Hebron, West Bank -- On Thursday, September 3, Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Land
Defense Committee, another CPTer and I visited a family whose tent home on a
dusty hilltop 20 miles south of Hebron was demolished on Wednesday, August 17.

The family of 18 people lives in a rock-walled tent overlooking a brown,
desert valley dotted with old cars and tanks used by the Israeli army for
target practice.

On the same day a bulldozer demolished the Ata Jabber home to the east of
Hebron, another bulldozer, accompanied by Israeli troops, came to this
desolate area. Its path, marked by raw earth and overturned rocks, leads to a
burnt spot where some of the family's belongings were burned by the soldiers.
In the chaos, soldiers scattered the family's grain, salt and sugar, and
flour. But the family's tent is again set up, blending into the hillside.

Just up the hill, on land owned by the family, sits a small
prefabricated house in which an Israeli settler family of four live. Like any
middle-class home in the United States it has electricity and water. Unlike a
U.S. home, the services aren't provided to the rest of the neighborhood.

The Palestinian neighbors do not get water from the four-inch pipe that passes
their tent, nor do any of the 33,000-volt wires for their Israeli neighbors
who have taken their land lead to their home. They can, however, count on the
insecurity of not knowing when a bulldozer and military jeeps will again
appear over the crest of the hill to destroy their home.