Hebron, South Hebron Hills, Wed 18.1.12, Morning

Translator:  Charles K.

A bulldozer is blocking the access points to Highway 317 from the adjoining fields, even though most of the road has long been closed.

We drove up to a-Tuwwani, to Jum’a’s house, and heard the sad stories of how the settlers from Ma’on abuse the villagers – for example, how the girls fear to cross the road out of the village and must be accompanied by the Italian volunteers who have cameras to document the incidents and also protect the residents from the abuse and the hardships caused by the settlers.

Jum’a asks Ar’ella and Ehud to send someone to help him set up a tank (for  sheep  and goat dung) to generate methane that can be used for heating, to generate electricity and for cooking.

Jum’a pays NIS 15/cubic meter for water; his tank holds 100 cubic meters.

We drove to the protest tent in Hebron.  We heard the story of Hana Abu Heikhal, Baruch Marzel’s neighbor, whose car had been set afire for the fifth time, andwhose brother’s car had been set afire once (a total of 6 incidents).  She stays in the tent because she’s handicapped and has no way to get home without a vehicle, and certainly can’t lug a shopping basket.

Hana and her sister live in Tel Rumeida, in a 1300 square meter house.  In 1996 settles offered her a huge amount of moneyfor her land but she firmly refused.

In 2009 a settler reported that Hana isn’t living in the house.  She was arrested and released.  Hana demanded that the soldiers who drove her to jail take her back home, and they did.

She concluded her story by saying that’s she’s stuck like a bone in the throat of the settlers, and they have shut everything down in Shuhada Street and Al Katrina Street.  All the shops and commerce that once existed in the Tel Rumeida area have been paralyzed; life is difficult and unbearable.  They promise to demonstrate peacefully, like all the other protest tents throughout the world.

Hana is the first person ever to have set up a protest tent in Hebron – perhaps the first anywhere in the Palestinian Authority