June 18, Thursday
A round-the-clock presence in the Beqa'a Valley continued throughFriday.
Members of the team stayed with a family who hadreceived verbal threats from
an Israeli military officer that a demolition was scheduled for the past week.
No demolition occurred during this time.

Jamey Bouwmeester accompanied five international visitors to theAl-Atrash
home, which had been bulldozed June 11. They also visited the home of Abdel
Majid Abu Turki, who was killed last week by youth from nearby Beit Haggai
settlement, to offer condolences to the family. [The team learned that the
Israeli Interior Minister later visited the family to offer compensation,
which was refused. According to news reports, Prime Minister Netanyahu
publicly condemned the
killing as "a heinous crime." ] The Abu Turki family lives across the road
from the Al-Atrash home. The slaying site on the bypass road is visible from
their land.

June 20, Saturday
Sara Reschly, Pierre Shantz and Claire Miller traveled with 15 college
students from Intervarsity Fellowship to visit the Ibrahim Abu Jindeeya
family in the Yatta area, southeast of Hebron. Because of harassment by
residents of the nearby Jewish settlement of Ma'on, Jindeeya has had
difficulty completing his wheat harvest. The group hoped to assist with the
work. However, Jindeeya explained that the weather was too dry that afternoon.
The students, CPTers and members
of the family shared a simple meal. [The team learned June 27 the Jindeeya's
entire wheat crop was burned the night of June 26. See separate release.]

June 23, Tuesday
The team learned from Palestinian journalists that one home and two rock-wall
sheep enclosures were destroyed in the Yatta area. An accelerated policy of
demolitions by Israeli authorities has been witnessed in the West Bank and
Jerusalem. A report from LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of
Human Rights & the Environment, documents over 30 house demolitions so far
this month.

June 24, Wednesday
Anne Montgomery and Shantz visited a family in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron,
who have received a demolition order on their home, reportedly because of the
lack of a building permit. They sought legal assistance to procure a permit,
and had just received news from their lawyer. The court told him there is no
use in applying for a permit, since Highway
60, a bypass road running south from Bethlehem, is scheduled to pass through
the family's land when construction continues. Montgomery reported that the
family has lost all interest in their ripening grapes or any other aspect of
their lives because of their concern with the threatened demolition. "It would
be better to have the house demolished than to endure the waiting," the mother
said.