CPTnet
April 19, 2001
HEBRON: CPTers caught in crossfire on road from Jerusalem to Hebron

On April 17, Hebron team members Anne Montgomery, Bob Holmes and Rick
Polhemus attended a brainstorming session about "escalating nonviolence"
with Israelis, Palestinians and internationals at the Tantur Ecumenical
Institute in Jerusalem. They were given a ride to Damascus Gate after the
meeting and got a taxi back to Hebron at 6:30 pm.

After they had passed through the tunnel on the bypass road near Beit Jala,
their taxi was stopped, along with other Palestinian vehicles. They heard
from bystanders that gunmen had shot into Israeli settlements and that
settlers had closed the road ahead by throwing stones. Soldiers were not
allowing anyone to pass and had even turned Israeli buses around.

Around 7:45, bullets began flying around the area where the CPTers were
waiting with Palestinians. Rick Polhemus reported seeing white sparks fly
up from where the bullets were hitting the road. People began running up a
side road to get away from the shooting. Over the next couple hours, the
shooting continued on and off from the tops of the four hills that
surrounded the area where the people and their vehicles were waiting.
Soldiers shot more than a hundred flares to light up the valley.

Around 9:15 the village of Beit Jala got hit hard with heavy shelling.
"We could see large explosions of light," Polhemus said, "Bigger than those
I've seen from the tank fire in Hebron."

A Hebronite who runs a gift shop in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem told
the CPTers that the shooting lets up on most nights around 10:00. There was
a brief burst of gunfire at 10:15. Soon after, an Israeli military jeep
passed and one of the taxis followed it. The driver of the taxi in which
the team and the shopowner had been traveling followed the next jeep that
passed, and they made the trip to Hebron, "in record time," according to
Polhemus.

As the taxi was pulling into Baab iZawiye, the center of Hebron, several men
flagged it down and told the driver it was unsafe to proceed. The team then
saw that the tanks from the Usama Bin Munqeth school, which the Israeli
military had confiscated last fall, were firing into Baab iZawiye. The team
tried to walk an alternate route, but stopped when they saw tracer bullets
coming into the area where they were walking. They called a friend who
lives outside of the old city of Hebron and spent the night with him
instead.

When asked in a phone interview to comment on the events of the evening,
Rick Polhemus said, "This was just one night for us. I was thinking of
that shopowner and all the nights he's left Jerusalem at 6:00 and not gotten
home until after 11:00."