Palestine Projects

About CPT Palestine

CPT Palestine is a faith-based organization that supports Palestinian-led, nonviolent, grassroots resistance to the Israeli occupation and the unjust structures that uphold it.  By collaborating with local Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers and educating people in our home communities, we help create a space for justice and peace.

We maintain a project in the southern West Bank city of Hebron (Al-Khalil in Arabic).

The Work of CPT Palestine:

  • Supporting Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the occupation in coordination with Israeli and international organizations
  • Providing daily accompaniment for Palestinian children walking to and from school
  • Accompanying Palestinian shepherds and farmers to fields where Israeli settlers often assault them
  • Monitoring treatment of Palestinians at Israeli military checkpoints and roadblocks
  • Intervening during human rights abuses and violations, including Israeli military invasions of Palestinian homes and markets
  • Sharing reports and documentation with CPT's network, media contacts, governmental and human rights organizations, and consular and embassy officials
  • Hosting international delegations organized by CPT, in addition to hosting groups visiting Hebron/Al-Khalil and At-Tuwani; connecting these groups with local peacemakers and organizations
  • Advocating for the reduction of foreign support for the occupation, through increasing awareness of the occupation’s realities and through support of the boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement

CPT in Hebron/al-Khalil

 

Latest Updates:

Under Attack”: the Golani Brigade's war on the Palestinian population of Al-Khali/Hebron

February 12, 2012 Al Khalil/Hebron, Palestine


A newly released report submitted to the United Nations by international organizations working in Al Khalil documents a sharp increase in serious human rights violations against Palestinian civilians, particularly youth and children, living in the Old City and Tel Rumeida.

Since their arrival on December 27 of 2011, the Israeli Golani Brigade has shown signs of deliberate harassment and targeting of the Palestinian population of Al-Khalil. The report documents an increase in arrests and detentions of adults and children, serious physical injuries sustained while in military custody, home invasions, and an increase in the number and duration of arbitrary detentions of civilians at checkpoints. It also documents harassment of and attempts to silence international observers attempting to document these abuses.

Contrary to military justifications, these human rights violations have occurred without any observed provocation on the part of Palestinians. These eye-witness accounts, either reported to or witnessed by Internationals working in the city, are believed to represent only a small portion of the total number of abuses.

Internationals working in Al-Khalil have called for an immediate withdrawal of the Golani Brigade, citing fears that the abuses will continue to escalate and make life unbearable for Palestinians should the soldiers remain another two to five months as expected.

The full report is available for viewing, along with video and photos, at http://www.cpt.org/underattack

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) ACTION ALERT: Fast with the prisoners of Palestine

May 11th, 2012
in:

CPTnet
11 May 2012
AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) ACTION ALERT: Fast with the prisoners of Palestine

On Monday 7 May 2012, the Israeli High Court of Justice denied the petition of two hunger-striking Palestinians against their administrative detention, meaning the Israeli authorities have never charged them with any crime or given them a trial.  The two prisoners continue their hunger strike, are now on their seventy-fifth day, and are in critical condition.  Their attorneys said they were not allowed to see classified material that the state had cited as grounds for imprisonment.

One thousand six hundred prisoners joined the hunger strike and are now in their twenty-fourth day.   The prisoners are demanding an end to administrative detention, solitary confinement and other punitive punishment measures taken against Palestinian prisoners, including the denial of family and lawyer visits, especially to prisoners from the Gaza Strip to whom the Israeli authorities have denied family visits since 2007.

Prisoners have  face harsh collective punishment from the beginning of the hunger strike.  Some have received fines between 250 (€50) and 500 (€100) shekels for each day of their  strike.  In Naqab prison, prisoners are experiencing daily random inspections that last for approximately forty to fifty minutes.  These inspections include cell and body searches.  In addition, prisoners are no longer permitted to leave their rooms for the daily break period. 

This 15 May 2012 marks the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, when pre-Israeli state paramilitary forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948.  The annual Nakba fast this year is focusing on the plight of the prisoners.  CPT Palestine is gravely concerned about the health of the prisoners and in an act of solidarity, team members will be joining the fast.  The  team invites you to join the fast from 7:00 a.m. on 15 May.

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): Israeli military demolishes cistern in Beqa’a Valley

May 7th, 2012
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At 8:30 on the morning of 2 May 2012, the team received a call from a friend in the Beqa’a valley to inform the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron the Israeli military was destroying his cousin’s reservoir. Two CPTers went to the valley. Upon arriving, they saw two army vehicles, two intelligence service vehicles, and a power shovel digging up the ground on the hill below the friend’s house and filling dump trucks with this material. The friend told them to follow the truck.

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): Israeli military demolishes dairy farm

May 2nd, 2012
in:

On May Day, 1 May, at 7:45 a.m., the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron received a phone call from Noah al-Rajabi in Bani Naim.  Al-Rajabi reported that the army and bulldozers were demolishing his cousin’s home and threatening to demolish the family’s farm. He urged CPT to come and to call the media and other internationals to bear witness to what was happening.  Two CPTers arrived at the main road near the house and saw six military jeeps, three police vehicles, and three intelligence service vehicles at the site.  Initially, the Israeli authorities prevented CPTers from approaching the scene. When they asked soldiers why they were demolishing the farm, a soldier replied, “Because we are the army.”

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) REFLECTION: Not for Sale

April 20th, 2012
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 On 5 April 2012, I accompanied our neighbor, Afifah *, as she tried to talk to the settlers who were protesting outside a house in a Palestinian neighbourhood from which the Israeli authorities had evicted them so she could understand their view of the situation.

A settler refused to speak to her when she requested a conversation.  Upon enquiring why, he told her that he did not speak to anti-Semites. Afifah told him that they were both from the same origins.  The settler abruptly pronounced that he was referring to me and that CPT was an anti-Semitic organization.  Afifah told him that she had known CPT for many years and did not think that its members were anti-Semitic.  He replied that he had read the CPT website, that everything they posted was anti-Semitic and that they were Jew-hating Christians. 

AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) REFLECTION: Holy Saturday--Entombed in Hebron

April 7th, 2012
in:

Hebron is a sacred place because of the cave/tomb of Abraham and Sarah, Rebecca and Isaac, Jacob and Leah.  Today Hebron feels entombed by the Israeli military occupation and colonization.  It is a Holy Saturday that has lasted over forty-five years.  No resurrection in sight—but somehow the winter of all hopes and dreams bears the seeds of a, maybe far off, spring of justice and freedom.  I offer two stories of occupation: one of oppression, one of hope.

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CPTnet Stories

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Events

Title Start: End:
Palestine / Israel delegation Tue, 05/22/2012 Mon, 06/04/2012
Palestine / Israel delegation Tue, 10/02/2012 Mon, 10/15/2012
Palestine / Israel delegation Tue, 11/06/2012 Mon, 11/19/2012