What follows is a letter to the US Administration from CPT and partners in
the work against home demolitions. This letter was sent now because we
believe that the pace of land confiscation and house demolition has
increased in areas of the West Bank where we have been able to monitor.
Readers are encouraged to use this letter for educational events and as
background for their own communications to the US Administration. - CPT

Palestine, West Bank

Mar. 14, 1998

Dear President Clinton and Madeleine Albright,

The situation here in the Hebron district is becoming increasingly
desperate. You are aware, of course, of the three men shot at the
Tarqoumia checkpoint several days ago. However, there are literally
hundreds of incidents of settler and soldier aggression, land
confiscation, home demolition, tree uprootings, and crop destruction
that are going unreported in the media.

Just last evening, two of us from Christian
Peacemaker Teams went out to investigate after hearing
gunshots near our apartment. We went across the H1/H2 border and saw
police leading away grinning Israeli settlers who had methodically
smashed all the Palestinian car windows on the street and injured
several people in the neighborhood. Later, we learned that the shots
we heard had been fired by IDF at some of our Palestinian journalist
friends, one of whom was shot in the head and then shot again as he
lay on the ground writhing in pain. In the last two weeks alone,
there have been more than 2500 dunams (about 660 acres) confiscated
from Palestinian families so that settlements may expand and quarries
started.

Palestinian crops near settlements have been sprayed with
chemical defoliants and more than a thousand olive trees have been
uprooted to make way for settlement expansion and by-pass roads.
Settlements are literally taking away the food and livelihoods of
Palestinian families living in the Hebron District. We realize that
the media is interested primarily in footage of young men throwing
rocks, but we plead with you to look beyond what the media films and
see the long slow strangulation, humiliation and abuse of people in
the Hebron District. As signatories to the Oslo Accords, the U.S.
pledged to ensure that parties would act in good faith with each
other.

We are confident that the vast majority of the American
people, were they to see the conditions here, would demand that their
government act to stop the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian
people. U.S. tax dollars, after all, make these abuses possible.
Palestinians deserve security too.

Hebron Land Defense Committee
The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.
Christian Peacemaker Teams -- Hebron