Tag: Hebron

by ISM Hebron, October 17th

At 12.35pm two soldiers asked a Human Rights Worker (HRW) sitting opposite checkpoint 56 (the main entrance in and out of the Israeli controled H2 part of Hebron) to not watch the soldiers at the checkpoint and to move up the hill away from the checkpoint. The HRW refused to do this and the soldiers then rather strangely asked the HRW to move over to the other side of the road. The HRW did this, as this position is actually closer to the checkpoint and affords a better view of both the soldiers and the Palestinians passing through.

At 3pm on Shuhada Street, a HRW said “good afternoon” to two passing soldiers who were walking past. One of the soldiers responded by coming up to the HRW and very aggressively kicking the door to a Palestinian house close to the HRW’s face. He obviously found this very amusing, as he laughed loudly as he moved down the street. When the HRW asked the soldier why he had done this, the second soldier responded, “He doesn’t like you”. A few minutes later, a Palestinian man who had been walking down Shuhada Street in the opposite direction to the soldiers told the HRW that the aggressive soldier had told the second soldier that he should hit the Palestinian man in order to make the HRW take a photograph.

At roughly 4pm, four Israeli border police and a regular Israeli policeman walked down Shuhada Street from Beit Hadassah settlement, one pausing to look at the HRW stationed there and to peer into her bag. The soldiers then stopped at checkpoint 56 and started stopping most young Palestinian men who passed through the checkpoint into Tel Rumeida and taking their ID cards to be checked. This continued until 5.05pm when the border police left. During this hour and 5 minutes, between 20 and 30 Palestinians were detained and had to wait in a line by the side of the road for their IDs to be returned to them. This took between 10 minutes and half an hour at a time when the Palestinians were making their way home for their evening meal after having been fasting all day for Ramadan. One man was kept for longer than the others – roughly 35 minutes. At one point during this detention, a border policeman asked the man his name, got his ID from the policeman who was holding it, waved in the man’s face, then gave it back to the policeman so that the detention could continue. At one point, the Palestinian obviously got fed up with waiting and stood up to leave, but was prevented from doing so by the border police until they were finished with his ID. When a HRW asked one of the border policemen why they had done the ID checks at this particular time of the day, he answered, “Those are the rules”.

At 8pm a man was detained for walking past the Tel Rumeida (Eli Yishei) settlement. The man was new to the area and did not know about the army restrictions on using the road. One soldier, at the Tel Rumeida guardpost, was agitated and gesticulated with his gun.

by ISM media team, October 17th

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported yesterday that settlers from the illegal colony of Susia, east of Yatta in the south of the Hebron region, annexed 150 dunams of farmland, plowed them and planted several trees. The annexed orchards are located near the colony. According to the agency, the settlers planted olive, almond, and evergreen trees, while Israeli soldiers closed the area and barred the Palestinian owners of the orchards from entering it.

The Palestinian residents did not receive any annexation orders from the Israeli authorities and were not given any chance to defend their lands in front of any Israeli court. Most of the newly annexed areas belong to the families of Al Shamesty, Abu Sabha, and Al Sha’abeen.

Settlers in the south Hebron Hills are notorious for their violent attacks on local Palestinian farmers and their property. In September masked settlers attacked and hospialised 79-year-old Khalil Nawaja, just the latest in a series of attacks on farmers. In the summer, international human rights workers volunteering in the area at the invitation of local Palestinians were attacked by masked settlers from Susia.

In a separate incident, settlers expanded a cattle ranch in the Um Zeitouna area, which is a Palestinian area located between the illegal Israeli colonies of Karmiel and Maon, south-east of Hebron city. Farmers in the area told WAFA that colonist’s bulldozers are destroying the annexed Palestinian lands in order to expand the ranch.

The farmers added that the colonists placed concrete blocks, some fixed to the ground, and installed barracks in the ranch that was constructed 15 years ago on lands annexed from the Palestinian residents.

ISM Hebron, Saturday 14th October, 2006

On two occasions this week Human Rights Workers (HRWs) witnessed colonist settlers from the illegal Israeli-Jewish caravans at Tel Rumeida stealing Palestinian olives (see “Israeli Colonists Steal Palestinian olives in Tel Rumeida”).

We visited the owner of the olives today, he informed us that he had called the police (at the nearby Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba) while the theft was occurring but they refused to come and investigate. Also today, we were shown an olive branch (above), belonging to a Palestinian family, that had been cut by the Israeli colonists from the Tel Rumeida caravan. The yard of a Palestinian home directly below the caravans was filled with broken glass (below) from bottles thrown by the colonists.

We were told that colonists have recently placed barbed wire around the yard of a Palestinian family to prevent them using a track below the Tel Rumeida colonists’ caravans despite a supreme court ruling (see “Report on Razor Wire closing entrance to the track leading to the Al Azzeh homes”) saying that the family should have access to the track.

Earlier this week the water pipes providing water to several families living close to the Tel Rumeida colony were cut by Israeli colonists for the fourth time this month. The Palestinian municipality was prevented from mending the pipes for several days because of the Jewish holiday (Sukkot).

Despite all this, the Palestinian families of Tel Rumeida are resisting the harassment, aimed at forcing them to leave their homes, and are trying to lead a normal life.

by ISM Hebron, 14th October

At about 00:25, international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) based in Tel Rumeida, Hebron heard the sound of a screaming baby on the street outside their flat. On looking outside, they saw a male adult settler carrying a baby down the street from the Tel Rumeida settlement and sit on a ledge outside Palestinian houses with the baby. The settler seemed to be making no effort to calm the child, which carried on screaming very loudly and which was obviously in some distress. After about 10 mins, a HRW, woken by the screams, approached the settler and asked if something was wrong with the baby and if she could help. The settler answered, “There’s nothing you can do here” and just kept repeating this to every question asked him by the HRW. There were two soliders stationed at the nearby guardpost but as far as the HRWs could see, they never approached the settler or asked him why the baby was crying and why he had brought it down to the Palestinian area. It was after midnight on a relatively cold night and the baby was wearing only a pair of thin cotton pyjamas with exposed hands and feet. The settler was pressing the baby, who was hysterical, to his chest to prevent the child from squirming off of his lap and the baby also appeared to be trying to suckle. However, instead of trying to deal with the screaming baby, the settler was reading the Torah. After about 20 minutes of the baby screaming, two female settlers came up the hill towards the male settler and one of them took the baby. As soon as the female took the baby and put it under her shawl, it stopped screaming, and the settlers moved off to the Tel Rumeida settlement. On being asked by the HRWs what he thought of the settler bringing a screaming baby out into the cold night, one of the soldiers on guard refused to answer. He also refused to answer the question as to whether he would have allowed a Palestinian man with a screaming baby to go and sit outside the Tel Rumeida settlement at 00.30. He also would not answer questions as to whether or not this was a form of child abuse.

At about 12 noon a procession of about 30-50 settlers was seen marching toward the Ibrahimi mosque.

A group of 5 settler boys were seen looking over the wall of the Palestinian Qurtuba school but dispersed when they saw that Human Rights Workers (HRWs) were watching.

Israeli soldiers were stationed by Abraham’s Well throughout the morning. They prevented Palestinians from washing in the well but allowed settlers to congregate there.

Religious visitors to the illegal settlement of Beit Hadassah were heard telling an Israeli soldier that his job was to protect ‘only Jewish people’.

At 13.20 a procession of settlers (estimated at between 100 and 150) made its way from the Beit Hadassah settlement up Shuhada Street towards the Israeli army checkpoint. The procession was mostly made up of male settlers, some carrying Torah rolls, and they were singing loudly while walking. Two HRWs on Shuhada Street were approached by two male settlers, one carrying a bottle of vodka. The male HRW was offered vodka, and told that if he refused to accept this offer, the settler would break his video camera. The HRW refused and the settler with the vodka told the HRWs that he knew they were here to “show the Jews are occupying the Arabs”. He also added that Jesus was an “evil Jew” and that his name should not be mentioned. At one point in the conversation, the settler with the vodka picked up a stone from the street and then removed the lens cap from the video camera, presumably in order to try and break it, but was prevented by the HRWs. The second settler also at this point told his companion that he should not break the camera. These two settlers then moved on with the procession.

At 13.45 a young settler boy, aged about 9, spat at the HRWs feet, but was told off by adult settlers with him.

During this time there were many settlers on the street, and the HRWs noticed a Palestinian girl, aged about 12, peeping out of a door on Shuhada Street. Only after twice looking out of the door but both times seeing settlers on the street and withdrawing into her house did the girl dare leave the house and walk the short distance to the checkpoint, accompanied by a HRW. She was clearly scared of the settlers on the street.

At 14.30 during a procession back to the Beit Hadassah settlement, a male Orthodox Jew deliberately stamped on the foot of a female HRW. This same man had stamped on the foot of a male HRW earlier that day, but this had not been perceived at the time as being deliberate as the man appeared to have a disability and walked with a pronounced limp. However, the man came back to the male HRW and attempted to do it again, saying, “Scored the first time” when he missed the HRW’s feet. Other adult settlers however appeared to tell him off for doing this.

At about 14.40, a female HRW on Shuhada Street noticed a male settler child opening the entrance door to several Palestinian houses. She shouted at him and went over to him, only for a male adult settler to come over and also open the door. The HRW also shouted at him to go away, and a further HRW tried to close the door, which led to the settler gripping her wrist tightly in an effort to stop her. One HRW then stood in the doorway to prevent the settler entering, while two HRWs alternatively shouted at and reasoned with the settler to leave. The settler became very abusive towards one of the female HRWs, insulting her personally and calling her an anti-Semite and a Nazi. A jeep with several soldiers arrived, and soldiers from the guard post at Beit Hadassah arrived but most just observed the argument or filmed it on their mobile phones instead of intervening. At one point another male settler came up and punched one of the female HRWs in the face. Finally the settler moved off towards the Beit Hadassah settlement.

At 14.50 a HRW was informed that there was a problem at checkpoint 56 (the main entrance in and out of the Israeli controled H2 part of Hebron) and that there was a queue of Palestinians waiting to be allowed through into Tel Rumeida. On approaching one of the soldiers at the checkpoint, the HRW was told that the checkpoint was closed. When she asked why, the soldier answered, “Because I want it closed”. On further questioning, the soldier said that the commander had ordered the checkpoint closed, but that the commander was in the jeep approaching the checkpoint and the HRW could talk to him directly. When the HRW asked the commander in the jeep about the checkpoint, the commander told her that it was now open again. The two soldiers on duty at the checkpoint however were slow in reopening it, and insisted on calling each Palestinian over to have their bags checked, although the search was clearly cursory and of no real security benefit. Also, despite the queue that had built up during the closure, the soldiers insisted that the Palestinians pass through one-by-one, even sending back two young Palestinian children who had passed through the metal detector together.

At 15.35 one of three teenage settler boys walking together down Shuhada Street spat at a male HRW but missed. The same boy then spat in the face of a female HRW further down the street and all three laughed loudly. One of the same three settlers spat on a further male HRW at 16.40 and also gave him and further HRWs on the street obscene hand gestures.