging to Palestinians. They left from
Mutahseb's front door on Shuhada Street. A soldier stopped them near the
Avraham Avinu settlement. The soldier checked Mutahseb's permit then
allowed them to continue. A short time later, he spoke with Mutahseb and
suggested that standing near Avraham Avinu settlement while the CPTers
photographed the area was dangerous for her. Mutahseb returned to her
apartment.

At 2:00 p.m., Roe and Peters observed at the mosque. About thirty men
waited fifteen to thirty-five minutes for their IDs at Ibrahimi checkpoint
after prayers.

Kern and Uhler, along with translator Mutahseb, went to visit families in
Wadi Ghroos. They met a man who took them to his house in the wadi, that the
Israeli army had enclosed with a fence and allowed settlers to enter. The
home is near Harsina, an Israeli settlement to the northeast of Hebron. (See
forthcoming CPTnet Release: "The Game of "Stealing Home.")

In the evening, Benvie, John Harris, Kern and Uhler went to an action
(gathering grass for fodder), organized by Palestinians, on the Al Ja'aberi
land, near the settler-occupied house. By 6:55, a number of settlers, some
of them armed, were standing on the stairs leading to Givat Ha'avot. Some
settlers from Givat Ha'avot threw stones at internationals and Palestinians
as they took bags of grass to the Al Ja'aberi home.

At 7:15, a small group of Israeli settlers came out of Givat Ha'avot and one
of them attacked t