CPTnet
Hebron: Road Rage
13 February 2001
by Bob Holmes

Martin, visiting Hebron from Jerusalem, didn't know how difficult it would
be returning home.
Our service-taxi driver tried several exit routes. Turned back at one
checkpoint by soldiers of the
Israeli Occupation Force (IOF), he dove down a precipitous private lane
emerging below the
checkpoint. From there he was able to access the Kyriat Arba settlers' road
and then the highway.
Knowing entry into Jerusalem was not permitted, he chose small back roads
first east, then north
down steeply into the depths of the Wadi Nar valley. From there he headed
west, up and up to the
Palestinian village of Abu Dis where we walked into East Jerusalem catching
another service-taxi
to the Damascus Gate of the Old City. Almost two hours for what is normally
a forty five minute
trip.

Another day, returning to Hebron, Dianne Roe and I boarded Rashad's
24-passenger bus. The
floor was littered with broken glass. Asked why, Rashad pulled a fist sized
stone from under his
driver's seat. A settler from Kiryat Arba had thrown it through the window
days before. The glass
on the floor prompts the retelling of the story and, I'm thinking, helps
justify, in his mind,
charging double the normal fare. When he reported the incident to the
Israeli Police in Kiryat
Arba, Rashad was told he could be reimbursed if he declared that it was a
Palestinian who threw
the stone.

The next day, walking over an earth and stone barricade across the only
road from the highway
into the village of Qilkis, Dianne, Art Arbour and I were met by Musa Abu
Turki and invited to
his house for arabic coffee and wonderful pastries. Musa works in a
pharmacy in Yatta, ten
minutes away by the highway. Now he drives along rough trails over the
hills at a cost of both
time and wear on his car. His son Haroun, eighteen, had to change schools
because the IOF took
over an elementary school in Hebron (putting a tank in the schoolyard). The
elementary students
moved into Haroun's school and the secondary students moved further away.
Soldiers are an ever
present threat to Haroun as he treks back and forth to classes through the
curfew zone.

Near Haroun's original school is Muhammed Ali Al Muhtaseb Hospital where
our friend Osaid is
a nurse. Osaid came by today and told us that because of the road closures
and curfew, people
have difficulty getting to the hospital. The neo-natal ICU unit where he
works, used to serve fifty
premature babies per month but has had only fourteen in the last two
months. Nurses are often
working half time or less. During curfew Osaid cannot walk to his hospital.
Instead he goes by
taxi on a forty five minute route around the outskirts of the city to get
to a place he could walk to
in 10 minutes. As he tells us this story Osaid owns that he is angry.

Many are angry. And the anger of some has turned violent. Last week Dr.
Shmuel Gillis, a settler
from Karme Zur near Hebron, was shot and killed while driving home. This
week, Dr. Tzachi
Sasson, from Gush Etzion a settlement between Bethlehem and Hebron, was
shot dead on the
tunnel road leaving Jerusalem. Yesterday, Zaid Abu Sway was killed when IOF
soldiers opened
fire on a bus carrying Palestinian labourers near Bethlehem. The
escalating spiral of violence hasproduced a new, virulent form of Road Rage.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite
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