AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) NEWS: Updates on settler road expansion, situation of South Hebron Hills villagers threatened with expulsion, settler vandalism in Hebron market, and more.

CPT is also monitoring an evacuated Palestinian apartment block (see photo
above), built by the Al-Rajabi Family, because its ownership is being disputed
in Israeli courts, with Israeli settlers trying to prove that the owner sold
them this building, which he denies.  A settler takeover of the building (as already happened
briefly before the Israeli military evicted settlers) would effectively blaze a
more unrestricted corridor from Kiryat Arba to the synagogue and tourism center
where tradition holds that that the biblical patriarch Abraham is buried.  Like the new road, it would impose even
harsher movement restrictions on Palestinians, and expose Palestinian families
to even higher levels of settler violence.

Anxiety overwhelms 1,000 Palestinian residents of the South
Hebron Hills as a 15 July Israeli court decision approaches, which will
determine whether the Israeli army can forcibly expel them.

For the past two weeks, several international human rights
monitoring groups, including CPT, have launched an effort to provide a more
continuous presence in villages of Masafer Yatta (labeled in red above) that
the Israeli military has slated for imminent forcible expulsion.  The military intends to exploit more
fully the area for training, designating it as “Firing Zone 918”
(white area above).  The action
threatens more than 1,000 residents (60% of them women and children), whom the
military falsely claims are seasonal or nomadic inhabitants.  More than 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares)
of Palestinian cropland and 12,000 head of livestock lie within the zone.

For years the military has already carried out daily live
fire training around the villages with troops, tanks, artillery and
helicopters, often terrorizing villagers with night raids inside their homes,
and littering the fields with hazardous unexploded ordnance.  The villages of Jinba, Mirkez, Halaweh
and Al-Majaz are in particular peril, with fifty-two of their structures under
demolition orders, and with the 1949 Green Line cutting through the fields
adjacent to their homes.

CPT and partner groups will now spend days and nights in the
Firing Zone for most of each week, prepared to monitor and document the military’s
abuse of Palestinian residents and their agricultural lands, as well as any
demolitions of homes and infrastructure.  For further information about the plight of Masafer Yatta,
see This Must Be the Place
as well as reports by UN-OCHA
and B’Tselem.

Repeatedly in the past weeks, residents of the Israeli
settlement of Beit Hadassah, located within the Hebron Old City, have vandalized
merchandise and assaulted their Palestinian neighbors.

From a multi-storey building directly overshadowing one of
Hebron’s busiest marketplaces, the settlers of Beit Hadassah have long attempted
to maintain an atmosphere of fear and unpredictability for surrounding
Palestinian merchants and residents.  On 16 June, CPTers visited clothing stores upon which
settlers had just thrown plastic bags full of bleach from above.  Shopkeepers reported that this thuggish
behavior happens frequently.  Settlers
also spray water from hoses down through windows and courtyards of adjacent
homes.  Such vandalism damages and
destroys merchandise, for which Palestinian family businesses receive no
compensation.