Hebron, South Hebron Hills, Tue 6.12.11, Morning

We left Beersheva at 7:30.

Sansana-Meitar

already clear of workers, but women and family members of prisoners were still trickling through to the waiting buses.

Route 60

was pretty clear and we didn't see a single soldier.

Hebron

After the usual tour of silent H2 - the old city of Hebron, we stopped at Abed's store opposite Gutnick's tourist center, because we saw a large group of girls waiting on the "Arab" side to enter the Ibrahimi mosque. However within minutes they streamed up the lane to the mosque, full of beans and chatter. We were still standing, nursing cups of hot sage tea when a pair of TIPH observers came up and got chatting to us. In answer to our questiion they said that H2 is very quiet these days, but if there are incidents they are not usually in the morning but in the afternoon or evening and at night,  with shabbat being a particular time of tension. They gave us a pamphlet explaining who they were and what they do. Their website is at www.tiph.org This was the first time almost that we found TIPH observers to be friendly. One of them was Swiss, a lawyer by profession and the other was a Danish citizen. originally from Jerusalem whose family fled in 1967. 

Afterwards Netanya and I walked up the Worshippers Alley. Along the way we encountered a settler in his car who stared at us but didn't bother us.  When we got to the top of the alleyway, Ofer  the photographer was waiting for us with his video and some curses that were so unoriginal and childishly vulgar that I myself could have done better (but decided silence was wiser!)  Our settler from the alley was standing by grinning like an idiot, probably pleased that he had alerted Ofer to our dangerous presence.  Don't these people do any work?!!  Mohammed arrived and whisked us off. Unpleasant, but at least they didn't run us over ...this time.