Monday, March 9--Wednesday, March 18
CPTers maintained a continuous 24 hour presence at the Al Atrash
family home from Monday March 9 until the present as the family
rebuilt their home destroyed on March 3. CPTer Rich Meyer found out
earlier in the week that a road to the cluster of houses on Al Sendas
mountain, south of Hebron, was built by the Israeli military
specifically to allow a bulldozer to reach the homes.

Tuesday, March 10
A journalist friend stopped in and told CPTers that three Hebron
police officers responsible for investigating crimes perpetrated my
members of the Hebron settler community had been transferred out of
Hebron. Sami Sockol of the Israeli newspaper Ha ?Aretz wrote that
nearly 60 open cases against Hebron settlers may not be prosecuted,
because of the transfers. Regarding the transfer of Brigadier General
Yaakov Ish Yemini, a police source told Sockol, ?His departure is not
natural and it looks like the police are looking for someone more
flexible for the job.? Police also told Sockol that it is extremely
difficult to function in Hebron, because of constant complaints filed
by settlers against the police. The complaints deter police officers
from acting against settlers who break the law.

Clashes began in the evening to protest the IDF killing of three
workers from Dura as they crossed the Tarqoumia checkpoint from Israel
into the West Bank. They continued throughout the week.

Friday, March 13
Dianne Roe, Pierre Shantz and Gene Stoltzfus went out to the Baka,a
valley to collect profiles for the Campaign for Secure Dwellings.
While they were out there, they talked to Atta Jaber?s father (Abdel
Jawad) and found that on Sunday, part of the Jaber family land had
been bulldozed to make way for a gas station to service the
settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha Harsina. Abdel Jawad stood in
front of the bulldozer with all of the other family members, but the
soldiers only laughed at them. As Abdel Jawad told the story he began
weeping.

In the evening, the team heard shots near the settlement of Avraham
Avinu and went to investigate. CPters Dianne Roe and Gene Stoltzfus
were told that settlers had made violent incursions into the
PA-controlled area above the Muslim cemetery across from the vegetable
market since 1:00 in the afternoon. Roe and Stoltzfus talked to a man
who was bleeding from injuries inflicted by settlers. They saw that
close to a dozen cars had had their windows smashed by the same
settlers. Roe and Stoltzfus accompanied two mothers who had been
separated from their children back to their houses and listened as
outraged Palestinian families described what happened while they were
trapped in their houses. Police later arrested several of the
settlers who had been a part of the rampage.

Saturday, March 14
The team learned that the gunshots they had heard the previous night
had injured several journalist friends. Nael Shyoukhi was shot in
the head by a rubber bullet and then in the torso as he lay on the
ground. Maazen Dana was shot in the shoulder as he went to help
Shyoukhi.

Pierre Shantz and Mark Frey went to a press conference in front of the
Hebron Municipality organized by the journalists to protest their
being targeted by IDF soldiers. Afterwards they accompanied Israeli,
Palestinian and international journalists on a visit to Nael Shyoukhi
in his home.

Abdel Hadi Hantash stopped in and gave a report on recent home
demolitions, land confiscations, olive tree uprootings and settler
harassment in the Hebron District. He asked the team to write a
letter to Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright to make them aware of
the dire state of affairs in the Hebron district.

Several international friends of the the Christian Peacemaker Hebron
Team came down from Bethlehem and Jerusalem to help the Al Atrash
family in re-building their home. Yussuf Al Atrash and Rich Meyer
went to see a lawyer who helped Al Atrash apply for a new permit for
his home. Palestinians living in Area C are routinely denied permits
for building homes, but legally, the family's home cannot be destroyed
while they are involved in the application process.

Sunday, March 15
Gene Stoltzfus, Dianne Roe and Kathleen Kern met with representatives
from the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions in Jerusalem to
discuss strategies for making both the Israeli and North American
public more aware of the problem.

Tuesday, March 17
Rich Meyer and Kathleen Kern conducted a Nonviolence training session
with several women from Bat Shalom, freshly arrived from a meeting to
greet British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Cook told the women that
the joint greeting from Bat Shalom and its Palestinian sister
organization, the Jerusalem Center for Women was ?the warmest welcome?
he had had all day. (The Israeli government was outraged that Cook
visi