Today was a quiet day. Volunteers doing a lot of work preparing for the press conference on Wednesday. A Press release and open letter to the police and army about rising settler violence are being drafted.
Jerusalem Post visit Tel Rumeida and visit two families who recount stories of settler and IDF violence. I hope their words get through to the journalists because it is obviously painful for the people to tell their stories. While we are with the journalists and international and a Palestinian are spat at and threatened by settler children on Schuhada Street.
Tuesday, April the 25th
The morning school run goes well. Three settler visitors wearing the orange threads signifying opposition to disengagement come to talk to the soldiers.
As we are leaving a soldier comes to check our passports, he grabs our passports out of our hands and tells us we are being detained. We try to reason with him but he is obviously intent on causing us as much trouble as he can. In the end five internationals from CPT and ISM are detained for three hours at the Bab-a-Zawiyye Machsom. After three hours the shift changes and we are released immediately – it is patently obvious that this particular soldier does not like the internationals and wants to cause as much trouble as he can, his peers do not seem to share his animosity.
The Jerusalem Post are here again and watch what we on the school run with interest. Surely they must wonder why so many internationals are needed to watch this group of schoolchildren walking home.
The soldiers stationed near the Tel Rumeida settlement stop three schoolgirls from walking home. The family that these girls belong to has won a court battle for access to the land below the Tel Rumeida settlement. However, today the soldiers are not aware that the family have permission to use the path to their home and they have to wait by the guards post dangerously close to the settlement buildings. A settler child emerges and throws a stone before he is shooed away by the soldier. This exact same situation occurred last week and could be avoided if IDF soldiers were properly briefed.
Wednesday April the 26th
Men doing building work at the school are stoned by settlers and later a large group of settlers come and destroy the building work.
This Saturday, the 30th of April everybody was apprehensive about further settler attacks. Over the last three shabbats settlers have mounted more and more organised attacks against internationals and Palestians in Tel Rumeida. There was a large intrernational presence in response.
Internationals and Palestinans have been active this last week in trying to draw attention to the increasing level of violence in Tel Rumeida. On Wednesday a conference was held highlighting the escalating violence and an open letter was sent asking the police and army to protect Palestinans in Tel Rumeida.
Throughout the week international volunteers have been speaking to the army units in Tel Rumeida and impressing on them the danger posed by settler attacks and asking that they intervene if attacks occur.
Settler violence has been covered in the mainstream media including the Jerusalem Post and some TV stations.
On Wednesday an organised group of settlers attacked workers at Qurtuba school in Tel Rumeida and later destroyed school property. Palestinians and internationals made calls to the DCO and the police asking for more policing near the school.
On Saturday an unprecedented number of border police were present at Qurtuba school stationed close to the place where the attack occurred on Wednesday. We can only assume that at least some of our efforts were worthwhile.
The day passed without any trouble whatsoever. It seems that the large numbers of police coupled with the numbers of internationals and the fact that the settlers know that the media is watching has had a preventative effect… My only hope is that we an maintain a focus on Tel Rumeida in weeks to come.
Settlers from Beit Hadassa settlement in Tel Rumeida on the outskirts of the old city of Hebron vandalised a school path at Qurtuba school which is used by local Palestinian children.
The path was being built with money from TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron). The builders had just laid bricks along the path above Beit Hadassa settlement.
At 2pm on April 26th builders had stones thrown at them by children from Beit Hadassa. Shortly afterwards international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) saw an adult settler looking at the building work and making several calls on his mobile phone. Between 6 and 7pm yesterday a group of 20 adults and children from Beit Hadassa climbed the steps to the school and began tearing up the bricks and throwing them down the steps.
Soldiers are stationed at a guardpost 50 feet away. Local Palestinians said soldiers did try to intervene but did not stop the vandalism. Police attended but no arrests were made.
A Palestinian family living behind Qurtuba school said that when the settlers approached the school they were frightened that they would attack them and they called their children inside the house. Palestinian residents in Tel Rumeida are subject to regular attacks by extremist settlers. Qurtuba school has been daubed with graffiti such as ‘Gas the Arabs’.
Frequency and seriousness of attacks in Tel Rumeida has been increasing over the past weeks. The most serious attacks occur on shabbat. Last Saturday 30 settlers attacked a Palestinian shop on Tel Rumeida Street and assaulted a young Palestinian (see
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/04/23/settlers-attack). HRWs are afraid that more attacks will occur this Saturday and have written an Open Letter to the Police (see
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/04/26/open-letter-heb1/)
Her gray hair and slim size did not stop Israeli children waiting at a Hebron bus stop from tossing a palm size rock in the direction of Anne Montgomery, 79.
A nun from the US, she was volunteering to help monitor Palestinian interactions with settlers, the IDF and the police. Rock-throwing by settler children is so typical, she said, that “we just looked at them and we knew it was going to happen.”
On Wednesday morning, however, instead of ignoring the brief stoning, she picked up the palm-sized rock and brought it to a Jerusalem press conference on rising settler violence called by international and activist groups working in Hebron.
“Luna,” a volunteer from the US who heads the non-profit Tel Rumeida Project, said that in the past year there have been hundreds of documented settler attacks of varying severity. Initially, the attacks seemed random and involved mostly settler teens, said Luna, who prefers that her real name not be used.
“Alarmingly, Tel Rumeida adult settlers are now starting to carry out carefully pre-planned violent attacks. We, as human rights workers, have started to fear for our lives and the lives of the Palestinians we are attempting to protect,” she said.
Attacks are more likely to occur on Shabbat or a holiday, said Luna, whose organization has observed incidents each Saturday during April. Attacks include physical assaults, stoning and verbal threats. In one incident on April 1, Swiss lawyer Silvana Hogg received seven stitches in her head after she was stoned by a settler.
Last Thursday, five international workers were injured by stones, including Montgomery, while they protected children and teachers as they walked to the Cordoba Girls School in the morning.
Students and teachers are so likely to be attacked along that route that international workers with video cameras post themselves by the stairwell and street outside the school just in case an attack occurs.
Luna’s group and others, including Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom, Yesh Din and the International Solidarity Movement, are so concerned they sent a letter Wednesday to the Defense Ministry, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra and police Insp.-Gen. Moshe Karadi, asking that the security forces operating in Hebron be forced to take action.
While there have been helpful security officers, often times the soldiers or police in the area do nothing to control the settlers, said Luna. She showed a number of video clips during the press conference to prove her point.
In one, taken last August on what appears to be a Saturday, small Jewish children could be seen picking up rocks and tossing them at Palestinians and international workers.
One rock barely missed a Palestinian boy who stuck his head out of a doorway. A police van drove up to the settler children, who continued to pick up stones and throw them, and one was also thrown at the van. Off to the side, two policemen were seen recording the event and there were also soldiers on the street, but neither appeared to try to stop the stone-throwers.
In a second video, a male settler wrapped in a prayer shawl was seen shoving an elderly international volunteer to the ground.
On Wednesday, the World Council of Churches in Geneva sent a letter to Ambassador to Switzerland Aviv Shiron protesting settler violence against Christian volunteers.
In his letter, Peter Weiderud, director of the WCC Commission on International Affairs, asked the security forces to stop “abusive, unlawful and violent behavior by settlers toward Palestinians.”
He said that the root of the problem is Israel’s “practice of establishing, protecting and expanding settlements.” He called on Israel to withdraw from all settlements, including Hebron.
Neither the army nor the police responded to queries regarding Hebron. Soldiers on its streets had mixed reactions. Some said they knew nothing of such incidents, and blamed the international volunteers for inflaming an already tense situation between the approximately 500 Jews and 130,000 Palestinians who live in the city.
Others said they knew of incidents in which settlers attacked Palestinians.
The soldiers said that at times they could find themselves protecting settlers against Palestinians, and then saving settlers from Palestinians during the same day.
Ruth Kedar, who created Yesh Din a year ago to help Palestinians sue the settlers for violent attacks, said her organization had 140 cases pending against settlers in all of Judea and Samaria.
Still, a few of Hebron’s Jewish residents said they were startled to hear that the Palestinians and the international workers feared them, since they view themselves as the ones under attack.
Several Jews and soldiers have been killed in Hebron in the last five years. A spokeswoman for the Hebron community, Orit Strock, said that incidents of Palestinians acting against settlers occur every day.
“They have thrown stones at me and they have thrown stones at my children,” she said. “It happens all the time.” There are also attacks against property and bombs thrown at cars, she added.
Another Hebron spokesman, David Wilder, said that given the tensions in the city, he believed that there had also been attacks by settlers against Palestinians.
“I’m not saying that nothing happens,” he said. But he added that neither he nor his children regularly attack Palestinians. Parents are not saying to their children go attack this Palestinian or that Palestinian, he said.
On Saturday in particular, he said, “I have only three things on my mind: praying, eating and sleeping.” He had a suggestion for the international workers who feared for their lives: “The best way to prevent violence is for them to leave,” he said, because their presence in the city only inflamed already existing tensions.
Strock said that international volunteers come to Hebron with an agenda. “They want to get the Jews out of Hebron. That is their objective. Some hide it and others do not.”
Wilder wondered why the same groups hadn’t been equally concerned when the international observer group, Temporary International Presence in Hebron, was forced to leave in February after it was attacked by Palestinians angered by the publication by a Danish newspapers of cartoons against the Prophet Muhammad.
TIPH spokeswoman Eli Smette, whose organization monitors Israeli and Palestinian activity based on an agreement with both governments, said that her organization has observed violence by both parties. The number of settler incidents against Palestinians seemed to be higher, she said. But she qualified her statement by noting that while the Palestinians contact her organization when an incident occurs, the settlers call the police or the army instead. This makes it more difficult to assess the exact number of Palestinian attacks against settlers, said Smette, whose organization has only recently returned to the city.
But Luna said it had been her experience in the last six months that the violence has been on the part of the settlers. She recalled how only last Saturday she and another volunteer raced to the Abu Ishi family grocery store, when they saw a group of 30 settlers try to attack three Palestinians teens.
She said her arm was bruised by a settler, who also pushed her against the door.
“The only reason I am not in the hospital or possibly worse is because this one soldier intervened,” said Luna. She recalled how one settler shook her as she stood between him and a Palestinian. “Then a soldier came and stood in front of me,” she said.
Radi Abu Ishi, 16, was calm several days later as he described that brief five to seven minutes of scuffling that occurred around 2 p.m..
“I was slapped twice and kicked twice,” said Radi. From the back of the store he dragged out a large, almost body-length metal rail with a sharpened edge that he said settlers used against them during the attack. He held it up to show how it was thrown only a short distance and to demonstrate where it landed near a carton of flour, without injuring anyone.
He dismissed the attack as a normal part of living within a short distance of Jewish families at the top of the hill. But Luna and other international volunteers said this situation was anything but normal. More to the point, they said they believed it was increasingly becoming more dangerous.
They bristled at accusations that their presence in Hebron inflames the situation.
Holding a video camera as he stood against the closed shutters of a shop on the deserted Shuhada Street, as he waited for children to come out of school,Tom Hayes, a volunteer from Britain, said he and others were there because the Palestinians believe their presence improves security.
“If they didn’t want us here, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
When they stand in the street, they try to be as unobtrusive as possible, said Luna. “We don’t want to provoke anyone,” she said. “A good day is a boring day.”
GENEVA – The World Council of Churches denounced on Wednesday two attacks on Christian volunteers in Hebron, and called on Israeli authorities to punish the Jewish settlers responsible.
In both cases, the attacks occurred as the volunteers were helping Palestinian children on their way to school, said the Geneva-based WCC, the world’s biggest grouping of Christian churches.
Israeli authorities should stop the “abusive, unlawful and violent behavior by settlers toward Palestinians and internationals,” Peter Weiderud, the WCC’s director for international affairs, wrote in a formal protest to the Israeli ambassador to Switzerland.
The council groups nearly 350 mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches representing more than 500 million followers. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member.
Israel’s embassy in the Swiss capital, Bern, acknowledged receipt of the protest, but was not immediately able to comment.
Wiederud’s letter expressed “alarm and concern” with the attacks, and said they were part of the larger problem of “settler and other occupation-related attacks against Palestinians in Hebron, in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.”
The WCC said a Swiss lawyer was “stoned” by a young settler in Hebron’s Tel Rumeida area April 1, suffering a head wound requiring seven stitches. A German social worker and a Norwegian sociologist were attacked in the same neighborhood April 20 by 15 young settlers, but neither suffered serious injuries, the WCC said.
The three volunteers were escorting Palestinians attending the Cordoba Girls School, which is situated opposite the Beit Hadassah settlement. “Its pupils and teachers are frequent targets of stone-throwing, kicking and spitting by the settlers,” the WCC said.
