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About CPT Hebron

CPT maintained a team in Hebron from 1995 - 2008, witnessing to the need for peace in a violent and sometimes desperate situation.

Despite years of negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, progress towards peace remained elusive. With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising), violence in the streets of Hebron only increased. Amnesty International called the Israeli counterattacks with tanks and missiles "grossly excessive."

New challenges faced the Hebron team as they sought creative ways to address the violence on the streets and the economic siege of the Occupied Territories. Team members provided an alternative, first hand perspective for scores of foreign journalists who wanted to look beyond Israeli and American government analyses of the crisis.

In addition to repeated bombardment of their neighborhoods, Palestinian families in the Hebron District continued to suffer ongoing effects of military occupation. Israeli authorities persist in confiscating land to expand Jewish-only settlements, tightening access to water resources and threatening to demolish homes.

In October 2008 the thirteen-year-old project closed due to staffing constraints.

During it's history the Hebron team focused on:

• school accompaniment
• documentation and human rights reporting
• nonviolent trainings
• regular visits to Palestinian families threatened by Israeli home demolition and land confiscation
• joining with Palestinians and Israeli peace groups to develop action campaigns that expose the face of the Occupation

Chronology: 1995-2003

CPT Hebron

February 1995 - September 2003

February-March 1995
Wendy Lehman and Kathleen Kern go on a fact finding tour of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, talking to Palestinians, Israelis and internationals who are working for human rights and for peace. They make several trips down to Hebron. After they talk to the Public Relations Director of the Hebron municipality about CPT's work in Haiti, she tells them that such a team is exactly what Hebron needs.

April 1995
The Hebron Municipality issues an invitation to Christian Peacemaker Teams and the Steering Committee votes to approve sending a team of four.

June 1995
The first Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron (Jeff Heie, Cliff Kindy, Kathleen Kern and Wendy Lehman) set up the project. They spend the first weeks visiting and living with numerous families in the area. Palestinian journalists then help them find an apartment around the corner from their office.

Three Palestinian houses are destroyed by the IDF -- one because they found wanted fugitives inside and two because the IDF shot down a fugitive fifty meters from the homes. Christian Peacemaker Teams helps rebuild houses.

July 1995
Cliff Kindy and Jeff Heie are detained for nine hours while accompanying a water tank truck sent by the city government to fill the cistern belonging to the Abu Haikel family. The municipality had stopped delivering water to people who lived near Israeli settlements because Israeli settlers had broken the windshield of the water truck too many times. As a result of the detention, international attention is drawn to the CPT project in Hebron, and the Israeli public demands an investigation into why there is a water shortage in Hebron when the settlements around Hebron have plenty. The arrests also bring CPT into contact with the Society of St. Yves, which offers free legal help to the team and eventually represents several families in Hebron.

CPT receives an invitation from people connected with the University of Hebron to open a gate which had been sealed shut since the beginning of the Intifada. The University is nowhere near a settlement or military checkpoint administrators, teachers and faculty point out, so the only reason to keep the gate sealed is, in their opinion, harassment (the military later explain that it is to "protect" the University from settler attacks). Three members of the team, Cliff Kindy, Kathy Kamphoefner, and Wendy Lehman are arrested and released two days later. The entrance is resealed nine days later.

On July 22, the same day of the university action, CPT begins a Saturday afternoon presence on Duboya Street, which runs between the settlements of Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumeida. The previous Saturday some teenage Hebron settlers went on a rampage in the street, injuring several Palestinian children -- one by jumping on a boy's leg until it broke. CPTers continue this Saturday presence until March of 1996.

August 1995
The team spends much of the month visiting and increasing their visibility on Duboya Street. They becomes particularly involved with the family of Shakir Da'na, whose house is stoned three-four times a week by his neighbors: settlers in Kiryat Arba. Work includes talking with Israeli police and the military, and connecting Shakir with Israeli legal help and journalists. The team proposes that they spend a night on Shakir's roof or on the hillside inside Kiryat Arba from where the stones are usually thrown, but Shakir refuses to allow the team to put themselves at risk in this way.

September 1995
On the first day of classes, settlers charge the Palestinian Qurtuba girls school on Duboya Street after the raising of the Palestinian flag, and begin what becomes an ongoing struggle. CPT members begin a daily presence at the school, but withdraw at the request of the headmistress who fears exacerbating the situation. They do, however, continue to accompany children on their way home from school past the nearby settlements and maintain a visible presence nearby.

On Saturday, September 30, while Kathleen Kern and Wendy Lehman are on Duboya Street, they are attacked by a group of approximately twenty men, knocked to the ground, spit on and stomped upon. They steal Kern's camera and break all the car windows on the street. After Rabin's assassination, the team finds out that Yigal Amir (the convicted assassin) and his brother Haggai were among the men participating in the rampage.

October 1995
The team moves from an apartment near the municipal offices into another in the center of the old city, in order to be closer to the settlements and the "thick of things".

Settler activity steps up specifically in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood. Team members document stone throwing and ongoing harassment and begin to accompany a young Palestinian girl who has been the target of settler children on her way home from school.

On Oct. 26, CPTers are walking in the city center around 9 pm when they observe settler youth spraying graffiti on the doors of Palestinian-owned shops while adult settlers cheer them on. As the crowd proceeds down the street chanting and spray-painting, Israeli border police watch the vandalism -- some officers standing two to three feet away from the spray painting youth and failing to respond. The settlers, led by Miriam Levinger, shout at the CPT team to go away. Levinger screams obscenities at the team, calling them "harlots." CPTer Dianne Roe is hit in the face with an egg and Wendy Lehman is hit in the head. Another settler spits on team member Carmen Pauls from a distance of six inches. When the CPTers leave with the police to make a complaint at about 12 am, the crowd cheers.

CPTers asked an investigating officer at the police station why the Israeli border police and soldiers allowed the vandalism to continue unabated. The officer, who asked to remain anonymous, tells them, "The police take orders from the commander, who takes orders from the Minister of Police, who takes orders from the Prime Minister, who takes orders from the settler.

November 1995
The Michigan Faith and Resistance group joins the project for the month, adding five more persons to the team, and allowing for much more interaction with families.

On the day that Prime Minister Rabin is assassinated, team member Dianne Roe is knocked to the ground and kicked by teenage Israeli boys. When a Palestinian teenage girl tries to help her, she is also knocked down and dragged along the ground by her hair. (Later this girl and her sister become Roe's Arabic teachers.)

After the assassination (Nov. 4), things quiet down somewhat for a time -- the team notices the military begin to enforce the house arrests of Hebron settlers who had been sentenced by the Israeli courts for acts of violence. It also seems as though the police begin to take complaints by Palestinians regarding settler harassment and attacks more seriously.

December 1995
Team members celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem -- the first Christmas after the Israel Defense Forces turn Bethlehem over to the Palestinian Authority.

January 1996
Art Gish is arrested and Cliff Kindy and Cole Hull detained as they participate with local Palestinian merchants in a spontaneous effort to take down the gates that the military use to seal the city's main market shut (and which make the passage of produce extremely difficult.) Gish is released after 48 hours.

Six families (mostly Russian Jews) are evicted from Ashmoret settlement, on the outskirts of Hebron, after violating court orders and moving into homes illegally built on Palestinian land. Although the families were unhappy with the evictions, it was instructive to note the care in moving the families, including a chartered bus, and moving trucks with boxes; in contrast to the complete demolition of Palestinian homes built without permits less than a mile from the same point. The Ashmoret homes have since been taken over by the Israeli Border Police as a barracks and command center.

Hundreds of Israelis flood the streets of Hebron to protest on the day of the first ever Palestinian elections. Several of CPT's friends and acquaintances are attacked by settlers. One settler girl is stabbed, and chaos and several arrests follow. Two CPT members are temporarily detained.

Team members document the destruction of caves used by Bedouin families for generations, simply due to their proximity to an expanding settlement.

February 1996
The team sets up a symbolic "Oslo II" tomato stand in the Hebron vegetable market, which had been closed after settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 men and boys as they prayed in the Il Ibrahimi Mosque (and was scheduled to be open no later than January 1996, according to the Oslo Accords.) They sell all their tomatoes at a profit in spite of the military trying to close them down.

Buses are bombed in Jerusalem and Ashkelon. Over sixty people die. Three days later, team members climb on the roof of a house in a vain attempt to keep it from being destroyed. Six houses lying between the settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina are destroyed that day for having been built without permit (Palestinians living near settlements are not permitted to build on their own land, which leads to impossible over-crowding.) Several other homes are saved by the organizing, delaying tactics and press coverage which results in the intervention of then-president Shimon Peres. Robert Naiman and Dianne Roe are arrested after they follow a young man whom the police have taken away. Although they are threatened with deportation, following a massive fax campaign, the police do not show up for their deportation hearing.

March 1996
After three days in jail and four under house arrest, Roe and Naiman appear before a court in Jerusalem. The police do not show up to present their case, so the two are released without restrictions.

The #18 bus in Jerusalem is blown up by a suicide bomber exactly one week after a suicide bomber blows up the first #18 bus in Jerusalem. The following Sunday, team members ride the #18 bus in Jerusalem from 6 to 9 am, alerting Arab, Israeli and international contacts and press before they do so. The morning passes safely.

The team, along with Israeli and international activists, bring food to the Al-Fawar UN refugee camp, which had been under complete closure for over two weeks in the wake of the bombings. Part of the group sneak into the camp past roadblocks to talk with families inside. After several hours in a standoff with the IDF, the food is allowed to be transferred inside to eager residents. The closure is ultimately eased after the media event destruction of 2 homes belonging to families of the suicide bombing suspects.

Defense for Children International office in Hebron is ransacked, and an ongoing relationship with their staff and their work with refugee, imprisoned, and victimized children is established

April 1996
CPT holds a "teach-in" in front of Hebron University, which remains closed after the bombings in February and March as a form of collective punishment (none of the students, university or staff were found to be connected in any way with the bombings.) Approximately 25 students come to discuss nonviolent strategies for social change in English.

After a student sit-in is violently broken up (seven students are arrested and later beaten in prison), the students ask CPT to accompany them in another peaceful walk from the Hebron municipal offices to the university campus. At a certain point, student leaders encourage the students to turn back to avoid confrontation with the gathered military. Soldiers nevertheless attempt to arrest one of the leaders who is urging the students to turn back. Team members and Palestinian bystanders are able to intervene and give the boy a chance to escape.

CPT members are invited by Hebron University professor Musallem Shreateh to cut a fence that settlers from nearby Susia have illegally put around his field. Team members leave a note explaining who they are and why they did this.

The team learns that 60 Palestinian houses in the vicinity of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina settlements are scheduled for demolition. They invite members of the Rehovot Peace Now group to come to Hebron and visit the families whose homes are scheduled to be demolished. After many hours of phone conversations and networking, team members learn that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres had told PLO President Yasser Arafat the houses would not be destroyed. International faxes and e-mail in response to CPT and Peace Now urgent actions alerts play an important role in calling off the house demolitions.

May 1996
CPTers accompany Shreateh and his extended family to their fields as they harvest their wheat. They witness harassment of the family, including death threats from armed settlers.

At the end of the month, Shreateh again invites the team to his field -- this time to dig up olive trees that settlers from Susia have planted there, making it impossible for him to cultivate his field. As Team members begin the process of transplanting the trees from Shreateh's field onto settlement property, they are they are detained by the IDF, then attacked by armed settlers while soldiers watch. The police arrive and arrest all four team members: Randy Bond, Wendy Lehman, Tom Malthaner, and Bob Naiman. The four remain in prison for three days (Malthaner for four days) and are released on the condition that they not return to Hebron.

June 1996
After consulting with Palestinian, Israeli and expatriate friends, as well as legal support, the Team decides to return to Hebron. They write an open letter to the police stating their reason for returning, questioning of the validity of some untranslated court and police documents, and challenging the authority of the Israeli military to bar peace activists from Hebron. Mayor Mustafa Natsche writes a letter to the authorities stating that he had originally invited the team and wishes them to continue their work in Hebron.

July 1996
Two team members spend three days in the village of Samua, which was placed under curfew after Palestinian teenagers set fire to bulldozers which were tearing up confiscated farmland for a new settler bypass road. Water and electricity were also shut off.

Representatives of Peace Now and Rabbis for Human Rights come to meet Musallem Shreateh and see what they can do to help. They view his documents but the Peace Now delegation is unwilling to act unless they can be assured that the army has not confiscated Shreateh's land since the time of the documents. The following week CPT visits with Shreateh to discuss the issue further, telling him that they are still willing to accompany him during further cultivation of his fields, but need at least one week's notice.

On July 30 Shreateh tells CPT that he needs to plant his land in 25 days. He wants to see if Susia residents will remove the trees themselves.

On July 31 Rabbis for Human Rights visit and express an interest in helping Shreateh, who hoped that they can help him resolve the issue by arranging for a discussion with Susia settlers.

August 1996
Team members visit the Al-Mutoor family just north of Hebron shortly after the IDF destroyed their house. The family indicates they had been given no advance warning. An IDF spokesperson says that the house had been destroyed to make room for a bypass road (and was one of 60 given demolition notices earlier in the year, though they had supposedly been canceled in April), although a bypass road had already been built a quarter mile away and the house built on the side of a steep, rocky hill. Twenty -three other families between the settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina receive notices of a proposed road through their properties later the same month.

Rabbi Arik Asherman of Rabbis for Human Rights concludes that the settlers of Susia are not willing to dialogue regarding Shreateh's land without crippling preconditions. A hoped-for meeting is canceled because of settler intransigence.

September 1996
While final plans are made to accompany Shreateh and for an inevitable confrontation, he agrees to postpone plowing his fields pending a meeting with the military governor of Hebron.

On September 25, demonstrations and violent clashes break out throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, sparked by the Israeli government opening an archeological tunnel in East Jerusalem. By the time it's finished, 60 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers are dead; 1,200 Palestinians are injured. In Hebron, the worst day of clashes occurs on Sept. 26, when Israeli soldiers fire rubber and live bullets as well as tear gas at demonstrators. One Palestinian is killed and 33 injured. The IDF places the Palestinian residents of Hebron and members of Christian Peacemaker Teams under curfew, although settlers are allowed to walk the streets freely. During this same period, the Israeli army puts the entire West Bank under internal closure -- separating all towns and villages from each other -- which results in a daily loss of $10 million to the Palestinian economy. Team members receive differing opinions from Palestinian and Israeli friends as to whether they should violate the curfew.

October 1996
The curfew in Hebron, which began on September 26, is lifted. Christian Peacemaker Team members visit the Abu Haikel family who live near the Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida. During the visit, they occasionally hear soldiers announce, "Go to your homes! Curfew!" and then laugh. The Abu Haikels, and the CPTers, don't find this "joke" particularly amusing.

CPTers come across some Palestinian girls they know speaking with an Israeli police officer. Earlier that day, a van driven by a settler man tried to run down the two girls and hit Norva Abu Ramailay (13 years old) in the left side. Her friend was not struck. Norva received minor injuries.

CPTers and members from the Rabbis for Human Rights once again visit Shreateh. Earlier in the morning, Shreateh had gone with two officers from the Israeli military and although both captains studied his legal documents and said they believe the land belongs to him, they said they cannot give him written documentation stating such. The captains said that if Shreateh wants to plow in areas that settlers have not planted trees, he should give them a three-day notice and they will protect him. They will not, however, interfere with the land that's been planted by settlers until court proceedings go through. Later attempts at plowing have continued to result in confrontations with settlers, and inconsistent response from the police and military.

November 1996
The team sees an increase in Israeli soldier drills as the military practices for the long-awaited redeployment (rearrangment) of Israeli troops in Hebron. According to the Oslo II agreements between Arafat and Peres, the redeployment was to have occurred by the end of March, but the Israeli government postponed the event. Sometimes these drills include soldiers in complete combat gear establishing a "mock" curfews, forcing Palestinians to close their shops in the busy marketplace. Ongoing negotiations between Netanyahu and Arafat continue as they try to reach an agreement on redeployment. Some say it's just around the corner, others say it will never happen, others don't seem to think it'll make any difference.

CPTers also see an increase in demonstrations in Hebron -- Israeli peace activists join Palestinians in calling for a just peace and an end to the occupation; settlers demonstrate to protest the pending redeployment. During some of these actions, Palestinians are beaten by Israeli police and soldiers and Israeli peace activists are arrested; the settlers are left alone.

December 1996
On Dec. 9, approximately 200 students from Hebron University, joined by CPTers, enter the school grounds in violation of the military closure. The university campus was closed in March by the army following a wave of suicide bombings in Israel, even though no student or teacher had been accused of participating in the bus bombings or other acts of terrorism.

For the following two weeks, the students continue in nonviolent opposition to the closure, holding sit-ins outside the school for a few hours nearly every morning. They are joined by CPTers. On Dec. 28, following lengthy negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials, the school is reopened. As in the past, international response to CPT urgent action alerts helped facilitate the reopening.

Throughout the month, CPTers hear reports of molotov cocktails being thrown at Beit Hadassah settlement. As CPTers arrive on the scene, journalists, who usually see no evidence, tell them they question the source and intent of the alleged attacks.

Just before Christmas, CPTer Bob Naiman attempts to return to work in Hebron and is refused entry by the Israeli authorities. Despite contact with Israeli lawyers, peace workers, and Israeli parliament members, he is still turned back.

CPTers spend Christmas in Bethlehem. When they return, they learn that earlier in the morning, dozens of settlers attempted to enter and take-over Palestinian homes but 17 were arrested by the Israeli police. Almost all were soon released.

January 1997
Redeployment in Hebron is finally carried out on Jan. 17. The Israeli army leaves 80 percent of Hebron to the Palestinian Police, and 20 percent in the city center remains under direct Israeli control. The number of Israeli soldiers does not decrease, and in fact in the weeks prior to redeployment, CPTers see an increase.

Following redeployment, the Israeli government demolition of Palestinian homes, which had been suspended during intense negotiations, is begun again.

February 1997
Following news that at least 700 Palestinian homes are facing demolition, the team discusses ways they can address this problem. After discussions with the CPT staff, steering committee, and supporters, as well as local Palestinian and Israeli consultants, the team decides to embark on a 700- hour (29-day) Fast for Rebuilding -- one hour for every family facing demolition. The fast calls for an end to Israel's policy of demolishing homes and a rebuilding of those already in ruins.

March 1997
The team begins the fast at the beginning of the month, planning to end on Easter Sunday. Local Palestinians donate a tent for them to publicly fast in during the day in downtown Hebron. The fast gains strong support among local Palestinians who visit the tent by hundreds each day. Scores of villagers come to share their stories of house demolitions, land confiscations, arrests and raids by the Israeli military. Israeli peace workers also join the team periodically, as do international supporters. By the end of the fast, they learn that an estimated one thousand people joined the fast at some level in eight different countries. People joined the fast in different ways -- some for a week, others for a day, others in a total fast.

On Good Friday morning, the team in Hebron together with Palestinians, Israelis and other internationals gather to rebuild a Palestinian home - the same home destroyed in February after CPTers were dragged from the roof. Israeli soldiers prevent the rebuilding and arrest CPTer Cliff Kindy, Palestinians Mohammed Shawer and Mamdoh Abed Al Asam Zaatary, and Israeli Rabbi Arik Asherman. Asherman was released on bond, Kindy was held for four days before returning to the U.S., and Shawer and Zaatary were subjected to beatings and sleep deprivation while in detention for 13 days.

April 1997
CPT member Wendy Lehman is denied entry into Israel on April 16. Israeli authorities inform her at the airport in Tel Aviv that she will not be allowed to enter the country and they put her on a return flight to the U.S.

On April 21, over 500 teachers march through the streets of Hebron in protest of the detention of 25 teachers by Palestinian Authority (PA) Security forces. The march is the latest expression of West Bank teachers' three-month struggle with the PA for better wages and work conditions. As hundreds of teachers gather in Hebron and begin their march, Palestinian police and Preventive Security tell the crowd the march is illegal. The crowd ignores the police and marches anyway, gathering at a local high school to issue statements. Police do not interfere.

May 1997
Following conversation among CPT headquarters in Chicago, the steering committee, the Hebron team, and at the invitation of local Palestinians, CPT launches CPT-Rebuilders Against Bulldozers (CPT-RAB) teams intending to bring several delegations to Israel/Palestine over the next 9-12 months. The focus of these delegations will be on house demolitions; team members will document the cases of families facing demolition while seeking opportunities to rebuild destroyed homes.

Four houses are demolished in the Hebron area on May 6, including the houses of Robir and Hisham Mustaffa Jaber. Mark Frey and Jeremy Bergen try to stop the demolition and take photographs.

On May 20 Daoud Kuttab is arrested in Ramallah while covering Palestinian legislative events. He has helped CPT with communication and legal advice. The US Consulate, family members and his lawyer are denied permission to see him. He is released after being held for one week.

Netanyahu's announcement on May 25 that he is freezing house demolitions rings hollow to villagers who can not even enter the land where their farming shelters are located. New settlements, expansion of old settlements, new settler roads and other unilateral Israeli activities are rendering villagers powerless.

June 1997
On June 10 a twelve member CPT delegation departs for the Middle East. The delegation visits key sites where land confiscation and house demolitions are occuring. Several days are spent with the Hebron team and visits to homes that are targeted for demolition are organized. The delegation is led by Kathy Kern.

On June 12 Israel release Palestinian social worker Riyad Za'aqiq from prison. On June 17, 1996, Israeli soldiers forcefully entered Riyad Za'aqiq's home near Hebron in the middle of the night, blindfolded and arrested him. His pregnant wife was in labor at the time. Za'aqiq is a social worker for DCI (Defense for Children International) with whom Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members work. Israeli authorities held Za'aqiq without charge or trial for six months at Meggido prison in Israel. CPT, Amnesty International, The World Organisation Against Torture, and other groups sent urgent actions alerts calling for his release.

In Hebron, clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli soldiers catch the world's attention. Palestinians, mostly teenagers and children, throw rocks and gasoline bombs at soldiers who respond with bullets.

July 1997
Clashes continue. Over two hundred Palestinian youth and half a dozen Israeli soldiers have been injured. There has only been about four days rest since the clashes started last month.

The IDF take over Qurtuba School as a military base. CPT has previously escorted children to this school, in an attempt to reduce settler harassment.

On Thursday, July 10, all of the farm access roads on the outskirts of Hebron are bulldozed, thus preventing access by tractor to fields and vineyards. Several new checkpoints are set up, with the result that all traffic coming into Hebron has been stopped and searched. Palestinians whose ID's do not show Hebron as their address continue to be turned away.

Posters of a pig labeled Mohammed tramping on the Koran are posted on shop doors in the main market.

As agreed in the Hebron Protocol, U.S. AID is redoing Shuhada Street's sewers and water lines, laying new electrical and telephone conduits, repaving the street and providing new sidewalks, sandblasting exteriors, repainting shop and house doors, and installing new awnings all along the street.

The team starts work with Abdel Hadi Hantash, the Hebron representative of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee.

The clashes come to an end mid-month because the Palestinian Authority (PA) sends in troops. The checkpoint on the edge of town is removed. The huge cement blocks that had divided the city between H1 (the area under Palestinian control) from H2 (the area under Israeli control) are also removed from Shalala St. (where the clashes have been occurring).

The team made weekly visits to Beit Ummar this month because over a dozen houses there have received demolition orders.

On July 30 the team learns that there has been a bombing in Jerusalem. Fifteen people are killed and 160 others are injured. The Israeli government imposes an internal closure in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite the efforts of Mark Frey, Esther Ho, Kathleen Kern and Anne Montgomery to convince soldiers of the Golani brigade that they indeed live in Hebron, the soldiers say they can not permit the four Americans to enter Hebron, because of their orders. After forty-five minutes the team is able to return home.

August 1997
A number of Palestinian homes are demolished this month. CPTers are present at the demolition of the home of Faid Jaradat near Sair on August 5.

The team attends a number of meetings and a demostration to show support for the formation of the Coalition against Home Demolitions (an ad hoc organization of several Israeli peace and human rights groups.) The group will focus on home demolitions and plans to visit families living under threat of home demolition in the Hebron area.

U.S. AID works on refurbishing Shuhada Street despite much harassment and abuse by the soldiers and settlers in Hebron, including stealing blocks, shooting at workers with compressed-air pellet guns and Palestinian workers being beaten. On August 30 the paving of Shuhada Street begins. The road was scheduled to be finished by July 15 but because of the harassment and the closures of the past month, it wasn’t completed.

September 1997
On September 1 CPTers meet with members of the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior, who says that CPT must register with the Palestinian Authority in order to work legally in Hebron. They ask for documents to prove that CPT is an actual organization operating out of the United States.

David Muirhead, the American engineer in charge of the U.S. AID funded Shuhada Street renovation, is arrested by the Israeli police for intervening between soldiers and workers. When the part in front of Beit Hadassah is finally paved every type of soldier and police arrived to protect the work on the section of Shuhada Street. Plainclothes Israeli security personnel occupy rooftops and carry "ammunition" off the settlement roof: cartons and sacks of rock, chunks of cement, bottles. Before work begins police cart off cars the settlers refuse to move. There are engineers, laborers, soldiers, civil police, military police, anti-terror police, intelligence agents, TIPH observers, U.S. AID officials, numerous reporters filming, and settlers arguing with police or just watching. The IDF threatens to bring out tanks and troops to stop the paving. The paving is finally completed by September 30.

Excavation starts at the Tel Rumeida settlement in Hebron, a sign that building is going to begin.

October 1997
On October 14, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) demolish two Palestinian homes in the town of Beit Ummar. Several CPT members witness the destruction of the second building; their attempts to intervene are prevented by IDF soldiers.

On October 16 the team is presented with a plaque during their visit with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, representing over 88,000 Palestinian workers, indicating appreciation of CPT's efforts for peace and justice.

The team participates in a demonstration in Anata, a Palestinian village east of Jerusalem where twenty families have recently received home demolition orders. They present a protection order based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing..."

Near the settlement of Beit Hadassah, a 6-ton soldier outpost is placed on top of a Palestinian building .

On October 29 the settlers hold a protest regarding the reopening of Shuhada street to Palestinian traffic. The peaceful protest lasts about 2 hours. Following the demonstration, a group of 10-15 settler teenagers run through the Arab market.

 

November 1997
On November 2 CPTers note that Palestinian taxis and municipality cars are allowed to enter the bottom half of Shuhada street (which is to be fully open to Palestinian traffic according to the Palestinian- Israeli Hebron Agreement), but very few are allowed to continue up the road past the Israeli settlement of Beit Hadassah.

On November 5 at midnight about 100 Israeli soldiers round up over 200 Palestinian men, aged 15 to 45. It is rumored that a molotov thrown a week earlier near a military checkpoint is the reason for the gathering in the park across from the Ibrahimi Mosque. The Palestinians’ individual pictures are taken and all are held until past 2:00 a.m. in the cold night air. An officer ends the roundup by warning that "All these buildings (the Palestinian homes in the mosque area) will be destroyed if settlers are attacked by stones or bombs."

On November 15 the border police blow up a truck. They seal off the area and call in the bomb squad. An explosive device is attached to the pickup and detonated. There is no secondary explosion, an indication that the pickup was clean (no bombs). The owner, a Bedouin from the Negev, returns to his car an hour later to discover the window blown out of the door on the driver's side and a gaping hole in the door and rear side panel on the passenger side. A soldier when asked about the possibility of compensation for the mistake responds, "It is his problem. It was suspicious. We don't take chances."

A technician in the water department of Hebron, reports to CPT that water lines installed for Palestinian shops and school during the U.S. AID project rebuilding Shuhada St. have been cut ten times in the five weeks since the project was completed. CPTers have observed water spouting from cut lines near their apartment.

CPTers returning from visa renewals are granted visas of only two weeks and one month rather than three month visas.

The team meets with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions to coordinate the North American and Israeli responsibilities in the Campaign for Secure Dwellings. The campaign is a three-way covenant between Israelis, North Americans, and Palestinian families to stop the destruction of homes .

December 1997
On December 20 CPTers are called to a boundary area between the Israeli and Palestinian zones in Hebron where Israeli soldiers are detaining 13 Palestinians. Cliff Kindy films the situation with a video camera and asks why the Palestinians are being held. One of the three soldiers orders him to leave and tries to stop his filming. Cliff holds his arm and protects the camera and is subsequently arrested and charged with interfering with the work of an officer and assaulting the officer [physical contact is considered assault]. He is held at the police station for 5 hours and released on his own recognizance.

On Christmas Day the team joins over 2000 people in an annual candlelight march for peace from Shepherds Field in Beit Sahour. Immediately following, a group of more than 150 marchers goes to the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem to raise the issue of freedom of worship in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers refuse to allow the marchers to pass.

January 1998
There are clashes between Palestinians and soldiers at the beginning of the month.

On January 18 the team receives word from the Chicago office that they have received death threats via e-mail and the phone answering machine targeting the Hebron Team.

On January 20 the team holds a press conference at the Hebron municipality regarding the death threats. In addition to CPTers, the Hebron mayor, Mustapha Natshe, and Palestinian human rights lawyer, Jonathan Kuttab, speak at the press conference.

On January 27 as CPTers return toward home from night patrol, a car with yellow plates (West Bank Palestinians have blue plates; Israelis, including settlers, have yellow plates) approaches them from behind. A young man wearing a skull cap shouts a threat from the back seat as the car slows down and passes them. "Go back to America you scumbags before we kill you." Then louder, "We will kill you."

February 1998
The team meets with Major Rocky from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the liason between CPT and the IDF. Major Rocky explains that sometimes CPT's intervention work is problematic for the IDF. The team explains that CPT's work in Hebron is supposed to be promblematic for the IDF.

From February 9 to 15 the team and members of a delegation help set up, as well as attend, the Sabeel Palestinian Liberation Theology Conference at Bethlehem University. Speakers include Edward Said, Hanan Ashrawi, Mark Ellis, Uri Davis and others. The team hosts two groups of conference attendees on one of the days.

A delegation member photographs the excavation of a tunnel designed to connect all of the Heron settlements to each other and to the Ibrahimi Mosque. Israeli authorities have denied the existence of this tunnel. The delegate, an archaeologist with a long history of excavations in Israel and Palestine, is particularly incensed at the destruction of unique archaeological and historical information caused by these excavations.

Near the end of the month Palestinian shops in a part of the market under Israeli control are put under curfew for a number of days, supposedly because a molotov cocktail had been thrown from that area.

March 1998
On March 3 Yussef and Zuhoor Al-Atrash experience their second home demolition. On the 8^th the team receives a call from the family. CPTers investigate and find that nearly 100 soldiers and settlers have converged on the family demanding they cease construction of their home and threatening to bomb the construction equipment. The team, along with various Israeli and international peace groups, maintain a continuous presence at the home for a number of weeks. On March 22 Yussuf, Zuhoor, Hussam and Manal are all arrested and the cement mixer the family is using to rebuild their home is confiscated. Zuhoor and Manal are released that evening. A judge pronounces a sentence of a 1500 shekel fine each for the two men or 60 days in jail. An Israeli group pays the fine and Yussef and Hussam are released on March 29.

On March 10 clashes begin to protest the IDF killing of three workers from Dura as they crossed the Tarqoumia checkpoint from Israel into the West Bank. The clashes continue throughout the week. During the clashes a couple of journalists are shot.

In the middle of the month a road is bulldozed in the Beqa’a Valley to make way for a gas station for the settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina.

April 1998
The team worships at the Al-Atrash home on Palm Sunday and on Easter. Later in the month the Al-Atrash family gets a phone from World Vision so that they will be able to call for help if soldiers come again. The family also gets a electricity hook up from the Hebron Municipality.

On Sunday, April 6 an anonymous caller leaves a message on the answering machine in the Chicago office threatening to send Israeli intelligence teams to kill the CPT staff who work in Chicago.

The team finds out from a Palestinian friend who lives south of Yatta near Ma'oun settlement that about 100 families in that area have orders to evacuate their houses. Abdel Hadi Hantash later reports that 6 new settlements are planned along the southern border of Hebron district just beyond the Green Line. He thinks this may be related to the eviction notices.

On April 19 Dov Drivven, a settler, is killed in a confrontation with Palestinian shepherds. According to news reports, a shepherd snatched his gun from him and shot him with it. The team later hears that a second settler shot Dov by mistake. On April 23 the team learns that the military has arrested 38 people in the remote area where he was killed.

On April 30 Israel celebrates its 50th anniversary. Settlers hold a demonstration at Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa) on the border of Bethlehem to demand that building for the new settlement begin immeditely. Peace Now holds a counter-demonstration at the foot of the mountain.

May 1998
Yaaleh Cohen from Bat Shalom spends a few days with the team. David Wilder of the Hebron settler community distributes an e-mail release entitled, "CPT-Squalor on the Face of the Earth."

The team learns that settlers from Ma’on settlement have prevented farmers from harvesting their wheat and that the number of people arrested since Dov’s death has risen to fifty.

Charles Lenchner, an Israeli who hopes to establish a Jewish Peacemaker Team, spends 3 days with the team.

On May 14 Palestinians commemorate Al Nakba, (The Catastrophe). In Hebron, over a thousand Palestinians march nonviolently in H-1, but clashes occurr at the dividing lines between H-1 and H-2, when dozens of young Palestinians begin throwing rocks. Team members witness the efforts of Palestinian security forces to prevent additional boys from joining the clashes by linking arms and standing between them and the rock-throwing youth. However, after about an hour they are overwhelmed by the crowd and abandon the effort. Shooting by Israeli soldiers continues. Several Palestinians are injured, but none fatally. Sporadic clashes continue for three days.

At the end of the month CPT responds to a number of calls from families in the Beqa’a Valley where settlers from Harsina are bulldozing a new road and erecting electrical towers near the gas station under construction.

June 1998
The team and delegation members assist the Ibrahim Abu Jindeeya family with their wheat harvest. The family is one of several who live in the Yatta area, southeast of Hebron. A few weeks later Ibrahim Jindeeya and his brother report that settlers have burned 150 dunams (about 40 acres) of unthrashed wheat the day before. CPTers visit the family to document this fact. After visiting the fields, CPTers go to the home of the settlers accused of burning the wheat. Although team members are unable to speak to the actual family of the house, a friend of the family speaks to the team about the killing of a settler several weeks ago and the burning of the wheat.

Team members attend the LAW conference in Jerusalem from June 7 through 10. On June 10 there is a demonstration in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where Jewish settlers have moved into four Palestinian homes in the early hours of the previous morning. According to newspaper reports, the group, part of the Elad ("To the City of David") Association, cites an Israeli High Court decision issued 3 months ago, and asserts that they had a right to occupy the homes. About 150 demonstrators carry signs into the courtyard of one of the affected houses, decrying human rights abuses in Israel/Palestine. Police and Israeli military quickly move in, calling on people to leave the area. "This is an illegal protest on private property," they say, and begin to push the demonstrators. After the demonstrators move to a second house, police begin physically removing protesters from the area, kicking, striking, and dragging them. Bouwmeester struggles to protect a demonstration organizer being beaten by an Israeli soldier by covering him with his body. Six people, including at least one Palestinian (but no CPTers), are arrested.

On June 11 the new house of Yussef and Zuhoor Al-Atrash is demolished. Upon arrival at the site, CPTers see 8 military jeeps and a bulldozer leaving the scene. Yussef and Manal are arrested for resisting the demolition. They are released around noon.

The team has a round-the-clock presence in the Beqa’a Valley from June 14 to June 19 because of the threat of imminent demolitions. No demolitions occur during this time.

On June 16 Abdel Majid Abu Turki is killed. According to news reports, two youths from the Beit Haggai settlement admit to striking him in the head with a plank of wood from a passing van.

July 1998
On July 9 the Israeli Defense Force sets up roadblocks and prevents cars from entering or leaving H2. They also put part of the center of Hebron under closure. There are clashes in the center market in protest.

From July 9 to 20, the Israeli Committee sponsors a travelling potest tent against home demolitions. It is inaugurated in Beit El on the 9^th. During the inauguration word is received of two home demolitions happening nearby. A bus full of Israeli peace activists is diverted to the scene where they attempt to stop the demolition. The tent campaign ends on the 20^th with a series of protest meetings in Jerusalem in front of the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, the Jerusalem City Council, and in a park in front of the Knesset (Israeli parliament).

The team, along with Israeli peace groups, plans an action for July 17^th to paint over the settler graffiti scrawled on Palestinian shop doors. On the 13^th the team discovers that the Civil Administration has hired someone to paint over the graffiti for them. The IDF almost blows up the painter’s car, thinking it may contain a bomb. On the 17^th the Israeli Human Rights Defenders' Team comes to paint over some of the graffiti that remained. When the group goes on a tour of the old city market, Israeli soldiers tell them it was a closed military zone to Israelis. When the group walks past Beit Hadassah they are stopped by Israeli police and taken to the Kiryat Arba police station for several hours of interrogation.

Fayez and Hudda Jaber, along with six other families in the Beqa’a Valley, receive a one-week demolition order on July 20^th. In light of this threat, the team maintains a three day presence at their home at the end of the month. On July 31^st Fayez reports that all of his irrigation pipes have been taken by the Israeli authorities, who also accuse families in the area of stealing water.

August 1998
The house in Anata where two CPTers and Jeff Halper are maintaining a presence during the rebuilding is demolished on August 3^rd.

On August 4^th soldiers rip up and confiscate irrigation lines from tomato and sqaush fields in the Beqa’a Valley. Jim Satterwhite joins some of the Palestinian women who are moving the pipes to the next field to protect them from confiscation. He is arrested when he picks up one of the coils of piping and is about to move it. He is taken to the Kiryat Arba police station and is held for four hours.

On August 15^th the team hears that the Israeli High Court has overturned the demolition orders for several Palestinian families matched through CPT's Campaign for Secure Dwellings.

On August 19^th the home of Atta and Rhodeina Jaber is demolished in the Beqa’a Valley. They decide to rebuild a two-room house and many Palestinians and internationals participate in the rebuilding.

On Thursday the 20^th Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan from Tel Rumeida settlement is killed. Curfew is imposed on Hebron until August 30^th.

At the end of the month the team hears that the owner of the house in Anata, which is destroyed twice in July-August, has been granted a permit.

September 1998
On September 10^th the IDF destroys Abdel Jawad and Jawdi Jaber’s terraces and olive trees. Then on the 16^th Atta and Rhodeina’s house is demolished, exactly four weeks after the previous demolition. During the demolition Atta is arrested. His trial is set for September 23^rd and he is released on September 27^th. The charge against him is stated as "assault by infant" since during the demolition he handed his five-month-old son, Rajeh, to an Israeli border policeman saying, "You raise my child, I cannot."

In the middle of the month Manal Al-Atrash is attacked and beaten near her home by three Israeli paratroopers. According to Israeli news sources, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that soldiers on patrol had stopped and used force on the young woman. When relatives come by to see what is happening, the soldiers accused her of having thrown stones. Manal is hospitalized for two days.

On the last day of the month, two grenades are thrown by an unidentified person in Aaron Gross Square. At least one of them blows up a Palestinian car. The Israeli-controlled area of Hebron (H2) is put under curfew. All of Hebron is placed under closure.

October 1998
Clashes break out at the borders between the Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled areas of Hebron and last until October 12^th. The team witnesses a journalist being shot in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet. Shuhada Street is closed to traffic again. On the 2^nd the entire West Bank is placed under closure as Israeli authorities claim to have proof of a Hamas plan to attack Israel. The team holds a candlelight vigil at sites where clashes have occurred. The curfew is finally lifted the middle of the month but the closure of Shuhada Street in front of Beit Hadassah continues.

On October 7^th thousands of Jewish visitors, the largest crowd yet experienced by CPTers in Hebron, arrive for a concert by a Hasidic music star at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Israeli government officials lay the foundation stone for a permanent settlement at Tel Rumeida.

A settler is murdered on the afternoon of October 26^th, Danny Vargas from Kiryat Arba. The Israeli-controlled area of Hebron is placed under curfew again until October 28^th.

November 1998
CPT hosts a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation at the beginning of the month. The schoolgirls and teachers from Qurtuba School are harassed as they walk in front of Beit Hadassah settlement. They are allowed to pass freely until 7:30am at which point soldiers make them walk a longer way around, encouraging a dog to frighten them. CPT and the FOR delegates maintain a presence in this area each morning for a number of days. Some of the girls are assualted and three require overnight hospitalization. The principal of the school and one student are arrested and held for a few hours.

On November 6 a car bomb explodes in the crowded Jerusalem Mahane Yehuda market, killing the two Palestinian assailants and injuring 16 other people. The Islamic Jihaad political group claims responsibility.

On November 13 an un-detonated grenade is thrown at the Israeli military checkpoint at Aaron Gross Square. The military blows up the grenade and then declares curfew. Some young men in the old city are arrested. The curfew is lifted two days later.

There are many attempts at land confiscation through bulldozing of fields and trees and preparing for new roads this month. Also many stop-work and home demolition orders are issued.

December 1998
The team hosts some diplomats early in the month and gives them a tour as well as talking about the work of CPT.

Political prisoners go on a hunger strike protesting the release of common criminals instead of political prisoners as outlined in the Wye Agreement. There are clashes throughout the West Bank as the strike continues with planned solidarity marches held throughout.

There are more examples of land confiscation this month with the bulldozing of roads, the setting up of new settlements and new home demolition and stop work orders issued.

Clinton comes to visit in Israel-Palestine and on the 16^th the US and Great Britain bomb Iraq. Clashes occur in Hebron as a response to the bombing and thirty-one Palestinians are injured by rubber-coated metal bullets.

January 1999
Curfew is imposed on the 4^th after two Jewish settler women are shot in H2. Two days later a young Palestinian man is shot outside the CPT apartment. The team later learns that the man has died.

Palestinians hold noviolent marches protesting the curfew and the closure of Hebron. On the 10^th CPTers join one of the nonviolent demonstrations and Pierre Shantz and Sara Reschly are arrested for "stopping soldiers from doing their duty." In the evening, the week-long curfew and closure is lifted. The next day Sara and Pierre are released without their passports and with 2000 shekels each, paid on their behalf by courtroom supporters. Charges are later dropped against them and their passports and the money are returned.

The terraces that Jawdi Jaber has reconcstructed since the demolition of the others last September are bulldozed.

Rich Meyer climbs onto bulldozers along with 30-40 Israelis protesting bypass road #45 north of Jerusalem near Ramallah. Ten Israelis are arrested, and the bulldozers stop work for the morning.

CPTers join 100 Israelis and 100 Palestinians who replant trees which have been uprooted near the Green Line near Tulkarm. The event is initiated by Palestinians and Israelis who have been meeting for two years with the motto, "Right of dignity, duty of respect."

February 1999
The team decides to fast from solid foods for an entire week, to gain a sense of clarity and vision for expanding the Campaign for Secure Dwellings and responding to the events in Hebron and the surrounding Hebron District in the coming months. Instead of eating supper, they have a "Meal Without Food" each evening.

Three CPTers hold signs alongside Palestinians and Israelis in a demonstration against the police and military violence that kills 21-year-old Zaki Afaid. Afaid was shot in the head and neck with three rubber-coated steel bullets while he was protesting the demolition of his family's home in Issaweiah, a village north of Jerusalem. The demonstration which begins as a silent vigil outside the national police headquarters in Jerusalem, is organized by Israeli peace groups. After about an hour, the demonstrators take signs and go to Issaweiah, marching silently down the main street with signs saying, "Stop Using Rubber Bullets," and "Justice now for all Homes Demolished." The Israelis visit the family to express their regret for the death of Zaki.

The team again hosts some diplomats this month and giving them a tour as well as talking about the work of CPT.

On the 4^th the team has plans to hold a small worship service in front of Beit Hadassah, where Palestinians have not been allowed to pass since October. As they began walking up the steep stairs around the street, soldiers call them back and point out that some Palestinians behind them are now walking past Beit Hadassah. To the teams amazement, Shuhada Street is opened that day to Palestinian pedestrians. Police and TIPH personnel are present to monitor any tension between Palestinians and setlers. Later that day the team receives a phone call that Fayez and Huda Jabber's house had been demolished in the Beqa'a Valley earlier that morning.

The team finds out that the preparations for making Tel Rumeida permanent have been stopped while Palestinian pursue a lawsuit in the Israeli high court protesting the possible damage to archaeological sites. Tel Rumeida is the site of ancient ruins going back to Abraham's time and is also considered the site of King David's first city.

The team begins Tent for Lent, a campaign to raise awareness of the issue of home demolitions. The team lives in a tent in downtown Hebron for a few days.

March 1999
CPTers join Palestinains west of Karmei Tzur settlement to call on the military to remove the poles placed along a settler road encircling Palestinian land. While military officers argue with Palestinian leadership "explaining" why the poles are still up, a smaller group of farmers digs up and cuts down poles.

On March 12 the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and the Palestinian Land Defense Committee (PLDC) organize a mass action against the Occupation that takes place in four locations simultaneously. Demolished houses are rebuilt in Anata (Jerusalem area), Yatta (Hebron area), and Kifl Haris, and trees are planted in Beit Dajan to replace trees uprooted by settlers and soldiers. More than 500 people participate in the action.

 

April 1999
On Easter Sunday tens of thousands of Jewish visitors come to Hebron to celebrate Passover. CPTer Anne Montgomery meets 5 soldiers looking for "CPT" to warn the team not to take pictures of the neighboring soldier camp which is easily visible from the CPT rooftop. Later in the month a CPTer is ordered to get off the roof by a soldier stationed on the roof across the street and when CPTers take a group to the CPT roof to show them the view they are immediately told that they will have to get down by soldiers across the street. Speaking in Hebrew, the Jewish-American members of the group ask why it is forbidden for them to be on the roof. The reply is security reasons. Eventually an officer comes to the roof across the street and tells the group they have two minutes to get down or everyone will be arrested.

Yussef Al Atrash, a friend of the team who has had his home demolished three times, is stopped at the Bethlehem checkpoint as he returns to the West Bank from Jerusalem. When his ID is checked in the computer, his record shows his past history of building "illegal structures" and indicates that he currently had an illegal one on his property, although the only structure on his property is a tent. He is arrested and brought to the Kiryat Arba police station where he is held in jail over night and charged NIS 1000 ($250), which the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions pays.

Near the end of the month the team and a delegation accompanies about a dozen Palestinian merchants as they march up Shuhada Street and then to the Hebron city hall to protest the continued Israeli-imposed closure of the street and its affect on their business. The march happens without incident. Police and soldiers seem confused as the group walked past Beit Hadassah settlement. At city hall, the group has a short meeting with the mayor in which they air their grievances.

May 1999
On the first day of the month a border police soldier in Hebron is waving around his M-16 in anger at some children and accidentally shoots and wounds two children from the Muhtaseb family near the Cave of Machpela. The bullet passes through the leg of the 11 year old boy and hits a wall, causing shrapnel that grazes the head of his 4 year old sister. The boy is treated at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem where he undergoes a 14 hour surgery. The military apologizes for the accident.

On the 13 the Israeli army destroys four houses in the southern Hebron District.

On the 17^th Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses his office to Ehud Barak.

In the middle of the month the team is in the Beqa'a valley as the Israeli Army demolishes three Palestinian agricultural reservoirs. Soldiers remove CPTer Jamey Bouwmeester and Jeff Halper of ICAHD when they attempt to prevent the demolitions by getting in the way of a bulldozer. Halper is handcuffed and taken to Kiryat Arba police station, but is released that evening

At the end of the month there is dynamiting on the hill above Abdel Jawad Jaber’s house to break up rocks and clear the earth so that new settlement housing can be built there. Israeli surveyors also put up lines within meters of the house to mark where a new retaining wall for the settlement will be built

June 1999
The Palestinian Authority declares a "Day of Anger" against Israel's settlement policy on the 3^rd. In Hebron the political and religious leadership organize a large demonstration, intending to march peacefully from the Palestinian controlled area of the city into the Israeli controlled area and then past the settlement of Beit Hadassah. When the demonstrators reach the border of the two parts of the city, several young teenagers pick up stones to throw at the Israeli soldiers who are waiting for them. The teenagers are immediately reprimanded by older organizers. Before the demonstrators reach the settlement, Israeli soldiers block the road and begin to physically push the marchers back. Realizing that they will not be allowed to continue and that violence might break out, the Palestinian leaders end the demonstration and lead the demonstrators back up the street and across the border into the Palestinian controlled part of the city.

 

July 1999
The team attempts to visit a friend of the team who lives just past Tel Rumeida. Soldiers prevent the team from walking past the settlement, explaining that they have orders that no visitors can walk there. When the team finally visits with the friend at his work, he explains that the soldiers at that checkpoint have been stopping people for a while. Again, the team walks up to the checkpoint, and the soldiers look at their armbands and say, "CPT - not allowed." When asked why, they answer that their captain has ordered it.

On July 10 team members travel to Anata for a celebration of the newly built home of the Shawamreh family. Around four hundred Israelis, Palestinians and internationals come to celebrate in solidarity with the family. Several organizations make speeches challenging Ehud Barak to bring an end to home demolitions, and expressing their hopes for a just peace and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Later the team hears about how settlers have been entering a Palestinian neighborhood near the top of Tel Rumeida since the beginning of the summer. Two olive groves there belonged to the Jewish community in Hebron before 1929, and the settlers wish to claim them. In light of all this, CPT begins a daily presence near the top of Tel Rumeida hill in the afternoons which last about two weeks. One afternoon when CPT arrives, a group of about 10 settlers, all women and children, are sitting in an olive grove across from Palestinian houses. Israeli police and soldiers are present. The settlers and police do not respond when a family member tries to drive his truck in; the settlers do not move their vehicle until police force them to leave the area. The last day of the month CPTers observe eight young settler men sitting on a pile of construction materials at the top of the hill. Palestinian residents and Israeli police and soldiers are gathered. Palestinian residents tell CPT that when the settlers first arrived, they began to pick up some of the building materials. The police show the settlers orders forbidding them to be there, and the settlers left quietly.

August 1999
The evening of August 3 someone shoots at two settlers from the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba as they are driving towards the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Following the incident, Israeli soldiers prevent CPTers and members of TIPH from leaving the park across from the Tomb. TIPH is guaranteed freedom of movement by prior agreement with both Israeli and Palestinian authorities. When the TIPH members call their liaison officer within the Israeli military, the officer in charge at the scene refuses to speak with him. The next day curfew is declared on Hebron and clashes break out. The curfew lasts for four days. Later CPTers pray at the site of the shooting as well as at the sites of the clashes.

On the 11^th the Israeli military demolishes two homes in Walaje, a small Palestinian village south of Jerusalem. The villagers begin to rebuild the houses the same day since the residents of Walaje, many of whom have received demolition orders, have an agreement that everyone will join together to rebuild in the event of a demolition. CPTers and delegation members join in the rebuilding a few days later.

August 19^th Shuhada Street is partly reopened to Palestinian vehicles. The section of road running past Beit Hadassah remains closed to through traffic however. Settlers demonstrate against the opening of the street by forming a motorcade and driving slowly on the street. CPT observes Israeli police blockading and dispersing the demonstration, except for one van which remains on the street blocking one lane of traffic. The van finally moves after a tow truck arrives on the scene. Israeli police give the driver a ticket for obstructing traffic. Later that morning, Israeli parliament member Ariel Sharon speaks against the opening to the press in front of Beit Hadassah.

At the end of the month a fire starts in the former wholesale market in front of Avraham Avinu settlement. CPT arrives on the scene after the fire, which started in a closed storage area, has been put out. Israeli military personnel at the scene blame the fire on an electrical problem. The mayor of Hebron expresses concern that fires often start in the market when it is closed or when there are few people around.

September 1999
On the 4^th an agreement is signed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt setting target dates for the opening of a further section of Shuhada Street (October 30), and partial re-opening of the Palestinian market in front of Avraham Avinu settlement (November 1). Later in the month Abdel Hadi Hantash reports that the first stage of the Sharm al Sheikh redeployments concentrate mostly along the western border of the Hebron district and do not affect any of the families CPT works with.

October 1999
October 9 While giving a tour of Hebron, Jamey Bouwmeester witnessed a delegation of Jordanian and Palestinian politicians near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. A group of settlers was also in the area for Shabbat prayers. A confrontation ensued with Palestinian security and Israeli military forces between the two groups. Eventually the politicians and the settlers moved on leaving only Israeli military and Palestinian shopkeepers in the area. Tensions were still running high and when soldiers began pushing and arresting Palestinians, Bouwmeester got involved. He tried to separate some soldiers from Palestinians they were harassing, asking the soldiers to "take it easy." One particularly agitated soldier began pushing Bouwmeester, asking him, "Why do you want to hurt us?" "I don't want to hurt you," Bouwmeester replied, "You're hurting me." A moment later Bouwmeester was escorted to a police jeep and told he was under arrest. However, after being held for 30 minutes, he was released.

October 13 Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee (PLDC) took the team and two journalists to an area near Idna village, west of Hebron, where more than 5000 acres were recently declared closed military areas. Tens of families were given evacuation orders although all plan to defy the orders. The area is nearly adjacent to the border between the West Bank and Israel and it is expected that this is the first step towards annexing the land to Israel.

October 21 Anne Montgomery attended a demonstration organized by Bethlehem University students to protest the new checkpoint. The demonstrators walked towards the checkpoint, and without warning Israeli soldiers fired rubber coated bullets and tear gas into the crowd. Montgomery and several of the demonstrators sought refuge from the gas in a nearby store. When they tried to exit the store, they were fired upon again. Five students were injured and taken to area hospitals.

31 October Israelis from Hebron and neighboring settlement Kiryat Arba prayed in front of Beit Hadassah settlement for several hours in the morning, blocking the street to protest the scheduled opening of Shuhada Street to all Palestinian vehicle traffic. In a press statement, Jewish settlers said they were concerned about security risks with Shuhada Street, or King David Street, as they call it, being opened to Palestinian vehicle traffic. They also expressed concerns about the opening of the "safe passage" way between Gaza and the West Bank, complained that they are limited to certain areas and streets in Hebron and asked for safe passage, too. Around 10 a.m. the settler demonstration and prayers concluded.

Some time later, the Israeli commander for the Hebron District ordered the blockades opened up but only for Palestinian taxis. He said to journalists that this would be a test, and that if nothing happens the IDF may open the street up to more traffic. At about 10:30 a.m. soldiers pushed aside the large barriers and waved through a taxi whose unsuspecting driver was confused that soldiers were waving him through the previously-closed route. As journalists snapped photos and interviewed passengers, more taxis began using the new route.

November 1999
November 10 IDF troops removed Israeli settlers from the hilltop settlement of Havat Ma'on early in the morning, with international and Israeli journalists observing.

November 13 Joanne Kaufman accompanied Palestinian journalist Kawther Salam to Yatta to investigate reports that Palestinian farmers had been injured by settlers hiding out in caves near Havat Ma'on. A farmer in a Yatta hospital had bruises and 12 stitches in his head from stones and sticks wielded by the 60 or so settlers who attacked the six Palestinian men from an extended family. The Palestinians had gone to plant farmland that settlers had prevented them from tending for a year and a half.

November 15 Palestine Independence Day. Four CPTers went to Yatta area with Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Hebron District Land Defense Committee and a journalist. They waited an hour to enter the closed military area that had been imposed since the previous day, and were finally allowed in because of the journalist's privileges. The military stopped them at the next checkpoint, at the road into Twaneh. When the farmers just happened to drive by on their tractor, they invited the group into the village and their fields. An Israeli officer and 14 soldiers stopped the group of six plus two Palestinian farmers and forbade them to go to the fields. They said the fields would be opened on Friday.

November 16 Kaufman went with a Palestinian journalist to Twaneh after they received a call saying that Israeli soldiers were evicting Bedouin families in the area from their homes and fields. They sneaked into the area to photograph and interview the families packing up chickens, household pans and goods, bedding and bedsprings and animal feeders and wood into wagons pulled by tractors. When asked why they were packing up their own things, the people replied that they didn't want the soldiers to do it because they would probably break things and might demolish their simple cave homes. Soldiers claimed they were just following orders and evicting the families "for their own safety."

The pair also noted that Ma'on Farm is now inhabited by Israeli soldiers. No soldiers were guarding the caves near the Farm, indicating that maybe the Israeli settlers who had hidden in the caves have been removed from that area as Barak's government claimed.

December 1999
December 13 During visits to the Beqa'a Valley, CPTers Natasha Krahn and Jane Adas noticed that water pipes were again being cut by the Israeli water company. Cutting off the water supply of the farmers is one aspect of this pressure.

Two team members responded to a call from the Beqa'a Valley to translator Zleekha. The Israeli settlers who demonstrated for the demolition of a Palestinian family's house a week ago had planted grapevines and spray-painted stars of David on land just north of the house. By the time CPTers arrived, the settlers had left.

The family reported that some Palestinian children had uprooted the grapevines. They said that one of the sons of Israeli settler leader Moshe Levinger had threatened that he would come and uproot more of the family's grapevines in retaliation the next day. The land belongs to a another family but is worked by this family. CPTers saw the remains of long tapers from five nights of settler vigils around the house from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

December 21 In the evening, 250 settlers surrounded the Omar and Lamia Sultan house, threatening to demolish the house themselves if the Israeli military government would not. One settler tried to enter the house. Two demolition orders were issued, by the military government, to the family against the house in 1995.

December 22 After several weeks of harassment from Israeli settlers, the Sultan family invited CPT to begin a presence with them. The team sent Gish as a one-person presence, since he is matched with the family in the CSD. About 25 Israeli settlers were demonstrating between the house and the bypass road 75 meters below it. They wanted the demolition of the Sultan house and land, owned by another Palestinian family just north of the house, for a settlement or expansion of Kiryat Arba 3 km away. The Israeli military moved the settlers and their banners across the road. The settlers built a fire across the road and the Sultan's built a fire in front of their house to keep warm for the vigil through the night.

December 25 When Art Gish returned to the Sultan house, Israeli settlers were holding a large rally across the road. Late in the evening, about 100 settlers began tearing down a rock terrace wall near the house, despite the presence of Israeli police and soldiers. The settlers declared that they would return on Tuesday to demolish the Sultan house and start a settlement

December 27 No settlers appeared but many Palestinian neighbors, journalists and international visitors went to the Sultan home to offer support. Two Jewish peace activists from Gush Shalom ("Peace Bloc," an Israeli peace organization) and two Jewish activists from the U.S. and Canada spent the night with the family in case bulldozers came the next morning. Other Israeli peace activists and organizations also contacted the Israeli government to express their concern for the Palestinian family's safety.

December 28 The Israeli government promised that the Sultan home would not be demolished. Israeli soldiers arrived at the house at 11 a.m. and said that the area had been declared a closed military zone, and that everyone but the Sultan's would have to leave or risk arrest. Three Gush Shalom activists were prepared to stay, but the soldiers did not carry out the threat. A bus and several car-loads of other Israeli peace people came and held banners all afternoon to support the family. CPTers stayed overnight again in case settlers came but none did.

December 29 Israeli soldiers again declared a closed military zone in the morning. CPTers visiting the Sultan family left, and Gish left for a few hours to visit neighbors a few houses away. A bus-load of Israeli settlers arrived and held another demonstration on the land north of the Sultan house for several hours before being removed by Israeli soldiers. At one point, they rushed toward the Sultan house but were stopped by Israeli soldiers at a stone wall near the house.

December 30 Local Palestinian Authority leaders organized a demonstration at the land near the Sultan house. They were stopped for over an hour a mile away from the house before some were allowed to visit the Sultan house. The demonstrators included a member and former member of the Israeli Knesset, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and several Israeli peace activists. While the group was visiting the Sultan's, an Israeli military commander told the group that the Sultan home would not be demolished.

There has been no settler activity at the Sultan home since the first of January. The attempt of the settlers to establish a new settlement near the Sultan home has been thwarted.

January 2000
The team is told by the Sultans that their home is still a "military closed zone," presumably to keep Israeli settlers from harassing them. Soldiers do not stop or harass the team when they visit the family.

The gates just north of the Beit Hadassah settlement are removed by settlers. The settlers do not want any walls around them, feeling that gates and walls enclose them into a ghetto here. When asked why the soldiers didn't stop this action, a soldier responded: "There were too many of them. What can we do? We can't beat them because they are Jews".

It snows on the 27^th and Hebron is shut down for two days under almost two feet of snow.

February 2000
February 11 In "sympathy" with Israel's greed for more land, CPTers along with Israeli Peace activists and Palestinians "helped" by taking buckets of soil to Harsina settlement. One at a time, the demonstrators poured the contents of their buckets out at the feet of soldiers and police and onto confiscated land. The action was the kick-off to a world wide campaign to send packets of soil to the Israeli government.

Feb. 15 Most of the CPT team went to observe a settler demonstration at a Palestinian owned gas station scheduled to reopen on Shuhada street. The gas station has been closed for many years because it is close to a Jewish settlement and deemed a security risk. Several hundred settlers showed up for the demonstration which called for its continued closure. One speaker warned that reopening the gas station "would be a point for the terrorists". Palestinian foot traffic was prevented from passing by the demonstration and was re-routed on a foot-path above Shuhada street. The gas station remains closed.

Feb. 22 CPT was informed today about a West Bank teacher's strike. Teachers are demanding an increase in their salaries, which has actually decreased in past years. Their wages are between $300-$500 U.S. per month. The Palestinian media has been discouraged from covering the strike, and a T.V. station which interviewed some teachers has been closed by the Palestinian Authority.

Feb. 24 Anita Fast and Reinhard Kober went to observe a teachers strike demonstration at the Ministry of Education. At least 400 teachers gathered for the demonstration, which was policed by Palestinian Authority forces in bullet proof vests and helmets. "This is not a political strike", one of the teachers told Fast, "this is a strike just for food. We are starving. Teachers live in bad conditions. We do not have money to buy food and clothing for our children." The demonstration lasted an hour and ended peacefully.

Feb. 25 Upon returning to Hebron, CPT received word that more garbage had been thrown onto the porch of the Abu Daoud family. Fast, David Cockburn, and Kober went with Palestinian journalist, Kawther Salaam to the family's home and documented the situation as Salaam began arranging to lodge a formal complaint with the military.

Feb. 28 Harassment continued today for the Abu Daoud family living beside the Avraham Avinu settlement when soldiers stationed on their roof began stomping on their metal roof until Nazeeha Abu Daoud came out of her room screaming. They then threw a small but heavy piece of metal down through the mesh wire covering the family courtyard and porch areas. Fast went with Kawthur Salaam to their home. Salaam suspects that the harassment from the soldiers is due to her complaint to the commander of the army, who had paid the Abu Daoud family a visit earlier that day and promised to "look into" settler harassment.

March 2000
March 6 Work began on a Palestinian-owned gas station next to Isreali settlement, Beit Hadassah, which is scheduled to reopen after years of being closed for "security reasons". Dozens of extra soldiers and Israeli police officers were brought in to help control settlers from Hebron and near-by Kiryat Arba who were aggressively protesting the station's re-opening. Settlers pulled down barriers surrounding the station, and tried to sit in the ditches being dug for a fence. Reinhard Kober, Rick Carter, Dianne Roe, and Anita Fast went to the station to observe the situation, and were consistently called "Nazi" by settlers. A group of young settler men approached Fast and one of them yelled at her, "You are a Nazi! Why are you here? We don't want you here! You are a Nazi!" Fast looked him in the eyes and responded "I just want you to know that I mean you no harm". A larger crowd of settlers gathered around Fast and the settler kept yelling, "I don't believe you! You are a hypocrite! You love the Arabs! You are a Nazi! Why don't you leave!" Fast replied, "I will leave when there is no longer the threat of violence here." Some settlers laughed and one replied, "That will never happen." A police officer tapped Fast on the shoulder and motioned her to move away from the crowd. He said to her, "stay over here, I don't want you to get hurt." The settlers remained at the gas station all day, trying to stop the work from being done.

March 7 Settlers continued to demonstrate at the gas station today. Police and soldiers were not allowing any Palestinians to walk up Shuhada street past the station and the protesters. Rich Meyer and Anne Montgomery went to observe and noticed that settler youth were still being quite aggressive in their actions, and that police were starting to get rougher with them, sometimes pushing them down.

March 21 Today was also the day of the last redeployment in the West Bank before the final status talks. 6.1% of Israeli controlled land was handed over to the Palestinian Authority. None of our CSD families are affected by the redeployment and remain living under full Israeli control.

March 29 The Israeli Supreme Court met today to decide on the fate of the Palestinian families evicted from the Yatta area in November. Montgomery, Roe, Carter, and Kober went to Jerusalem to hear the Supreme Court decision. Many Yatta families and Israeli peace activists also gathered at the court. The Court ruled that the displaced families could return to their land and their homes immediately, and that an arbiter would be appointed to figure out which families are permanent residents and have the right to stay there.

April 2000
April 6 Israeli settlers who had been evicted from their settlement, Ha'vat Maon, last November, returned to the land near Yatta and set up a tent where they had been before. They did this in response to the Israeli High Court decision permitting 85 Palestinian families to return to their homes and farms in the area from which they had also been evicted. The IDF removed the settlers again, but are allowing them to return once a week to check on the crops they have planted. Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee reported that the IDF has announced that they will accept the return of Palestinian families, but that only the 85 families who were listed on the original court petition will be allowed back. Nineteen new eviction notices were given to other Palestinian families in the area, demanding they leave within 24 hours. The families refused to leave, and are waiting to see whether they will be forcibly evicted.

April 9 The team traveled to Yatta to join Palestinians from the area, Israeli peace activists and media in a gathering celebrating the return of the evicted Palestinian families. Although this area is still considered a military training area, the visitors were not stopped. Soldiers watched from a distance. As the men listened to speeches and interviews, the CPT women visited with the Palestinian women and children who stayed in their homes during the festivities. A big meal was cooked and served on heaping platters to feed well over two hundred people.

April 14 A CPT friend, joined Anita Fast and Rick Carter on a fact-finding walk around the settlement of Karmei Tzur They were unable to find the disputed fence, and spoke with Palestinian farmers in the area to find out information about the situation. One man from the area told them that the fence had been removed by soldiers. Upon arriving in the nearby Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, they visited the mother and brother of one of CPT's CSD families. The family reported that 6 dunams of the fenced land belonged to them, and showed the CPTers legal ownership documents dating back to the Ottoman Empire, as well as papers from each succeeding occupying force (British and Jordanian). The brother confirmed the removal of the fence, but said that the land is still considered disputed and the case is in court.

April 19 Anne Montgomery, Carter, and Fast went with a friend from Beit Hanina to Beit Ummar where they were met by Ahmed Salaye (a brother of one of CPT's CSD matches). Ahmed took them to visit some families who live near the Karmei Tzur settlement and received stop-work orders on April 6th. This is the first time that these families have had trouble with the military authorities. The families have been given a court date for May 23rd, and some Palestinian lawyers have taken their case. The families reported that an Israeli helicopter circles the area every two or three days to check on whether they are obeying the stop-work order. Ahmed emphasized that the people in the area who are trying to build homes are all refugees, and that some are orphans.

May 2000
May 5 Journalist Kawther Salaam informed the team that there were settlers at a Palestinian house near the Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida in Hebron. Anita Fast, Jamey Bouwmeester and Natasha Krahn went to the house and found a group of about seventy settlers outside the house of Fariel Abu Haikel. Fariel reported that a settler had tried to come up a hill through their yard and her daughter tried to stop him. The situation escalated and the settlers smashed the window of a neighbour's car, fought with the family and fired five shots into the air. Israeli soldiers eventually separated the two groups and arrested Fariel's husband and two of her sons. The dispute was over some olive groves that the settlers claim belong to them. They have previously attempted to start a settlement in these groves.

May 12 Rick Carter and Reinhard Kober joined a demonstration in Hebron organized by the Palestinian Prisoner's Society in support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. The prisoners were in the twelfth day of a hunger strike. The prisoners are demanding to be released. Recently Israeli prisoners convicted of killing or attempting to kill Palestinians have been pardoned or have had their sentences reduced. No Palestinian prisoners have been considered for reduction of sentence, even though many of them are in prison for lesser acts.

May 15 There were clashes all over the West Bank as Palestinians commemorated Al Nakbah - The Catastrophe. Carter and Kober observed clashes between Palestinians and soldiers in Hebron. The clashes were unusually violent with soldiers shooting round after round of rubber bullets. All stores in the market were shut down and it was impossible to cross the border between H1- the Palestinian controlled area of Hebron - and H2 - the Israeli controlled area.

May 16 Clashes continued in Hebron today effectively shutting down H2 again.

May 17 Jane Adas, Natasha Krahn and Carter visited Fariel Abu Haikel to check out what had happened since the confrontation with the settlers (see above May 5). Fariel told CPT that her husband and two sons had spent four days in jail and were to appear in court in July. They had to pay 3000 shekels ($750US) to be released. Fariel commented, "I called the police to help me [with the settlers] and they arrested my family. Next time who should I call - the police, the army, journalists, CPT? Who?" She added wryly, "At least my husband and sons were in a five star prison."

As Ala', one of the sons who was arrested, was showing CPTers the contested olive groves, soldiers approached and asked them to leave. "These groves are quarantined," he explained. Adas said the team was just seeing some of the olive trees that settlers have cut down. The soldier said, "You have five minutes but then you must leave. If the settlers see you here they will cause problems." The team left after checking out the trees.

May 18 Carter and Adas visited the solidarity tent of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. The tent in Hebron is part of a wider movement calling for the release of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails. Major Palestinian political factions - Fatah, Hamas, PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) -- were represented. 1600 prisoners have been on a hunger strike since May 1st.

May 22 In Bethlehem, Carter witnessed a demonstration of several dozen Palestinian students marching towards Rachel's Tomb. They were prevented from reaching it by Palestinian police who erected a barricade

May 28 The team expected Cliff Kindy to arrive, and were concerned when he neither came nor sent word. They later learned that he was detained at Ben Gurion airport for 32 hours without access to a telephone, then sent back to the United States (See release, "CPTer Denied Entry...")

June 2000
On June 6 a CPT delegation and the team sell tomatoes in a Hebron wholesale market that, according to signed agreements, was to have opened last November but has remained closed. This is the third time CPT has sold tomatoes in this market. This time all the tomatoes are sold out and no one is arrested.

On June 11 the Hebron settler community celebrates the completion of the 3-story addition to the settlement of Beit Hadassah.

The team attends the first of a number of demonstrations sponsored by the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom, and Bat Shalom. They are held in front of the home of Interior Minister Nathan Sharansky to protest two recent home demolitions in East Jerusalem that were ordered by his department. Spokespeople say that although they ordinarily do not approve of demonstrating at private homes, this particular issue justifies such a tactic.

On June 30 between 25-40 settlers surround Atta Jaber’s new house. Settlers tear off and demolish white stone blocks that are being laid on the outside of the house. Israeli police and soldiers arrive after one hour, and after another hour make the settlers leave. The Israeli military Civil Administration declare the area a closed-military zone and forbid Atta from continuing work on his house.

July 2000

July 1 Sara Reschly went to spend the night in the Beqa'a in response to reports that settlers had been harassing families in the area. At 10:00 pm settlers came to a Palestinian family's property, but were stopped by soldiers at the bottom of the hill leading to their home.

July 7 On night patrol, Anita Fast, Reschly and Grace Boyer were walking past the IDF military camp and a settler woman came out and asked them to come into the military camp to turn off a refrigerator light for her (on the Sabbath, Orthodox Jews cannot turn lights on or off). The CPTers followed her into the military base and turned off the light. This confirms earlier suspicions that there is now a civilian family living in the military camp which is on the land of the old Arab bus station in Hebron.

July 8 CPTers, Reschly and Boyer, went out to the Beqa'a valley to continue to follow-up on the situation with the terraces which were bulldozed two days earlier. They spoke with a CSD family in the area who reported that settlers have been coming regularly to his house and to his neighbor's house, walking around and praying on the land. He also told CPTers more about Thursday, July 6, when the bulldozer came. He reported that a bulldozer, accompanied by lots of police, army, and Civil Administration personnel arrived at 9:00 am. It bulldozed terraces that were not in use. The soldiers denied access to the reporters, saying that it was a closed military zone.

July 14 While on her way to meet journalist, Kawther Salaam, Boyer came across 3 TIPH cars and 15-20 soldiers in front of Beti Hadassah settlement. She learned that settlers had beaten up a Palestinian and he was taken to the hospital. Boyer and Salaam then visited the Commander of the Israeli Police in Hebron, who was home mourning the death of his mother.

July 15 At 7:00 in the evening, CPT received a phone call informing the team of clashes in Hebron. The team was in Bethlehem at the time, and immediately caught a taxi back to Hebron. When CPT arrived in Hebron, things had calmed down considerably, but the streets remained full of soldiers and police. The main road past the settlements, Shuhada Street, was closed to Palestinian traffic. Nait Alleman, Jamey Bouwmeester, Kathy Kamphoefner, and Paul Pierce entered an alleyway where 25 soldiers had 20 Palestinian youth, age 10-14, penned in. The soldiers wouldn't let any of the youth leave because they were worried that they would throw stones at settlers as the settlers returned to their homes. Fast and Reschly went to the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs and spoke with local Palestinians about what had happened. They observed several parked cars which had been vandalized by settlers. CPTers were informed that at 6:00 pm, approximately 100 settlers from Kiryat Arba began marching through town to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Settlers threw stones at Palestinians along the way, and smashed parked cars. Palestinian youth threw stones at the settlers in retaliation. Soldiers physically separated the two groups. At the same time, about 60 settlers from the Hebron settlement of Beit Hadassah marched towards the Tomb, attacking a young Palestinian family and smashing goods in Palestinian store-fronts. They also vandalized the car of TIPH observers. The young Palestinian couple had to wait for several hours in the police station before they were allowed to make a report. Palestinian reporters were also attacked by settlers, and 7 of them were injured. Fast and Reschly were told that settlers were reacting to an attack on a young settler girl earlier that day. Others speculated that settlers were reacting to concessions being made by Israel at the Camp David negotiations.

August 2000

August 5 In the early evening Michael Goode and Bob Holmes followed Israeli soldiers running down Shuhada Street to the intersection near the Israeli settlement of Avraham Avinu . There they entered a crowd of soldiers, settlers and Palestinians and were informed by a soldier that two young settlers had thrown rocks off the roof of a shop onto Palestinian cars below. He said they would be arrested if caught. As Jim Satterwhite arrived the team noticed an ambulance further down the street where another crowd had gathered. Calling for more CPTers to come Goode, Holmes and Satterwhite headed in that direction. Witnesses explained that settler youth had damaged a parked Palestinian car and that the owner and other Palestinians neighbors had come out of their homes to protect their vehicles.

August 8 Jeremy Bergen and Satterwhite, while traveling to the village of Beit Ummar saw an IDF unit supervising the destruction of market stalls along bypass highway #60.

August 10 At 6 p.m. Nait Alleman and Goode observed a group of settlers, about 100-120 persons, proceeding down Shuhada Street. When the group reached the Palestinian market a young settler woman, claiming she had been hit with a thrown stone, began overturning cartons of fruit and vegetables. Alleman and Goode entered the market in an attempt to reduce the violence.

August 13 In the evening Bergen, Goode and Holmes noticed a crowd gathered near the high gate at Beit Hadassah. The team approached to find that settler women had attacked two Palestinian brothers, throwing glass bottles at them seriously injuring one over the left eye. Soldiers responded by standing between the settlers and the Palestinians. The team learned that the two Palestinians had a grant from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee to renovate their abandoned home adjacent to Beit Hadassah. While moving materials into the house they were attacked. The military authority issued a verbal "stop-work" order to the Palestinians and insisted that they remove the building materials. A group of about 20 settlers were verbally harassing them. To speed things up some Palestinian journalists and CPTers helped carry cinder blocks out of the house.

August 19 Shabbat Shalom is the Jewish Sabbath greeting. It was Shabbat but there was little shalom today at the Hisbeh market on Shuhada Street. Natasha Krahn, Goode, Bob Holmes and Jeremy Bergen were engaged for several hours in non-violent intervention during yet another violent clash involving settlers, soldiers and Palestinians. See release August 21, "Violence in the Market."

August 20 The settlers held a remembrance ceremony at the Jewish cemetery marking the anniversary of the 1929 massacre of 69 Jews in Hebron. Several buses carrying settlers from Kiryat Arba came for the ceremony. Fearing further violence CPT patrolled the streets before, during and after the ceremony, but no confrontations took place.

August 26 The tension on Shuhada Street this Shabbat was electric all day given the frequency of clashes on Saturdays during the summer, and the fact that there were hundreds of settlers and Jewish Israeli visitors in Hebron for a concert that evening. On Shuhada Street Palestinian vehicular traffic was restricted and some stores were closed. Twice the usual number of soldiers stood at the checkpoints and patrolled the street. Media reporters with cameras waited on every corner. CPT was on constant patrol throughout the day and night. Although the tension was palpable, there were no clashes.

September 2000
The team hears a lot about the problems of education in Hebron and surrounding areas. The team hears about the lack of schools and how children must walk a long time to get to the schools that are available. The focus is on the Qilkis school and trying to get a permit for it. Although the team talks with the Bedawie brothers, who are building the school, about setting up a tent and teaching in that but the demolition order on the school is rescinded before this plan goes into action.

The team starts fasting and praying on Saturdays as a response to the increased settler violence that has been happening in Hebron.

On September 28 Ariel Sharon visits the Haram Al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, in a assertion of Jewish sovereignty over the area. Many clashes break out in the entire West Bank as a result of his visit.

October 2000
The clashes and unrest sparked by Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount continue all month. Hebron is under curfew the entire month. On October 30 it is lifted "for good" only to be re-imposed again the next day.

The first week of October CPTers observe the clashes and visit with families living under curfew. On October 4 the military begins firing into the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Abu Sneineh and Harit iSheik. After that shooting continues almost every night. CPTers work on getting curfew lifted so that families can have access to food, and visit with families who have soldiers posted on their roof. The team is not able to worship in Jerusalem for most of October so they worship at home.

Because of the clashes many of the border points in Hebron are re-inforced with cement blocks. There is intense closure on all of the West Bank most of this month. On October 12 the Israelis start bombing in Ramallah and Gaza in retaliation for the deaths of two soldiers, killed by a mob in Ramallah. The American and Canadian governments calls for all of their citizens to leave the Occupied Territories. Bombing of various towns and villages continues throughout the month with especially heavy bombardments in Beit Jala and Beit Sahour.

The team continues fasting and praying on Saturdays throughout the month, concluding on October 28. The team notices an increase in racism against Israelis and hatred towards Americans. The team verifies reports of tanks at one of the schools in Hebron that has been taken over by the military as an army post. They also document the bulldozing of roads at Halhoul to prevent access in and out of Hebron.

On October 17 the Sharm El-Sheikh peace agreement is reached between Arafat and Barak but it doesn’t make much difference. A British photojournalist, Julia Guest, spends three days with the team at the end of October documenting the experiences and the work of the team. At the end of October a taxi driver is killed in Bab i Zaweyya, while washing his car. Some CPT team members arrive about five minutes after it happened. The team later learns that the man had driven CPTers out to the Beqa’a Valley for CSD visits. Children can’t attend school this month and are concerned about passing the year.

November 2000
The curfew in Hebron continues for most of this month although a few times it is lifted for twenty-four hours or more before it is once again re-imposed. Shooting into the neighbourhoods of Abu Sneineh and Harit iSheik continues with most of the shooting aimed at Harit iSheik. CPTers spends some nights in houses in these neighbourhoods, with families that are being shot at. Although a ceasefire is declared on November 3 it doesn’t make much difference. This month more heavy artillery, such as tanks, is used.

The team discusses and implements a short term presence in Beit Jala to draw attention to the intense bombing that is happening there.

A delegation of seven people comes to see the situation. They spend the first few days in Jerusalem before coming to Hebron. Once in Hebron they help maintain a presence in the Beqa’a Valley with Ismail and Abdel Jawad Jaber’s families. Settlers from Givat Ha Harsina and Kiryat Arba have nightly demonstrations, throwing rocks at houses, pulling up irrigation pipes, uprooting plants and causing other violence, hoping to scare the Palestinians away.

On November 3 a car bomb explodes in Jerusalem killing two people.

The closure of the West Bank is intensified. On November 12 three CPTers are made to get out of the taxi they are in and the IDF slashes the tires as a punishment for the driver trying to find a way out of Hebron.

CPTers participates in three international demonstrations against the violence of the past months.

BEIT JALA CHRONOLOGY Dec. 2000-Feb. 2001

(Hebron continues below)

December 2000

On December 1, Anne Montgomery and Pierre Shantz begin a CPT presence in the village of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. Because of its location across a valley from the Israeli settlement of Gilo, Palestinian gunmen have sometimes shot at the settlement from locations in Beit Jala, which draws heavy retaliatory Israeli shelling into civilian Palestinian neighborhoods in the village.

Team members document the damage of homes from Israeli gunfire. Over 400 homes had been destroyed since the beginning of the current spate of violence. There is heavy shelling in the neighborhood of CPT’s apartment many nights. Windows are broken in the team’s home on December 5 and on December 11 three sides of the building are damaged. The team covers remaining windows with sandbags and joins neighbors in more protected parts of their building until bedtime.

Team members meet with the Beit Jala Mayor, a conflict resolution specialist, an evangelical pastor, and other local contacts, and tour nearby refugee camps. They speak with several members of the international press about their presence in the town.

The team calls on churches in the U.S. and Canada to observe five miutes of darkness and silence during their Advent and Christmas and services in solidarity with the people under siege in the Bethelehem/Beit Jala area.

January 2001
On January 3, Montgomery and Jamey Bouwmeester tour damaged homes and factories in nearby Beit Sahour with a Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) delegation.

On January 8 there is a momentary burst of Palestinian rifle fire from near the team’s house, aimed at Gilo settlement. There is no return fire from the Israelis

As of January 12 there has been no shelling into Beit Jala for almost four weeks, and the team closes the CPT Beit Jala project.

February 2001
While riding to a restaurant in Bethlehem with friends from Beit Jala on February 10, Pierre Shantz is almost hit by shots from an Israeli army base. Art Arbour, Rebecca Johnson, and Jamey Bouwmeester, waiting at the restaurant, watch tracer bullets streak across the sky into Beit Jala for an hour.

On February 19, Shantz and Johnson document damage at a Palestinian home from shelling received from Israeli military the night before.

HEBRON CHRONOLOGY CONTINUES

December 2000
Curfew is imposed in the Israeli-controlled (H2) sector of Hebron for 16 days of the month. On December 22 Palestinians are permitted into Ibrahimi Mosque for the first time in almost three months .

On the afternoon of December 1, there is heavy Israeli gunfire into Hebron’s central Bab iZaweyya area and the neighborhood of Harit iSheik; heavy shooting into several Palestinian neighborhoods continues through the evening. December 4 is the first time in several weeks the team has heard no shelling at night.

Heavy clashes erupt December 16; Israeli soldiers fire tear gas into downtown Hebron to disperse the crowds.

The home of CSD partner Atta Jabber in the Beqa’a Valley is invaded by settlers December 8. They force the family from their home and burn their possessions. In a confrontation between settlers and youth from neighboring Palestinian homes the next day, 13-year-old Mansour Naji Jabber is shot in the left hand and abdomen by a settler. He is hospitalized in critical condition in Jerusalem.

The Israeli military ordered the settlers from the Jabber home at 1:30 a.m. December 10, declaring the house a "closed military zone," preventing the family’s return before March 1.

In the following days, settlers mass on the road below the Jabber house, shoot into the air, throw stones and block passage of Palestinian cars on the bypass road. Across the road from Atta Jabber’s, settlers also pelt the home of his father with stones on several occasions.

In Hebron, the team notes other instances of settler violence: Bob Holmes’ camera is kicked out of his hands. Water pipes and shops on Shuhada Street are vandalized. The team’s phone is out of service from December 5 until January 2 after settlers cut a trunk line serving almost 1200 phones in Hebron’s Old City.

The team reports several incidents of soldier violence also. On December 11, CPTers investigate the sound of gunfire and discover that an Israeli soldier has shot an emotionally disturbed Palestinian in both legs. On December 22 a soldier levels his gun at Gary Brooks and forces him against a wall, releasing him after about five minutes.

Team members note increasingly difficult travel to Jerusalem, as taxis begin to take back roads to avoid huge rubble barricades erected by the Israeli army to impede access into and out of Hebron.

January, 2001
Hebron’s Old City is under curfew for 8 days of the month.

When Bob Holmes responds to news that a mentally ill man has been shot for violating curfew near the Israeli settlement of Avraham Avinu on January 1, he sees a pool of fresh blood, sprinkled with sand. A human rights worker tells Holmes that the man had had his foot nearly severed by bullets and had lain on the ground for nearly 15 minutes before receiving medical help.

Shelling into neighborhoods by the Israeli military continues, with heavy fire January 26 and 31. Team members visit homes damaged by the shelling. One house had also sustained damage from soldiers who had occupied it December 11 through 24. Holmes visits the family of a boy who was killed when Harit iSheik was shelled.

In the Beqa’a Valley, Art Gish stays at the Abdel Jewad Jabber house. The house continues to be a target of periodic stone-throwing by settlers. On January 9, team members document the Israeli military bulldozing a new road within feet of the rear of the Atta Jabber home

Palestinians are no longer allowed to walk on Shuhada Street past the Israeli settlement of Beit Hadassah; several times team members intervene with soldiers to ask that Palestinians be allowed to pass; on the evening of January 22 settler boys throw stones at Shantz as he walks there.

Vendor stalls near Avraham Avinu are pushed back by soldiers and stone barricades erected to limit access to the market

February 2001
The Old City is under curfew for a total of 14 days this month.

The team hears heavy gunfire, including shelling from tanks, into the neighborhoods of Abu Sneineh and Harit iSheik on several occasions. On Febrary 16, two un-armed Palestinians are killed. The team documents punctured water pipes near their apartment. On February 17, a CPT delegation returns home from a meeting in Harit iSheik between rounds of bullets being fired into the area, and on the same day gunfire is reported strafing the main intersection of Bab iZaweyya.

Closures of roads leading into and out of Hebron and surrounding villages are tightened. As Pierre Shantz returns from Beit Jala February 14, he and fellow passengers dig away a pile of dirt and stones that impedes their taxi from entering onto the main road. They are interrupted by a soldier who threatens them with a gun. Later Shantz’s taxi is among many Palestinian vehicles halted on the highway by some 20 teenage settlers near Efrat settlement; and as he continues on his way he witnesses Israeli police firing canisters of tear gas into a group of Palestinians walking around another roadblock. The trip, which normally takes about 30 minutes, takes 2 ½ hours.

A bulldozer movers several new cement barricades to block access to the market near Avraham Avinu..

Team members observe sporadic clashes on the road towards Abu Sneineh and on Shuhada Street. The afternoon of February 16, Holmes and Jamey Bouwmeester observe over 40 soldiers restraining male settler teenagers on Shuhada Street, who they say are trying to enter the neighborhood of Abu Sneineh, which is under Palestinian-Authority control.

The team learns that on February 20 a Palestinian woman is arrested for stabbing and lightly wounding an Israeli Yeshiva student near the settlement of Beit Romano.

Team members document the harassment of Palestinian families near Tel Rumeida and Kiryat Arba by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In Beit Ummar, two partially-constructed homes are demolished by Israeli authorities on February 20. Team members, along with CSD co-ordinator Rich Meyer and members of a CPT delegation, respond as soon as possible but not before the area is declared a "closed military zone."

The visiting CPT delegation participates in a 4-day conference sponsored by the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre in Jerusalem. Activities of the conference include a CPT-led bus tour of the Hebron district; participation in the weekly "Women in Black" vigil against the Occupation in West Jerusalem; and a non-violent challenge of the Bethlehem/Jerusalem checkpoint with Israeli activists.

On Ash Wednesday, February 28, the team initiates a Lenten Calendar of observance and prayer for people and events associated with Israel-Palestine, and some members begin a Lenten Fast.

March 2001
The team records five days of curfew in the month.

The shooting of an Israeli settler in front of Avraham Avinu by a Palestinian gunman on March 10 spurs demonstrations by settlers. Settler youth hurl stones into the Palestinian market, upset vendor stalls and stomp on vegetables. The Israeli military responds with machine gun and tank fire into the neighborhood of Abu Sneineh. The next day, settlers parade in front of Avraham Avinu, and Palestinian youth throw stones and roll burning tires in the direction of soldiers stationed near Shuhada Street.

Team members document damage from the previous night’s shelling on March 11. The father of a family in Abu Sneineh was shot in the head while inside his house.

On March 26, shots fired from the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Sneineh kill a ten-month old Israeli settler baby in Avraham Avinu and wound her father. In retaliation the Israeli military heavily shells the neighbourhood. During the next two days, settlers try to enter the Abu Sneineh neighborhood, but are prevented by Israeli soldiers, who bring in about 200 reinforcements. The settlers set fire to several shops near Avraham Avinu, and burn nine cars in Abu Sneineh. There is sporadic shooting from the Palestinian neighborhood and heavy shelling and shooting by Israeli military for several hours during the next two days.

In Beit Ummar CPTers find the recently completed home of Wajeh Abu Maria reduced to rubble on March 13. Bulldozers complete the demolition of another house, and move across the road to destroy structures at the Love and Peace Nursery. More than thirty soldiers and military police, military jeeps, and two armoured personnel carriers with mounted machine guns accompany the demolition action.

The neighborhood of Tel Rumeida faces encroachment by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Rick Polhamus and Pierre Shantz photograph settler building activity. Dianne Roe spends the night with the Abu Haikel family where settlers try almost nightly to break into the house.

During the month, the team participates in several non-violent actions with Israelis and Palestinians. On March 12, Shantz and Greg Rollins join a 500-person march organized by the faculty and Palestinian students of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. Despite being met with tear gas fired by the Israeli military, the activists remove three dirt and rock roadblocks. On March 13, Rick Carter joins about 80 Israelis in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, calling for the end to the occupation. Ten days later, CPT members join about 150 Israelis and internationals in an action organized by Israeli peace groups near the Palestinian village of Rantis northwest of Jerusalem. The group successfully remove a dirt and stone roadblock with their bare hands after soldiers and Israeli police confiscate their tools. During the action, Polhamus and Shantz are detained by the police, along with two Israelis. The next day Polhamus and Shantz return to the Rantis checkpoint and see that concrete barriers have replaced the dirt roadblocks. Later, they join a non-violent demonstration of about 50-60 people, mostly Palestinian, to pass through the Aram checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Soldiers fire tear gas and percussion grenades into the crowd, and beat several demonstrators, some severely. The same day, Roe and Rebecca Johnson join about forty Palestinian women in a march across the roadblock at Halhoul to the Israeli by-pass road, Route 60. About two dozen Israeli soldiers block their passage, pushing them back about 100 meters to the other side of the roadblock.

The team documents incidents of soldier harassment of Palestinians. On March 15, a shopkeeper near Ibrahimi Mosque tells team members that Israeli soldiers have thrown a percussion grenade into the courtyard of a nearby Palestinian boys’ school, injuring six children.

April 2001
Hebron’s H2 area is under curfew for 14 days in April.

Settler retaliation continues in the aftermath of the killing of the Israeli baby in March. In the early hours of April 2 that two shops in front of Avriham Avinu are blown up. When Israeli soldiers clear a crowd gathered to survey the damage, a young Palestinian acquaintance of the team is arrested on charges of attacking a soldier. Pierre Shantz attends his court case on April 10; he is sentenced to two months in jail. A Palestinian store beneath Beit Hadassah settlement and a mosque in the Old City are also vandalized on April 2.

On Tel Rumeida team members visit Palestinian families and document damage that occurred when settlers broke into a house during the family’s absence. New settlement construction continues on top of an archeological site in the area.

Action continues around the Abu Sneineh neighborhood. Dianne Roe spends the night of April 11 with a Palestinian family on who has suffered from the Israeli gunfire barrages that follow Palestinian sniper fire.

On the evening of April 15, shots are again fired from Abu Sneineh. Enraged settlers run up the hill towards Abu Sneineh, but are stopped by soldiers. Following the incident, heavy Israeli fire is returned until 1:00 a.m. the following morning. During the shooting, a friend of the team’s calls to say three members of her family are injured by Israeli shooting. An ambulance, delayed by gunfire, arrives during the call. Bob Holmes, Rick Polhamus, and Greg Rollins, observing the action from CPT’s apartment roof, witness a settler shooting into Abu Sneineh from a balcony in the Avraham Avinu complex. The next day, Roe visits the injured members of the Palestinian family in the hospital.

Settlers set up a camp at the foot of the street to Abu Sneineh, preventing reporters, Palestinians and international observers from passing. At 3:30 a.m. April 20, Anita Fast watches from the CPT apartment roof as police and soldiers prevent about one hundred Israeli settlers from going up the hill into Abu Sneineh. At 5:00 the same morning, the team is awakened by a bulldozer placing cement barriers across the street in front of the CPT apartment, blocking access to the Palestinian chicken market from Shuhada St. Later they learn that 24 settlers were arrested overnight. The settlers have moved their camp up Shuhada St. to a location less vulnerable to Palestinian gunfire.

Exchanges of Palestinian gunfire and Israeli military retaliation occur in other areas as well. While in a taxi on their way home from Bethlehem April 17, Holmes, Anne Montgomery and Polhamus are pinned for four hours by heavy fire near the Israeli settlement of Al Khader. When they arrive in Hebron about 11 p.m., shooting is so intense at Bab iZaweyya that they spend the night with a friend in another part of the city. Heavy shooting in Hebron continues until 2:00 a.m.

The threat of home demolitions by Israeli authorities continues in the Hebron district. On April 4, Polhamus, Rollins, and Shantz respond to a call about impending home demolitions in Wadi el-Ghroos, on the outskirts of Hebron,. Five nearly completed Palestinian homes are demolished. Shantz is slapped and pushed by an officer while observing the demolition. He is then arrested. Polhamus is kicked in the leg by the same soldier. At the police station Shantz files a complaint and is released; Polhamus files a complaint the next day.

In Beit Ummar JoAnne Lingle, Montgomery and Rollins investigate possibilities for a round-the-clock CPT presence in the wake of 15 new home demolition orders.

On April 27, Rick Carter and Fast travel to the Al Bweireh valley near Halhoul, where settlers from Harsina have set up a tent and camper on top of a hill. The CPTers are told that the previous day settlers on the hill attacked an elderly Palestinian man and broke his arm.

Team members join or initiate several non-violent actions during the month. On April 4, Carter and a local journalist travel to Tel Aviv and join a vigil sponsored by Israeli peace groups that calls for the Israeli military to pull out of Hebron. On April 11, the team hangs a banner on top of Abu Sneineh that says "The Veto Kills," and hold a press conference denouncing the recent U.S. veto of a United Nations resolution calling for unarmed international observers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On April 14, team members join Palestinians and Israelis in an action challenging the Bethlehem/Jerusalem checkpoint. CPTers again join Palestinians and other internationals on April 16 to stage a non-violent march through a checkpoint separating Bir Zeit University from Ramallah. Two days later, Holmes, Montgomery, Polhamus, and Rollins are among 200 Palestinians, Israelis and internationals to remove roadblocks impeding access to the Palestinian town of Bidya. When the first roadblock is almost removed, Israeli police arrest fifteen people, including Holmes and Rollins. As others attempt to remove the second roadblock with the help of a bulldozer, Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas and percussion grenades at them. After four hours, those arrested are allowed to leave without charges.

May 2001
The team records only three days of curfew this month.

Israeli shelling into Palestinian neighborhoods occurs on several occasions. For three hours the night of May 20, team members hear heavy fire directed into the Harit iSheik neighborhood. The next day, Bob Holmes, Jane Adas and a Palestinian journalist talk with the family of a woman who was shot in her bed at Alia Hospital during the shelling. On May 21, Israeli fire into Abu Sneineh begins at 11:00 in the morning. Holmes later visits the neighborhood and sees a badly damaged Palestinian home less than 50 feet from a school that was in session during the bombardment. He is told that the terrified teachers and students took shelter under their desks during the incident

The market area near Avraham Avinu is again the site of settler violence. The morning of May 29, Jane Adas and Gene Stoltzfus observe dozens of settlers stoning Palestinians on Shuhada Street. Several women and children settlers smash construction blocks that are intended to repair Palestinian shops blown up April 2. Meanwhile, CPTers on the apartment roof observe settler women and children throwing stones and trying to force entry into the Palestinian chicken market. Soldiers close off the market entrance.

Periodic clashes occur between Palestinian youth and Israeli soldiers. On May 11 while coming from Bab iZaweyya, Greg Rollins sees a young Palestinian man being carried from a clash site after being shot by Israeli soldiers with rubber bullets in the face and shoulder. According to the Israeli military manual, rubber bullets are only to be aimed at the legs.

On May 15, Palestinians march through the Palestian-controlled (H1) section of Hebron on the day called Al Naqba (The Catastrophe), which commemorates the widespread displacement and destruction caused by the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli soldiers start around 10:00 a.m. and last until 4:00 p.m. At least 21 people are reported injured.

On May 19, shopkeepers in both the H2 and H1 areas of Hebron close their stores to mourn Israel’s F-16 bombing of Nablus and Gaza yesterday. Around noon clashes begin at the H1/H2 border and continue for about two hours. All evening and into the night the team heard sporadic tank and artillery fire.

In the face of the threatened demolition of 15 homes by Israeli authorities, CPT sets up a two-week presence in Beit Ummar on May 13 at the invitation of the town’s mayor.

The Beqa’a Valley is the site of continuing settler harassment. Visiting CSD families on May 10, Adas and Rick Carter learn that settlers from Kiryat Arba recently opened sewage pipes onto neighboring Palestinian fields in an attempt to destroy their crops. The night of May 18, Adas and Carter observe about 20 settlers blocking Road 60, stoning Palestinian vehicles and setting brushfires on either side of the road. Israeli military police respond to Carter’s call and clear the area in about an hour.

Again in the Beqa’a on May 29, four adult members of Abdel Jewad Jabber’s family are injured as they try to protect their children from settlers stoning them at the door to their home. Adas and Stoltzfus, responding to a call from Atta Jabber, observe about two dozen settlers throwing stones, tearing out irrigation hoses, and blocking Road 60 and a side road. At one point Stolzfus is surrounded by hostile settlers. An ambulance is prevented from reaching the Jabber home by Road 60, finally getting into the area by back roads. The four injured Palestinians limp across several fields to reach it. Adas accompanies them to the hospital in Hebron. Stolzfus spends the night at the Jabber home. On the afternoon of May 30, Adas, JoAnne Lingle, and Harriet Taylor respond to a call about more settler stoning attacks.

Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida are harassed by Israeli soldiers and concerned about expansion of the adjacent Israeli settlement. On May 7, team members visit a doctor who reports that soldiers stationed on his rooftop throw garbage into his yard, and they have poured urine on the family’s clothes drying on the roof. He says the soldiers attacked and beat him on April 25, and the army refused to take his complaint. The Israeli high court in Jerusalem issues a stop work order on settler apartments under construction over an archaeological site on Tel Rumeida. However, on May 24, Adas, Holmes and Anne Montgomery document construction still in progress.

Visiting the Al Sendas area on May 10, Anita Fast and Rollins learn from CSD contacts that the Qilkis school has recently been issued a second stop-work order. Construction on the partially completed building that had resumed a few months previously has now been stopped.

Joining 100 Palestinians, and 20 Israelis and internationals in a non-violent march on May 11, Adas, Holmes, and Lingle protest new settlement construction by the village of Deir Istya, near Nablus. The march is halted when Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas at the group.

Roadblocks continue to impede the lives of West Bank residents. When Harriet Taylor arrives to join the team May 24, her trip from the airport in Tel Aviv, normally requiring two vehicles and an hour and a half, requires six vehicles and 3 ½ hours. Among the difficulties she encounters is shooting between Beit Jala and the Israeli settlement of Gilo outside Bethlehem.

On May 31, a five-member CPT delegation arrives.

June 2001
The team records three days of curfew this month.

The team again documents incidents in Abu Sneineh. The afternoon of June 25 the team hears heavy fire among gunmen in Abu Sneineh, settlers in Avraham Avinu, and the Israeli military. A seven-year-old settler boy, several Palestinians, and four soldiers are wounded in the four-hour exchange. The same night, settler women attempt to enter the market in front of the CPT apartment but are prevented by Israeli military. The next day, settler women attempt to set up a protest tent on the road leading into Abu Sneineh, but are held back by Israeli soldiers. On June 29, young Palestinian men in Abu Sneineh clash with Israeli soldiers, who respond with percussion grenades and tear gas.

Near Avraham Avinu on June 6, Adas and delegation member Pat Katagiri witness settlers taunting Palestinian market vendors, throwing bottles and stones, and tearing down awnings. Israeli soldiers prevent passage into or out of the market for three hours.

In the Beqa’a Valley, the team documents actions by settlers against Palestinian families which include throwing stones, cutting and uprooting grape vines and tomato plants, destroying wire trellises and irrigation lines, cutting a water pipe, and blockading the road and stoning cars. Intern Ben Long and other team members spend several nights with families.

In response to the May 29 incident of settler stoning of people and property in the Beqa’a, CPT writes a letter to the Hebron police, raising the question of settler impunity. On June 4, team members take the letter and photos to the Kiryat Arba police station, where they wait for four hours without being served. CPTers return the next day with the letter, and are able to deliver it after a phone call from Rabbi Arik Ascherman.

On June 19, Le Anne Clausen and Anita Fast document damage to two Palestinian homes on the hill opposite the Beit Hadassah settlement, including broken windows, bullet holes, and a destroyed solar panel and water tank. The families report attacks by settlers, and that bullets fired from the Palestinian neighborhood of Harit iSheik also inflict damage on their homes. They report their children are suffering trauma from the incidents, and say that many other families have already fled homes in the neighborhood.

At Tel Rumeida, team members visit families and see where settlers have cut grapevines and fruit trees, burned fields, and forced open and broken windows. On June 10, Jane Adas and a Palestinian journalist hear about a June 4 incident in which a baby was snatched from the arms of her 12-year-old sister by three teenage settler girls. The girls reportedly dropped the baby where Israeli soldiers prevented them from continuing into the Tel Rumeida settlement. The baby was treated at a hospital and released.

When members of the Israeli Knesset and Peace Now attempt to document the construction at Tel Rumeida June 17, they are prevented by angry settlers and the Israeli military commander. A few days later, team members accompany a journalist employed by Peace Now, who photographs the building site. Fast and Clausen deliver video footage for use at a High Court hearing on the issue.

Soldiers begin searching homes and businesses in Hebron’s Old City. On June 3, eight soldiers enter the Hebron Municipal Observers’ office across the street from the CPT apartment. On June 9 two soldiers enter the roof of the Turkish bath directly across from the CPT women’s balcony. Families in the Old City report that soldiers enter their homes, upturn bedding and furniture and rifle through cupboards. According to members of Doctors Without Borders, 51 people have been arrested during home searches between June 1 and 23; none have been formally charged.

A 24-year-old Palestinian man reports to Fast and a local journalist his experience at the District Civil Liaison (DCL) office June 20. On June 22 Fast and the journalist meet the man at Al-Ahli hospital. He says that he was ordered to appear at the DCL office after being detained by soldiers on Duboya Street. At the office he was held in a room which he described as unbearably hot, with plastic walls and a glass roof, for 2 ½ hours. He fell asleep on the floor and later collapsed when he tried to stand. An ambulance driver confirmed to Fast that the man was semi-conscious when he transported him to the hospital from the DCL.

Palestinians, and Israeli and international peace activists engage in a series of non-violent actions. On June 1, Bob Holmes, Anne Montgomery, Harriet Taylor, and a 5-member CPT delegation challenge Israeli settlement expansion near the Palestinian village of Deir Istya. Holmes and the village mayor are among twelve persons detained and interrogated for two hours by Israeli police before being released.

On June 8, the team attends a Women in Black vigil in Jerusalem. More than 1000 Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals call for an end to the occupation and the removal of settlements. Concurrent actions are held in cities around the world. A counter-demonstration in Jerusalem attracts about six.

A number of events are scheduled to protest the expansion of Efrat settlement outside the Palestinian village of Al Khader, near Bethlehem. At the action June 15, Fast and five Israelis are arrested and released without charges after four hours’ detention. On June 20, CPTers join about 20 Israelis, 100 Palestinians, and 30 other internationals in a presence marked by confrontations with Israeli soldiers. Several Israeli activists are arrested; others, including journalists and CPTer Ben Long are hit and roughed up by soldiers. The next day, team members file complaints of police brutality related to both demonstrations. On June 22, Clausen and Greg Rollins travel to Al Khader for a third action; the event is cancelled by local leaders who are concerned about the possibility of violence. On June 29 Clausen and Holmes travel again to Al Khader, with Holmes accompanying two busloads of Israeli demonstrators from Jerusalem. After the buses are prevented at multiple access points from getting into the area, the activists block traffic with a sit-in. Five Israelis and Holmes are arrested and released a few hours later. Meanwhile, inside Al Khader, the planned non-violent action is pre-empted by clashes. The next day, team members accompany Palestinians in erecting a large wooden foundation for a protest encampment at the site.

On June 23, Holmes, Montgomery and Jim Satterwhite travel north to join an action protesting the uprooting of some 450 trees at Ab’oud. However, they turn back at the Ramallah checkpoint because their Palestinian companions are not permitted to cross.

In response to a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv June 2, the Israeli government imposes a total closure on the West Bank and Gaza.

Team members visiting Beit Ummar learn that the wholesale market has been sealed off by the Israeli military, preventing fruit from being transported. The crop, worth nearly six million shekels, is likely to rot in storage.

Israeli soldiers set up new roadblocks in the Beqa’a Valley. On June 27, Long observes soldiers confiscating passengers’ identity papers and car keys and sending the items to a settlement police station; they are returned hours later.

On June 20, while traveling from Bethlehem, the team’s taxi stops at Beit Hannoun because stone-throwing settlers are blocking the junction. When team members encourage Israeli police to intervene, settlers call them "Nazis" and throw stones at them.

July 2001
Curfew is imposed for a total of 14 days. Much of Hebron’s Old City, including the CPT apartment, is also without electricity for several days. As the chicken shop owners near the CPT apartment clean up their shops after curfew ends July 21, they tell Kathy Kamphoefner that they lost many chickens because they couldn’t feed and water the poultry; other stock spoiled due to lack of refrigeration when the electricity went out and also because of damage during shooting. The combined losses reported by the three shop owners since September, 2000, totalled approximately $52,400 US.

On several occasions, settler adults and children harass Palestinian shop-owners in the market and on Shuhada Street, throwing stones, slamming shop doors, and rushing into the market until restrained by Israeli soldiers or police. Team members accompany several journalists on tours of the area, and they are also targeted by settler youth throwing stones. Team members visit the Al-Baatsch family near the CPT apartment on July 18. Family members tell them settlers entered their house a few nights previously, damaging furniture and breaking their television. On July 19, a Palestinian woman tells Jim Satterwhite and Dianne Roe that settlers entered her home in the Old City and threatened her with a rock the previous day.

Solder harassment of shopkeepers in the market is reported to CPTers on many occasions. One chicken shop owner tells team members he was beaten by soldiers when he and his brothers came to feed their animals during curfew. He required four stitches for a head wound. CPTers see soldiers trying to push over rabbit and poultry cages, tearing down awnings in the market, demanding identification papers of shopkeepers, and photographing shops. On one occasion a soldier flings a shopowner’s keys onto a nearby balcony when he doesn’t respond quickly enough to an announcement of curfew. Anita Fast and Kamphoefner intervene to retrieve the keys the next day. Team members document soldiers detaining young men for identification checks for inordinate amounts of time and under the hot sun.

Soldier assaults are also reported to CPTers, with victims including a 17 year-old woman and three sons who live near the CPT apartment. Le Anne Clausen and Satterwhite observe soldiers entering and searching Palestinian homes in the Old City on July 14. When the soldiers leave one home, family members tell the two that soldiers hit several family members, and showed them where they had ripped down doorframes. On July 24, Grace Boyer and Kamphoefner see a young man clutching his side against a wall, saying soldiers had just beat him. A passing driver takes him to the hospital. On her way to Bethlehem July 25, Clausen intervenes when soldiers assault a Save the Children staff person.

Palestinian police detain team members on two occasions in the H1 area of Hebron. On July 16 Greg Rollins and Satterwhite are accompanying an American journalist to his hotel. On July 18, Kamphoefner and two US-based filmmakers are returning from the Beqa’a Valley. On both dates the team members and others are released with apologies when the authorities ascertain they are not Israelis.

The team records 13 days of shooting in Hebron, including clashes with live ammunition and incidents of shelling into Palestinian neighborhoods. On July 12, there are two hours of heavy crossfire in the middle of the night in the central market area. On July 13 heavy gunfire commencing at midnight continues into daylight hours. On July 19, Hebron experiences the heaviest shooting in months, and a shot enters the CPT women’s apartment. The team documents damage by Israeli shelling in al-Numra, Harit iSheik, and Abu Sneineh neighborhoods, and visit a boy who was injured by shrapnel from mortar fire.

In Tel Rumeida, Palestinian residents tell CPTers of many incidents in which settlers have harassed them, throwing stones and eggs, spraying water, chasing children, and throwing oil at their house. Team members stay overnight on two occasions with families who have faced abuse. When Boyer and Kamphoefner spend the night of July 21, they are disturbed by soldiers drilling in the street throughout the night. Then about 3:30 a.m., Kamphoefner hears chanting and singing from inside the soldier camp; the chanting has apparently been coming from some 30 settler men who exit the camp shortly thereafter.

In Beit Ummar, Dianne Roe and Satterwhite spend the night of July 20, and observe soldiers entering houses. Soldiers have taken over one house at Beit Ummar junction for an observation post. JoAnne Lingle and Roe meet with representatives of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions to consider responses to Beit Ummar’s almost total closure and resulting inability to market its farm produce.

Residents of the Beqa’a Valley and other areas near the Harsina settlerment continue to experience harassment by settlers. Incidents include stone-throwing at homes and cars, pulling up tomato plants, and on the night of July 1, setting cars ablaze.

Soldier harassment also occurs; valley residents tell team members on July 11 that Israeli soldiers woke them up at 3 a.m. that morning for an identification check.

In the Yatta area on July 3, the Israeli military bulldozes 25 homes, as well as sheep pens, cisterns, and caves following the reported killing of an Israeli settler near the town of Susia. Team members travel to area the next day to document the destruction. They hear that Israeli soldiers detained 20 Palestinian men overnight for questioning. In response to the incident, curfew was imposed on the entire Area C in the Hebron District, including Hebron’s Old City. More homes in the Yatta hills were demolished July 5, and on July 22 the team receives word that the Israeli military is bulldozing tents that families were given by Red Cross agencies following the earlier demolitions.

International activists and Palestinians continue with plans for a Peace Camp in Al Khader. In an action on July 5, participants successfully remove a dirt roadblock and non-violently challenge Israeli soldiers on their role in the Occupation.

Several members of the team stay overnight in Beit Jala July 23-31. They are part of a "human shield" action organized by international and Israeli activists. A visiting CPT delegation joins the effort the night of July 31, and experience gunshots in the homes they are staying in.

New roadblocks are bulldozed into place at several locations.

A 16-member CPT delegation led by Clausen and Kathy Kern arrives in Jerusalem.

August 2001

August 9 Following a bombing in a heavily trafficked commercial district of Jerusalem, settlers in Hebron attacked Palestinian vendors in the market and stoned Palestinian homes bordering settlements.

Kathleen Kern and Dianne Roe visited a family whose home had had a Molotov cocktail thrown in it one hour earlier by settlers from Avraham Avinu. The heat from the bomb had melted the TV set. A seventeen-day old infant had been in the room and seemed blue and unresponsive. Kern and Roe accompanied the baby and her mother into H-1 where they could seek medical help.

August 13 Late afternoon, heavy shooting began in Hebron and lasted most of the night, at times shaking the CPT apartment building. The next day the team learned that a seven year old girl died in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood after receiving a bullet to the head. Her distraught grandmother, who had accompanied her to the hospital, died an hour after her return home from a heart attack.

The team visited homes near Avraham Avinu settlement, which have been stoned by settlers for the last three days, and learned that settlers had put a foul-smelling chemical beneath the windows.

August 20 After a night of heavy shooting and shelling between the Israeli settlement of Avraham Avinu and the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Sneineh, CPTer Kern discovered that a low-caliber bullet had come through the window of the door leading onto the balcony of the upstairs women's apartment.

The hole, like the one left in the door after shooting one month ago, clearly frames the roof top of the Israeli settlement of Avraham Avinu.

August 23 Israeli forces entered the Palestinian area of Hebron around 11:30pm. The Israeli military took control of the Abu Sneineh neighborhood and destroyed two large houses that sit atop Khoury Mountain.

Shooting from both sides started around 3:00 pm and escalated following the wounding of an eleven-year-old Israeli settler boy. The shooting continued to increase during the evening.

Around 10:00pm Israeli helicopters could be heard, and was followed by the Israeli assault on the Abu Sneineh neighborhood. The houses, which were the most visible landmarks in the neighborhood, appeared to be destroyed by a simultaneous detonation by the Israelis.

August 27 About forty Palestinian children from the Old City of Hebron participated in a demonstration against the curfew imposed by the Israeli military. They have been under curfew for 183 days of the last 11 months, during which time they have not legally been allowed to attend school, play outside or go to doctors. The children held signs with messages like, "I have the right to learn," and "My daddy needs to work," for approximately 10 minutes while soldiers demanded they leave. They dispersed after reading aloud a letter to Kofi Annan asking for his intervention.

September 2001

September 11 Overnight, Israeli tanks made incursions into Palestinian-controlled H-1 area.

Team members spent 4 hours and 40 minutes watching a man detained by soldiers at the Beit Romano checkpoint. Despite calls by team members and Israeli friends, the Israeli police never showed up, even when team members reported settler youth stoning Palestinian homes and shops in the vicinity of the checkpoint and attacking Palestinian passersby.

September 12 Dozens of Palestinian friends and strangers phoned or approached members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron throughout the day to express condolences for the catastrophe in New York and Washington. Several times when members of the team said they had no television, Hebronites responded, "It is better. No one should see these pictures."

At no point in the course of the day, did team members witness anyone celebrating or even speaking with approval of the disasters.

Over night on Sunday, September 16, an Israeli bulldozer moved the cement blocks that divide Hebron in two, twenty meters into the Palestinian side of the city.

September 18 In the early morning hours on Tuesday September 17, Israeli forces filled in eight Palestinian homes south of Yatta near the Israeli settlement of Susia. The homes were made up of small dwellings attached to caves. When the Israeli army left, they told the Palestinians that they would be back at 7:00 PM that night to destroy several more dwellings in the area.

In the Israeli side of Hebron, Israeli soldiers threw tear gas into the gates of a Palestinian elementary school. The school was evacuated and the afternoon classes had to be cancelled.

September 19 Regardless of the September 18 cease fire between Israel and Palestine, shooting started in Hebron on the 19th, shortly before 5:00 PM, and lasted two hours. During that time Israeli forces heavily shelled the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Sneineh with tank, mortar and machine gun fire. Most of the Israeli shooting was directed at abandoned Palestinian buildings, some of which were being rebuilt after being hit hard and often by Israeli fire in the past.

September 28 Even though there was no curfew in Hebron when the day began, for the fifth day in a row, Israeli soldiers refused to allow Palestinian shops within sight of Shuhada street to open.

On the anniversary of the Alaqsa Intifada, shooting between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces started at 1:00 PM, and went until 3:00 PM. In the shooting, one twenty five year old Palestinian man from Hebron, and a ten year old Palestinian boy from the village of Bani Na'im where killed. Shortly after the shooting started, soldiers put the Israeli occupied part of the city under curfew.

October 2001

October 3 With the celebration of the Jewish holiday Sukkat, the Israeli occupied part of Hebron received hundreds of Jewish visitors. Many of them spent the day touring the old city. At 4:30 PM shooting between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers began, and continued until 6:00 PM. During this time many Israeli settlers used the streets and tunnels of the old city to avoid being in the open. While passing through these areas, some threw rocks Palestinian windows and smashed them. A curfew was placed on Palestinians in the Israeli occupied part of Hebron at 6:00 PM.

October 6 Israeli forces continued to occupy the previously PA-controlled neighborhoods of Abu Sneineh and Harit iSheik, having invaded in the early hours of Friday morning. The entire Palestinian population were told by the Israeli military to remain in their homes, although some people could be seen walking the streets throughout the day. In the late afternoon, gunfire could be heard from the neighborhood of Harit iSheik, and at least two Palestinian men have been reported killed. Two additional tanks were then seen entering this hill-side neighborhood bordering the north-east edge of the Old City of Hebron.

October 15 After agreements between Israeli and Palestinian officials, Israeli forces withdrew from the Palestinian neighborhoods of Hart iSheik and Abu Sneineh (occupied October 5th). According to news reports, settlers attempted to enter the Abu Sneineh neighborhood Sunday evening, and caused disturbances in the Palestinian market Monday afternoon. Curfew remained lifted for a fourth day. A new stone structure is under construction by settlers at Tel Rumeida, 200 meters from the original settlement site.

October 25 At 3:30 p.m. this afternoon, a group of about twenty Jewish settler youth and children ran up into the Palestinian-controlled neighborhood of Abu Sneineh which overlooks the old city of Hebron. Once there, they began to throw stones at Palestinian homes, as well as at Israeli soldiers who tried to usher them back into the Israeli-controlled part of the city. Settler adults followed the children, and occupied a Palestinian girls' school part way up the hill. Soldiers went in after them, and for quite some time could be seen together with settlers on the balcony of the school. A few Palestinian boys threw stones at the settlers from the roofs of their homes. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and sound grenades at the Palestinian stone-throwers. By 6:00 p.m., the Israeli soldier and police jeeps were no longer in the Abu Sneihneh neighborhood, and it appeared that the Jewish settlers were also gone.

October 28 Three Israeli settler boys, ages 11-13, threatened two Palestinian women and their children with stones and a plastic gun as the women and children were trying to cross Shuhada street in Hebron's old city. Members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Anita Fast, JoAnne Lingle, and Mary Lawrence stood between the Israeli settlers and the Palestinians, walking the later across the street so they could continue on their way home. The settler boys then turned on the CPTers, calling them "Nazi" while shooting Fast in the head four times with plastic pellets from the toy gun and hitting Lawrence several times with large stones. One of the boys kicked Fast as the CPTers retreated into their apartment. The boys continued throwing stones at the windows of the apartment complex, breaking the window of a Palestinian family who lives in the same building. Fast, Lawrence and a member of the Palestinian family lodged a complaint with the Israeli police.

November 2001

November 3 Israeli settler violence in Hebron has been increasing. Christian Peacemaker Teams now observes daily incidents, predominately settler teenagers and younger children throwing stones and other materials at Palestinians and Internationals. Two attacks occurred today against CPTer, Anita Fast and a Palestinian woman she was with, while walking down Shuhada street in the old city. In the first incident, Israeli settler teenage girls threw several stones at the women, and in the second incident, an hour later, settler boys threw a length of large plastic piping, which smashed into a few pieces at Fast's feet.

November 5 Palestinian families from the Beqa'a valley east of Hebron showed Christian Peacemaker Team members copies of new home demolition orders received from the Israeli civil administration on October 17, 2001. The two families who received new demolition orders already have demolition orders on other structures on their property and have been part of CPT's Campaign for Secure Dwellings since 1998. Families also complained of increasing harassment and several recent attacks against them by Israeli settlers from Kiryat Arba and Harsina, the two settlements between which these families live.

November 10 The Israeli military blocked Palestinians from moving North-South in the old city, as a thousand settlers and their guests paraded up and down the East-West center artery, Shuhada street, commemorating the biblical patriarch Abraham's buying the cave of Machpelah in Hebron. Banners were hung on Shuhada street near the site, where a synagogue and mosque now stand. They read in Hebrew: "Hebron is all ours," and "All the land that you see I shall give to you" (a quote from the Torah). Sunday evening the Israeli military blocked all Palestinian traffic including taxis from Rte 60 between Hebron and Gush Etzion -- CPTers returning from Jerusalem walked about an eighth of the distance. The blockade continued Monday morning, preventing a planned CPT visit to Beit Ummar.

November 19 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has ordered construction of a permanent Israeli settlement on Tel Rumeida to resume. The 12-unit concrete settler compound, which is being built on top of archaeological excavations of the oldest inhabitation of the city of Hebron, has been the source of an extended Israeli High Court struggle this past year. Seven families belonging to the Kahane movement [an extremist faction dedicated to expelling Palestinian residents from Hebron] have lived in heavily fortified 'temporary housing' units for over 20 years. They have repeatedly destroyed property and attacked the Palestinian families who own the land on which the settlement is built. Both settlement structures and an accompanying military base are in direct violation of the fourth Geneva Convention and other international humanitarian laws.

December 2001

December 5 In response to the suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa, and Israeli retaliation in Gaza and Ramallah, CPT Hebron put up two signs at the entrance to the chicken market that read "Praying for the peace of the cities." One sign faced in toward the chicken market for Palestinians to read, and one faced out for passing Israeli settlers and soldiers. The team then sat outside for one hour and prayed in front of the signs. They also handed out leaflets in Arabic and English to passing Palestinians, and Israelis. The team will do this again at 1:00 PM on Thursday the 6, and Friday the 7.

December 10 At 2:20 this afternoon, Israeli Apache helicopters fired two missiles at vehicles near the junction of Salam Street and Wadi Tufah in Hebron in an assassination attempt. Nine Palestinians were wounded and two children, ages 13 and 3, were killed. The first missile hit in the middle of five cars. The second missile hit the vehicle containing the children. The intended target of this attack, claimed by Israel to be a militant associated with Islamic Jihad was wounded.

December 11 Because H2, the Israeli occupied part of the city, was under curfew, many children who live in the old city were not allowed to go to school. Throughout the day sporadic machine gun fire was heard in the city. Dozens of shoppers and merchants suffered from tear gas inhalation when a brief clash erupted at the border between H1and H2 nearby.

CPTer Greg Rollins was arrested by Israeli border police who said he disturbed them when he took a picture of Palestinians being detained. They also said he told the Palestinians to disobey them and sit down when they had been made to stand. Rollins stated that he had already taken the picture before he was told not to, and denied telling the Palestinians to sit down. After being held for five hours, Rollins was released without charges.

December 24 The CPT team traveled to Bethlehem and attended a multilingual service at Christmas Lutheran Church. News reports mentioned that Israeli security on the roads would be enhanced to prevent Yassar Arafat from attending Christmas Eve mass in Bethlehem. The team noticed army tanks on several side roads as they traveled to the city.

December 25 After having spent the night in Bethlehem, the team attended Christmas morning services at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Jerusalem. After a meal with friends, CPTers joined about 5000 people, including many Palestinian Christians and some 200 international activists, in a candlelight procession from Shepherds Field to Manger Square in Bethlehem, recalling the first Christmas.

About 1000 participants continued in a march from the Paradise Hotel--burned out in Israel's incursion into the Palestinian Authority-controlled city in October-- to the military checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The checkpoint and border restrictions prevent Palestinians who lack specified identification documents from entering Jerusalem. Encircled by the international accompanists, Palestinians hoped to enter the Holy City on this Holy Night. However, Israeli soldiers refused to allow passage to Jerusalem. The crowd, which included hundreds of young Palestinian men and women, maintained a non-violent stance throughout the hour-long stand-off, at times seated on the ground and singing. As leaders made a decision to return to Bethlehem, Ghassan Andoni, of the Palestinian Rapprochement Centre said, "We will not resort to the violence of our opponents."

December 28 CPTers JoAnne Lingle, Claire Evans and Anne Montgomery joined a procession of 5,000 people from Paris Square to Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, mourning Palestinians and Israelis who had died or been injured in the past 15 months of violence. The gathering was sponsored by Women in Black and other Israeli peace groups. Most of the participants were Israelis. Members of the visiting International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People (GIPP), and French and Italian delegations also joined the peaceful witness, which Gila Svirsky of Gush Shalom later called "A ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak Middle East."

January 2002

January 12 When CPTers visited Abdel Hadi Hantash at the Hebron Municipality, they learned that a relief convoy of 58 vehicles organized by the Israeli group Ta'ayush had been stopped by Israeli police, soldiers and settlers on their way to deliver blankets to families in the South Hebron Hills area the day before. Despite the arrest of two organizers and attacks by the police and soldiers, the group was able ultimately to deliver the supplies to waiting villagers, walking the last three miles up muddy hillsides. The Palestinian families' cave dwellings had been demolished by the Israeli military several months previously.

January 13 CPTers traveling to Jerusalem noted that machsoums (dirt and rock roadblocks) had been removed from the roads they took in and out of Hebron (at Halhoul and Yatta junctions), giving some credence to Israeli reports that travel restrictions in the West Bank were being eased.

Starting on Monday January 14, Israeli forces started bulldozing a road through part of the northern half of the Baqa'a valley north of Hebron. Representatives of the Hebron municipality stated that 200 dunams of land have so far been confiscated from Palestinian families to make this road. The eight kilometer road will confiscate some three thousand dumans more from Palestinians, and is said to be part of a proposed plan to build a industrial park under the area name of Kiryat Arba.

January 21 This afternoon in the Al Odisah north of Hebron Palestinians were engaged in a non-violent protest against a planned settler road. The Palestinians were blocking an earth mover that armed settlers were using to dig the foundations for a new road through the Al Jarradat family's land. The seven Palestinian brothers and their families all live on the hillside which is directly opposite Kiryat Arba and Harsina settlements. Their homes and land lie between the settlements and a new industrial area being built on confiscated land. One Palestinian girl was taken to the hospital after she fainted when settlers shot at the ground at her feet.

January 24 Rich and Brenda Meyers, Dianne Roe and Greg Rollins went to the Beqa'a to do further investigation of the military takeover of the land. While they visited with the Sultan family, they observed a crane working on the mountain across the road. A settler mobile home had been placed there a year ago and the crane was adding water tanks to the site.

January 26 For the second time in the week, several dozen settlers accompanied by soldiers came to pray at a particular spot in the market, close to where the team has its apartment. Kathleen Kern helped a candy storeowner pick up pieces of candy that fell on the ground after one of the settlers had overturned a bin.

February 2002

February 10 Settlers continued bulldozing a road through the Beqa'a Valley today, plowing through a roadblock at the entrance to one of CPT's Campaign for Secure Dwellings family's land and then replacing it when they were finished. The settlers were not accompanied by Israeli soldiers, as they had been on January 21, but by other armed settlers. The new road lies more than two kilometers from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, but all the farmland between the road and the boundary of the settlement is slated for the expansion of Kiryat Arba.

February 12 Early this morning Israeli tanks entered the Palestinian town of Halhoul. They shot and killed a Palestinian policeman stationed at the border of the town, and according to area residents, then slung the body over the tank. With the body still on the tank, Israeli forces then began shelling a Palestinian home near by. Because the home sold cooking gas canisters, one side of the house was blown out. Israeli soldiers then detonated a blacksmith's shop, and bulldozed a third Palestinian home where they then deposited the body of the dead police officer.

February 14 Israeli forces closed down Palestinian stores in the Israeli occupied half of Hebron, claiming that a Palestinian terrorist threw a hand grenade into a Palestinian market. During the closure, while an official of the French consulate was video taping a street scene, a settler youth hit his arm and camera to stop him from filming. As the diplomat and others were leaving the old city, another settler youth struck one of the group on the back with a plastic pipe.

February 19 Shooting began in Hebron shortly after 4:30 p.m., at least some of it coming from the hills of Abu Sneineh across from the CPT apartment. A friend of the team's who lives in Abu Sneineh called around 5:00 to say that "settler men are trying to take over Abu Sneineh." Art Gish and Janet Shoemaker went to investigate and saw Israeli police and soldiers trying to evacuate settler men already in the neighborhood and prevent other settlers from trying to enter the neighborhood. By 6:00 the standoff seemed to have ended.

February 28 The Israeli military invaded the Jenin and Balata refugee camps in the northern West Bank. In reprisal, Palestinian militants opened fire on Israeli positions in H-2. The resulting firefight between soldiers and militants was the most intense since last summer. On the morning of the 28th, CPTers found barbed wire across the entrances of upper and lower Shalala streets, finally rendering all the major streets leading from H-1 into to the old market, where the CPT apartment is located, impassable to Palestinians.

March 2002

March 2 The principal of Il Ibrahimi School asked Kathy Kern and Mark Frey to go to the Al Khalil boys' school because of problems with soldiers there in the morning. When they arrived, they found an ambulance at the adjoining Khadijaa girls' school. Teachers informed them that Israeli Border Police had shot four canisters of gas towards the girls' school because boys had been throwing stones. Frey and Kern saw one girl convulsing inside the ambulance and several others having difficulty walking and standing.

A teacher told CPTers that the gas the soldiers had shot was different from tear gas in that it "makes you nervous." The gas canister CPTers observed was solid silver, without markings. Tear gas canisters that that team members have observed before have safety warnings and an address in Pennsylvania where they are made.

More than 600 students attend the morning school session. (A thousand students attend morning and afternoon sessions, because the schools are accommodating the students from Osama Bin Munqeth School, which the Israeli military confiscated at the beginning of the Intifada in Fall 2000.) Teachers told Frey and Kern the gas had affected more than twenty girls and a few teachers, some pregnant.

March 12 In the evening the team heard the noise of bulldozers and other heavy machinery in the vegetable market, closed to vendors for most of the last year. Shortly before 9 AM, a Palestinian man had stabbed a settler youth and then fled through the closed market. From the roof of the team's apartment, Mary Lawrence watched the machines dragging away metal stalls and tables.

March 14 Lawrence and JoAnne Lingle went to Al Mezan Hospital in Halhul, north of Hebron, to talk with Dr. Gandhi Tamimi. They took pictures of damage done to the fourth and fifth floors by Israeli shooting. Hospital staff had to move the equipment and patients, including one recovering from open heart surgery, to a safer area.

The first time the hospital had been fired on four days previously, the staff thought the shooting was accidental. However, on subsequent nights, after staff turned on the lights so that soldiers could see clearly that the building was a hospital, the military continued to shoot at it.

Dr Tamimi told Lawrence and Lingle, "I don't believe that it was Jews that did this because of their religion. It must have been soldiers from other countries."

March 26 Dianne Roe, Lingle and Lawrence spent the day in Beit Ummar, looking for housing and visiting with Beit Ummar's mayor in preparation for setting up a satellite CPT project here. While they were there they heard that soldiers with dogs had gone into the Al Alami family home while people were coming to pay their respects after a young man in their family, a photojournalist, had been shot on March 17. The CPTers also visited a family in Beit Ummar who had received a notice rejecting their appeal of their home demolition order.

On the way back to Hebron, Roe, Lingle and Lawrence stopped in Halhul to visit Dr. Gandhi Tamimi, who had arranged a coffee gathering for medical personnel--including representatives from Doctors without Borders and the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH.) An hour after they returned to Hebron, they learned that two members of TIPH had been killed and one wounded by a gunman near the Halhul bypass bridge. The TIPH doctor with whom the CPTers had had coffee pronounced the two observers dead at the scene.

March 30 Israeli tanks entered the Palestinian-controlled H-1 area of Hebron, going up as far as the Hebron municipality before withdrawing.

April 2002

April 1 An old friend of the team's met with Kathy Kern, Le Anne Clausen and Christine Caton to discuss how CPT could help the people of Hebron if an Israeli military invasion occurs there like the invasions in Ramallah and Bethlehem. Returning home to discuss the issue with the rest of the team, Kern was rounding a corner in the Old Market when an explosion occurred quite nearby, followed by shooting that also sounded very close. Kern retraced her steps and tried to reach the team apartment via lower Shalala Street, but found it full of soldiers positioned to fire who yelled at her to get out of the area. She went up the hill into the neighborhood of Harit iSheik and noted as she passed the Beit Romano checkpoint a flaming broken glass bottle.

April 3 CPTers and delegates met journalist Mazen Dana who told them that a man had been killed in the vegetable market the previous day while shopping with his son (which explained the explosion and shooting that Kern had heard.) Dana said soldiers had dragged the man's body several hundred meters from H-1 into H-2. When Dana and other journalists arrived, the soldiers confiscated the their videocameras and cellphones and forced them to remove their jackets. After their commander appeared at the scene, he apologized to the journalists and directed his soldiers to return their possessions.

April 4, 2002 As members of the Hebron team searched the internet for news relating to the possible Israeli military invasion of Hebron, they read that there were 250 Palestinian gunmen holed up in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. A report from French press stated that Michel Sabbah, the head of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem had said that the Palestinians could claim sanctuary inside the church and had already laid down their arms.

"The basilica, a church, is a place of refuge for everybody, even fighters, as long as they lay down their weapons," he said. "In this case, we have an obligation to give refuge to Palestinians and Israelis alike." A man claiming to be the commander of the gunmen inside the church, who refused to give his name or affiliation, said his men were under orders not to open fire. "The fighters have instructions not to shoot in holy places and not to give the Israelis the pretext to do so," he told French Press.

A convoy of approximately 100 priests and laypeople attempting to enter Bethlehem to bring medical supplies to the wounded and to perform burial rituals were turned away by the Israeli military.

April 9 Kern and Greg Rollins tried to enter the village of Dura, west of Hebron, which the Israeli army had invaded in the night. The two CPTers retreated when soldiers fired warning shots from a house at one entrance to the village. After hearing from a contact in Dura that soldiers were shooting anything that moved and refusing medical personnel permission to tend to the wounded in the streets, Rollins and Kern accompanied some journalists to the roof of a building outside of Dura and met a man there who told them that soldiers had taken over his daughter's house and that several members of his family were trapped inside. Kern and Rollins returned to the home where soldiers had fired warning shots and successfully persuaded the soldiers to release the man's wife, teenage son and daughter and his married daughter with her two children.

April 11 JoAnne Lingle from the Beit Ummar team called the team in Hebron to report that the Israeli military had arrested 150 men during their Dura operation The men, ranging in ages from 13 to 80, were taken to the Gush Etzion military camp blindfolded and handcuffed. While they were there they were interrogated, forced to kneel for hours, sleep on the ground outside and given no food or blankets. Some were beaten. Fifty-five of the men walked to Beit Ummar after they were released. The residents put them up at a local youth camp and provided them with food and mats.

April 21 A Palestinian jewelry store next to the Beit Romano soldier checkpoint was robbed. The thieves broke a hole through the back wall adjoining the Beit Romano settlement. The day before, when the curfew had been lifted, the shop owner had noticed that the light was on in his store, but soldiers would would not let him open his shop because they said it was Shabbat. When he returned on Sunday, he found the door barred from the inside. After bringing a welder and opening the doors, he saw that everything was stolen including the things in the safe, which had been cut open with a torch. He called the police but when they arrived they refused to allow him to enter. The shop owner estimated he lost the equivalent $50,000 to 60,000 U.S. dollars.

April 25 At 4:30 AM Israeli forces entered Hebron. In the fighting, one man from the Palestinian security was killed, several Palestinians were detained, and one was arrested. The Israeli forces did not stay in Hebron but pulled out as soonas they had caught the people for whom they were looking.

Israeli forces also entered the village of A-Shyukh north of Hebron, destroyed a telecommunications tower and confiscated the computer disks of the Palestinian Authority office there.

At 4:00 AM on Monday April 29, Israeli forces entered the Palestinian part of Hebron and arrested suspected Palestinian militants. In the fighting eight Palestinians were killed and twenty-five wounded. Several buildings were also destroyed, including a television station. Throughout the day Israeli tanks, Armored Personal Carriers (APCs) and jeeps patrolled the city while sporadic shooting could be heard. A curfew was placed on the city but Palestinians still ventured out to see what was happening and to get supplies from neighbors and stores that kept their doors closed, but welcomed people when any knocked.

April 30 Rick Polhamus and Rollins walked to the Israeli District Command Office (DCO) on the outskirts of Hebron to inquire about Palestinians who had been arrested. There, in the courtyard of the DCO, they saw about one hundred and fifty Palestinians sitting on the ground in handcuffs, some wearing blindfolds. When Polhamus asked an Israeli soldier how the Palestinians were being processed, the soldier said the peoples' records were being checked and those who had records would be further questioned by Israeli secret police. Those that did not have records were released. In the hour that the two CPTers were there they saw twelve Palestinians released. All of them had papers stating that they had been detained and released, but three Palestinian men said that the Israelis had arrested them twice. Polhamus asked a soldier at the DCO about the re-arrests, and the soldier admitted that sometimes the soldiers who arrest people do not bother to look at these papers.

May 2002

May 1 Israeli forces withdrew from most areas of the Palestinian side of Hebron, but remained in the neighborhoods of Harit iSheik and Abu Sneineh, and maintained a sporadic presence in Bab iZaweyya. Soldiers put large concrete blocks across the bridge between Hebron and the village of Halhoul, cutting it off to vehicle traffic.

May 3 Le Anne Clausen, Greg Rollins, a Palestinian journalist, and a photojournalist from France, visited a Palestinian home on Tel Rumeida that Israeli settlers had spray painted graffiti on. The graffiti consisted of a star and fist, the symbol of the Kach* movement, and the words in English, "Watch out Fatima, we will rape all Arab women," "Exterminate the Muslims," and "Die Arab sand-niggers." Similar remarks were also written on the walls in Hebrew. The next-door neighbor's house was painted with a Kach symbol and signed 'JDL' for the Jewish Defense League. Another house next door, previously abandoned due to the frequent settler violence, had also been spray-painted and the inside burnt out. The graffiti in that house included a wall-size Kach symbol, an Arab man with exaggerated features hanging from a noose with a machine gun pointed at him, and a pig with the words, "Mohammed was a pig." [Pigs are considered unclean in both Jewish and Muslim culture]. The house was signed "Kahane Chai." Two more previously abandoned houses in the immediate area [across from the Beit Hadassah settlement] have been broken into and vandalized. Residents reported the vandalism took place Thursday. Both families have several young children. *(Kach, Kahane Chai, and the Jewish Defense League are all registered by the US State Department as terrorist organizations.)

May 13 Clausen visited apartment buildings in the Dweiban area of Hebron that Israeli tanks shelled on May 5th. The Israeli invasion rendered ten families homeless. They are now living in a makeshift camp next to their former apartments. The residents reported that on May 5th the Israeli military surrounded their buildings at 2:15 am. At 5:00 am, soldiers ordered all inhabitants to vacate the buildings and separated the men from their families for interrogation. The man the Israeli soldiers claimed they were seeking was not at home. They ordered two building residents--a local blacksmith and the 14-year-old landlord's son--to search each apartment in the building, so that any booby-traps set would first harm the Palestinians. The soldiers shot through each apartment door and sprayed each room of each apartment with bullets as they entered. The soldiers, still holding the boy captive, proceeded to the roof, where they shot a line of bullets through each of the water tanks, then lifted the lids and searched inside. At 7:30 am, the Israeli army opened a round of artillery fire, shooting one tank shell into each apartment, according to the residents. Residents said the soldiers then blasted open the gate to a local polyester textile factory with a tank shell, and brought the tank around behind the building. They fired a shell that destroyed the back wall of the warehouse and incinerated rolls of fabric. The fire then spread to consume the entire building, and residents heard multiple explosions when the cooking gas canisters in each apartment ignited. The Hebron Fire Department reportedly tried to reach the building, but the Israeli army prevented them from getting to building. Israeli sources later claimed the building was a weapons factory, but witnesses who spoke to the fact-finding group reported the Israeli army had not confiscated anything from inside it.

May 27 CPTers Bob Holmes, Kathy Kamphoefner, and Rollins were on their way to Beit Ummar when they passed a work crew mending the water main that runs from Halhoul to Beit Ummar. The crew's supervisor said an Israeli army bulldozer broke it when plowing a farm road shut. He said many in Beit Ummar had been without water for three days. The CPTers then noticed a Hebron Bus Company bus with its back window full of bullet holes. The Israeli army had shot at a bus of schoolchildren belonging to the Hebron Bus Company near Al-Arroub Refugee Camp Sunday about 12 noon. Four children and the driver, Naim Hassan Jaabari, 45, of al-Arroub, were injured when a volley of plastic-coated bullets, fired at close range, hit the back window of the bus.

May 29 The CPT delegation went to Beit Ummar for family visits overnight. When Kamphoefner and two delegates, Letitia Wise (Stauffville, Ontario) and Heather Steckle (Markham, Ontario) were on their way to visit a family, Israeli solders stopped the three women at the roadblock and ordered them to turn back and walk a long way around the checkpoint at the Beit Ummar Junction of Road 60. When the CPTers asked why, a very aggressive settler-soldier yelled some more, insisting the roadblock was a Closed Military Zone. The soldier continued shouting louder and louder. Finally Kamphoefner said, "We'll just cross the road here and walk on the other side." The soldier again ordered them again to go back, but the three walked across the road and continued on their way. When a Palestinian family drove Kamphoefner back to the team's Beit Ummar apartment, a shot was fired over their heads without warning. Later in the center of Beit Ummar, soldiers stopped delegation leader Pieter Niemeyer and Rollins and demanded their passports. Niemeyer was handcuffed and the two were forced to walk arm-in-arm, with hands behind them to the checkpoint. They were released after an hour and a half.

June 2002

June 3 Greg Rollins reported that Israeli soldiers had chopped down fifteen to twenty trees in Beit Ummar along Route 60 on Sunday and dug away at the edges of the road, so that cars could not pass from it to neighboring villages. He photographed the damage. All day long and several times during the night, squadrons of F-16 fighter planes flew overhead.

June 4 Formations of F-16 jets continued to fly overhead in the morning, causing a sonic boom at 8:15 am. At just past noon, a team translator called to say an Israeli army Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) was in Bab iZaweyya, inside H1 (designated as under Palestinian control under the Oslo Agreements). Kathy Kamphoefner and Rollins went to observe. They saw four jeeps and an APC plowing tracks in the road. The APC and two jeeps went up the hill to Al-Manara, around the Martyrs' Monument, and back down through the Bab iZaweyya produce market, firing percussion grenades about eight different times. The panicked fruit and vegetable sellers began packing up their produce. The CPTers stood near them. Soldiers ordered those that immediately packed up to close. Then the APC went up into Harit iSheik, returning about twenty minutes later to Area H2. Three Palestinian men asked Kamphoefner and Rollins to escort them from H2 to H1 when the army was in the street.

June 12 Rick Polhamus and Jim Satterwhite conducted a non-violence training in Jerusalem for the Quaker Peace Team. Rollins and Kamphoefner assisted with a non-violence training for Fatah youth in Bethlehem, which continued through Saturday, June 15.

June 20 Jerry Levin, Satterwhite, the three Quakers, and a team translator went to Yatta check on the farmers whose caves and homes were destroyed during the last two years. Currently an Israeli High Court order prevents the Israeli military from removing them, but the farmers are also prevented from rebuilding their demolished homes or wells. The army frequently holds artillery and bombing practices in the area. The military wants the entire area declared a closed military zone and all the Palestinian residents removed. The group also visited villagers in Twaneh, next to the Israeli settlement of Ma'on. The villagers reported Ma'on settlers had prevented them from harvesting their wheat. The villagers reported that in one case settlers cut and plowed under nearly 300 dunams (75 acres) of land. In another instance, settlers tried to set an entire wheat field on fire. As the group hiked across the fields, they saw some Israeli settlers swimming nude in a well belonging to Palestinian families. When the settlers saw the group, they made obscene gestures. They padlocked the well and left. At the request of one of the village families, Satterwhite called the police, who said they'd send the army to look into it. About twenty minutes later a settler security man appeared, followed by an Israeli army truck carrying a few soldiers. The settler security guard insisted no one could be in the area unless they have permission from the Ma'on or Carmel security. After twenty minutes of discussion, the settlers and soldiers left. The CPT group hiked back to two earthen roadblocks that now prevent taxis from traveling on the main road from Hebron to Yatta.

June 25 In the early hours of the morning, the Israeli military placed Hebron under curfew and laid siege to the Muqata, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian police. Israeli sources said fifteen of the 150 people inside were wanted men.

CPTers Diana Epp-Fransen, Janet Shoemaker, Levin, and Satterwhite went to Beit Ummar to help farmers harvest their fruit near Karmei Tzur settlement. When they arrived at the field, they met other farmers leaving, who had been ordered off their land by a settler security guard. Epp-Fransen and Satterwhite approached the security guard and found he was aiming his gun at them. Because he pretended not to understand them, they asked him to call the soldiers so there would be someone who understood English. The CPTers tried to negotiate with the soldiers. Epp-Fransen told them, "This fruit is these families' only income. They need it to be able to eat and to feed their children." One soldier was sympathetic to what CPT was doing. Pointing to his uniform, he said, "I wish I could take this stupid thing off and help them pick fruit. I'd even give them some of my food." The military commander insisted the Palestinians could not pick the fruit but allowed the CPTers to pick the fruit by themselves. However, on their lunch break, the farmers learned that all the roads out of Beit Ummar were closed, leaving no way to get the fruit to market, so they did not want the harvesting to continue.

June 27 The Israeli army fired a lot of heavy artillery at the Muqata, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Hebron. The team heard a loud explosion around 5:00 am.

Le Anne Clausen, Levin, and Satterwhite took bread to two employees trapped for three days of curfew inside the Arab Bank in the old market. The men told them they were out of water, as well. The CPTers called the municipal government to truck in water and volunteered to accompany the water truck, if needed.

June 30 Rollins and Satterwhite were on their way to sleep overnight at Al-Mizaan Hospital, when they saw Israeli soldiers enter the Hebron Municipality Building in the part of the city formerly controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The soldiers gave themselves a tour of the building. When the janitor didn't have keys for three offices, the soldiers broke out the windows in their doors to see inside. They did not communicate with any officials in the building. Israeli authorities have not discussed any distribution of duties with the city government since the reoccupation of the whole of Hebron.

July 2002

July 2 Diana Epp-Fransen and Kathy Kamphoefner went with four volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement to try to help Halhoul area farmers work in their fields next to Karmei Tzur Settlement. Soldiers fired shots over their heads to impose a closed military zone and curfew in the area. Jim Satterwhite and Janet Shoemaker went to the Polytechnic Institute, where the Israeli army had detained all the students and faculty. The soldiers checked the IDs of all the male students.

July 6 The CPT Team worshiped at the Muqata, the now demolished former headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Hebron. Their worship coincided with the beginning of a walk by CPTers from Chicago to Peoria to protest the manufacture of Apaches helicopters and Caterpillar military bulldozers. Kamphoefner stopped by the Hebron municipality offices to ask about the water situation, because two apartments in the building where CPT lives have been without water for more than one week. The public affairs representative reported that because of the water shortage, the city is rotating the water supply to a different neighborhood each day.

July 11 Dianne Roe and Shoemaker visited families living in Wadi Roos. In 1996, the Israeli army had demolished two Zaloum family homes there which lay between the two Israeli settlements of Kiryat Arba and Harsina. Two Israeli settlers drove a van alongside Roe and Shoemaker as they walked home on the road past Kiryat Arba. The driver said to them, "Go back to Europe." (Both women are from the US.) Then he returned and said that Europeans had committed many atrocities, and "Christians worship stones. We are the only true religion. We are Israel! We are Israel!" Neither woman responded to his remarks. He ended by saying, "You are Christian. You are the devil." When they later walked past the Ibrahimi Mosque/ Cave of Machpela, he drove by the CPTers again and yelled something else at them.

July 15 On the way to patrol Bab iZaweyya, one of the handcart workers voiced concerns about having no work, no food, nor water to CPT volunteer James Baer and CPT reservist Kamphoefner. He asked them to speak to the mayor of Hebron about these problems. The mosque in the Harit iSheikh neighborhood normally supports the Ibrahimi Soup Kitchen and feeds some 500 poor families, but they said they were also out of food and water. Baer and Kamphoefner later brought the soup kitchen bread.

July 18 LeAnne Clausen and Shoemaker went with the team translator to document new land confiscation, the demolition of orchards and vineyards, and new road construction surrounding Harsina settlement. On their way, they found large barriers blocking the old market's entrance by the Ibrahimi Mosque. They learned the mosque has remained closed to Muslims although the curfew was lifted a few days ago. Many Jewish settlers had come in tour busses to celebrate the Tish B'Av holiday.

July 22 In the evening settlers broke into three shops beside Beit Romano and stole all the contents therein. Then they barred the shops from the inside so that their owners could not reenter the shops. The Israeli police and soldiers told the shop owners they could enter their shops the next day.

July 23 Baer, volunteer Matthew Kraybill, Kamphoefner, and a UCP representative interviewed Hebron University students. The students reported these problems: transportation difficulties because of checkpoints, army harassment and beatings, a lack of tuition funds due to high unemployment, frequent class cancellations due to curfews, and being imprisoned arbitrarily by the Israeli authorities.

July 25 Baer and Rollins went up to Bab iZaweyya to observe the Israeli military imposing curfew about 7:00 pm. The market was already closed, so they went uphill toward al-Manara. En route, soldiers in an APC ordered them to continue in that direction and forbade them to return to the Old City. When Baer and Rollins headed back downhill toward the Old City and home, another APC arrived and its soldiers ordered them again to go the other way. When Rollins argued that they lived in the Old City, a soldier demanded their identification. The two initially refused, but a few minutes later decided it might de-escalate tensions to give their IDs, so Rollins gave them his CPT card and Baer gave them his passport. Meanwhile the soldiers also detained two Palestinian drivers and took their IDs too. Then two members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) arrived and called the army commander. The commander said he did not know why the CPTers were being detained, but that the soldiers were not permitted to keep internationals' passports. When the TIPHers asked the soldier why he had taken Baer's passport the soldier replied, "Because they made me nervous." After about an hour, the soldiers let everyone go.

July 28 The Israeli military placed the Old City under curfew at 8:30 a.m. in preparation for the funeral of Israeli soldier Elazar Leibovitz, whom Palestinian snipers killed south of Hebron several days earlier. Leibowitz had been a resident of the Avraham Avinu settlement in Hebron. Shortly after noon, the team heard shots fired not far from the CPT apartment. Soon after that, a neighbor called to say that the settlers were creating problems in the market and invading houses. Clausen and Satterwhite went to investigate and learned that a group of settlers had left the funeral procession and rampaged through the market, shooting randomly at Palestinian homes and people. By the end of the day, nine Palestinians and fifteen Israeli police and soldiers were reported injured, and one Palestinian girl was killed.

July 29 Clausen, Shoemaker, and a Palestinian friend went to a house belonging to the Sharabati family near the Avraham Avinu settlement to document damage settlers had created when they ransacked the house Saturday night. When Clausen knocked on the door and identified herself as CPT, they heard banging on the door and yelling from the inside. The CPTers heard a shout from the roof and looked up to see a settler boy with a chunk of concrete in his hand, ready to throw at them. They quickly left, narrowly avoiding being hit by the rock. Unable to return the way they came, they continued out of the market through a closed military zone. The soldiers stationed at the entrance to the street greeted the three and stated, "We usually don't let people pass through there." When Clausen explained that the settlers had taken over a Palestinian home and were throwing rocks, the soldier responded, "They are angry because of the soldier who was killed." On their way back, a young Palestinian man directed Clausen and Shoemaker to the Abu Samir Sharabati home that settlers had attacked Saturday. An elderly couple who have spent years collecting Palestinian antiques owns the house. Settler youth had overturned furniture and smashed everything in every room of the house. The library, which contained rare books (some 1,000 years old) on the history of Palestine, Islam, and Jewish-Arab relations in Hebron, was completely incinerated. "There were many old and expensive things here. They took the expensive ones and destroyed everything else," the owner said. "It's not the money. We tried to preserve our history here."

July 30 During the team's morning meeting, settler youth began throwing rocks into the Chicken Market at Palestinians. When Clausen and Jerry Levin went to photograph the incident, teenage settler women entered into the fray, walking into the market and threatening the CPTers. When Clausen attempted to protect her camera from the settlers, the young women attacked her. Shortly after noon, the settler women entered again, with a few more friends, throwing rocks and yelling. This time, the police arrived early, but stood outside the barricade to the market and watched the young women assaulting the shopkeepers. The women went further into the market until a group of soldiers ushered them out towards Gross Square. They lingered at the entrance of the market for a half hour until a group of Palestinian reporters began photographing them. The soldiers then forced the Old Market vendors to close for the rest of the day.

August 2002

August 1 In a phone conversation with Jeff Halper from the Israeli Coalition to Abolish Home Demolitions, the team learned that Abdel Jawad Jaber had broken his leg during an attack on his house in the Beqa'a by settlers. When he heard settlers throwing stones from the wall above his house, he rushed outside to protect his granddaughter who was in the yard. The settlers hit him on the back with a rock. He turned around and slipped on the veranda steps, fracturing his left leg near the hip socket. He was taken to Alia hospital in Hebron.

August 8 Greg Rollins, Greg Wilkinson and Donna Hicks stopped at the entrance to the old wholesale market to observe soldiers detaining and interrogating a Palestinian man. While the CPTers were in conversation with the soldiers, three members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) arrived and began asking about the detained man. Suddenly, a young Palestinian woman came out of the street and rushed at the soldiers with a large kitchen knife in her hand. Rollins, Wilkinson and a member of TIPH immediately stepped between the woman and the soldiers. The soldiers stepped back and cocked their guns but did not aim them. The CPTers and TIPH moved the woman back against the wall and prevented her from repeated attempts to get to the soldiers. Eventually, a commanding officer came, wrenched the knife from her hand and arrested her.

August 10 Jerry Levin and Janet Shoemaker went to Bab iZaweyya to meet a friend visiting the team. While waiting at an intersection, an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) came through the main street. A soldier on top of the APC held a tear gas canister in his hand, acting as if he was going to throw it into the most crowded area of the market and laughing as people turned to get away. Immediately after the APC had moved through, a BBC reporter approached Shoemaker. He informed her that the military had told the shop owners whose shops are near Avraham Avinu to clear their merchandise out of their shops because the military was going to demolish the buildings. The shop owners did not know when the demolition would take place.

August 13 At mid-morning, the team received a call for help from the owner of the house adjacent to Avraham Avinu that settlers had occupied on the night of Saturday, July 27. The military had removed the settlers and told the family they could return to their home. The family had hired workers to rebuild a wall between their house and the settlement that the settlers had destroyed over the past two years. That morning, settlers began stoning the workers from inside Avraham Avinu. When CPTers Hicks and Shoemaker arrived at the house, there were about eight soldiers inside trying to turn the settlers away. The soldiers ordered the CPTers to leave, which they did so as not to escalate the situation. The owner told the CPTers she would stay in contact.

August 20 On his way past the Ibrahimi Mosque, Rollins witnessed a Border Police officer make a Palestinian teenager put his head against a wall and hit the boy on the back of the neck. When he saw Rollins, the officer let the teenager go and began walking away. Rollins approached the policeman and asked why he hit the boy. "I don't want to talk to you," the soldier said. "Don't you think that just makes the Palestinian mad at you?" Rollins asked. "No," the officer stated, and refusing to answer any more questions, walked away and got on a bus.

August 22 In the early evening, a family from Tel Rumeida called and said settlers were cutting down their trees again. Le Anne Clausen and Jerry Levin went up to observe the situation and watched from a window as settlers dug out the roots with large hoes of trees they had damaged the week before. The family called the police for help. Both Israeli Border Police and civilian Police arrived and stood around, chatting with the settlers. The family expressed frustration that the settlers claim they are "clearing unattended land." If the Palestinian family who leases the land tries to work on it, the settlers attack them. The civilian police left about a half hour after the CPTers arrived, then the settlers, and finally the Border Police. The family also reported that soldiers came two days earlier at 5:00 a.m. and searched the house.

August 27 Jerry Stein, Hicks, Dianne Roe, and a translator for the team visited one of the schools in Hebron to learn about a training course for teachers on how to recognize the effects of violence on children, how to help the children act constructively, and how to seek appropriate sources for professional help. The course, funded by a grant from the European Community, is being offered in all the schools under the auspices of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. Because the Israeli military took over three schools last school year, a number of the remaining schools are operating on double shifts to accommodate the 2000 students from the three closed schools. Teachers and principals with whom the team met are concerned about the effects of the double shifts and effects of curfew called during the school day.

August 30 On returning to the old market at the Beit Romano checkpoint, Hicks and George Weber learned that a Palestinian shop in the market backing up to the Avraham Avinu settlement had been broken into overnight and its goods damaged. After the shopkeeper had removed the padlocks, he discovered that the doors had been bolted from the inside. A neighbor helped to pry the door open. The shopkeeper discovered that a hole two feet across had been punched through the back wall from the settlement side of the building.

September 2002

September 7 A Palestinian woman called early in the morning to report that settlers had come through her neighborhood near Kiryat Arba in the middle of the night and had broken out car windows, damaged some water lines, and thrown rocks through the windows of some houses. Donna Hicks, Joanne "Jake" Kaufman, and Jim Roynon responded to her request to visit. When they left the market on the Ibrahimi Mosque side, they found both iron gates padlocked from the other side. They turned around and exited the old market at Beit Romano and walked down Shuhada Street towards the road to Kiryat Arba. A group of settlers were walking up the street. As they passed the CPTers, two settler boys spit towards them. One of the settlers threw a rock towards the CPTers, which hit Hicks on her back.

September 9 CPTers on school patrol learned from a shopkeeper across from the schools on Tariq ibn Ziad Street that families had been rounded up from their homes on Sunday and held outside for several hours because boys had thrown stones at the soldiers. A neighbor told CPTers that an 8-9 month old baby had been left in a house and the soldiers refused to let the child's mother go back in to get the baby. A small girl was able to sneak back into the house and bring the baby out.

September 15 Jerry Stein and George Weber went on school patrol. When they saw the headmistress of Khadija School, she informed them that she had been delayed for forty minutes at a checkpoint and then told by soldiers when she got to school that she had only thirty minutes with her students before she had to close the school. Boys on the street were anxious to confront the soldiers up the street. Later during the patrol, the headmaster of one of the boys' schools told the CPTers of his frustration with the situation: The soldiers insisted on moving down the street towards the schools, and the boys insisted on throwing stones, which always led to a confrontation between the two groups.

September 17 Hicks, Stein, and Weber went on school patrol. By 7:30am, only a few stragglers were on the street. A jeep of soldiers came down the street, stopped at El Khalil Boys' School, and ordered the headmaster to dismiss the students in ten minutes, and they would be back. The jeep returned, siren blaring and lights flashing. The school was closed for the day. The CPTers visited Khadija Girls' School, which had not been closed down the previous two days. The headmistress said, "I have never been afraid, but the last few days I have been afraid. The soldiers are getting more and more aggressive towards women teachers and girl students."

September 21 The head mistress of Johar School, the second shift meeting at Al Hajiriya, told CPTers that a third grade student had been shot on her way to school at shift change on Saturday, September 14. She did not witness the shooting and initially thought the child was absent because of the curfews, but noticing her continued absence, she investigated and learned of the shooting. She says the children are now afraid to come to school during curfew. CPTers made their way to the child's home. She shyly told her story. As she and her older sister walked holding hands on Tariq ibn Ziad Street, they noticed a military jeep sitting at the corner closest to the Khadija School, where the older sister goes. Her sister went onto the grounds of Khadija School and the third grader continued on her way to the side street to walk to Yatta Road where her school is located. The next thing she knew she was lying on the ground, felled by a rubber-coated bullet. A Palestinian man took care of her and carried her to the hospital. The school area can be clearly seen from their home on the hill. Her mother said that she observed that no one was throwing stones. The child had a vertical wound above her right eye from the hairline down to her eyebrow.

September 26 Kaufman observed soldiers at the Bab alBaladiyye standing beside an elderly Palestinian man. Two Israeli settler boys came marching from the Old City market. Soon after, two men, a woman, and some others followed. One of the soldiers argued with them. Then he let the elderly man go. All of a sudden, rocks came skittering down from the market area. The soldier called the Palestinian man back. Half a dozen or so 10-17 year old settler boys came up the market. The soldier grabbed the most aggressive settler boy by the front of his collar and almost shook him, chewing him out thoroughly in Hebrew. The rest of the boys sauntered out as a squad of six or seven soldiers went into the market. The soldiers mildly reproved them but went off in search of others deeper into the market. The soldier told the Palestinian man to take a different road. Kaufman asked,"Why can I go but they can't?" The soldier replied, "It's not safe for them."

October 2002

October 14 The headmistress of Qurtuba School requested CPTers come to the school to view the vandalism which had happened over the weekend and to accompany the students as they came towards the school. Kristin Anderson and Donna Hicks, accompanied by a delegation from France, viewed broken windows and graffiti in Hebrew sprayed on the school's walls and doors. Israeli settler children waiting for their school van threw rocks towards the CPTers.

October 16 Anderson along with a WCC ecumenical accompanier observed Israeli settler children throwing stones at teachers heading to the Qurtuba Girls' School across from the Beit Hadassah settlement. A settler boy threw a rock at Anderson from about ten feet away, then another from five feet. He marched up to her, grabbed her hat, and smacked her on her forehead. Anderson and the accompanier asked the soldier standing nearby why he hadn't stopped the children from throwing rocks. He replied, "They are children. What can I do?" The accompanier said that he knew of many tactics the soldiers used to control Palestinian children [tear gas, "rubber" bullets], but that "Perhaps if he would just sternly tell the children not to hit and throw rocks, instead of laughing along with them, it could possibly have an effect." A second soldier approached as the first retreated and apologized. "You should not be here. This is not your job. You are making them angry by being here," he said. Anderson insisted that it was someone's job to insure that children and teachers could walk to school without getting attacked. Agreeing, he said, "It doesn't always happen, because some of the soldiers are 'stupid' and don't intervene in the actions of settler children."

October 21 Hicks and Bob Holmes observed soldiers closing down shops in the old marke again. The lead soldier said the purpose was to reduce traffic to lessen the chances of a "terrorist" getting near Avraham Avinu settlement. He and his companion agreed that it was sad that the Palestinians couldn't earn a living, but said, "We have our job to do." When Hicks suggested it was not fair to penalize all Palestinians for the behavior of a few and that there is a perception that settlers are not held responsible for their actions, the second soldier said, "You don't want to hear about it." Hicks said, "Tell me." The second soldier said, "A settler shot into the casbah. We took him to the military base. Some settlers came to get him. We prevented it, and he is in jail."

October 24 Authorities at Ben Gurion airport refused long time CPTer Kathy Kern entry into Israel and deported her back to the United States.

October 29 A visibly frightened Palestinian woman came to the CPT apartment. She wanted someone to walk with her to her home, which is located next to the Avraham Avinu settlement. Mary Yoder and Christine Caton walked with her to her house, where they were confronted by two Israeli soldiers. One of the soldiers aimed his gun at them and swore and yelled at them in English. They managed to calm down the soldier and explain that they were just trying to get this woman to her house. The soldiers refused to let her go in, so the CPTers accompanied her to the police station, where she tried to make a complaint. They told her to come back the next day. The CPTers and the woman met the team translator who talked more with the woman about her situation. Settlers had broken into her house, where she was not currently living, and she wanted to retrieve some of her personal belongings.

October 30 Anderson and Caton walked to the BabiZawwiya in the morning. When they got there everything was shut down. Soldiers and police vans were everywhere. In the market there were overturned carts, with rotting fruit and vegetables on the ground, and awnings on some buildings had been knocked down and were half hanging or lying on the ground. Several tires burned in the streets and a few people were running between the buildings when the police vans drove by. The CPTers saw soldiers taking a man away in handcuffs, so they followed him to the checkpoint area. A soldier put the man behind some barbed wire, facing the wall, next to another handcuffed man. The CPTers talked with the soldier and then began to leave. The soldier asked them to not think of him and the other soldiers as cruel. The CPTers explained that they wanted the man treated fairly and that they understood that he had a job to do, just as the CPTers had a job to do.

November 2002

November 1 Bob Holmes, Kristin Anderson, Kathie Uhler, and visiting Quakers from Great Britain visited with Atta Jabber at his house. He showed a letter from the Civil Administration that protects his home from demolition. Jabber also spoke of how the same Civil administration has allowed his land, owned by his family for four hundred years, to be taken over for settler housing. He said that he doesn't care who builds on his land as long as there is fairness for all. His house is currently without electricity.

November 7 Anderson and Christine Caton went with the team translator to accompany a woman and her friend to her house, which is located next to the Avraham Avinu settlement. They surveyed the damage done to her house by settlers, which included broken windows, and smashed planters. The settlers had also stolen a TV and tape recorder. Bernt Jonsson and his colleague from B'Tselem arrived and took photos. Preschool children from the settlement shouted at the group in Arabic, "Death to your fathers," "Death to the Arabs," and "You are prostitutes."

November 12 The entire team, from Hebron, Beit Ummar, and Jerusalem, traveled to Beni Naim and accompanied a family to pick olives in their grove near the Penei Hever settlement. Two years ago the Israeli government destroyed five hundred to a thousand olive and fruit trees belonging to the family to put in a settler road. Initially the settlers shot in the air when the group arrived and said if they did not leave they would shoot the Palestinians in five minutes. Soon afterwards the Israeli Army and the Civil Administration arrived. Mary Lawrence, Anne Montgomery and Greg Rollins negotiated an agreement with the Israeli officials stipulating that the family could pick olives above the road up to the settlement, and the CPTers could pick below the road. The family wanted to pick twelve trees at the top in the afternoon, but settler children returning from school began to throw stones and the group decided to go home, leaving twelve trees unpicked.<!-- p-->

November 15 Jerry Levin, Quaker volunteer John Lynes, and Bob Holmes observed soldiers detaining a doctor at the Beit Romano checkpoint. He was being denied passage even though he had a hand-written permit to move during curfew. He called the District Coordinating Office, representatives of which came in about twenty minutes and told the soldiers to let the doctor proceed. At the same time, soldiers detained an ambulance for ten minutes while they checked the driver's ID. Around 7:15pm, the team heard shots, followed by more loud gunfire and flares in the sky. Gunfire, tank fire and explosions continued throughout the night. The team later learned that nine Israeli police and soldiers, three Israeli settler guards, and three Palestinian gunmen were killed on the road between the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Il Ibrahimi mosque and Kiryat Arba.

November 16 Holmes, Levin, Lynes and Le Anne Clausen went to see the site of the shootings. Soldiers stopped them several times. When they arrived at the site, they saw at least ten military vehicles parked there, with about twenty soldiers standing nearby. The bodies of the three gunmen were laid out in a field. While walking back to the CPT apartment Levin and Holmes came upon soldiers systematically searching the home of Palestinians in the vicinity of the shootings. Soldiers detained the two CPTers four times on the way back. Ha'aretz correspondent Amira Hass came to the CPT apartment to meet with the team and cover events in Hebron. That night, approximately nine settlers held a demonstration where the soldiers were killed. At the end of the demonstration the settlers started to stone Palestinian homes in the area. Haas told the police to stop them. Several settlers became angry with her and began to swear, spit, and shove her. They also stole her notebook and her glasses. The four CPTers gathered around her to protect her. No soldiers came to help. Finally a reporter from Israeli TV came and guided them to the soldiers. The five spent the rest of the evening beside police and soldiers. They wanted to go back to the Palestinian home they were visiting but were not allowed to because of the settler presence. At the end of the night they walked back to the CPT apartment because they didn't want to endanger the Palestinian family.

November 17 At 5:00am the team heard two explosions. At 8:15am, they heard more explosions saw and smoke and dust risking from the area of the Friday night shootings. Later, they received a report that the Israeli military had demolished five homes. Levin, Mary Yoder, and Holmes went to the site of the attack and documented settlers breaking the windshields of ten cars.

November 18 The team received many phone calls from families without food because of the tight curfew. They made trips out to buy food in places they knew would be open, and then delivered the food, mostly milk and bread, to various families in the area. Many families and two of the team's translators told CPT that the Hebron Municipality usually delivers emergency food during curfew, but that the Israeli military has forbidden them to do this, threatening to shoot them if they try. CPT offered to accompany the workers on delivery if the workers were willing to try going out. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, occupation forces must guarantee occupied populations access to food, medical aid, and humanitarian aid. Clausen collected information on eighteen families in Wadi Roos, Beqa'a Valley, and the Jabel Johar neighborhood who have received new home demolition orders. The families who received these orders were not connected to the attack, but are in the path of the proposed "buffer zone" being expanded around Kiryat Arba.

November 21 Levin, Rollins, Sue Rhodes, and Lynes, along with members of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, (ICAHD) went to spend the night with Palestinians in Jabel Johar. Israeli soldiers had already knocked down one house's kitchen wall with a bulldozer, and said the entire house would be demolished in the morning. Soldiers ordered Levin, Lynes, and Katherine Maycock, and Jeff Helper from ICAHD, to leave, promising that they would protect the house from settlers. The group was able to spend the night in two other Palestinian homes and heard no reports of further settler attacks.

November 22 An Israeli lawyer for ICAHD obtained an injunction postponing the demolition of the house the Israeli Army threatened to destroy. Clausen and Anderson delivered food to Jabel Johar area. En route, they discovered Israeli soldiers detaining some twenty Palestinian men outside a mosque. Neighbors told them the men had been standing there a long time. The CPTers passed by, greeting the soldiers and detained men. After delivering the food they saw that the soldiers had let all but three men go. CPTers stayed in the area until the soldiers released the men and left. Anderson, Rhodes, Levin, and Yoder slept in homes along with the Israeli group. CPTers observed that Israeli soldiers appeared to keep the settlers under control.

November 26 Anderson and Rhodes did follow-up visits in Jabal Johar. One family had been interrogated by fifteen soldiers the night before who took many pictures inside and outside the house. The family requested that the CPTers return for the night and told them that soldiers had given a close neighbor a house demolition order.

November 27 At 2PM, Clausen observed soldiers enforcing a curfew in Bab iZaweyya by firing tear gas grenades into crowded streets. Shoppers and storeowners began to flee immediately. Soldiers then moved up the street to Al Amanara where they took keys from five taxi drivers and left their cars blocking the road. The soldiers also detained a Palestinian ambulance and searched it. They grabbed one driver by the neck and tried to pull him out of the car. Clausen and two journalists approached the vehicle and the soldiers let the man go. Clausen then followed the soldiers into a crowded vegetable market where they screamed orders at a 70-year-old man and kicked over his eggplant crate. Clausen helped pick up the eggplants and was subsequently tear-gassed by the soldiers.

November 28 Yoder made several unsuccessful attempts to coordinate food delivery by the Red Cross to the Old City. The Red Cross has been unable to deliver food in the Old City since implementation of curfew on November 14.

December 2002

December 2 Greg Rollins, team friend Henri Longbottom, and a Reuters reporter saw Israeli soldiers putting demolition orders on Palestinian homes between the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Kiryat Arba settlement. Most of the homes are empty, waiting for reconstruction permits which are repeatedly denied, but a few still have families living in them. Families reported 15 properties have demolition orders.

December 7 CPTers Anne Montgomery and Le Anne Clausen visited families along the road to Kiryat Arba settlement, including the Jaberi Quarter and Wadi Nasara above the new Israeli settlement. They observed a new road extending from the main gate of Kiryat Arba to the police station (two other roads for this purpose already exist), the widening of Worshipers Way--the path between Kiryat Arba and the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs--near the new settlement, and a road serving as a shortcut from Kiryat Arba to the new settlement. A friend of the team living in this area said that 25 additional homes were threatened, including those lining the paved road to the new settlement.

December 9 Montgomery visited a home in the Beqa'a Valley. She reported that settlers were bulldozing two roads on the hill near Atta's house, 200 meters to the left and right. Settlers had also cordoned off 100 dunums (one dunum is 1,000 square meters) at the top of the ridge. The roads will completely surround his house.

December 11 Kristin Anderson, Quaker volunteer John Lynes, Rick Polhamus, and Rollins responded to a call from the headmaster at Maarief boy's school. He reported that soldiers were surrounding the school grounds. CPTers oversaw the release of the boys and spoke with border police, negotiating time for the boys to safely return home. The headmaster at Khadijah girls school indicated that this is only the 2nd day school has been open since November 15.

Thursday, December 12, at approximately 8 pm, two Israeli soldiers were shot and killed as they were approaching the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs. Gunmen fired from the Jabal Johar neighborhood then fled. CPTers learned that the IDF (Israeli military) bulldozed five homes during the night. The homes were close to the site of the ambush and were inhabited, although the Israeli military made claims that they were vacant.

December 13 At 8:00 pm CPTers received a call requesting accompaniment for a very ill baby close to the Beit Hadassah settlement. JoAnne Lingle and Anderson responded to the call, walking through a street full of settlers since it was Shabbat. Anderson and Lingle negotiated the ambulance's arrival in the area. After one to two hours, a soldier indicated that the CPTers, along with the baby, the mother, and the mother's sister, would be allowed to walk to the Beit Romano checkpoint to catch an ambulance. The group was escorted down Shuhada Street where they were surrounded by approximately 10 soldiers. An Israeli doctor examined the baby. Four soldiers escorted the mother, baby, and CPTers past more settlers on Shuhada Street where they met the Red Crescent ambulance and journeyed to the hospital. The baby was treated and released. Anderson and Lingle were pleased to witness the women's excitement about the soldiers' friendly and polite treatment of them.

December 16 Polhamus and four CPT visitors arrived at Bab iZaweyya to find a young man who had been beaten by soldiers. The man was very traumatized and hysterical. Polhamus sat with him and comforted him until the man could talk. The man said he had been with his mother when curfew was imposed and did not move quickly enough to please the soldiers, because his mother has bad knees. Two border police put him in a van and beat him before dropping him off at the checkpoint. The commander arrived and told Polhamus that they were investigating the border police officers' actions.

December 19 Lynes and Polhamus went to area of the new settlement to investigate reports that police were dismantling it. Hundreds of police were observed dismantling the tents and buildings and removing the caravan.

December 22 A phone call at approximately 8:30 am informed CPTers that Israel was demolishing the home of Atta Jaber's brother, a long-standing friend of CPT. A second phone call informed CPTers of yet another demolition in process. The team then split into two groups. The first group -- Polhamus, Kathie Uhler, and Lynes -- went with Nayef Hashlamon, a Reuters photo journalist. In Wadi Roos, an IDF (Israeli military) "bagger" knocked down an unoccupied house. Due to curfew, the owner, who lives near the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs, was unable to be present at the demolition. The second group -- Lingle, Sue Rhodes, Anderson, and Rollins -- arrived at the Jaber house. A bulldozer was in the process of destroying the nearly complete house. Three soldiers were physically aggressive with CPTers and pushed them to the fringes of the property, where it was more difficult to take pictures. Jeff Helper from ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), extended family members, neighbors, and CPTers were was present with the family. The army departed quickly after bulldozing the house and leaving behind a large area of concrete rubble. Jaber stated that the Israeli District Coordinating Office had been to the property four months prior and reassured him that his home would not be demolished, even though a stop work order had been issued. Jaber then decided to finish the house he started building two years ago on the property that was in his family for generations. Jaber stated that he was not permitted to gather his belongings from the nearly completed house, thus losing many items he had recently purchased.

December 24 CPTers spent Christmas Eve in Bethlehem where they took part in a peaceful vigil, organized by Palestinian Christians, protesting the occupation.

December 25 Palestinians called Anderson and Lingle to ask them to investigate their shop near the Beit Romano settlement. On arrival, CPTers noted a large hole in the wall, leading to another wall. The hole had been made from the parking lot of the Beit Romano settlement. Inside the shop, many vacant shelves indicated that settlers who had broken into the shop stole merchandise. Rhodes photographed the damage. At the same time, a settler attempted to enter the shop through the hole in the wall. CPTers questioned the soldiers, whose post was approximately 20 yards from the hole in the back of the shop. The soldiers stated that they were "watching" it. Finally a soldier, who others said was the commander, along with two other soldiers came and inspected the shop and spoke with the Palestinians. The Palestinians said they would cover the hole with metal.

CPTers returned from Bethlehem to find Israeli soldiers installing a large iron gate in front of the CPT apartment, which would block access to Shuhada Street.

December 28 CPTers Mary Yoder and Lorne Friesen left for school patrol at 7AM. They saw students arriving, but many teachers were unable to come because of curfew. One teacher said that students could not concentrate on their mid-term exams because the stress of curfew. Around 8AM, a sound grenade exploded near the school and students began running in many directions. Three army jeeps arrived at the intersection of the schools. Yoder spoke with soldiers who told her the students needed to go home because of the curfew. Yoder asked a soldier driving one of the jeeps not to use tear gas or sound grenades. The soldier stated, "They're not scared of us!"

December 31 While on school patrol, CPTers Friesen, Lynes, and David Janzen came upon a large crowd near the schools on Tariq ibn Ziad Street. They were told that the Israeli military had taken a 17 year-old Palestinian boy in the neighborhood to the industrial area of town. Later his body was found in the same area.

January 2003

January 4 David Janzen and Lorne Friesen escorted two Palestinian women across Shuhada Street because they were afraid of settlers there. Near the settlement of Avraham Avinu, settler children grabbed Janzen's CPT hat as settler adults watched and laughed. When the CPTers walked past the Beit Romano settlement, a settler teenager shouted at them and struck at Friesen, but missed. The teen struck Janzen twice on the shoulder and kicked him in the back. Soldiers at the checkpoint asked the CPTers if they were okay.

January 6 Throughout the day, Israeli soldiers detained men (some with children), at the Duboya Street checkpoint. Between twenty to forty men were detained at a time from one to ten hours. Soldiers went into H1, formerly the Palestinian-controlled area of Hebron, took men from their shops and off the street, and brought them to the Duboya checkpoint. CPTers stood with the detainees from mid afternoon until 8:00 PM, when soldiers released the last man. CPTers provided food and water to the detainees and coats to two men who were cold. The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) also maintained a presence throughout the day.

January 7 At 2:00 PM JoAnne Lingle, Quaker volunteer John Lynes, and Friesen responded to a call from a Reuters journalist that soldiers beat a boy at the Beit Hadasseh checkpoint. When they arrived, they saw a fifteen-year-old boy in handcuffs, sitting stooped by the soldiers' post. His hands were discolored. CPTers asked the soldiers to loosen the cuffs but they refused. TIPH and human rights reporter from B'Tselem (An Israeli human rights organization) joined CPT. They pulled the boys shirt up and saw red marks on his back where he had been beaten. The boy's relatives stated that he had protected his sister-in-law from sexual harassment when four soldiers entered their house. At 5:00 PM, CPTers again requested the handcuffs to be loosened. A soldier said they would not loosen the handcuffs because CPTers, TIPH, and journalists had taken pictures. Two Red Cross workers arrived but were not permitted to examine the boy. CPT and the others remained with the boy and his relatives until soldiers escorted the boy to a military vehicle at 6:30 PM.

January 8 At 7:30AM, Lingle and Friesen went to the home of the teenager arrested the day before. The family said they were told the boy was at the Kiryat Arba police station and could be released on condition they did not file a complaint against the soldiers for their alleged sexual harassment of the boy's sister and sister-in-law. The CPTers accompanied the boy's father and another family member to the police station. At the station an investigator told them the boy was not there. He was at the Gush Etzion military camp and could not be released. Lingle called the Red Cross and asked them to visit the boy. A representative of the Red Cross said they could not visit detainees in the first fourteen days of detention.

Art Gish, Mary Yoder and Kathie Uhler, met with Abdel Hadi Hantash, of the Hebron District Land Defense Committee, and a representative from the Hebron District Governor's office. They gave a tour of the Beqa'a valley land confiscation to German and Egyptian consulate representatives. During the tour, Yoder took pictures of a settler driving a bulldozer to clear land. The bulldozer charged Yoder. She jumped out of the way but the driver climbed out, pushed her down and grabbed her camera. He then climbed back on the bulldozer and headed toward the highway Route 60. Another bulldozer came and constructed a large earth mound to block any Palestinian traffic from using the entrance onto Route 60. When the tour group arrived at the earth mound, several army jeeps stopped. A soldier in one jeep aimed his gun at a German diplomat's head. The diplomat asked the soldier not to point his gun at him. Soldiers took Yoder to the Kiryat Arba police station where she waited for several hours to file a complaint. A police officer returned the camera to her and asked if she would be willing to drop charges against the driver of the bulldozer if the man apologized. Yoder agreed.

At 3:00 PM, Yoder, David Janzen, and Lynes responded to a call in the old city near the Ibrahimi Mosque. Upon arrival, they saw soldiers with two boys held against a wall. The boys' legs were spread and their arms were held up high. Four soldiers had their guns pointed at the boys. After twenty minutes the soldiers left. The soldiers said they were looking for a fourteen-year-old boy who threw stones at them and that they had not hurt anyone. Family members said the soldiers kicked the boys and hit their heads against the wall. Red marks were visible on their legs and foreheads. The sixteen-year-old daughter of the family locked herself in her room. CPTers saw marks on the metal door where soldiers attempted to break the door down while they shouted obscenities. The door handle was also broken off. A nine-year-old girl then came out of hiding. The mother said the girl had been made to lie flat on the floor while soldiers pretended they would fall on her. The family said that this was the tenth invasion of their house in twenty days and the second invasion that day. At 10:00 PM CPTers received a call that soldiers had again invaded the same house. The family called the local commander who stated, "If you die, you die. If you live, you are lucky. You should move out of the Old City."

January 10 In the morning Art and Peggy Gish, and Dianne Roe accompanied several Israeli peace groups who attempted to come to the Beqa'a valley to plant olive trees and call attention to the 3500 dunams of land that settlers from Kiryat Arba have stolen. On the way down they were stopped at the Gush Ezyon checkpoint where soldiers told them the Hebron district was a closed military zone. The group had a demonstration at the checkpoint before they turned around. Lingle, Friesen, Janzen and Greg Rollins waited in the Beqa'a valley for the Israeli peace groups to arrive. When only one vehicle was able to get past the Gush Ezyon checkpoint, the CPTers and some fifty Palestinians planted olive trees on the stolen land. Israeli soldiers arrived as the crowd finished, but the soldiers did not disturb the people.

January 14 Out on school patrol Friesen, Sue Rhodes and journalist Donna Baillie encountered an Israeli soldier who told them that no children could go to school. He became angry as small children continued to emerge from nearby houses and run in small groups to the school. Parents, who are not allowed out during curfew, called their thanks to CPTers for being present. Further along the road a soldier with his gun raised was preventing twenty girls from proceeding to school. While Rhodes engaged the soldier in conversation, challenging his actions, the girls ran past safely. Rhodes continued to escort small groups of girls while the soldier looked on.

January 15 Art Gish and the Head of Hebron District Land Defence Committee took a representative from the U.S.Consulate and twelve people from the U.S. State Department on a fact finding tour of the Baqa'a valley, where they saw the new roads, settlements, confiscated land and demolished houses.

The Israeli Army closed Hebron University and two Polytechnics for two weeks, and have said the period could be extended up to six months.

The team learned that the 15 year-old detained on January 7 had returned to his family. Four CPTers joined with his family and friends to welcome him home.

January 16 On patrol, Roe and Friesen encountered a soldier trying to prevent children going to school. The commander reprimanded him for speaking to CPTers and told him to keep his gun ready. The commander called the police who took the CPTers' passports and told them "The children are not allowed to go to school. If CPT helps children break the law , then CPT is breaking the law and will be arrested." Roe asked to see the order. The police told her the soldier was the law.

January 17 CPTer Lingle and a translator visited a fourteen--year-old boy in al Alia hospital. They were told that on January 4 soldiers handcuffed him, blindfolded him and drove him around in a jeep, where he the soldiers inside the jeep and passing soldier beat and kicked him. Soldiers turned away an ambulance twice, telling the medics there was no problem. On the third try, medical workers managed to take the boy to the hospital. His doctor said he had internal injuries and a damaged testicle and needed to remain in hospital for a few days longer.

In the evening, Palestinian militants shot a settler at an outpost in the Baqa'a Valley, near the Harsina settlement.

January 18 Rollins, Friesen and Roe went to Twaneh village near Yatta and joined fifteen people from Ta'ayush, an Israeli peace organization. Palestinian farmers there have been unable to plow their land because of harassment from settlers from the nearby settlement of Ma'on. As farmers began to plow, settler militants started to shoot from their outpost overlooking the fields. About twelve settlers charged down the hill, some shot their guns and some hurled rocks from slingshots. The settlers knocked Friesen down, smashed his camera and destroyed the film. Rollins tried to protect him but a settler hit him on the side of his face and knocked off his glasses. The settlers chased an Israeli woman but she escaped into the crowd. Palestinians on tractors retreated as settlers continued to chase them, fire at them and attack them with stones. Several Palestinians threw stones back at the settlers. Settler security arrived on the scene and arrested a Palestinian who threw stones. They put a farmer's tractor in neutral and pushed it down the hill where it flipped over. Israeli soldiers and police came and took the complaints of the Israeli activists. Most of the group went to Jerusalem to file complaints.

January 21 CPTers heard from the Land Defense Committee that thousands of dunams of land are being confiscated because of the recent Israeli decision to expand all settlements by 300 meters on all sides.

January 23 At 8:15 pm, Hamas militants killed three soldiers on foot patrol south of Hebron. The perpetrators fled toward Yatta. Israeli soldiers searched the south of Hebron using helicopters, flares, Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), jeeps and foot patrols. The military placed Yatta under curfew.

January 29 In a meeting with the Hebron Municipality, Roe learned that the Israeli government is confiscating 286 dunums [a dunum equals approximately one fourth acre] behind the settlement of Gush Etzion. Any Palestinian claiming ownership has thirty days to prove ownership, then an additional fifteen days to remove the trees or reimburse the Israeli army for bulldozing them. Farmers asked Roe, "How do we prove ownership? We can't move. We are under curfew and closure. They don't accept our documents as proof."

January 30 On her way to the CPT apartment, Rhodes saw earth mounds on many of the main roads in Hebron. Tanks had destroyed curbstones, and streets were deserted. CPTers Rhodes and Roe, accompanied by a Japanese journalist visited a Palestinian friend in the old city of Hebron. The family told them last July after settlers attacked them in their house, the Israeli military declared their home a closed military zone and locked them out of their house. On the way to the taxi, CPTers Art Gish and Rollins saw soldiers trying to enforce curfew. Soldiers responded to rock-throwing youth by shooting tear gas and rubber bullets. Gish saw soldiers fire tear gas at al-Alia Hospital, then drive away. As Gish showed two visitors around the downtown area, they came across tanks destroying the market.

January 31 Walking between Bab iZaweyya and Al Manara in downtown Hebron, CPTers Gish, Rhodes, Tracy Hughes, and Kathy Kapenga noticed more destruction of fruit and vegetable stands since the previous day. An Israeli military jeep stopped to let a Palestinian man vomit repeatedly, then made him climb back in the jeep. Soldiers did not answer when a CPTer asked why they were detaining him. The man had tears in his eyes and shook his head. The jeep drove around in the area, stopping occasionally, for half-an-hour, then released the man. He told a reporter the soldiers beat him in the jeep for two hours.

In the afternoon, CPTers Hughes, Rhodes, Gish, and Lingle waited nearly two hours on Duboya Street with two young Palestinian men about 16 years of age. Soldiers alleged they threw rocks. The soldiers handcuffed them and forced them to remain kneeling, hitting or kicking them if they tried to stand to relieve their discomfort. One soldier confided to the CPTers that he disapproved of the treatment of the young men. At 5:00 p.m., after five hours of detention, soldiers released the two young men.

February 2003

February 1 At 7:00 a.m. during school patrol, CPTers Tracy Hughes, Sue Rhodes, Kathy Kapenga, and Barbara Martens met a patrol of soldiers who were not permitting children to go to school. A jeep joined the patrol, and a soldier who refused to give his name claimed he was the commander. Even though Rhodes cited the universal right to education, he said the children could not go to school because there was curfew. Two soldiers entered a schoolyard nearby and began pushing the students out. Four soldiers kicked at the gate of Al Fayha' Girls School and entered the building, shouting for all to leave. The girls screamed and ran out. Hughes and Kapenga stayed to monitor the soldiers' behavior. One of the soldiers pushed Hughes. Two women from the school said that one soldier who spoke Arabic had used obscene language.

February 3 At 7:00 a.m., CPTers on school patrol observed some students going to school while soldiers prevented others, particularly at the intersection below Tariq Ibn Ziad Boys School where two bulldozers and several jeeps were parked. One soldier told CPTers that they were behaving in an illegal manner by helping students go to school. Kapenga responded, "Denying children the right to education is illegal under international human rights law." When female secondary school students confronted the soldiers, soldiers threatened them with tear gas. A few threw rocks at a jeep that was driving back and forth. When the students were at some distance, continuing to retreat and no longer throwing rocks, CPTers rejoined them. Soldiers fired a percussion grenade, then rubber bullets. One hit a student in the calf, and two more tore Hughes's raincoat and hit her in the arm.

CPTers Hughes, Rhodes, Martens, and Kristin Anderson visited five of the twenty-two families whose structures the Israeli military destroyed the day before. These included a garage, cistern, chicken coop, field wall, steps, and three homes (leaving sixteen people homeless.) A military jeep drove at high speed to the Beit Hanoun roadblock as CPTers were returning to Hebron. Soldiers jumped out and ran over the barrier, shouting and pointing their guns at people. They examined IDs, then left.

February 6th In the morning, Rhodes and Kapenga watched Israeli soldiers forcing students to leave the Ibrahimiya School before classes had started. One soldier said he had already phoned his commander and that schools were to remain closed because there was curfew. One said he didn't like what he had to do but was following orders. In any case, he said, he was just one small person. Kapenga pointed out that students have a right to study. TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) arrived and phoned the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) commander to verify the order. Meanwhile the faculty and administration herded the students between two buildings across the street to wait. After an hour, word came that the school was to remain closed, despite the fact that all other schools in the area remained in session. Everyone dispersed. (Ibrahimiya School is located near the Avraham Avinu settlement and faces one of the roads the settlers use.)

February 11 On the way home from the Beqa'a Valley, the team came to a house in which a family of four adults and twelve children had been locked in for the day. Soldiers had locked the door with plastic handcuffs, and told the Palestinian family that the house would be demolished if anyone broke the plastic lock. Soldiers released the families at 5:30 p.m.

February 12 Martens, Rich Meyer, Rhodes, and William Payne accompanied a 22-year old man to the hospital. He was limping and bleeding from a cut above his eye after soldiers had beaten him. The team received three other reports of soldiers beating Palestinians that day in the old city.

At 11:30 a.m. Martens and Meyer met a patrol of four Israeli soldiers, one of whom was carrying a crowbar, and observed them forcing entrance to a six unit apartment building in Harit iSheik. Martens and Meyer heard the noise of breaking glass and other loud noises as the soldiers moved through the apartment building.

February 14 A shopkeeper showed team members one house and nineteen shop doors in the old city that had been welded shut by the Israeli military occupation forces.

The team learned that the Israeli military used a bulldozer to push six Palestinian cars over a cliff between Hebron and the Kiryat Arba settlement.

February 15 Anderson, Meyer, Chris Brown, and Art Gish saw two soldiers trying to scare people off the streets in BabiZawia. Schoolgirls returning home from school ran from the soldiers. As the soldiers walked past two schoolgirls, they kicked rain water from the gutter onto the girls' faces.

February 16 The Israeli military demolished the Al Manara produce market for the second time, using a bulldozer and a tank. Rhodes quickly helped prevent boxes of cabbage from being crushed by the tank and bulldozer.

February 17 When Brown and Gish saw one of four soldiers aim his m-16 rifle at little girls trying to go to school, Gish jumped in front of the gun and said, "Aren't you ashamed of threatening little girls? Just let the girls go to school." After about fifteen minutes of confrontation, the soldiers left and the children went to school.

February 19 As Meyer and Brown walked on the Yatta Road during morning school patrol, children told them there were soldiers ahead. As the CPTers approached, one of the soldiers whose cheek was cut, asked the CPTers if the children had thrown stones at them. When they said the children had not thrown stones, the soldier said, "No? Then walk back and let them throw stones at you. Stones hurt, you know." International observers in the area told CPT that children had hit that soldier with a stone, and the soldier was now angry. The soldiers said that the Ibrahimi boys' school and Fayher Girls' School were closed. Meyer and Brown then went back toward the children, telling the soldiers they would attempt to accompany the children back to their homes. The injured soldier was attaching either rubber-coated steel bullets or tear gas cartridges onto his barrel, and said, "No, we have a better way." Meyer and Brown kept walking, and soldiers warned them they were walking into the line of fire. When they reached the kids, they told them that the soldiers were angry and had closed the schools. Older boys then told the younger ones to go home.

February 22 The team took a few moments to reflect on 100 days of curfew. For 100 days their neighbors had been imprisoned in their own homes. The usual celebrations for the feast during the previous week were impossible for them. Children had been able to go to school only when the commander has allowed it. Team members wondered how much longer their neighbors could endure this situation.

March 2003

March 7 Walking back to the CPT apartment in the early evening, Art Arbour and William Payne heard gunfire. The team learned later that two Palestinians killed two settlers and injured eight others at the Kiriat Arba settlement located on the edge of Hebron, about 1.5 kilometers from the CPT apartment. The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the killings. The two Palestinians were also killed in the exchange of gunfire.

March 8 On the way to school patrol Chris Brown and Payne encountered four soldiers who positioned themselves at a crucial intersection and prevented children from passing through to school. Dozens of children made several attempts at walking through the area. Brown and Payne witnessed a soldier grab a very small child and shout at him. The CPTers asked the soldier not to yell at children.

As the CPTers passed Israeli settlers on route to the synagogue located at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Brown and Payne expressed their condolences for the deaths of settlers the previous night. The settlers nodded in response.

March 9 The team's translator called to say that settlers were bulldozing on the perimeter of Kiriat Arba, and that a Palestinian family was worried that their house was in danger of being demolished. Payne, Sue Rhodes, and Brown went to investigate. Two Caterpillar bulldozers were clearing a section of land adjacent to Kiryat Arba on the southeast side. As Payne began filming the destruction, an angry settler threatened to shoot at him.

The Palestinian family lost over five dunams (1/4 acre) of land with six hundred trees, including almonds, olives, and grapevines. The settlers had also destroyed a building used for farm animals. A settler told Payne that he would like to demolish the Palestinian homes but did not have permission yet from the Israeli government. Another settler threw rocks at Payne and members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), and also tried to push the TIPH observer off a rock ledge.

The CPTers learned that soldiers forced one Palestinian family of seventeen people to stand outside the previous night for two and a half hours, and then to stay in one room of their own home for another three and a half hours. CPTers asked what the soldiers were doing. "They were just relaxing in our house," the family said.

March 16 Payne and Greg Rollins watched Palestinian school children climb down a ladder from a house at the edge of the old city. Because all the entrances in and out of the old city are blocked during curfew, the children are forced to go through people's homes to find a way to their schools outside the old city. The two CPTers intervened when Israeli border police (who are a branch of the Israeli military) yelled at the children to return home. When one of the police pulled the ladder away from the house Rollins pulled it out of the policeman's hands and put it back against the wall. The border police left when Payne began to videotape their actions.

News of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie's being killed by an Israeli bulldozer reached Le Anne Clausen and other internationals while they were taking part in a vigil in Bethlehem against the war in Iraq. After returning to Jerusalem, Clausen gave a number of interviews to the international press about the killing and its impact on international peace workers in Israel and Palestine.

March 17 Israeli settlers outside the settlement Beit Hadassah attacked two European members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) who were escorting Palestinian children home from school. The settlers also attacked an Israeli military officer who was talking to the two TIPHers. None of the men were badly hurt.

CPTers Brown and Clausen traveled to Gaza to offer condolences and provide trauma support to the ISM team in Rafah. While there, they took part in a memorial walk to leave flowers at the place where Corrie was killed. An Israeli tank approached the peaceful procession, which included about eighty Palestinians, and tear-gassed participants while they laid the flowers. The dozen internationals stood between the tank and the Palestinians, then processed towards the Egyptian border to lay flowers and an ISM banner along the wall. The tank followed them and attempted to bulldoze the banner and flowers. The ISM activists and several Palestinians responded by placing flowers and pictures of Corrie on the tank while appealing to the tank to allow them to mourn in peace. Two more tanks and the bulldozer that killed Corrie also drove past the group, firing shots and tear-gassing as they passed. At one point, several Palestinian boys entered the no-man's land near the Egyptian border. Brown and an ISM coordinator tried to prevent the boys from getting near the heavy machinery. A Palestinian doctor whose house was saved from demolition when Corrie was killed gathered the boys and young men present to sit together on the sand while the machinery passed. While sitting, the Palestinians and internationals were tear-gassed again. Due to the rising tension among the group, the Palestinians and internationals left the area.

March 18 CPTers Kristin Anderson, Art Arbour, William Payne, and Ecumenical Accompaniers (EA's) Rebecca Johnson and Tord Strom went on school patrol. Anderson and Arbour observed Israeli soldiers and teachers at the Ibrahimi Boys' School sending children home. As Anderson and Arbour followed the soldiers down the street, they observed two Israeli jeeps with a soldier announcing closure of the schools. Payne, Strom, and Johnson observed two border patrol jeeps speeding through the Tariq ibn Ziad junction, where they stopped and began shooting. The clashes between soldiers and students continued for forty minutes as children threw stones and soldiers shot plastic-coated bullets and percussion grenades. Payne and Johnson shouted at the soldiers to stop shooting over the course of the clashes. Johnson stepped in front of a soldier pointing his gun towards the children. The soldiers justified their shooting by saying someone had thrown a stone at them. On the way back to the apartment, an Israeli settler called Payne names and tried to hit his hat. An Israeli soldier intervened.

March 23 Anderson, Arbour, and Ecumenical Accompanier Hallstein Laupsa observed Israeli soldiers stopping Palestinian drivers, confiscating their keys and forcing them to leave their vehicles on the street. A tank sometimes trained its gun on the drivers. It left when Anderson began taking photographs.

March 25 CPTers Arbour and Diane Janzen and Israeli soldiers helped a Palestinian shopkeeper near Beit Hadassah remove debris from the roof of his shop and deal with a leak from a pool of water on the roof.

March 26 Brown, after repeated calls, was able to talk with a person in the District Command Office (DCO) of the Israeli military in Hebron to determine if Palestinian shops whose doors had been welded shut could be reopened for merchants to retrieve their inventory. The DCO representative informed Brown that the shopkeepers would have to contact the DCO directly. Brown passed this information on to the shopkeepers.

March 29 Payne and Rollins visited a family on Abu Sneineh, part of whose home has been occupied by Israeli soldiers for over seven months. The father said some of the soldiers are good and others are very, very bad. In winter, they tracked in lots of mud and used lots of water and electricity. The night before fourteen or fifteen soldiers were in the apartment. As Payne and Rollins were returning to the CPT apartment, Israeli settler children threw some large stones at them. Israeli soldiers from Beit Hadassah, Beit Romano, and the military post came running out to stop the children from throwing stones.

March 30 Brown and Rollins visited a family who live along the "worshippers' way", the path by which Israeli settlers from Kiryat Arba come to the Cave of the Patriarchs to worship. Soldiers have harassed the family for fifteen years, and have occupied the roof for a month. The soldiers have put a piece of sheet metal in the staircase so they will hear anyone approaching. The noise from the soldiers stepping on it keeps the family awake at night.

March 31 A Palestinian shopkeeper whose shop the Israeli army had welded shut for over a month reported that the Israeli army had unwelded his shop and he was able to remove some of his inventory.

CPTers Anderson, Payne, and Rollins met with staff of Hebron University, which the Israeli authorities closed in January. Some classes are meeting in elementary schools throughout Hebron. Administrators and teachers told the CPTers that they are without access to their offices and computers, which impedes their ability to run the university. The staff fears the closure will extend beyond July without significant international pressure.

April 2003

April 5 Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint across from the old wholesale vegetable market told CPTers Art Arbour and Donna Hicks and Ecumenical Accompaniers Hallstein Laupsa and Tord Strom that the military had called a curfew for everyone in the area, except for students. Shortly after arriving at the junction near the Ibrahimi Boys' School, CPTers Arbour and Hicks observed four soldiers in an Army jeep chase a group of students across the parking lot below the Ibrahimi Mosque. The headmistress of El Fahya Girls' School was forced to close the school and send the children home. While the soldiers concentrated on the girls' school, students of the Ibrahimi School were able to get into their schoolyard unobserved. One of the soldiers noticed the boys heading to school and attempted to stop others from passing the junction. Another jeep arrived with an officer who ordered the headmaster to close the Ibrahimi School. The headmaster was able to convince the officer to let the school remain open.

Later in the morning, the headmaster of Ma'aref School called to request accompaniment for his students as they left school. He reported there were soldiers surrounding the school and one videotaping. The Ibrahimi headmaster had also requested a CPT presence at dismissal time. Hicks, Laupsa, and EA Tord Strom responded to the Ma'aref request. They observed an Israeli soldier videotaping the students as they left school. As an army jeep parked at the Tariq ibn Ziad junction sped up the street, some boys tossed stones. The Ibrahimi students were able to leave school for their homes without incident.

At 4:30pm, while passing through the Bethlehem checkpoint, Chris Brown, Le Anne Clausen, and Mary Lawrence observed an ambulance with lights flashing waiting in line while other cars were allowed to pass through the checkpoint. The crew asked for assistance from the CPTers. The ambulance was carrying four cancer patients headed for treatment in Jerusalem. When the ambulance reached the checkpoint, soldiers thoroughly searched it and collected the ID cards from the passengers and crew and put them on a desk where they lay for fifteen minutes. When the CPTers inquired about the delay, one soldier called in the ID numbers while two others searched the ambulance a second time. CPTers pointed out that under international law, ambulances are not to be delayed even in times of armed conflict. "There is no such law," replied one soldier. When Clausen went over to the ambulance to get more information from the crew, a soldier grabbed her by the elbow and forcefully escorted her away. The ambulance had been waiting in line for a half hour before it was able to transfer the patients to another ambulance waiting on the other side.

April 6 At 1:30am, CPTers received a call that settlers and soldiers were attacking a Palestinian home in the Jabal Johar neighborhood below the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba. (Palestinian gunmen had infiltrated the settlement earlier in the evening.) Rollins and Strom walked to Jabal Johar where a white jeep from the District Command Office (DCO) pulled up and a soldier asked them to leave, threatening them with arrest if they moved forward. A police jeep escorted them away. Rollins phoned the family to update them and to say they would follow up in the morning.

Brown, Hicks, Rollins, and Strom visited the family on Jabal Johar whose homes settlers had attacked the night before. CPTers observed broken windows and shards of glass on the floors of two houses, and bulldozed land and trees. One family member was injured by a rock in the course of the attack and a young boy was shot in the leg after soldiers opened fire. His grandfather applied a splint and tourniqet and then called for an ambulance. Because soldiers held the ambulance up at checkpoints, it took three hours for the boy to get to a hospital in Hebron.

April 7 At noon,the Palestinian Hebron District Governor's office informed the team that IDF soldiers had entered a Palestinian home on Jabal Johar next to the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba. Hicks, Lawrence, and Laupsa walked to the Jabal Johar neighborhood, where they were invited into another family's compound to photograph damage from an incursion by the Israeli army on April 6. After viewing the damage and taking photographs, the CPTers climbed up the hill to the home invaded by the army the night before. The army had forced out the family, who spent the night with neighbors. When they returned in the morning, they found the soldiers had occupied the two upper floors of the house and the roof.

April 9 A journalist friend of the team called in the morning requesting assistance. Kristin Anderson and Brown met the friend and another journalist on Shalala Street and accompanied them to the Beit Hadassah checkpoint. The friend explained that soldiers had accused him of taking a picture of a military position, but the screen on the digital camera showed two men being detained with their backs to the camera. The soldiers refused to look at the screen. Five other journalists arrived. The soldiers threatened to arrest them also.

The friend stood up from sitting against the wall, unbuttoned his shirts, took them off, and placed his camera around his body. He started yelling at the soldiers, "Look at me! I have no bombs, no guns, nothing - only a camera! I have nothing, yet you are still ready to kill me! Yesterday, you killed three of us in Iraq [three journalists had been killed the day before]! What today? I am a human! I am a peacemaker!" He became physically ill. The other journalists repeatedly told the soldiers he had a heart condition and needed medical attention. The soldiers said he could not go. The journalists called an ambulance. The medical workers had to negotiate with the soldiers before they were allowed to care for him.

Before the ambulance arrived an Israeli medic had hooked up an IV to the journalist. As Brown held the friend's head and upper body, Anderson asked the soldier standing next to her, "Is it worth it?" The soldier replied, "Yes." "So his life means nothing to you?" Anderson continued. The soldier responded with a smile. The journalist was not released for medical care and transportation to the hospital until the soldier confiscated his digital camera disc. He was treated at the hospital and released.

April 12 Arbour, Brown, William Payne, and Greg Rollins, along with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists from Ta'ayush met with families in the South Hebron Hills community of Twaneh. The children are forced to walk five to six kilometers out of their way to school to avoid attacks from settlers. Settlement security and an IDF jeep told the visitors the area was a closed military zone, but the Israeli activists engaged the soldiers in a long conversation, the result of which was that the soldiers agreed to escort the children each day past the settlement.

April 13 Anderson and Payne responded to a call from a family at Jabal Johar against whose home the Israeli army was laying a razor wire fence. The army informed the CPTers that they could not document the laying of the fence and bulldozing of the land, that they could not leave, yet were not allowed there or in Hebron. In the end the CPTers were not stopped from leaving.

April 15 CPTers Hicks, Lawrence, and Laupsa visited the families on Jabal Johar who have suffered from Israeli settler and military harassment. A representative from the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq was there to document the families' plight.

April 20 Hicks, Diane Janzen, and Lawrence went on school patrol. Israeli soldiers were patrolling the streets in larger numbers and stationed at many of the intersections in addition to the usual checkpoints. A soldier called to Lawrence, "Hey CPT! Please get the children to go back home. There is no school. They must go inside now. There will be a big crowd of Jewish people visiting here today, so it is best if the children are not in the street. It is for them, I'm telling you." He continued, "There is nothing I can do about this, you know. These are orders."

At the Ibrahimi School junction, soldiers told Hicks and Janzen that the Palestinian boys could go to school but that they must walk towards the school on Tariq ibn Ziad Street. The girls were gathered outside their school, which was locked. Two military jeeps with sirens blaring came down the street announcing curfew and school closure. The girls gathered in the schoolyard, explaining there were soldiers at the foot of the street who would not let them pass to go up the hill towards their homes. Lawrence explained to the border police who assured her the soldiers would let the girls pass. When the girls, accompanied by the CPTers, reached the intersection, they found boys on the other side of the machsom (barrier of rubble) throwing stones at the soldiers. The girls managed to cross the machsom in between bouts of stone throwing. Two soldiers grabbed a boy who was throwing stones and hauled him up the street to a waiting jeep. Janzen observed some of the girls crying when they saw the boy hauled off.

April 22 A Palestinian boy told CPTers that he had gone out after curfew to get feed for his family's livestock near the Abu Sneineh neighborhood. A jeep of soldiers stopped him and shouted at him in Hebrew. When he did not respond because he did not understand Hebrew, the soldiers got out and hit him with their rifles, breaking his arm.

April 24 A friend of the team in Beit Ummar called to report that Israeli settlers had kidnapped two tractor drivers and their vehicles near the Israeli settlement Karmei Tzur. The settlers released the drivers after three hours but kept the tractors. They said that no Palestinians were allowed to work on their land in that area. Settlers had also forced Palestinians off their land the day before.

April 25 CPTers Le Anne Clausen, Janzen, and Rollins spent the night with the Jabal Johar families threatened with home demolitions. During the evening, soldiers entered the house where they were staying but left quickly when they saw CPTers along with five other internationals in the house.

April 26 Clausen, Janzen, and Rollins watched Israeli soldiers in Jabal Johar stop a Palestinian van during curfew. They forced the driver to drive the van to the school at the top of the hill, taken over by the army at the beginning of the second Intifada, and leave it there. A Palestinian friend told Rollins that the driver would probably be allowed to pick up his van in several days.

April 28 During school patrol two street cleaners told CPTers Germana Nijim and Eric Schiller that soldiers were detaining a schoolboy. Nijim and Schiller went back to investigate. They found several soldiers holding the boy, who appeared to be eight or nine years old. The soldiers had asked the boy to show the contents of his school bag. As Nijim and Schiller approached, the soldiers let the boy go. The boy then picked up a stone to throw at the soldiers. Two Palestinian adults talked the boy into dropping the stone, and he went on to school. As Nijim and Schiller walked away a car passed them and the settler driving it shouted obscenities at them.

May 2003

May 2 Germana Nijim, Eric Schiller, Diane Janzen and Greg Rollins went with Ta'ayush (an Israeli peace organization) to Twaneh, a Palestinian village in the south Hebron hills. On Shabbat, the Israel settlers from Ma'on, harass the villagers the villagers. The CPTers and Ta'ayush members helped Palestinian farmers plow their fields. The farmers had not been able to work on their land for two years because one settler would shoot at them when they came into the fields to work. After they had been working for two hours Israeli soldiers arrived and told them that the area was a "closed military zone." The group of CPTers and Ta'ayush were ordered back to their cars by the soldiers and then forced to leave.

May 5 At 7 am a teacher who lives on Yatta Road called to say that soldiers had entered his home at 5 am. CPTers Mary Lawrence and Nijim went to the house. There were six soldiers on the roof of the house and two soldiers in the teacher's apartment. CPTers asked the soldiers why they were in the house. The soldiers replied that the CPTers would have to ask their commander. Lawrence and Nijim sat on the landing below the living room to observe because the teacher's wife and his two small children were in the bedroom. The soldiers told Nijim and Lawrence that they could not stay there and should move down. They sat further down the stairs with the teacher, remaining there for six hours. At 2:30 pm Janzen replaced Lawrence. Nijim and Janzen remained in the house until 7 pm when the soldiers left. The soldiers then detained Palestinian young men who were in the street. When the CPTers left the house, the soldiers told them to go back inside, because it was curfew. Janzen and Nijim said they were going back to the CPT apartment. One told the team members they were tourists here and did not belong. After the soldiers detained them briefly, they let them return to the CPT apartment.

May 9 The team heard that Israeli soldiers had raided the offices of the International Solidarity Movement offices in Beit Sahour. The soldiers removed all the computers and detained four people, including two internationals whom the soldiers later arrested.

May 12 Rollins, Lawrence, Janzen, Nijim and a Jewish visitor went to Susia, a village south of Hebron to help a Palestinian family while they worked in their fields below an Israeli outpost. Israeli settlers and soldiers had chased the family off their the last time they worked there. The family were able to accomplish their harvesting in peace.

May 15 Rollins and Kathie Uhler met the American Political Officer, Michael Pascual at Beit Aynoun and took him for a tour of the Beqa'a valley. He noted the increase in settler land appropriation, and the group watched settlers erecting a metal fence on Palestinian agricultural land.

May 16 Uhler and Schiller began a six day stay with the Da'na family in Jabal Johar. This extended family lives right next to the Kiryat Arba settlement. Violent clashes with settlers have occurred nearby and two of the Da'na homes are threatened with demolition.

May 17 Just after 7 pm a very loud explosion shook the area around the CPT apartment. The team went to the roof and watched smoke rise from the Gross Square area as ambulances, fire trucks, army and police vehicles rushed to the scene. The team later learned that a Palestinian suicide bomber had killed two Israeli settlers, a man and his pregnant wife. Later in the evening settlers banged loudly on the doors of Palestinian shops and homes along Shuhada Street and continued for most of the night.

May 18 At 6 am, a Palestinian militant bomber blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem.

Soldiers would not permit Lawrence, Janzen, Chris Brown, Nijim, Harriet Taylor and Rollins to leave the Old City to do school patrol with the Palestinian children. Rollins, Brown, Lawrence and Janzen reached Bab iZaweyya using the 'tunnel' network. Rollins and Brown stayed to observe the detention of about thirty Palestinian men by Israeli soldiers at the Beit Hadassah check point. They had to hand in their passports and visas to the soldiers and were detained together with a Palestinian observer. After about three hours Brown and most of the Palestinians were released. Soldiers took Rollins to the police station near Kiryat Arba Israeli settlement where the police put him under arrest. The team alerted the CPT Chicago office, the CPT lawyer and the Canadian Embassy.

May 19 Rollins was moved to Ramle Prison, which is near the Tel Aviv airport. On school patrol, Sue Rhodes saw a soldier chasing five small school girls and pointing his gun at them. The girls were very frightened by the time they reached the school gate. The soldier said he had had his gun reversed and that he was shouting because it was curfew. "They must go!" he said and then added "and you go." A settler nearby also shouted "Go!" at Rhodes. Brown, Lawrence, Janzen and Nijim stood near the school gate, and other pupils passed without difficulty.

Uhler and Schiller returned from Jabel Johar where they had been staying with the Da'na family. The family was still concerned that their homes were threatened with demolition. Uhler and Schiller went back to the Da'nas, prepared to stay until May 21.

Just before 4 pm an Israeli army patrol of six soldiers came up the team's stairs and announced they would search the apartment. They noted our maps posters and books. The team phoned the lawyer who said items removed had to be signed for. After about an hour the patrol went to the roof for 'an exercise'. Rhodes and Lawrence spoke separately with two of the soldiers. They are part of a unit which serves four years, two of which are in community service.

May 20 Rollins is still in Ramle prison.

On school patrol an angry Israeli settler drove his car at Nijim and shouted at her. She refused to answer his questions and walked briskly away when he followed her. He was not armed and returned to his car when he saw soldiers near the school. He then turned his car around, scattering children and adults. A few minutes later the same man drove his car straight at Rhodes, who jumped on to a concrete block to avoid being hit. At 8.20pm eight soldiers knocked on the team's door and were admitted. This time they photographed posters, maps and pictures. Members of the team were photographed with their open passports: visa dates were checked. Soldiers looked at papers in the file cabinet. Soldiers verbally gave the Team these restrictions: 1. CPTers may not enter H1 ('Palestinian controlled area') and will be arrested if found there.
2. CPTers are not permitted to do school patrols
3. CPTers are not permitted to go near any Israeli settlement 4. CPTers will not be allowed back into H2 if they leave (e.g. to go to Jerusalem).

May 21 Rollins is still in prison.

Uhler and Schiller returned from the Da'na house. Settlers had stoned the house from above during their first night.

The team sought clarification of the new restrictions the soldiers had given verbally the night before. The Hebron District Commanders office was called, but he did not return the call as promised.

May 22 About 2.30 pm Rollins called to say he was to be deported at 1 am Friday morning. At 3.45 pm Rollins phoned to say he was about to be taken to the airport for deportation. The lawyer has received an injunction from the Court, against the deportation. At 9.45 pm Rollins phoned to say he was on the way back to Ramle prison.

May 26 Rollins' eighth day in prison.

Rhodes heard a distant explosion at 4:40 AM that turned out to be the Israeli army blowing up an apartment block near the University.

The Israeli army District Command officer met Lawrence and Schiller through the wire of Chicken Gate. He gave them a map showing the H2 boundary and showed them a document in Hebrew dated 2001. He said the document stated that Israelis and Internationals were not allowed to enter H1 without special permission (e.g. to visit holy sites). He refused to leave the document with CPT or get it translated into English. The team asked him to deliver our letter of condolence on the violent deaths of the settler couple.

May 29 Rollins' eleventh day in prison.

Schiller represented CPT at a 10 AM press conference organized by ICAHD (Israeli Committee against Home Demolitions) at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Statements were read about the recent harassment of Israeli, Palestinian and international peace groups. Several Palestinians spoke of recent demolitions of their homes. CPT Delegate Colin Stuart was interviewed about his seven hour interrogation at Ben Gurion airport the previous evening.

In the evening Uhler phoned the Da'na family and learned of a freak accident: an army truck had a roll of barbed wire trailing behind it, and four children had become entangled as the vehicle passed them. The children were all in the hospital. All the children had severe lacerations and two of them required forty stitches each.

June 2003

June 1 A family of five (a mother and father with two little girls and their older handicapped brother) came to the apartment in the evening in distress and asking for help. The mother and children had been trying to visit relatives who live opposite a nearby Israeli settlement. At the checkpoint, an Israeli soldier advised them to take the lower road. The mother saw a settler making a cell phone call and soon angry settlers who surrounded them and attacked the handicapped boy, bruising his face and eye. When the boy screamed, the soldier came and told him to be quiet before helping the family back to the checkpoint. After going to the hospital, they came to the CPT apartment. CPTers encouraged them to file a report at the Israeli police station and reported the incident to the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH).

June 4 At 1:15 pm a spokesperson from Hebron University telephoned to say that the students had just broken open the gates of the university and entered it. CPTers Kathie Uhler, Kathy Kamphoefner and Paul Pierce went to the University to observe and photograph. Kamphoefner met a colleague she had been with when CPTers helped break open the University in 1995.

The gate at the Ibrahimi Mosque were locked although the curfew was lifted. The army also had tried to weld closed homes near the mosque the previous night, but Palestinians resisted. One home was welded shut, but later the soldiers said it was a mistake.

At 5 pm, Greg Rollins phoned from a friend's car to tell of his release from prison after 17 days.

June 8 CPTers Diane Janzen, Pierce, Sue Rhodes and Uhler tried to tour the Ibrahimi Mosque in the morning. The tour guide said he had already been told no tourists could enter but invited the four to his home next to the mosque. He was telling the history of the mosque when very loud and close shooting occured. More bursts of gunfire were heard as the CPTers left to go back to their apartment through adjoining neighbors' houses. The CPTers met many frightened and confused Palestinians on their way home. The shooting continued throughout the afternoon and evening and two helicopters kept constant surveillance of the area. New reports later said one border police was wounded in the morning, and one of the Palestinian militants killed one soldier near the Ibrahimi Mosque.

June 9 At midday Rollins, Kristin Anderson, Janzen and Rhodes met a team translator in the Old City, near the Ibrahimi Mosque. She showed them the destruction to homes caused by the early morning explosion. The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee has been using European Union money to refurbish derelict homes in the Old City for Palestinians who would like to return. The area blown up was almost ready for habitation. Soldiers had found two Palestinian men who had been involved in a shooting at the Mosque area the previous day hiding there and killed them. The army then returned at 4 am and demolished the area, destabilizing surrounding homes.

June 10 Kamphoefner, Char Smith and Uhler met an official at Hebron University. Israeli soldiers had welded the main gate shut at 1:30 am.

June 13 CPTers Rollins, Anderson and Chris Brown went to Al-Manara market area. They met Israeli soldiers but were allowed to proceed. Some of the five main roads leading into the market area had had holes dug in them to a depth of four feet for the entire width of the road. The shrubs and ornamental railings along the roadway divider were also destroyed. Water pipes and electricity cables were broken and large pools were forming. Many shops and homes nearby were without electricity or telephones. Defying curfew, Palestinians stood outside, looking at the damage. A friend told CPTers that the road into Hebron was closed and soldiers were not allowing ambulances to pass.

June 14 Brown, Kamphoefner and Pierce attempted to go to Jerusalem. Border police chased their taxi, cut it off and grabbed Pierce from the back seat. They took the passports of Pierce and Brown, threw them back on the hood, and instructed the CPTers to go home on foot. Because the Border Police threatened to arrest the driver and confiscate his car the three refused to leave the driver. Eventually the Border Police allowed them all to return to the center of Hebron.

June 16 Hebron University students opened the gate opened the gate of the University and occupied the campus.

June 23 The Governor of Hebron held a celebration to honor CPT and Rollins' release from prison. The team and members of Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), attended.

Rollins and JoAnne Lingle spoke to twenty-five children at the Library on Wheels for Non-violence and Peace about the work of CPT and the power of nonviolence.

June 25 Anderson and Rollins were near Beit Romano when they met two women who are close neighbours of the team. The women, an elderly mother and her daughter asked for accompaniment through the checkpoint. The soldier initially denied entry to both women but when the older woman said she was going to hospital in Jerusalem he started to radio for permission. Another soldier arrived and said the older woman could proceed with CPT but the daughter would have to stay even though he knew she wanted to go to the hospital in Hebron. A radio call then came in denying the older woman permission. Both women were weeping and decided to give up trying to get to the hospital.

June 29 At Jabel Johar, a neighbourhood next to the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba, CPTers documented the new fence at the back of a Palestinian family's home.

July 2003

July 1 Jim Satterwhite, another CPTer, and two international visitors encountered a patrol of Israeli soldiers in Shalala Street refusing to let a group of Palestinians lay tiles outside their shop front. When the CPTers and internationals asked the soldiers if they could do the work, the soldiers agreed, but the shopkeeper said the tiles needed cutting. At this point the soldiers detained the shopkeeper and took him to a nearby checkpoint. CPTers accompanied them to the checkpoint, until the soldiers release him twenty minutes later. When the CPTers and shopkeeper returned to the man's shop, his employees had finished cutting and laying the tiles.

July 2 The team went to lunch at a friend's house near Harsina settlement and saw how settlers had erected a large fence very close to his house in order to steal his land. The team took photographs from his roof and heard him describe how he has tried to reason with the settlers over the years. Settler boys threw stones at CPTers as they returned to their apartment through the city.

July 3 Sue Rhodes called the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee Headquarters in the Old City and the Administrative Manager and the Resident Engineer confirmed that their organisation had received a 'Stop work' order from the Israeli Army the previous day. Four hundred builders and other skilled artisans had been sent home and told that there would be no more work for them until the organization received a reversal of the order. On the same day the Israeli High Court had granted permission for the settlers on Tel Rumeida to continue building on land recognised by most archeologists as historically and architecturally valuable.

July 7 In the early evening, Kathie Uhler and Jerry Levin were called to the home of an Old City mother of nine young children, who told them of a rough experience her fifteen year old daughter (the oldest) and she had experienced the day before. At about 10 AM an Israeli soldier, part of a patrol protecting workers installing a metal ladder leading to a guard post on top of their building, accused the daughter of threatening him with a knife. After a bruising body search by a female soldier, soldiers blindfolded the daughter and mother and took them to an Israeli detention center. Still blindfolded, they had to sit up and stay very still all night, while guards taunted them. The mother said her daughter's blindfold was bound so tight around her head that she cried for most of the night. Soldiers released them without charges the next morning and told the mother told that from now on her children could not play on the roof of her home, and she could no longer hang her laundry out to dry there. While getting the story, Uhler and Levin learned the significance of the metal ladder on the roof of the woman's building. It was the final link in a series of solid metal roof top walkways and steps installed to connect two long-established outposts situated strategically on top of Arab residences bordering the Avraham Avinu settlement.

Later Uhler and Levin viewed a new under construction mini "separation" fence the Israeli army was building across a street bordering the Ibrahimi Mosque. The fence is about one meter high. When finished, it will stretch a couple hundred yards down from the gated entrance to the Old City's Market to Shuhada Street. After gates are installed in the fence, a click of a soldier's key will trap Palestinian residents behind it in a kind of mini-ghetto. "I think this will be just like the ghetto that the Israel's say they never want to live in again," one resident said within earshot of a border policeman, who simply shrugged his shoulders and looked the other way.

July 9 A delegation of students from Palestine Polytechnic University asked CPT to help them open the school, when the six month closure of the school was due to expire the following Saturday. The students said they were anticipating preventative measures by the Israeli army.

July 10 At the Hebron Old City Rehabilitation Office Rhodes, Paul Pierce, and Kristin Anderson learned that the immediate effect of the Israeli army' stop work order on restoration work in the Old City issued the previous week was that 400 laborers were laid off without the prospect of future wages. Later they watched dozens of children eating at the Ibrahimi Mosque soup kitchen. Many families in the Old City are surviving on handouts.

July 11 The Israeli army announced that it was extending for an additional month its six-month closure of Hebron University and Palestine Polytechnic University.

In the morning JoAnne Lingle. Uhler, and Levin linked up with about two hundred Israelis, organized by Ta'ayush (A joint Israeli-Palestinian effort.) They rode in buses to the Palestinian village of El-Nu'aman, which is situated on a hill top lying across a broad swath of farm land from Beit Sahour. There, they joined beleaguered villagers in a day of protest and action. The Israeli military is building a "separation fence", also known as the "apartheid wall," between the village and Beit Sahour and will cut off villagers from their fields. To compound the residents' dilemma, the village will be isolated on the Jerusalem side of the wall, even though everyone living there has West Bank identification papers. As a result, once the village is annexed by Jerusalem, the villagers will be squatters in their homes. Once construction of that section of the wall is completed, El-Nu'aman's children, who went to school in Beit Sahour because they had been banned from Jerusalem schools, will not be able to get to Beit Sahour for their education. The Ta'ayush-sponsored visitors spent the day helping villagers repair roads and water pipes torn up by the Israeli army and settlers,plant olive trees and paint a newly constructed kindergarten building.

July 12 Anderson, Rhodes, Pierce, Greg Rollins, and Levin, as requested by Palestine Polytechnic University students on Thursday July 10, went to the school's south campus to observe actions taken in connection with the students' desire to have their campus reopened, following the end of the six month closure imposed on it by the Israeli Army. However, the CPTers learned that the Israeli soldiers had shown up earlier in the morning and informed students already there that the closure had been reimposed for another month. Instead of mounting a protest, the students elected to leave and meet later to deliberate on what to do next.

July 14 Palestine Polytechnic University students deciding to mount a nonviolent attempt to gain entrance to the south campus asked CPT to monitor their actions. Lingle, Rollins, Satterwhite, Uhler, and Dianne Roe were on scene at about 9:20 am when five student leaders arrived with sledgehammers. No Israeli soldiers were present during the action. Nevertheless, when school officials arrived, they said they were worried that the army might go on a destructive rampage inside school buildings if the students actually carried out the action. They counseled the students to drop the plan. Later some students complained to CPT that these same officials also threatened them with unspecified administrative punishment if they failed to stop. University officials ordered a school custodian to chain the door shut. After he did so, two students advanced on the door and broke it open. Then three other students accompanied by three CPTers went inside to see what kind of damage the Israeli Army had inflicted during the long months of closure. The worst effect of the closure was in the cafeteria, which smelled of spoiled food. When they left, the custodian chained the door shut again. A rally of about two hundred students followed, during which student representatives thanked CPT for being observers, and Roe offered CPT's congratulations to the students for their nonviolent effort. Then CPT was asked to monitor a similar action at another of the school's campuses the next day.

July 15 At 9 am Pierce, Lingle, Anderson, Uhler, and Satterwhite were present at another Palestine Polytechnic University campus to witness the students' nonviolent action to reopen buildings there, and to intervene on their behalf if the Israeli Army showed up. This time, however, the students told CPT that school administrators were not the only officials who had warned them not to do it; some from the city had warned them, too. Nevertheless, watched by several hundred students, a few did broke into the building. Once inside, they thoroughly cleaned classrooms and halls, both of which had become thickly coated with dust during the six months of Israeli Army imposed closure. The student leaders also asked CPT not take pictures and to be present at another nonviolent student action planned for the next morning.

July 16 In the morning Satterwhite, Rollins, Roe, and Rhodes went to another Palestine Polytechnic University campus to monitor and observe the latest student action to resist the Israeli Army's July 12th one month closure extension. While an Al Jazeera crew videotaped the action, which included the hoisting and display of Palestinian flags, the students entered the buildings with the intention this time of actually holding classes. Again the Israeli Army did not intervene.

July 20 In response to an urgent call for help, Rhodes, Uhler, and Anderson went to a home in the Jabal Johar neighborhood, which abuts the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba. There they found that earlier in the morning settlers, protected by Israeli soldiers, started building a concrete block wall between the family's land and the main road through the neighborhood. Family members told the CPTers that before they arrived, settler bulldozers tore up a considerable patch of ground. Then, settler trucks dumped dirt from the entrance to Kiryat Arba into the family's back yard.

July 21 Border Police in the special Ibrahimi Mosque security zone allowed Satterwhite and Pierce and a group of international volunteers they were taking around the Old City to pass through the big yellow gate blocking access to Shuhada Street and then walk to the Jabal Johar neighborhood outside the southern entrance to Kiryat Arba. They saw settlers, using heavy construction equipment, adding to the concrete block wall marking the new limits of the security zone being expanded around the Kiryat Arba entrance. Members of the Palestinian family living on the newly confiscated land showed the group how the extension in just one day swallowed up their vineyard. Knowing the history of such land grabs and home demolitions which often follow in their wake, family members worried that their home and others around them would be destroyed.

July 23 Uhler, Levin, Satterwhite, Pierce and three CPT guests visited a family living close to an electrified fence separating the Israeli settlement of Harsina from Palestinian farmland and homes in the Ba'qaa Valley. Settlers confiscated the family land, and that of other families, enclosed by the fence. The Palestinian father told about his sons whose homes had been demolished by the Israeli Army a few years ago. His sons left the valley, he said, and moved to Hebron next to a new school for girls in Jabal Johar being built at the top of the eastern ridge overlooking the Old City. The Israeli military later seized the school and turned it into a gun platform and observation post. Ever since, the father said, Israeli soldiers have made his sons and their families targets of daily harassment and humiliations in an effort to get them to give up and leave. "But they will not," he said. The father also said that years ago he operated a thriving business on Shuhada Street near the Israeli settlement of Avraham Avinu; but settler harassment, backed by the army, became so intense that he finally closed it down and moved permanently to the valley. He said that despite the continued harassments that he and his family have suffered in the valley they did not intend to leave either.

July 26 Pierce, Uhler, Jerry Levin, and Sis Levin joined members of a team of Ta' ayush, an Israeli group, at the home of a Ba'qaa Valley Palestinian farmer. Representatives from the Hebron Land Defense Committee were also present. The Palestinians briefed the visitors on the latest crisis faced by grape growers living in the shadows of the Israeli settlements of Kiryat Arba and Harsina. They said that the latest harassments by settlers, backed by the Israeli Army and the army's Civil Administration, involved the denial of access by the farmers to their vineyards in order to spray their grapes and tie up loose vines.

During the day, Satterwhite and Lingle visited a UN official living in the Al Aroub refugee camp. While his house was under construction in March 2001, he told them, the IDF seized it and turned it into a military outpost. They left in March of this year. the official said; but when his family took back possession they found that the structure had suffered extensive damage: especially doors, windows, water pipes, and electrical wiring. He said that a contractor estimated repairs would cost US$7,500.

July 28 Rollins and Jerry Levin learned from a Hebron Rehabilitation Committee official that the Israeli Army lifted its ban on restoration work. He credited pressure initiated by CPT, other international groups, and Israeli humanitarian organizations with getting the stopwork order lifted.

August 2003

August 2 A joint CPT-Ta'ayush action to escort a Palestinian farmer to his vineyard in the Beqa'a Valley so that he could spray his grapes was canceled. The local Israeli Army official had permitted him to go to his fields, but said later that he would withdraw the approval to spray if CPT or Ta'ayush showed up. Later in the day a caller confirmed that the spraying did take place, but time ran out, so the farmer was not able to finish the job.

August 3 At 12:30, Greg Rollins was in the main street through the Old City's market when soldiers suddenly appeared and told shop owners to close down immediately. They did not give a reason for the sudden change. But one soldier said quietly to Rollins that he would explain later, if Rollins would meet him that evening at the Beit Romano checkpoint. At 2:00 Rollins went back to the market street to see if it was still closed. It was. A soldier told him to go home. Instead Rollins walked up to the Ibrahimi Mosque to observe the closure there. At 3:00, soldiers let people into the market again. At 8:30, at the Beit Romano checkpoint, Rollins learned from the soldier he had met earlier that the authorities had ordered the shops to close so that an Israeli MK (Member of the Knesset) could visit the former home of his grandfather, who, he said, had lived in the Old City before World War I.

August 6 Dianne Roe and Joanne Lingle tried to escort a Jewish visitor past an Old City plastic blockade to visit the mother of a Palestinian boy, who studies in the U. S. city where the Jewish woman lives. The Israeli soldier would not let them pass. He said, "The plastic blockade must be sterilized of Palestinians." The Jewish woman cried and told the soldier that her relatives had escaped the Holocaust. The soldier softened a bit and let her tell him the terrible treatment of the Palestinians that she had witnessed. But he wouldn't let them pass through the plastic blockade.

August 7 Rollins and Roe visited a neighbor, who had moved from the Chicken Market to a neighborhood just across Shuhada Street. Barred from Shuhada Street, the CPTers had to go clear around the city to get there. When they walked past the archeological site at Tel Rumeida, they found new graffiti: "Gas the Arabs," and "Arabs to the Gas Chambers." Underneath the graffiti were the initials "JDL" (Jewish Defense League.) When they reached the house, the former neighbor said many people have fled the Old City because life is unbearable. The people who moved into the vacated buildings are from "the outside," refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars. They said that others are families whose homes the Israeli Army demolished.

August 9 A Palestinian taxi carrying Paul Pierce and Kathy Kamphoefner to Jerusalem was stopped at the Gush Etzion checkpoint. Soldiers refused to let taxis through, though Palestinian busses and cars could go on. The taxi driver discussed the problem for an hour. In the course of the talk, Kamphoefner said that 90% of all Palestinians are peaceful. An officer yelled in reply that 99.9% of them are peaceful. "Then why do you treat them all like dogs?" Kamphoefner asked. The officer said, "That's the only way to deal with them. How can we know which one is a terrorist?"

August 12 Roe, Lingle, and Jerry Levin went to the Wadi Hareyya campus of the Palestine Polytechnic University at the request of student leaders to observe their dismantling of the gates blocking entrance to the main campus building, which the Israeli Army had welded shut seven months before. Then the students rushed inside and proceeded to clean the building, which was thick with dust because of the closure. Many of the offices were in a shambles, apparently torn a part by Israeli soldiers. The Israeli Army did not intervene.

August 13 Diane Janzen and Levin led an ISM group to the Palestine Polytechnic University Wadi Hareyya campus to observe the second day of student actions. The students hoped teachers would come to teach, but none showed up. They said, negotiations with the school administration were disappointing. The administration said if the students would go to classes in alternate sites in the morning, the students could carry on student activities on the campus in the afternoon. The students rejected the offer.

August 26 Anderson and Lingle followed soldiers in Bab iZaweyya as they enforced curfew by shooting off percussion grenades. A soldier at the Beit Romano checkpoint said that curfew would continue because it was getting to be the end of the Jewish calendar year, and many Israelis would be coming to pray and "atone for their sins." Having said that, the soldier made a face and stuck out his tongue.

August 28 Soldiers would not permit Janzen and Lingle to enter the Old City via Beit Romano checkpoint. When they complained, a soldier suggested, "Go around where are no soldiers, so they won't see you." Taking his advice, they went home via the tunnels connecting the neighborhood of Haret iSheikh to the Old City.

The operational head of TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) told Levin that an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel assured him that the army would be helpful in allowing children in H2 to go to school, when schools open next week, even even if there is curfew.

August 30 Roe, Rich Meyer, Anderson, Chris Brown, Janzen, Kamphoefner, and Levin, guided by Israeli peace activist Amos Gvirtz, made a fact finding trip to Bedouin communities in the Negev inside Israel. They visited the sites of demolished Bedouin homes in what the current Israeli government claims are unauthorized villages. Previous Israeli governments had moved them to these locations several decades ago. One Bedouin who had been a volunteer in the Israeli Army told how the Israeli authorities had demolished his home shortly after his term of service ended.

September 2003

September 1 The Israeli Army, despite curfew, did not interfere with children on their way to school. However, the gate between the Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque was kept locked.

September 2 David Glas, CPT's contact with the Israeli Army DCO, met with Rich Meyer, Jerry Levin, Chris Brown, and EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel) colleague Klaus Engell in the street outside the CPT apartment. He spoke to them through the fence blocking entry to Shuhada Street from the Chicken Market. He introduced his replacement. Meyer asked Captain Glas to do something to get the gate between the Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque opened at 7:00 in the morning to make it easier for the children to get to school. Glas informed the three CPTers that the settlers had written an official letter of complaint about CPT to the Israeli Interior and Defense Ministers. He also reminded them that it is illegal for CPT to be in H1.

Greg Rollins encountered APCs at the Halhoul Route-60 checkpoint again but was allowed to pass. At about 5 p.m., however, Israeli soldiers ordered Kristin Anderson, Diane Janzen, and Kathy Kamphoefner to turn back from the same checkpoint. The soldiers insisted that Israelis and internationals were not permitted in the area by law. The CPTers asked for the order in writing. One soldier shouted, "We don''t have to give it to you in writing. Here we are the law." The three CPTers found another way home.

September 3 Rollins and Levin watched as soldiers stopped people from crossing the main intersection at Bab iZaweyya. A friend invited the CPTers to his home near Tel Rumeida, but soldiers at the Duboya checkpoint would not let them pass through. The soldiers were detaining four Palestinians, one of whom wanted to pray. The soldiers argued amongst themselves and then allowed him to pray. Two other soldiers took another detainee and marched him away from the checkpoint, around the corner out of sight of the checkpoint. Levin and Rollins followed. The soldiers made the young man squat. Every time he tried to get up to stretch his legs soldiers would scream at him, cuff him, and force him back down. The two CPTers protested and tried to intervene. The soldiers claimed the detainee had thrown stones earlier and "this is his punishment." TIPH showed up, took pictures and asked questions. Two French people happened by. The soldiers told them they were not supposed to be there because of curfew. The French people argued. Rollins then led them into H2 via a different route. The soldiers let the detainee go, but not until one of the soldiers threw him against the TIPH vehicle and pointed his gun at him, the barrel less than a foot from his face.

September 7 A friend of the team informed CPT that on Friday during the night Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Susia and searched two homes. Then they planted a landmine about fifty meters from one of the houses. After that the soldiers left. A little later the mine exploded. The soldiers came rushing back and accused the families of planting the mine. Then they set both houses on fire. The CPT friend said that he was sure that these actions were part of a new campaign to get rid of Palestinians living in the path of the the wall that Israeli is building. Many fear that the wall will encircle Hebron as it encircles the city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank.

September 9 Kamphoefner and Engell were at Hebron University when Israeli soldiers shot at students from outside the campus. Some of the bullets landed inside. The soldiers closed the University while first year students tried to take their registration examinations. Israeli army action had caused the postponement of the exams twice before. Kamphoefner and Engell then went to the Wadi Ana' neighborhood near Hebron University where the Israeli Army was in the process of shelling an eight- story apartment building in which neighbors estimated there were thirty two apartments. A huge Israeli Army bulldozer was parked nearby. Neighbors told the CPTers that the shelling had begun at about 3:00 am. At about 5:00 am two Apache helicopters started firing into the building. Shells destroyed two cars parked near the building. The bombardments killed an eleven-year-old boy living next door to the apartment building and gravely injured a thirteen year-old girl. The Army later killed two members of Hamas inside the building.

After dinner, hearing renewed shelling, Benno Barg, Chris Brown, Levin, and Janzen went back to Wadi Ana' to investigate. They found the area blocked off by the Israeli Army. As they tried to get closer to the scene Israeli soldiers guarding the big bulldozer shouted something at them in Hebrew and waved them back. Levin and Brown replied, "We only speak English." The soldiers, in response, quickly turned away and ignored them from then on. But almost immediately small arms fire broke out and lasted for about a minute. Then right after the small arms fire died down, Israeli tanks began shelling the building for several minutes. When the smoke cleared, the building was leaning dangerously. Then Israeli Army jeeps moved through the neighborhood reimposing curfew. By morning the building was flattened, leaving twenty-six families homeless and all their belongings buried within the ruins.

September 10 In the evening, team members Barg, Levin, Engell, and Kamphoefner went to Wadi el-Ghroos to visit two families and photograph two new roads and a new fence taking in more land for Kiryat Arba.

September 14 As team members were getting ready for church, Mary Lawrence received a phone call that soldiers were demolishing houses in the Beqa'a Valley. Janzen returned to Hebron to staff the office, while Barg, Brown, and Kamphoefner documented the first two completed demolitions. The military destroyed a house that sheltered three families and their thirty-one children as well as demolishing a neighbor's animal pens. The CPTers then witnessed the demolition of two shops and a cistern on the other side of the valley.

September 15 Brown, Janzen, and Kamphoefner met with students from the Polytechnic University and Hebron University about the wall that Israel is building that will effectively confiscate major portions of the West Bank. The groups agreed to begin a campaign against its construction, beginning with researching its probable path.

Janzen and Kamphoefner went to photograph the Qawasmeh house, a formerly eight-story apartment building that the Israeli army had blown up on September 9. Eleven Red Cross tents now house families made homeless by the army's operation. They noted all the windows were broken in neighboring houses. One nine-year-old boy showed them a large burn on his shoulder that his father said he got when a shell was fired past their house. Black gunpowder appeared embedded in the skin.

September 20 Brown, Rollins, and a visitor saw a group of about fifteen Israeli settlers touring the Old City, pointing out homes that Jews had owned before 1936 (when the British forced the remaining Jewish families to leave.) Israeli soldiers guarded the settlers. Hebron area settlers have invited Israelis to tour Hebron as part of festivities just before Rosh Hashanah.

September 22 Returning from school patrol, Brown and Rollins heard of a home demolition underway in the Haroos area in H1. The suspect had apparently hid in the house, but was not related to its owner, Abdel Karim Shaheen, who was in Jerusalem. The suspect told the woman and her mentally handicapped son to leave the house. The soldiers then shelled the house beginning about 1:00 am. When Brown and Rollins arrived, the Israeli army had the area sealed off and under curfew. The home was already demolished, and the soldiers were looking for the remains of a wanted man. Children from a school near the Haroos demolition threw stones at the soldiers, who fired teargas and rubber bullets at them.

September 23 Brown observed bulldozers cleaning up rubble and garbage in Bab ib-Baledeyya Square, next to Beit Romano checkpoint. A friend of the team said the army told shopkeepers they can reopen shops there but they should fence off the area to protect themselves from the settlers.

 

Latest Update

CPT Hebron project to close after thirteen years.

10 October 2008
by Tarek Abuata, Palestine Support Coordinator

I would like to thank our supporters, our team members, and our partners for their love, prayers, and generous financial support over the past thirteen years.  During these years, many have given much of their lives and poured plenty of their love into the continuing work of God.

I would especially like to express my gratitude for the loving spirit of our partners in Palestine/Israel with which they've always welcomed us.  Since 1995, we've shed many tears of sadness and joy with them, and we've dipped our fingers into many maqloobeh platters together.  Palestinians say "whoever lives forty days with a community becomes one of them."  We've spent more than 4000 days in Hebron, and we've always felt the incredible love and hospitality of the Palestinian community.  We are truly a family, because we've always helped each other as sisters and brothers.  

CPT regretfully had to make the hard decision to close the Hebron team site.  We have been suffering with an inadequate number of full-time CPTers on this team for months.  Stretched thin, we covered the work of the Hebron team site with reservists until August, knowing that this option was not sustainable.  

We continue to be committed to Palestine.  A strong CPT project in At-Tuwani continues to partner with the Palestinian communities of the Southern Hebron Hills in their nonviolence efforts.  We also have a committee exploring possibilities for collaborating with other significant Palestinian nonviolent efforts.  It is our hope that these efforts lay the groundwork for a healthy rebirthing of additional CPT work either in Hebron or elsewhere in Palestine when and if long term full-time staffing permits.

As an organization, we have expanded outreach efforts and ask that you join us in calling new people into this work.  We are working hard to undo oppressions within CPT, such as racism and sexism, and to nurture the conditions for healthy team life.

I would like for all of us to remember that we are Easter people and we open our vision to look outward toward new openings rather than narrowing our vision to see only closings, for the continuing work of God doesn't stop with a closure; it has no closure.  Only our human work comes to a close.

As a Palestine Project, we will keep folks updated on our progress with the refocusing committee work.  Many blessings and love to you, and many thanks once again for your continuing generous support.

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