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The Latest- from Hebron

Hello Everyone-

I did not think I would be emailing again so soon, but so much happened today that we wanted to report back. Right now, we are in a town just outside of Hebron. Today, we were able to take a tour of the old city in Hebron, where we found many armed soldiers lining the streets. We walked to Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi (Sanctuary of Abraham), where we had to be thoroughly searched (even more than at checkpoints) to get into the mosque. Inside the mosque, we found cameras everywhere. More than half of the mosque has been confiscated by the Israelis, and where the divide in the mosque is found, armed soldiers are found as well.

The walk through the old city was depressing. Once a booming market with hundreds of shops, it is now made up of vacant streets with closed doors and hardly any people. In 2000, at the start of the current Intifada, the Israelis shut down more than half of the town and even confiscated Palestinian homes. This part of the town reopened only 2 months ago, but because the townspeople are not used to being in that part of the village, it still remains vacant. A few shops have started to open up, but it will take plenty of time for it to return to the old city that it once was, if it ever can return to that state. Because so much of the market and town was taken, the rest of the town is so congested with cars and people. The shop owners that were kicked out all relocated to a few main streets, setting up their shops on tables.

In addition, many settlers occupy Palestinian homes & apartment complexes that are found just above many parts of the old city. As we walked beneath these settlements (they are on the 2nd floor of the buildings), we found so much garbage that the settlers have thrown out of their windows onto the Palestinians and their streets and market.

As many of you may know by now, there were 2 bombings today in Bi'ir Sabi3 (Beer Sheva), a town near Hebron. The news of the bombings reached us by word of mouth within an hour. We had planned to leave for Ramallah tonight, but because of the bombings, the line at the checkpoint near Hebron (and all other checkpoints as well) would have taken us 5 hours to get through because of the thorough searches that are carried out afterwards. So far, 16 Israelis have been killed and 93 have been wounded, some critically. You can read more details here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/08/31/mideast/index.html

We are all safe and doing well. Of course, the Palestinians will feel more pressure from the Israelis, as far as at checkpoints and especially in Hebron. We were worried that they would drop a curfew on Hebron, so we left right away, but so far we have not heard of any curfew. One of the bombers (if not both) was from Hebron, and the Israelis have already demolished his home. Because we left the town, we were not able to witness the actual demolition but we may be able to go to the site tomorrow if the Israelis do not drop a curfew on the town.

Finally, I want to give a brief update on the political prisoners. Today is the 16th day that the prisoners and supporters have been hunger-striking. The Israelis have taken away their salt water (they use salt water in order to give their systems something to digest) and milk (to maintain the strength of the bones) and have left them with only water. In addition, many of the Israelis are BBQ-ing outside some of the prisons in order to get the Palestinians to break their hunger strike. Almost every town has a hunger strike tent where all fasting non-prisoners stay during the day in order to be a support system for one another, and many people join them there even if they are not hunger striking. We have visited many of these tents to show support, and we've found many men and women striking to show support for their imprisoned loved-ones.

Please note- the Palestinians are not striking because they think that the Israelis will act on their own; the Israelis have already said that they can strike until death. The Palestinians are striking because they want the global community to put pressure on Israel to give the prisoners basic rights – such as clean food, decent cells, and visitation rights. To add to all that happened today, we found out that the Israelis took one of the college students we befriended at a checkpoint this afternoon. Please keep all the prisoners and their families in your thoughts and prayers.

from Falasteen,

gihad

“The ‘greater Gihad’ is the personal struggle to have compassion for those around us, to cast off pride and arrogance and to learn to tolerate and help one another, to live in humility and simplicity - In other words, the struggle we all undertake to become better human beings”