AT-TUWANI: Israeli settlers intimidate Palestinian school children after Israeli military neglects escort

Facebook
Twitter
Email
WhatsApp
Print

CPTnet
6 March 2010
AT-TUWANI: Israeli settlers intimidate Palestinian school children after Israeli military neglects escort
 

AT-TUWANI, South Hebron Hills, West Bank—On Monday morning, 22 February 2010, three Israeli settlers chased sixteen Palestinian children who were walking home after school.  The children had waited an hour for their Israeli military escort, which the Israeli Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child assigned to the children in order to ensure their safe passage to their home villages of Tuba and Maghaer Al-Abeed.  Because of the military’s negligence, the children were forced to take an alternative path that finally returned them home three hours after the end of school.  On the previous three school days, the soldiers also had failed to perform the escort three times.

After the Israeli military refused to respond to Christian Peacemaker Teams’ repeated calls for the first half hour, Israeli settlers approached on a farm tractor.  Two men, one masked, drove down to the children’s regular waiting point on the dirt road that bisects the Ma’on settlement and the Havat Ma’on settlement outpost.  Using the tractor, they tried to form a barricade by pushing boulders onto the road surface.  Normally, the road is in daily use by the children and their escort, because it connects their home villages with At-Tuwani and Palestinian cities to the north.  

The two settlers returned to their outpost.  The children decided to return home by a longer path around the settlements.  While they were on the path, three settlers came out from Havat Ma’on and chased them.  As the children ran from the settlers, Israeli military jeeps appeared ahead of them, but stopped while soldiers spoke with the three settlers.  Meanwhile, soldiers detained the children, refusing to provide them safe passage around the settlement.  One soldier told CPTers, “We have things more important to do.”  The children had to wait until the soldiers left, before they could proceed on their alternative path through dangerously rugged terrain.

The children of these villages require the military escort because of Israeli settlers’ repeated attacks and harassment, year after year.  Whenever the soldiers fail to meet them promptly before and after school, the children wait in dangerous areas under “de facto” settler control.

For the month of February, this encounter was the fourth recorded incident of settler violence against the children.

For photos of the incident, see: <https://cpt.org/gallery/album308>

For a thorough report on the school escort in 2007 and 2008, including maps, photos and interviews with the children, please see “A Dangerous Journey”: at

<https://www.cpt.org/files/Dangerous-Journey-Summary-2008.pdf>.

Categories

Subscribe to the Friday Bulletin

Get Ryan’s thoughts and the entire bulletin every Friday in your inbox, and don’t miss out on news from the teams, a list of what we’re reading and information on ways to take action.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Read More Stories

we are all palestine action

A political and moral turning point

For two weeks, Israel and the US turned their sights on Iran—and then, just like that, it stopped. A fortnight of phone calls with relatives,

A drawing of the woman's march

Women’s March for Peace

After a visit to the house of Ashti Khan, the CPT Iraqi Kurdistan team hears the story of how a women’s march interrupted a bloody civil war.

cityscape tehran

Iran interrupted again

The fallout from Israel’s war of aggression on Iran has left us at CPT worried about the safety of our teams in Iraqi Kurdistan and

Skip to content