On Thursday, December 4, the Israeli police, supported by the Israeli military, carried out the largest evacuation of illegal settlers in Hebron city in recent times. Up to 250 settlers, most bussed in from outside, had reinforced a building in central Hebron which had been taken over 2 years ago, but which the Israeli High Court had ordered evacuated weeks ago. They were dragged out of the so-called “House of Contention”, with approximately 20 arrested.
Settlers then rioted throughout Hebron, attacking Palestinians, setting Palestinian homes, shops and cars on fire, and in one incident caught on tape through the Btselem camera distribution project, shot 40 year-old Hosni … Continue reading

Chrisitian Peacemaker Teams, At-Tuwani:

On Wednesday July 30, settlers attacked fourteen Palestinian children between the ages six to twelve on their way from summer camp to their homes in the villages of Tuba and Magher Al-abeed. Five settlers hid themselves along the route of the children and waited for them. When the children approached the settlers began yelling, swearing, and throwing rocks at them. One settler jumped over the settlement fence and chased the children on a path leading to the village of Tuba. The Israeli soldiers assigned to protect the children (Jeep 611019) abandoned the children approximately 500 meters earlier, thereby failing to complete the escort of the children as ordered by the Israeli Knesset.

According … Continue reading

For three of the past four nights soldiers have entered Beit Ommar en masse, entering many homes and shooting live ammunition. It began at 2 am Thursday morning when five jeeps entered the village and fired volleys of live ammunition into the air. Over bullhorns, they declared a curfew, forbidding anyone from leaving their homes. They then spent over an hour driving through the village, seemingly just taunting the residents. No arrests were made and there was not even the premise of looking for “wanted” individuals; soldiers did not enter any homes but seemed content to impose their control over the village arbitrarily. The next evening was even more intrusive.

Beginning at approximately 10 pm Thursday … Continue reading

The Israeli Military has used Administrative detention in the past 10 years as a tool to dispel political dissent and break up Palestinian resistance, both armed and non-violent. It is also used as a way to disrupt the fabric of Palestinian communities. According to B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, between 1999 and 2001 the average number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons under administrative detention, that is, without charge or trial, was less than 20. This number significantly rose during the second intifada and was over 500 by 2003. Yet the use of administrative detention, which is ostensibly used to imprison immediate threats to Israeli security, has increased since the end of the second intifada, … Continue reading

From Christian Peacemaker Teams-Tuwani

On 24 June 2008, around 6:30, two Israeli settlers beat two unarmed Palestinian shepherds from Mantiquat Shi’bal Butum. The settlers came down from the nearby Israeli settlement outpost of Mitzpe Yair to an area where the shepherds, aged fifty-five and twenty, routinely graze their sheep. Armed with stones from the hillside, the settlers injured the ribs of the older shepherd and the eye of the younger. A Palestinian in the area called the Israeli police and ambulance, both of which arrived fifteen minutes after the beating.

The police spoke with the two settlers identified by the Palestinians as the attackers. They took the settlers’ ID numbers and issued … Continue reading

From the Christian Peacemaker Teams-Tuwani

At 11am on 5 June, 2008, the Israeli military again blocked the road between At-Tuwani and Yatta. A bulldozer massed a six-foot-high mound spanning the width of the road using concrete slabs, boulders and earth. Several villages in the South Hebron Hills are again cut off from basic supplies such as water, firewood and animal feed, as this road provides the primary vehicle access to Yatta, which serves as the region’s economic hub, with critical services such as hospitals and secondary schools.

The new roadblock greatly expands a pile of roadblock placed by the Israeli army on 28 May. It is the largest in a series of … Continue reading

At approximately 1am today, June 5, Israeli soldiers, with their faces painted in camouflage (to blend in with the gray concrete and tan stone walls of Palestinian homes?) invaded the home of Mohammed Fuwad Al-Qoom near the central mosque in Beit Ommar, Hebron District. The family was forced from the home and the soldiers remained all night. At approximately 8am, 7 hours after soldiers first entered the village, an Israeli soldier shot Tariq Abu Maria, 15, in the abdomen on his way to the school. He was taken to the hospital in Hebron, where he underwent surgery and is still in critical condition. By 9:30am 4 large Armored Personnel … Continue reading

From Christian Peacemaker Teams
Palestinians from the South Hebron Hills gathered today in the village of Qawawis to begin rebuilding homes destroyed by the Israeli military on March 19.
Villagers from At-Tuwani, international human rights workers and the families of Qawawis worked throughout the morning to clear rubble, which blocked the entrance to a cave home in the village. Israeli soldiers initially refused to allow the work to continue but a District Commander arrived later in the morning and confirmed that the family did have the right to remove rubble from the home.
Israeli soldiers using a bulldozer destroyed three homes and an animal enclosure in the village on … Continue reading

from the Christian Peacemaker Teams
March 17, 2008

An Israeli settler yelled threatening remarks, and wielded a rock at young Palestinian children on the way to school in the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills. About twenty children from the villages of Tuba and Magayer Al Abeed walk to the elementary school in At-Tuwani each day. They are accompanied by an Israeli military escort past the illegal settlement outpost of Havat Maon (Hill 833). The Children’s Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, ordered the escort in 2004 after a series of settler attacks on the children. On the morning of 17 March, 2008, the children were unable to meet the … Continue reading

From Christian Peacemaker Teams

In At-Tuwani Village, South Hebron Hills, Israeli soldiers and ‘border police’ assaulted Palestinian shepherds.

While they grazed their sheep and worked in their olive groves in the Khoruba Valley, Israeli police threatened the shepherds with arrest and assaulted them. This was on Palestinian land in the southern West Bank’s Hebron Governorate.

A border police officer twisted the wrist of one shepherd and pushed him to the ground. Police grabbed another by his collar and pushed several other Palestinians.

The shepherds were engaging in a simple act of life that has become an act of nonviolent resistance – feeding their sheep and tending their trees on their own lands.

The Palestinians were attempting to graze their sheep and repair olives trees … Continue reading