Andrew

  • 25 December 2005

This text came on Christmas Day, from David, who has been writing his experiences to his friends and family and, lately, to me, too. This page talks about himself and his own deportation:
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/01/19/iof-evacuated-human-rights-workers-instead-of-illegal-settlers /

Hebron – Kawawis

  • 5 December 2005

Today is my last day here and as a good bye to the house where we stay I do a “tour” around it. It is a neighbours’ building and the most interesting part of it is the flat roof. The drums containing the water that is supplied to all the block neighbours are kept here.

Hebron IX. WIG

  • 3 December 2005

Today is Saturday and, there is a “visit” from the “women in green” (WIG) scheduled for today. It doesn’t’ happen every Saturday, but they do come rather regularly, and people who have been in Tel Rumeida for months are familiar with their doings.

Hebron VIII. The donkey

  • 2 December 2005

Today D. and I patrol the lower street together, between the stairs and the checkpoint every one have to use to go from this neighbourhood to the rest of Hebron and vice versa.

Hebron VII. The woman

  • 1 December 2005

Today I’m in the upper part of the neighbourhood. An old woman from one of the illegal settlements comes up walking shouting at every one she finds on her way.

I’m told to be careful with her, although she is not usually violent physically.

Hebron VI. They’re all terrorists

  • 30 November 2005

I’m usually in the lower street, but some times I am up the hill, where the children enjoy themselves playing ball games or asking us to take pictures of them. If you take one’s picture, that’s it, you’re done, they won’t stop bugging you until you have taken two pictures of each of them, and then again in groups.

Hebron V. Apartheid

  • 29 November 2005

It is mostly quiet in the street where I “patrol”. The street is usually deserted, apart from the soldiers at the checkpoints and the odd Palestinian. The shops are all closed down. Their doors are all green but rotten because they are not used or painted or looked after. Most of them have David’s stars painted on them, just like the Nazis used to paint swastikas on Jews’ shops. Now it is Palestinian shops that have a Jewish sign on their doors.

Hebron IV. Lies

  • 28 November 2005

My favourite spot to patrol from is the place where I first saw D. when I first arrived here. The spot is good because from here we see, at the same time, the coffin-checkpoint to our right, and the illegal Israeli settlement (or at least the settlers that would come out of it to violently harass Palestinians) to our left.

Hebron III. Drug dealing

  • 27 November 2005

When the children get out of school I leave this spot and go up the hill, next to the other settlement. Roughly half way between the two settlements that surround this Palestinian neighbourhood, there are two “outposts” for soldiers, one at each side of the street. In one of those outposts two soldiers detain a boy, for no apparent reason, and they ask him for his identity card and I see them like playing with it.

Hebron II. Saturday

  • 26 November 2005

Hebron, specially the neighbourhood we are in, between two illegal Israeli settlements, is brutally depressing. It one of those experiences where you think you are loosing your sanity. We are in a Palestinian neighbourhood, between two settlements full of quite fanatic and fearful Israeli settlers. They are so fearful they go out to the street with sub-machine guns, and they routinely stone Palestinians.