Tag: Hebron

Tel Rumeida – Stones & Struggle

By Joe Carr

The Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron is a major flashpoint of tension between Palestinians and Israeli colonial settlers. Around forty Israeli soldiers protect over sixty of the most racist and violent of Israeli settlers, forcing over one thousand Palestinians (whose families have lived in Tel Rumeida for hundreds of years) to live in a virtual prison. Fences, walls, and checkpoints block every entrance to Tel Rumeida, and there are Israeli soldier posts throughout the neighborhood. The closures make commerce virtually impossible, and it is difficult for any non-residents to visit their Tel Rumeida friends and family. Many families have moved out for this reason alone.

Even more troublesome than the constant prison-camp conditions are the fanatical settlers who regularly harass and attack their Palestinian neighbors. Palestinians live in a constant state of terror from being beaten, stoned, robbed, and threatened with guns but they refuse to be forced out of their homes or let it interfere with their daily life.

Several international activists from the Tel Rumeida Project live fulltime in Tel Rumeida. They work with volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, Ecumenical Accompaniment Program for Palestine & Israel, the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and a variety of Israeli groups to accompany, document, and physically intervene to deter Israeli attacks and pressure authorities to better protect Palestinians and prosecute criminal settlers. Israeli soldiers and settlers regularly harass, threaten, intimidate, and stone the international and Israeli activists, but Palestinian children say they now feel safer playing outside their homes.

Even more encouraging, is the potential for a progressive change in the climate. Unlike other accompaniment groups, the goal of the Tel Rumeida Project is to support and empower Palestinians as they stand up against this colonial oppression.

For instance, last Saturday we got a call that settler children were throwing rocks at Palestinian passers-by. When we arrived, we found five 9-13 year-old settler boys hanging out in the Israeli military post. Palestinians immediately came out of their houses to tell us how the settler boys had just stoned them while the soldiers watched. The settler boys started throwing more rocks, some from inside the military post, and we began arguing with the soldiers that they should protect the Palestinians (supposedly a part of their job). The soldiers argued with eachother about what to do while we supported the Palestinians, including a mother and daughter, as they confronted the settler boys. Palestinians yelled at the settlers and soldiers for putting them through all this, and the Israelis were visibly intimidated. More settler children came out and began throwing stones, so we stood in front of the Palestinians. I got hit pretty hard in the leg, but the soldiers started trying to stop the settler boys, which made the soldiers a target for their stones. The situation escalated, but our presence supported the Palestinians’ expression of their outrage and prevented Israeli soldiers from repressing this Palestinian resistance.

Cordova School is a Palestinian girls’ school located directly across from Israeli settlement apartments and a settler school. Settler children often harass Palestinian students and teachers as they pass by. Yesterday was the first day of school for Palestinians, so we brought a team of internationals and media to accompany the children. Two Israeli military jeeps and a police jeep arrived shortly after us. All in all, there were 25 internationals, 12 soldiers, and four police officers to get around 100 Palestinian girls to school.

There were fewer internationals and soldiers for the girls’ afternoon walk home, and the settlers escalated their attacks. They threw stones and eggs from their apartment windows, while others hollered insults and threatened us. The Israeli police (who’s job it is to arrest settler law-breakers) also became a target of the settler violence, but they did nothing to stop it. We continued patrolling the area for the rest of the day, trying to have a presence in all the areas where settlers and Palestinians interact. “We’re like human security cameras,” one activist commented, “we never let the settlers out of our sight until we know another international can see them”.

A little before 2pm, several internationals had to leave and we went out to meet their replacements. On our way back in, we got stopped at the recently upgraded Tel Rumeida checkpoint. What used to be a green tower with concrete blockades is now a fortified trailer with metal detectors and electronic sliding doors. They’ve even tried to make it prettier by painting it to look like the white stone of the surrounding ancient buildings. An Israeli soldier at the checkpoint said that they would no longer allow in any internationals that are part of organizations, “Only tourists and residents” he said. We tried to explain that we are residents and have a house in Tel Rumeida, but because he had seen us doing accompaniment and documentation work he refused us entry. To go around the checkpoint, we had to wind through back allies, scale a wall, and crawl under grapevines.

During this time, a group of settlers took advantage of our absence and attacked several Palestinians. We found a 13-year-old Palestinian boy with cuts and bruises on his arms and stomach. He said a group of around 20 settlers in their late teens had surrounded him and beat him with sticks for around ten minutes. Other settler youths threw large stones a group of Palestinians, injuring an older Palestinian woman’s leg. We accompanied the Palestinians to file reports with the police, and then became more diligent with our patrols.

Things came to a head around 5pm, when a large group of settler children, some in masks, (observed from the hill by their parents and other settler adults), began throwing large stones and other debris at Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli soldiers in the area. One international was injured on her hand when she blocked a sharp rock from hitting her head. When the police arrived, the settlers briefly dispersed but then quickly regrouped. They began intensely stoning the police, who did nothing but videotape and stay in the protection of their armored jeeps. More police arrived and drove into the settlement area, and eventually an officer grabbed a settler boy. A small riot ensued, and settlers attacked the police officers.

Later in the evening, Palestinians reported that settler boys intensely stoned two Palestinian homes. Saturday, the Jewish holy day Shabbat, is a busy day for settler religious fanatics.

All in all, we hope that the settlers now know that their days of terrorizing Palestinians with impunity are over. Though the Israeli violence continues, Palestinians are now armed with international and Israeli activists, cameras, video-cameras, potential lawsuits, and contacts with the international community. I feel privileged to be able to stand with Palestinians in their struggle, it’s an honor to be stoned along side them.

Read Joe’s blog, Lovinrevolution.

Settlers and Shepherds

by Greta B

Saturday, September 3, the day after the demonstration in Bil’in, two of us boarded a bus bound for Hebron, a town of 130,000 Palestinians, 600 lunatic settlers, and thousands of soldiers and police to ‘guard’ the settlers. Arriving at noon on Saturday, the day most settlers run rampant over everyone, we were told to immediately go to the top of the hill that separates settlers from Palestinians.

Within a half hour, several settler boys between 10-17 came strutting down the road toward the small Palestinian children playing in front of us. The children left immediately, and we turned on our cameras as they advanced toward us. The older boys egged the younger ones to pick up stones and throw them at us two women who were sitting on a stoop. Stones came flying through the air, hitting me in the hand and thigh. Two soldiers who had been standing there watching finally called the police.

I screamed at the boys and started up the hill after them, only to be pulled back by the soldier who said, “I’m sorry, but they get very upset when they see a camera. You need to put it away.”

“Put it away? Not on your life. You think I’m going to let those damned thugs get away with throwing stones at two women who were sitting there doing nothing?”

“I know, I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. They’re under 12 years old.”

“Then take their parents in. Collectively punish them the way you do the Palestinians. Fine the crazy bastards.”

You get the idea of the conversation.

We had taken plenty of video and could clearly see which boy had hit me. The soldiers suggested we take it to the police station the next day, and, if we left, they would stop them right away. Well, these nasty kids began a full-on riot, throwing stones at the police and army, throwing pipes off the top of their settler apartment at homes beneath them, screaming obscenities, throwing garbage and flashing mirrors in the faces of the soldiers. Little settler girls started to come down and throw stones.

It was so disgusting, I finally left. The rioting went off and on for hours, into the night, where they threw boulders onto the homes of the Palestinians.

One Palestinian man called us and asked us to come to his home. The settlers had come in the week before, and they had cut through every single grape vine that he had, vines that were over 100 years old, thick as my thigh. When he called the army, they had come in and said, “Go back in your house or we’ll kill you.” He had no choice, and every single vine has been cut in half. He took us out and pointed at one.

“That one has a shoot growing already. They’ll come back someday.” My God, what could any of us say in the face of that optimism and courage?

I spent all day Sunday and Monday at the police station making out a report and giving them video tape of the attack. One policeman said, “I really sympathize, but there’s nothing we can do. They’re under 12.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from punishing Palestinian families when their kids throw stones… and you have 600 Palestinian children between 13-14 years old in jail.”

After an hour of increasingly hostile conversation, he finally admitted that the last time he had tried to stop them, they had slit all 4 of his tires. Another policeman said that they had broken his windshield.

Nothing will happen. Nothing will be done. These teenagers will grow up to be the worst kind of thugs, and even the police admit that. 600 of them have made life miserable for the Palestinians; they have closed the stores, thrown excrement and stones on the tops of homes, cut the trees, chain sawed the grape vines.

Yesterday, I went to Qawawis, a small village of 40-45 shepherds. We had gone for the day to protect them from the settlers, who have beaten them and killed their sheep. Several settlers had beaten a man who had already been badly beaten last year and had gone to Iraq for surgery. He refused to make a complaint, more afraid of settlers and knowing that, even with 3 internationals, 2 UN observers who check in once in a while, and an Israeli from Tayyush, they will find him and kill him.

I am tired, I am hot, I am dusty, I finally had a shower after three days. I am burned, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing here and if we make one bit of difference. Israel is committing silent genocide on a people who have been ignored and villanized for 57 years. The children look at us with big eyes and ask us why the world doesn’t see what is happening.

What do I tell them? That the police and army refuse to see what they’re doing? The policeman yesterday, a Sephardic Jew, admitted to me that he knew he was a second class citizen in a racist society. “But at least I’m a Jew.” he said. God help us all.

School, stones and settlers

by Greta B

It was the children’s second day of school in the old city of Hebron. We had been asked to accompany them to prevent settler children from stoning small boys and girls.

Settlers had gone on a rampage yesterday, stoning us, the police and even the soldiers as they came down their ‘settler hill’. The police did nothing except look at these thugs throwing stones at us. When we asked where the teargas, sound bombs and rubber bullets were, they just shrugged.

Ten minutes after we arrived at the bottom of the hill to escort the children, the military showed up. “This is a closed military zone.” They informed us. “We want you to leave.” As we stood there and argued with them, they took out a piece of paper and pointed at it, telling us that the paper said it was a closed military zone.

Since there was no writing on it and no signature, one of the activists told the soldiers we were going nowhere unless the paperwork was filled out and signed. Off he went, then returned ten minutes later with an apparent filled-out form.

By this time, most of the girls had been escorted safely to school and most of the little boys had been able to get through the checkpoint, just one of the eight that rings the area.

One of the soldiers and some of the police told us, CPT and the Interdenominational tear that we were interferring with their jobs, and they could escort the children just fine. But they don’t and they won’t.

So we will be at the bottom of the hill tomorrow morning.

Qawawis and the mustawtaneen

Qawawis is a small village with big problems. After an Israeli court ruled that villagers had the right to live on their land, settlers have harassed them with humiliation and violence. ISM and other organizations have kept a constant presence in the village.

Here’s an account from one of the volunteers who recently stayed in Qawawis. — via thismuchicansayistrue, an ISM media coordinator’s blog.

Palestinians Struggle to Hold on to Land, Watering Holes

by Henry Norr
Berkeley Daily Planet

Life in the tiny Palestinian hamlet of Qawawis seems straight out of the Old Testament, but that doesn’t stop the Jewish settlers in the hilltop outposts that surround the place from doing their best to destroy it. And if something isn’t done soon about the settlers’ latest threat—denying Qawawis’s shepherds access to watering holes their flocks depend on—the villagers might have no choice but to abandon their ancestral homes and lands.

Qawawis, located near the southern tip of the occupied West Bank, south of the city of Hebron, is home to just four extended families and a few hundred sheep and goats. Only one of the families has a house; the others live in caves carved—originally by nature, later by human hand—out of the region’s limestone hills.

Like their neighbors in nearby At-Twani and dozens of other villages throughout the south Hebron hills, the residents of Qawawis have faced harassment from the settlers since the 1980s. (See “Means of Expulsion: Violence, Harassment and Lawlessness against Palestinians in the Southern Hebron Hills,” a report released in July 2005 by the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem, and the reports of the Christian Peacemaker Team on the poisoning of wells, the beating of schoolchildren and international monitors, and other forms of settler harassment in At-Twani.

For a while things in Qawawis got so bad that the villagers had to move out altogether. When they left, settlers promptly moved into their caves, until the Israeli military decided to clear everyone out (for “security reasons”) and brought in bulldozers to seal the caves with rubble.

But in March of this year, after winning an order from Israel’s High Court confirming their right to their land, the villagers came back to Qawawis, cleaned up the mess left by the settlers and the army, and reclaimed their homes. In hopes of deterring settler retaliation, the villagers requested help from progressive Israelis and internationals, and ever since the International Solidarity Movement has provided a steady stream of volunteers to stay in the village and accompany the shepherds to their fields.

Neither the court order nor the international presence has stopped the harassment, though. At first the settlers showed up almost daily, often wearing masks, shouting insults and threats, waving guns and throwing rocks, sometimes attempting to enter the villagers’ caves, and beating locals and internationals alike. (See the account posted on April 1, 2005 by Kasper Lundberg, an ISM volunteer from Denmark, at electronicintifada.net/v2/article3735.shtml.)

While I was in Qawawis in late July, the settlers came up with a new trick: two of them showed up on horseback, galloping through the village’s olive groves and right past the caves. They didn’t stay long and caused no particular problem, but under the circumstances, their very appearance on village land was an act of intimidation. As I followed them, trying to snap their pictures, I could only imagine what would happen to a Palestinian who had the temerity to approach the settlers’ outposts.

What really has Qawawis’s residents worried at the moment, however, is the threat to its always precarious water supply. In July, after a suicide bombing in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, the settlers informed the villagers that they are no longer permitted to graze their sheep and goats within 150 meters of a road that leads to one of the outposts.

That order, which appears to have no legal basis—not even one of the military orders that provide pseudo-legitimacy for most of the occupation’s abuses—denies Qawawis a significant portion of its land. But the immediate problem is that the prohibited strip includes two watering holes to which the village’s herders have taken their sheep and goats since time immemorial. To keep the animals alive in the area’s stifling summer heat, the villagers have had to share the water from their own wells in the village. But the capacity of those wells is limited, and the villagers say it’s insufficient to supply both them and their animals (not to mention the internationals) for long.

Time standing still
At a glance, you might wonder why the settlers bother with Qawawis. The population usually totals only about 20, though it sometimes rises to 50 or 60, depending on how many offspring and relatives are at home at a given moment, as opposed to staying in the nearby town of Al-Karmel (a 40-minute walk), sleeping in the hills with their flocks, or—as in the case of one young man I met—studying electrical engineering at the university in Hebron. If you drive by on the highway that runs near the place, all you see are the solitary house (three bare rooms, no plumbing or kitchen) and the stone walls that surround the cave entrances and pens for the sheep and goats.

There’s no running water, just a couple of wells. Electricity arrived only this summer, in the form of a generator provided by Ta’ayush, a progressive Israeli organization with both Jewish and Arab members; the generator runs for just an hour and a half or two every evening. Each cave, as well as the outdoor platforms the families sometimes eat on and the canvas-roofed shelter the villagers recently built for visiting internationals, now has a bare light bulb and an outlet, but so far they have had no visible effect on the residents’ lifestyle: there’s no radio, TV, or any other appliance except a video camera left by a visiting international, which remains something of a mystery to the locals.

Daily life revolves around the sheep and goats, as it has in this area for millennia. At sun-up, men from each family take their flocks—about 30 or 40 animals each—out to graze on the rocky fields that surround the village, or sometimes to the adjoining olive groves. The women, meanwhile, prepare the food and tend to the homes, crops, and kids. (Except for constant infusions of tea and sugar, all the food I was served during my three-day stay was homegrown, including delicious flat bread baked in tabuun, or traditional outdoor ovens.)

By around 10 a.m., at least in the summer, the heat begins to get overwhelming, and the shepherds bring the flocks back to their stone-walled pens in the village. Then everyone seems to disappear for a rest and the midday meal. At 3:30 or 4 p.m, it’s off to graze again until dusk. By 9:30, when the generator cuts out, most everyone seems to have retired, until the routine begins again the next morning.

All in all, it’s a simple, peaceful life—or it would be if not for the settlers and the warplanes constantly audible and occasionally visible overhead. (There’s apparently an Israeli air force training base nearby—perhaps they’re practicing for a raid on Iran’s nuclear sites?)

The planes, though, are easy to ignore. The settlers are not. The shepherds continually look over their shoulders to see who might be sneaking up on them; the boys study each car that passes on the settler road.

Running dry
So far, the villagers have complied with the settlers’ demand that they stay away from the road and the watering holes near it—though they seem to value the presence of the international volunteers, they obviously don’t believe that we’re capable of protecting them from the consequences of defying the order.

The villagers have, however, tried to interest international humanitarian organizations in the threat they face. While I was there, a jeep from the International Committee of the Red Cross pulled up to the village, carrying an investigator, a translator, and a three-person film crew.

At the time the family that owns the house was away (they were in town with relatives visiting from Saudi Arabia), but one of the other elders had a key, and the house was quickly opened, and a half-dozen of the men, plus the two internationals, assembled there to meet with the ICRC team.

In addition to describing past incidents of harassment, the villagers explained the impending water crisis. The ICRC investigator tried hard to get the villagers to give him exact figures for Qawawis’s population as well as for the capacity in cubic meters of each of the “water systems” in question. The men were unable to respond with the precision he wanted, but after much consultation among them, they arrived at the key conclusion: if the sheep and goats as well as the human residents have to use the village wells, they’ll likely run dry in as few as thirty days, or sometime around the end of August.

The ICRC investigator promised to file an urgent report with the Israeli authorities. Whether that will do any good remains to be seen. But unless someone intervenes, the residents of Qawawis may again be forced to leave, and the settlers will have succeeded in cleansing another small piece of Palestine of its legitimate owners.

Update:
After this article was written, activists from the Israeli grassroots organization Ta’ayush brought a water tanker truck to Qawawis. With the activists standing by to deter settler interference, the truck pumped a tankful of water out of one of the prohibited watering holes, then into one of the wells the residents still have access to.

This emergency response has apparently eliminated the immediate threat to the survival of Qawawis, but it’s obviously not a long-term solution. That, of course, would begin with the removal of all Israeli settlements from the occupied Palestinian territories, as required by the Fourth Geneva Convention, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, and dozens of subsequent U.N. resolutions.