July 1 2002 Hebron with the CPT—the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

There was only Ananda, Eden and I left at the hospital in Ramallah the night of June 30, and the plan was to travel to Hebron through Jerusalem today. Six of us made the trip, Heidi from Germany and Ramallah, Kata from San Francisco and Hungary, Teresa from London, England, Ananda and Eden from New York, and me. We hiked about 35 minutes from Huwaida and Adam’s apartment in downtown Ramallah, and it dawned on us and everyone else I guess that the curfew had been temporarily lifted—for how long nobody but God and Sharon knew. The animals could come out of their cages for a while, take a taxi, get to a doctor, dentist, drugstore, grocery store, government office (only there aren’t any left, just the Israeli Army), see friends and relatives, and in general act like humans not Palestinians for a few hours.

We were able to get a shuttle bus heading for the checkpoint outside Ramallah without much trouble; the hassle at the checkpoints was minimal, at least for the non-Palestinians.

We are Internationals. Our lives and contentment count. Those of the Palestinians do not.

We got to Jerusalem at 8:30 AM, and after finishing the file on the injured child, I sent it off on the Internet. I then went to the hotel to get some clothes. The Manager was pleasant enough, but he suggested that I book a room next time for two days, so at $22/night, I booked both Friday and Saturday nights, July 5 and 6, when I would be returning from Hebron..

We actually took off from the Damascus Gate of the Old City at 10:30, with a driver who agreed to take the six of us all the way to Hebron for a total of 200 shekels, or about $7 per person. We were stopped at a checkpoint where the troopers told the driver that we could pass because we are tourists, but he could not. I gather he is from East Jerusalem and has Israeli license plates but is a Palestinian, not an Israeli citizen. The driver and I talked to them--he in Hebrew, I in English, and convinced them to let him drive us to the next checkpoint, and we were finally waved on, without a search. The next stop was not so much a checkpoint as a roadblock. Hebron was not too far away, but from that point on it was a Jewish only road, for the use of the armed and violent Jewish colonists in Hebron. So our driver had to turn around and go to a small village where we could get another taxi into the city. Instead of the 200 shekels he only charged us 150, but I tipped him.

We had to climb a barrier that had been bulldozed up to keep traffic out of this village. An old elongated Mercedes taxi took us to the hospital where some of us are to stay. There we were ushered into the office of Dr. Ghandi Tamimi, the Medical Director of the Al Mezan Specialty Hospital, which is private. He speaks English fluently, is lively and well informed, but depressed about the ongoing occupation. He gets his name from the fact that his father considered Mahatma Ghandi to be the Prophet of Peace. He spent 17 years in India, married an Indian woman, and has children. Dr. Tamami expects the hospital to have to close in a few months. The Cardiac Unit is already closed. The heart surgeon was from Egypt, and when he tried to return from a visit to Egypt six months ago, the Israelis denied him re-entry. This leaves a population of 500,000 without a cardiac unit.

There is almost no employment for Palestinians, so the patients simply cannot pay for hospital care. It is all part of Israeli’s policy of dismantling any semblance of a Palestinian society. I discussed the concept of sociocide with him. We agreed that is the Israeli policy.

In the few areas of the West Bank and Gaza that were under PA control, they had set up government, with health programs, police protection, schools, universities, and hospitals. That is now all but gone, much with no physical component left. Why? One conjecture is that the Israelis plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. I have heard this possible scenario: Bush invades Irak. U.S. and Israeli prevent any power in the world from intervening, and Sharon drives the Palestinians out of the land that God gave to the Jews and into Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and anywhere else they can be sent. Then there will be peace in "Holy Land."

Dr. Tamimi told us that the Al Mezan hospital had in fact been shelled several times in recent days. There was no explanation for the shelling. He showed us around including the slight damage to the upper floors. No injuries. Three of our group will stay there, mostly to keep the Israelis less belligerent, and intervene in any incursions by the Army into the hospital. There is a central ambulance service, so the hospital does not need people to ride ambulance.

Greg Rollins (of Vancouver) arrived from the CPT—Christian Peacemaker Teams. This is an ecumenical group of Christians who send out teams to points of confrontation, such as Hebron, where they have had a presence since June of 1995.

Monday afternoon Heidi and I accompanied Greg Rollins to an apartment building where the Army had taken over the top floor apartment. We were supposed to go in and see if we could help the family in any way. They are confined to one room and are short on food and water. One whole side of the building had been draped with a huge blanket of camouflage cloth with sniper holes cut here and there. This is a tall building on a hill overlooking the pile of rubble that used to be the PA government building in Hebron—the one the Israelis blew up with two tonnes of dynamite a few days ago.

When it was almost time for the curfew to descend again, a little old man came trudging up carrying two plastic bags of water for the family. He was the father, and he had a young son with him carrying food. They simply did what they had to do and walked on up the hill toward the building. We departed, defeated, and found a taxi just in time to get back to the CPT apartment in time for closure.

In the days of the British Mandate of Palestine, there was a Jewish community in Hebron. In 1929 there were anti-British and anti-Zionist riots. Sixty-seven Jews were killed; then in 1936 the British removed the remainder of the Jews from Hebron.

After the 1967 conquest of the West Bank and occupation of Palestinian territories, a few fervent Zionist Jews moved back into Hebron but were evacuated by the Israeli Army. They were moved to a newly established "settlement" on land confiscated from the Palestinian mayor of Hebron, without compensation. This settlement, Kiryat Arba, is one of the most violent of all Jewish colonial outposts in the West Bank. In 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a "refugee" from the United States living in the Kiryat Arba settlement, took his Israeli Army assault rifle and wore his uniform to the mosque in Hebron on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, where he murdered 29 worshippers and wounded many more. In the riots that followed soldiers killed another 30 Palestinians. Instead of punishing the settlers, the Israelis imposed a strict curfew on the Palestinians of Hebron. The religious right wing in Israel considers Baruch a hero, and there was a monument to him at the Kiryat Arba settlement, until the Israeli government forced its removal.

There are again 400 settlers in the old city, some of the nastiest of them all. CPT has documented some of the graffiti these settlers put up. A couple of examples.

Note: It has become Tuesday morning, after a good sleep, broken only by the occasional APC roaring by and the screams of F-16s overhead.