AL-KHALIL (HEBRON): CPT Palestine August 2017 Newsletter- Why do you keep going back?, Restricted Movement and More…

At the end of August, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman announced that the Israeli Military will be issuing an order that gives official status to the Hebron municipal committee, which represents settlers occupying Palestinian land in the city of Hebron. This action not only violates the Oslo Accords and the 1997 Hebron Protocol, but also international law and means further colonization of H2. Read More

Restricted Movement

CPT team was recently invited to attend a meeting in Ramallah. As a team, we took a Palestinian service taxi, an orange van which holds seven passengers, to Ramallah from Hebron. On our way to Ramallah, Palestinians in the taxi put their seatbelts on before we left the Palestinian streets of Hebron, as it is law for Palestinians to wear a seatbelt on an Israeli road. Just as the taxi was going to pass an Israeli checkpoint, an Israeli police officer pulled the taxi aside. Four of the passengers in the taxi, including a CPTer, were not wearing a seatbelt when the taxi was pulled over. Once the taxi was parked by the checkpoint, the Israeli police officer opened the van door, asked for everyone’s IDs and inspected to see who was wearing a seatbelt. The police officer seized almost everyone’s ID except for my passport and my fellow CPTer’s passport. Read more…

A new brigade, the Givati, have recently come to the Old City of Hebron to carry out Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. Last Wednesday, the Givati’s military presence was asserted when they arrested three Palestinian boys, ages thirteen to fourteen. As a matter of reference, Israeli soldiers are able to imprison Palestinian boys as adults once they reach the age of twelve years old, whereas Israelis cannot be imprisoned as adults until they are eighteen years old. Shortly after the aforementioned arrests, the Israeli soldiers established a human barricade, spanning more than three hundred yards, preventing Palestinians from walking and driving through the main streets of the Old City. Palestinian storekeepers were forced to close shops and soldiers conducted multiple ID checks. This detainment lasted for a couple of hours until soldiers went back to their military base, satisfied with the work they accomplished. Read more…