Tag: South Hebron Hills

Israeli army forces children and teachers to walk an hour from school after confiscating truck

Christian Peacemaker Teams

20 December 2009

Masafer Yatta/South Hebron Hills – On Sunday, December 20, the Israeli army disrupted transportation of children and teachers from Al-Fakheit school to their homes. The Palestinian driver, accompanied by one CPTer, was on his way to pick up children and teachers after school when, at about 1pm, soldiers in a Humvee followed and stopped the pickup truck used as a school bus. The soldiers confiscated the driver’s ID, searched the truck and personal belongings in it, and ordered that the driver follow them to a field south of Jinba.

Because the soldiers refused to allow the truck to take the children to Jinba, teachers and students had to walk an hour through the hills to get there. The headmaster reported later that two children became ill from the heat and required medical attention.

The Palestinian driver and CPTer spent over an hour in the field with the soldiers, who demanded the truck’s registration and ignition key, examined the engine for serial numbers, took photos of the truck and made various phone calls. According to the soldiers, the truck’s registration was invalid and they were calling the police to confiscate the truck. “In Israel we have rules,” one soldier told the CPTer.

More soldiers arrived, along with gear and a small water tank, but no police. At 2:45 the soldiers finally returned the driver’s ID, allowing him and the CPTer to leave by foot.

Al-Fakheit school opened this year to accommodate students living in Maghayir Al-Abeed, Markaz, Halawe, Fakheit, Majaaz, and Jinba. Previously, children from these villages attended school in Yatta, which required them to live in the city Sunday through Thursday. Now the teachers at Al-Fakheit school travel from Yatta each day and pick up schoolchildren along the route.

Children and teachers face ongoing obstacles when traveling to school. The Israeli military heavily patrols the road and surrounding area, randomly preventing Palestinians from accessing their education and work. Teachers and school children traveling to Al-Fakheit are sometimes stopped and searched by the Israeli military. In August 2009 the Israeli military attempted to dismantle the road with heavy machinery, worsening the road’s already poor condition after years of Israeli authorities prohibiting Palestinians from making repairs or improvements.

As a result of these tactics, it takes Palestinians extended amounts of time to reach their destination, and they are often late for school or work. In addition, the Israeli military is threatening to permanently close the road, which would completely deny Palestinians’ access to education, work and their lands. The army’s presence and interference with residents’ movements in this area undermines the basic human rights of Palestinians by hindering their ability to live in their villages and cultivate their lands.

Visit the CPT image gallery for or pictures of the Al-Fakheit school and picures of the army dismantling the road:
For background information about the communities of Masafer Yatta see and download the B’Tselem report.

Palestinians in Bir el-Eid win the right to use local road

Art (Jaber) Gish

13 December 2009

It seems that a major victory has been won regarding Palestinians using their road to get to and from town. Israeli settlers have demanded that only Jews be allowed to use the Palestinian road. For the most part, Israeli soldiers have been following setter orders, not the orders of their superiors or the Israeli courts.

The Israeli courts and the Israeli military have agreed that the Palestinians may use Palestinian roads. Another factor is that the fields the villagers have have been using have now been planted, so it is less tempting for the villagers to go through the fields to avoid conflicts with soldiers and settlers.

This is a major victory for the villagers, due to persistence on the part of the Palestinians, support from Israeli activists, and the presence of internationals in the village In addition to all this, the Palestinians have Israeli law, justice, and just plain common decency on their side.

This does not mean the struggle is over. Settlers are continuing to stop Palestinians on the road, but when confronted by even Israeli activists, they are backing down.

We received some good rain for which everyone is grateful. The hills are beginning to turn green, shepherds are grazing their flocks on the hillsides, and soon all the fields will turn green as the wheat, barley, and lentils come up. The planting is mostly finished. I spent two days accompanying the plowing. One settler watched us from above us, but there were no problems.

The people here probably think I am weird. One of the things I do is play with the little children here every chance I get. Old men here don’t play with children. I also help the women carry water. They protest, but their protests are weak. They carry five gallon buckets of water on their heads. The women have even allowed me to wash my clothes.

A major article on Bir el-Eid by Amira Hass appeared in Ha’aretz, Friday, December 11.

Twenty Israelis were arrested on December 11 for protesting the settlers stealing a Palestinian house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. The police support the thieves.

Sandy Tolen, the author of The Lemon Tree, came for a visit, and also David Shulman, author of Dark Hope.

I am having fun, basking in the sun with the sheep.

No freeze on Palestinian suffering

Seth Freedman | The Guardian

14 December 2009

Within minutes of our arrival in Tuwani, in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank, an army Jeep rolled into the village and shattered the mid-morning tranquillity. “We’re turning this place into a closed military zone,” announced the stern-faced commander to anyone within earshot. Brandishing his rifle in one hand and a military document in the other, he proceeded to explain that “I decide who can be here and who can’t, and anyone who isn’t a resident has to leave immediately”.

That meant us – me, my friend and our three guides from the Villages Group – as well as the other activists who maintain a permanent presence in Tuwani assisting the locals in their struggle to survive. The timing of the closure was no accident: earlier in the morning NGO workers and locals had taken part in a solidarity march to highlight the hardships suffered by the village children who run the gauntlet of the neighbouring settlement every time they walk to and from their school.

Anything the activists could do the soldiers could do better, it seemed. “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] don’t like us coming to support the residents of Tuwani,” said one volunteer, “so they make it their mission to make everyone’s lives uncomfortable as a result.”

The shutdown of the village and the surrounding farmland was only the latest in a long line of attempts by the Israeli authorities to break the will of the Palestinians living in the area. As we drove out of Tuwani, we were shown the stump of an electricity pylon sawn down by the army after attempts by villagers to connect themselves to the national grid. Elsewhere, dirt mounds and locked gates stopped locals driving to the nearby city of Ya’ta, thus preventing them taking their produce to sell at market, and severely impairing their economic prospects.

Thanks to the army’s exclusion orders, we were forced to walk a treacherous and convoluted route through the rocky scrubland to visit communities living in even deeper seclusion beyond Tuwani. In Tu’ba, the cave-dwelling residents of the village are under no illusion about what the future holds for them, despite all the hype surrounding the much-vaunted settlement freeze.

“The freeze will have no effect round here,” the father of the household told us bitterly. Our guide expanded on the theme, telling us that the “real freeze is on Palestinian construction: 95% of Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the civil administration, and for communities in this area they are not allowed to build above ground whatsoever”.

Those people living in caves are, it seems, tolerated by the authorities while they remain underground, but as soon as they put their heads above the surface and attempt to build rudimentary shacks and outhouses, demolition orders are served and the army are quick to enforce the letter of the law with gusto.

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring settlements of Carmel and Ma’on, building work was going on in earnest, and defiant banners on bus stops and fence posts declared the settlers’ intention to “smash the freeze”, and denounced the incumbent government as traitors to the Zionist cause. While government inspectors have been attacked during their attempts to bring settlement construction to a halt, the full force of the settlers’ wrath has – as ever – been meted out against the Palestinians.

The sickening desecration of a mosque on Friday in the village of Yasuf, near Nablus, appears to be the opening salvo in the settlers’ latest battle to force the government to back down over the building freeze, and those we met in the south Hebron hills were wary of similar reprisal attacks being carried out against their communities. “Our children are still attacked on a regular basis,” one local told us, “as well as our shepherds and farmers. Even if we call the police, we know justice will never be done, and the situation is only getting worse now that the settlers are furious about Netanyahu’s decision.”

Ehud Krinis, one of the Villages Group activists, believes that the freeze is “just an act” on the part of the government; having worked in the area for almost eight years and seen the settlers’ above-the-law behaviour first hand, he maintains “there is no effective force that can stop the settlers building more. In fact, as we can see in Susiya and elsewhere, the settlers simply see the freeze as a challenge to construct [at an even faster rate], which is what will happen over the next 10 months.”

As we sat with the head of the Bedouin clan living in Um al-Kheir – a collection of tumble-down tents and shacks literally touching the perimeter fence of the Carmel settlement – the mood of resignation engulfing the encampment’s residents was suffocating. We were shown aerial photos of Um al-Kheir’s gradual demise over the past 30 years, a situation attributable to the encroachment of the settlers and the military on to their ancestral land. It was clear that for those forced to endure the humiliation and hardship on a daily basis, the politicians’ upbeat talk was at best cheap, and at worst a flagrant denial of the facts.

For those Palestinians living under military rule, coupled with indiscriminate and incessant settler attacks against them, their children and their flocks, there is no end in sight to the suffering. While the world might have been convinced that the worm is about to turn in the Israeli political arena, a quick glance at the fevered construction still taking place in the settlements, the oppressive military activity against the Palestinian villagers and the overarching penury in which the Palestinians are forced to subsist should give onlookers food for thought about the true situation on the ground.

Freeze or no freeze, the future looks no brighter for the Palestinian locals today than it has during any of the bitter years and decades gone by.

Palestinians moving back to Bir el-Eid, a village from which they were expelled in 1999

22 November 2009

After spending a week in the modern city of Jerusalem, camping out on the street with a Palestinian family that the Israeli government had evicted from their home so that Israeli settlers could move into their house, I now have been down in the South Hebron Hills for two weeks near At-Tuwani where I spent the past five winters. I know most of the people in the area.

I am now living in Bir el-Eid, an ancient village which the Israeli military forced the Palestinian residents to abandon in 1999. Through the work of Israeli peace groups, especially Rabbis for Human Rights, Israeli courts have ordered that the Palestinian residents may return to the village. Around November 1, families began to return.

The problem is, the nearby Israeli settlers are furious about the Palestinians returning to the village. The settlers are insisting that no Palestinians use the Palestinian road to the village, so access in and out is difficult. The settlers claim the Palestinian road is for Jews only. The Israeli military is taking orders from the settlers and making life difficult for the villagers. Lawyers for the Palestinians are fighting this in the Israeli courts.

One exciting part of this struggle is Israeli peace activists coming to the village every day to bring needed supplies, plus legal and moral support. There also is now a continual international presence in the village to protect the villagers from both settlers and the military. It looks like this could be a long struggle. I plan to live in the village for the rest of my time here.

The village is comprised of eleven caves which have been dwellings for centuries, most of which the Israeli military demolished in 1999. Now there is much work to do after ten years of neglect and destruction. The people here are shepherds. I have been going out in the mountains with them.

Although the differences between the primitive lifestyle (no electricity, running water, houses, etc, except for cell phones) of the people in the village and life in Jerusalem are great, the issues are the same. In both places, the Israeli government wants to remove Palestinians and Palestinians are resisting nonviolently. Bier Ed in English means “Wellspring.” There is a wellspring of hope here in the middle of so much fear and hate. It is a fantastic privilege to be part of this struggle.