Operation Dove (Nonviolent Peace Corps of Association “Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII”) and Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) announce the publication of the 2009-2010 report on the Israeli military escort to the Palestinian schoolchildren from the villages of Tuba and Maghayir al-Abeed.

During the night of the 28 December 2010, Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya, setting fire to a house-tent containing a sleeping family.  Around 3.00 a.m., the fire, caused by bottles filled with a flammable substance, awoke the villagers.  They then saw three settlers from the nearby settlement of Suseya running toward a car.

"It's been a hard day's night, and I should be sleeping like a log.”

A couple weeks ago, I started downloading some of those old Beatles songs that I didn't yet have in my collection and it occurred to me I did sleep like a log despite the following:

a) An armed Israeli soldier less than thirty metres away was keeping us and of course some neighbouring Jewish settlers “safe”.  His radio crackled constantly; and his guard dogs were barking.
b) The CPT Apartment in the old city Al-Khalil/Hebron is a chicken market with cockerels crowing all night and every night
c) It was my fifteenth different bed in thirty-five nights.

SOUTH HEBRON HILLS – On Tuesday, 14 December 2010, the Israeli military demolished three water cisterns and two wells in the arid and hilly Khashem Ad Daraj/Hathaleen region, about twenty-six km southeast of Hebron/al-Khalil.  The military gave no reason for the destruction of the wells and cisterns.

School Patrol

Together with the members of Operation Dove, the team monitored the Israeli military accompaniment of the school children from the Tuba area as they passed near the Israeli settlement of Ma'on. Twice the soldiers failed to arrive in the afternoon, and the internationals accompanied the children back to Tuba. Four settlers, with faces masked, chased the children during one of these accompaniments, but no verbal or physical contact with the settlers occurred, and no one was injured. On another occasion, two high school students were returning to Tuba when two masked settlers stole the donkey they were riding.  Later the donkey appeared back in Tuba missing its saddle.

On the morning of Saturday, 30 October 2010, around 10:30 a.m., Israeli soldiers arrested a young Palestinian man from the village of Tuba, in the South Hebron Hills, who had been filming Israeli soldiers chasing two young Palestinian shepherds from Tuba.

 On Thursday, 21 October 2010, around 9:20 a.m., two Operation Dove volunteers, who were coming back to the village of At-Tuwani after having visited some Palestinian families in the village of Tuba, were attacked by Israeli settlers from the outpost of Havat Ma'on (Hill 833).

While walking, the internationals received a phone call from a Palestinian shepherd who was with his flock on a hill and warned them about some settlers who were quickly approaching them.  A few minutes after the phone call, two settlers with their faces covered by t-shirts appeared on the top of Meshaha hill where the internationals were walking.  The settlers started to lob stones with slingshots at the internationals who ran away and escaped injury.

Later on, around 1:00 p.m. in the same area, a similar incident happened to a Palestinian boy who was walking back home via the path on Meshaha hill.