Day Nine of Hebron Siege

Day Nine of the Hebron Siege
November 24, 2002

Hi everyone,

My teammate remarked this morning, "Day nine of the siege." I hadn't thought to count. We spent the night in a three story home downhill from the new settlement, which lies in a valley between the settlements of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. The people living there include a young mother, her two small children, and a diabetic grandmother with a wooden leg. The settlers have been stoning the house, and the soldiers threw a percussion grenade at the front porch. The mother is not happy.

Last night at 3am, we awoke to a bulldozer clearing out a vineyard. The soldiers put up a 'Palestinian only' dirt road as opposed to the 'Israeli' only paved road where the new settlement is. They also bulldozed a friend's prized blue Nissan. A few days ago, settlers broke out the windshield. It was in good condition before. It was pushed downhill 100 meters and then squashed.

The settlers also had a large rally at the site of the new settlement starting around 9pm. The speakers were vehement in both Hebrew and English. We didn't know how long the rally would last, but last week the rally descended into groups of settlers running around trashing the neighborhood. Lying in bed inside the house (they go to bed early here) it occurred to me that it was somewhat like staying in a black family's home near a Ku Klux Klan rally, expecting them to 'ride' that night. Really, that's all you can compare it to these days. Figuring the Hebron settlers have about as much to do with Judaism as the KKK had to do with Christianity.

There is a Jewish Israeli women's group that would like to set up a peace team in Hebron. They said, "Most of us in Israel don't even like the Hebron settlers, why should we allow them to do this?" It was neat to see. Other Israeli peace activists were in over the weekend and helped lawyers obtain an injunction against demolishing at least one of several Palestinian homes in the area where we slept. Good for them, although it was a funny sight that the college aged activists all had pink, green, and skunk-dyed hair and multiple piercings, staying in some of the most traditional homes in Hebron.

Some of you may know about ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions, whom we work with a lot. Jeff Halper heads the program and brought his students over the weekend. Lots of students. This tells me that all radical peace activists would do well to become college professors. What a good place to develop recruits! Even with skunk hairdos. Anyway, it was a hopeful sight here. There's so much attention focused here that I think maybe the soldiers and settlers won't be able to do too much.

Life in Bethlehem is not as hopeful though. As of this invasion, the Israeli military apparently has a list of 2,000 houses they would like to demolish, only a small portion of them belonging to Palestinian combatants, and say they're "not leaving until we finish them off." Yikes. Guess we're setting up a new team in Bethlehem. On the up side, our project coordinator estimated we'd have 20 full timers working here by next summer. Uff da!

I'd like to send more on Iraq, but that will need to wait a few days. I really did take a small book-full of notes. Anyone who wants to drop in on Jack and Anne can check out my 'goodies' that I posted home. They're coming along on next speaking tour.

If you've sent me anything between Nov. 5 and Nov. 20 on my hotmail account, please resend it. Since I was under siege, I discovered Hotmail just deletes your entire inbox when it gets full. Many thanks.

I think I mentioned they only gave me a 2 month visa at the border this time, am thinking through my options. If I go out for just a few days to renew my visa, I'm thinking about taking ulpan, or spoken Hebrew classes, in January. Seems like it would be neat to have a Hebrew speaker on team, and maybe the border guards would let me in without as much hassle if I were coming in 'to study Hebrew.'

Enough for now,

Le Anne