Hebron, South Hebron Hills
09:00-13:00
The stories from today’s shift are new tales of harassment of Palestinians by settlers (who still has strength to hear them?)
The photograph below is of Havvat Ma’on. 
For those who don’t know, Ma’on, the illegal farm, is near the village of Khirbet Tuwani in the southern Hebron hills. For more than ten years, thanks to us, the children from Umm Tuba (a settlement of people living in caves located about one and one-half kilometers from Tuwani, the road to which lies just below Havvat Ma’on) are escorted to school by the army and the police. The Israel Knesset’s Child Welfare Committee compelled the authorities in 2004 to do so in the wake of multiple attacks by settlers. This Saturday it happened again. A six year old girl and her eleven year old sister were attacked by masked settlers. One of the girls was injured in her head and leg and was treated by a civilian physician brought by the police. Residents of Khirbet Tawwani, who can’t use the shorter route to Umm Tuba – the army forbids it – came there via Umm Tuba, took the injured girl and brought her to the entrance to Ma’on where a police car awaited them with a policeman. The policemen took the girl’s father and her uncle for questioning to the Kiryat Arba police station and later brought them home. They didn’t catch the settlers… The army, whose job is also to protect the Palestinians from the settlers, doesn’t do so.
Another tale of harassment that occurred yesterday:
A seventeen year old boy rode his bicycle from the Palestinian village of Karmel to Khirbet Tuwani (Highway 317). A white car stopped and its two passengers got out and began chasing him and throw stones. He got off the bike and fled – this time, because the attack was unplanned, they weren’t masked. They took the bike and broke it and left the pieces by the roadside after the youth had fled to one of the homes.
The police said they couldn’t help because the youth couldn’t give them the license number.
Hebron. Many fewer soldiers than we’ve seen previously. The ecumenical peace activists (their group is being replaced next week) tell us that on election day the olive trees planted by the Palestinians at the Cordova school opposite Beit Hadassah were uprooted again.
One of the teachers we spoke to down on the road tells us…we’ll continue planting olive trees for as long as you continue coming…
At the school in Khirbet Tuwani they’re waiting for the beach days – they were cancelled last year because of the Gaza war.
We’re all human beings. Enough already of this violence. I’m sick of it.