fonte: Christian Peacemaker Team (www.cpt.org)

Hebron Update October 16-22, 2003

There was no curfew all week in the Old City. On Wednesday there was a shooting incident on Tel Rumeida. A Palestinian gunman shot and wounded two settlers. The gunman was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers who imposed curfew on Tel Rumeida.

Thursday, October 16
The Israeli army taped notices to shop doors in the Old City market, stating 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 50 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 that were 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 post. The land belonged to the Palestinian villages of Dura and Al Rihiah. They laid a street and a water line and set up electricity 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 cancelled.

On the way to Jerusalem CPTers Kathy Kamphoefner and Paul Pierce were in a van with a Palestinian family. They were stopped at the tunnel checkpoint. The mother did not have a Jerusalem ID and the soldier 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 there is a new detachment of soldiers in Hebron the CPTers decided to try and walk up past Beit Romano (which CPT had been forbidden to do for the last 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 on which CPTers had been denied 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. More than 700 trees were burned. The farmer had not received any compensation from the army. (See Hebron Reflection: Accidents that Happen, October 27,2003)

Wednesday October 22
Lawrence was in Bab iZawwiyeh at about 1:15pm when there was gunfire which 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, which they were convinced would be called after the shooting. The team learned that a Palestinian gunman had shot two settlers and had been shot and 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 Hebron Reflection: Crime and Punishment, October 26, 2003)

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, please visit our website at: http://www.cpt.org.
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