Hebron Witness

The soldiers came in the middle of the night, beating on the front door and yelling to open up. It was not the first time they had come to this house. This time, they were not accompanied by a bulldozer as they had been in the past. No demolishing of the house as they had in the past. The last time this happened, in 2018, they came to deliver a subpoena for an interrogation, taking the opportunity to beat the hell out of the entire family, including kids and even an infant. The dad was taken away to administrative detention for no reason other than to inflict some terror into the family’s heart. After October 7, things have gotten worse. On one occasion, the dad was returning to Hebron from Ramallah and was stopped at a checkpoint. He was snatched out of the car, beaten and made to sit in the cold from 9 pm until 4 am. He was taken to an interrogation place, then taken to the notorious Ofer prison. He told us that when he arrived in Ofer, he saw a lot of beatings taking place and blood...

We had a zoom meeting today with two young Israelis who refused to serve in the IOF. One did it quietly and one did it very publicly. Both were clear-headed about why they refused induction and both paid a price for it. The young man, in his mid-twenties,     served 50 days in a military prison and the young woman, at 19 years of age, did 85 days. I had a keen interest in talking with them because I myself was a draft resister some 55 years ago during the Vietnam War. But I didn’t go to prison. I went to Canada instead. It was an agonizing choice for me, but I was sure that I didn’t want to go off killing people and I didn’t want to turn myself over to the prison system either. And I wasn’t going to try to convince a military board that I was religiously inclined enough to be given an exception. Going into exile was tough, but not as tough as going to prison. Each of the refusers talked about what led them to the decision to go against the universal expectation and requirement...

The good news today was that the Settler Incursion did not take place in Hebron’s Old City. Probably because the weather was lousy - cold and rainy all day long. The Settler Incursion is a weekly Saturday parade of settlers swooping down from their guarded residences to sing, shout, and generally harass Palestinians in their shops, schools, and residences. They are accompanied by soldiers and are there to show their dominance. Kind of weird for it to be on their sabbath day. Here’s some info about the incursion:   https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/135038 . We were going to go witness it today, but instead we just walked over to where the incursion usually enters the Old City narrow cobblestone roads from behind their secured gateway. Then we were guided by our CPT friends along the route they normally take. Nearly all the shops were closed up tight and no one was out on these normally busy pedestrian ways. It was like we were having our own quiet counter-parade, the seven of us...

Today we did mosque patrol. Every Friday, CPT monitors the checkpoint at the Ibrahimi Mosque to accompany Muslims as they try to go for prayer. For an hour, we stood to the side of the caged-in entrance to the checkpoint, watching. Normally, about 400 men, women, and children come on Fridays, but since October 7, the Israeli security forces have made it more difficult, with longer waits, so fewer people are coming. Some are staying at home to pray rather than subjecting themselves to being crammed together and possibly not even getting through to the mosque in time for prayer anyway. Others come carrying cardboard to pray outside the mosque or even outside the checkpoint, anticipating that they won’t make it through the gauntlet in time to enter the mosque. The gauntlet is pretty daunting: standing body-to-body in a very tight space for a long time until the green light goes on and 2-3 people can jam themselves through a turnstile. Then they have to go through a metal detector and pres...

Our 5 person delegation made the trek to Tel Rumeida today on our own because our Palestinian CPT team is not allowed over on that side where there is an Israeli settlement with some 150 settler families. After the checkpoint, we walked in the pouring rain along the ghost town of Shuhada St. with all its closed shops. We followed a google map on our way to our destination, Youth Against Settlements (YAS). We managed to miss the little alley that led to our destination and ended up walking through some soldiers into an Israeli settlement area. We were lost and called our contact person at YAS for directions. While standing there, we were approached by an Israeli woman who asked if she could help us. We knew not to tell her our true destination, so we told her we were meeting a friend who was going to show us the archaeological dig that we were standing next to. When she asked where we were from and what our friend’s name was, I felt we were being sniffed out. Fortunately, our YAS person...

As soon as we stepped out of the car in the Masafer Yatta village of Um al Khair, we got the news that an international visitor had just been arrested for complaining to police about an Israeli flag that had been stuck in some rocks in the village by nearby settlers. Yesterday, a house had been bulldozed by military order. Demolishing the homes of Palestinians has been a mainstay of the decades-long ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank. Lately, this South Hebron Hills village has been an intense target for this strategy. Israel has its eye on this area and all of its small villages for a new onslaught of settlements. It’s a beautiful landscape with rolling hills and scenic vistas. You can see why it is such a desirable place to steal. The village itself is small - only 13 families, 200 people live here. But it’s proving to be tough to get rid of. We met with a very personable and quite brilliant resident of the village who served as our guide. He had come here as a refugee from t...

A couple of days ago, by military order, the IOF shut down the checkpoint into a boys school. The military told the teachers and students that it would be closed for the next week. It was a totally arbitrary and random decision, another one of many things the occupation does to create havoc and insecurity amongst the Palestinian population of Hebron.   Today, we accompanied a couple of CPT team members to observe a protest that was called by the school principal at the checkpoint. We arrived at 7:15 am, after traveling for a half hour around town to get there. Had it not been for the closer, more direct road being blockaded by the IOF, it was a trip that might have taken just 5 minutes or so. More deliberate power-flexing annoyance. The principal showed up soon after we arrived and chatted with the teachers who were sitting in their cars to keep warm. Then kids came straggling in. At 7:30 a TV reporter showed up with his camera on a tripod. I counted about 15 teachers and 30 studen...

As we walked up the steep hill towards the home of the Shaker al-Tamimi family, an IOF jeep came streaking down the hill towards us from the military base at the top of the hill. The driver had a smirk on his face as he sped past, headed right towards a school bus parked on the side of the road with little kids hanging around outside. It pissed us off. As we got to the top of the hill, A man in the family met us with a warm welcoming smile and a hearty handshake. He immediately pointed to the huge water tank on the adjacent hill and told us how all the water from that tank was being sent to the 3 settlements that literally surround his house. He can get water from it, but he has to pay for it and it comes in small pipes with little water pressure. He also has to pay for the electricity to pump the water up to his house. Israel is literally stealing the water from Palestinian land and selling a bit back to the Palestinians. We went inside a large, beautiful wedding-like tent with cushi...

Hebron is the biggest Palestinian city with the largest economy. There are 350,000 Palestinians living here. Also 800 settlers protected by 3900 IOF soldiers.   The history of how the settlers came to this city is one of typical Israeli incremental treachery. The story begins right after the 1967 war and subsequent occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In 1968, seventy-five American Jews came in to Hebron, stayed in a hotel at the outskirts of the central city, and then wouldn’t leave. They claimed the land was given to them by god. They quickly appealed to the IOF for protection and were provided with a military contingent. It was an invasive Jewish outpost in a Palestinian city. Within a couple of years, these invaders moved right into the nearby military base. In the mid-70s, they declared themselves a settlement and recruited another 2500 Jews from Brooklyn and Sydney to move in with them. The government soon declared the settlement officially legal and the ...

Mazin Qumsiyeh used a metaphor today to explain the situation Palestine is in. He said Palestine is a body with a disease. The disease is a deadly one: a form of displacement settler colonialism. Zionism.   It’s important to know that before the arrival of Zionism, the Palestine body was healthy. People of all religions, ethnicities, languages, and races were all living in the same land. It was a diverse and sustainable place like this for thousands of years. In fact, Mazin, scholar that he is, has done a study of the violence in countries since human settlement began and found that Palestine, over all these years, has been one of the most peaceful places on earth. Don’t believe that trope that Jews and Muslims have been at each others’ throats for centuries. No. I’s been just over 100 years and was brought on by this infection called Zionism. Zionism is intent on changing the region into a monoculture - one language, one religion. From a pluralistic society to a Jewish state. But ...

Our delegation went to the Aida refugee camp today and met a very bright and strong minded 27-year old Palestinian man who has lived there his entire life. I had been in the same camp 10 years ago and have carried its realities in my heart ever since. This young man gave a refresher course and update on what it’s like to live in captivity like this. He took us up to the rooftop of a building that overlooked the camp. From there we could see the apartheid wall surrounding the camp, the 7 observation/gun towers, the worn out streets and buildings, the density of all the people shoved into this small space, the water tanks on the roof (many of which have been shot full of holes by Israeli snipers for sport). It’s a sobering and heartbreaking site. He showed us where a child had been shot in the street below for no reason by a sniper in one of those damned towers. The new AI gun turret on top of one of the towers. The military base right next to the tower. Tear gas canisters - Aida is the ...

I listened in on two talks today given by our host, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh. Mazin is a well-known activist for Palestinian freedom and human rights. And he is also a scientist and founder/director of Bethlehem University’s Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability.   Mazin was wearing his academic hat for his talks today. Both had to do with the land and its plant and animal life. The first one was about Biological Reserves in the Middle East. Biological Reserves are legally designated protection zones for plant and animal life. There are a number of them in Jordan and Lebanon and 4 sites being considered in Palestine. But the sites in Palestine are not in the same condition as those in the neighboring countries. The reason is simple, Mazin said. It’s because Palestine is not a sovereign country in charge of its own resources and so can’t sustain these areas very well. And Israel has no concern for the welfare of the natural world. Not only is the land being destroye...