Closures, Olive Trees, and Racial Profiling

Many of you must be wondering what it has been like here since Arafat died. On Thursday, the day oafter he died, the Israelis closed the West Bank and Gaza, so things were back to the way they were before they caught the Hamas guy in Hebron. Soldiers created more roadblocks out of dirt piles, and more random check points, and made it very difficult to go anywhere.

On Friday the whole team went to Tuwani so we got to experience what it was like. To get out of Hebron we had to take a cab to an enlarged dirt pile/road block. We had to cross the paved settler road and go over another dirt pile to catch a cab on the other side. There was a tank at the paved road and soldiers checking IDs and refusing to allow Palestinians to cross. They let us cross, but we had to convince them, and we weren't sure we would be able to get back later. Palestinians were flying black flags as a sign of mourning, and schools were closed for a week, so people were out and about. Later, when we came back to Hebron the tank was still there, but we had no problem crossing the road. At that point, Palestinians had stopped trying.

One team member went to Jerusalem the next morning and it took three hours (normally a half hour) because the van had to drive all over the place to find a way in. He had to get out and walk several times, because the roads truly were blocked.

It seemed odd to me that the Israelis thought it was a good idea to intensify oppression of Palestinians as a fitting way to mark Arafat's death. All it does is get people angry.

We planted trees in Tuwani on Friday. You may remember in an earlier email I talked about how settlers and soldiers had uprooted olive trees there. The land belonged to Saber, the village leader, or mayor, but the Israeli army confiscated it, naming it state land, because it sits right next to the settlement fence. So as an act of nonviolent resistence, we replanted the trees. We don't know how long they will last, but now that so much attention is being paid to Tuwani, they have a better chance. The team will plant more in two weeks.

There is hope for Tuwani, but it is too soon to tell if the improvements that have been made as a result of the assault will last. They are building the clinic now without disturbance from the army. This is a major victory, because with the infrastructure of a school and a clinic, it will be much harder to destroy. Because of the attention after the assault, Israeli public opinion is less likely to stand for it. I may have mentioned earlier that two small villages close to Tuwani were evacuated several years ago due to settler harrassment. All the people moved to Yatta. The settlers have taken the land and plowed and planted it.

The children are getting to school with a three-jeep escort, but are still getting harrassed by settlers, who do not seem to care if army and civil administration are present. The only time the settlers behave themselves is when police are present, and this is rare.

Tuwani is improving its road as part of the clinic construction, and this is unimpeded by the army. They have been promised water and electricity, but it has not yet been delivered. I have my doubts, but we will keep up the pressure. I'm proud of the progress that has been made, due largely to pressure from US government officials and media attention.

I have no evidence that there is a real investigation of the assault happening. I doubt it.

Meanwhile, one of my teammates was detained again at the checkpoint near our house. We were walking through it to get to the van service the Jerusalem, and they stopped him. He fits a profile they are told to look for: young, dark, male. They detained him for about 30 minutes while they called the police, who came within five minutes. Eventually they let him go, after they realized they had no evidence he is a terrorist. I doubt that the Israelis would appreciate it if similar racial profiling was done against them.

Machine Guns and Holy Sites

On Saturday the settlers in Hebron were celebrating what they called Sarah's Day. Masses of tourists were here from other parts of Israel, because Sarah is buried here. When we went on our usual morning school patrol, accompanying Palestinian children to school here in Hebron, settlers and tourists were streaming to the synagogue, and there were at least triple the number of Israeli soldiers and military police present. What I noticed was that the Palestinian kids who would normally have to cross the street that the settlers and soldiers were using, were simply not coming out. They skipped school that day because it was too threatening.

As I was standing on the corner monitoring the situation, I noticed a few young men wearing prayer shawls and machine guns coming out from the synagogue. I have learned that this is common dress for many young settler men. One of them walked by me and said "fuck you bitch," in perfect American English. This was a religious Jew, with earlocks, a prayer shawl, and a machine gun, coming home from synagogue.

This was a change from the usual. Most of the Hebron settlers refuse to speak to us at all or even look at us when they walk by.

I had another illuminating encounter with settlers and machine guns in West Jerusalem on Thursday. I was there for a meeting with the US Consulate about holding the Maon settlers accountable for the beatings. Another CPTer and I were standing in line at the central post office to pay my ambulance bill. In order to go into the post office, as with other public buildings in Jerusalem, one has to pass through a metal detector and be frisked by armed security guards. Two young settler men walked in, dressed in prayer shawls and machine guns, and stood in line with us. Apparently settlers with machine guns are exempt from security precautions. The rules really only apply to Palestinians.

Later on Saturday, the settlers continued their celebration of Sarah's Day by organizing a march to some holy stone located outside of their settlement compound. In order to facilitate this, the Israeli army, police, and civil administration shut down the street where the march was to take place, forced all the Palestinians off the surrounding streets, and closed all the shops in the busiest market area of the city. There were six or eight military, police and civil administration jeeps with six people each, plus an armored personnel carrier with a bunch more soldiers enforcing this. I saw two military police officers fire shots into a crowded market, and I saw a jeep drive into a crowd in order to get them off the streets. The street they closed is lined with Palestinian homes and shops. Things remained closed for about three hours. No notice was given.

After they got all the Palestinians out of the way, the settlers lined up behind the military check point that separates their compound from the Palestinians. About 250 of them marched out, singing and clapping. They were all dressed as religious Jews. They were escorted by this large contingent of soldiers to their holy stone where they were to pray, and then escorted back. Many brought their own machine guns as well.

One man stopped to talk with us. He was not from this settlement, but from Tel Aviv. He basically blamed the whole situation on Palestinian terror. I asked him what he would do if the village his family had inhabited for 500 years was destroyed, his home bulldozed, his family herded at gunpoint to a refugee camp, and his land confiscated in order to create a new country. This is what happened to half of Palestinian villages in 1948. He said I was condoning terror. I do not get it. Obviously, I do not think that violence gets anyone anywhere, but one can imagine the desperation that has led to it. I can also imagine the desperation that has led Jewish people to want their own state. What I cannot understand is what they have done in order to get it.

And what they have done in the name of holy sites. My attitude toward holy sites is a bit different. I did see the place in Bethlehem where Jesus supposedly was born, but it is not the actual site that matters to me. They could destroy the site, and it would not affect my faith a bit. It is the spirit of the site that matters, not the actual place. Control over the place is not so important as is the way we live our lives.

Life With Israeli Soldiers

On Friday I traveled back to Hebron from Tiberias with one other team member. Hebron is now relatively open since about 10 days ago, when they captured the Hebron head of Hamas. In order to humiliate the man completely, they put him on television in his underwear. It reminded me of what US soldiers were doing to detainees in Iraq. It would humiliate anyone, but in Muslim culture, it is especially degrading.

Anyway, the main road to town is open now, which makes things much easier. But on Friday, our service van went up an access road to get across the main bridge into Hebron, and it was blocked with a barrel. The army commander said he didn't want Palestinian cars blocking the road because then his soldiers couldn't get through. I wanted to ask him, "but isn't it you that is blocking the road?"

A little later we were walking to our apartment in the Old City. We came across a group of eight soldiers, one of whom was breaking down the door of a merchant with a sledge hammer. It was Friday, Muslim holy day, so all shops were closed. So we asked the soldiers why they were doing this. The young Israeli soldier who spoke to us was from the U.S. and spoke English. He said some kids threw rocks at them from the roof. In this part of the Old City, the passageways are covered with tin or with netting, so that anything thrown from the roof would not hit anyone. I asked the soldier, "Did the rocks hurt you?" Immediately he demanded to search our bags. After the search, I asked him again, "Did the stones hurt you?" He hurled an insult at me and walked away. They continued their work with the sledge hammer.

Later, some other members of out team went out, passing through the army checkpoint nearest to our apartment, called Beit Romano. Beit Romano is named after the Jewish settlement that the army is there to protect. There they found a large group of detained Palestinian children. We do not know this for sure, but we guess that they randomly rounded up children in the Old City after the stone incident. The soldiers threatened the CPTers with arrest if they stayed. There was also a group of settlers there, watching the whole thing. Once the CPTers moved out of view of the settlers, the soldiers stopped threatening. A little while later, the children were released. We do not know if it was because we were there.

Yesterday we went out to the checkpoint again because we learned that among a large group of Palestinian detainees was Atta, a longtime friend of the team. The soldiers routinely stop and search any man who looks under 35. The search often includes making them raise their shirts to expose themselves in some way. Atta had refused to submit to this, so they detained him. In the entire time I have been in Palestine, only one weapon has been found on someone going through Beit Romano, and it was a knife, probably not going to be used as a weapon at all.

Also yesterday, the police went to Tuwani and threatened my teammates there with arrest for helping to work on building a medical clinic. The villagers had repeatedly applied for a permit to build, but Israeli civil authorities refused to accept their application. Then, about 10 days ago, the civil authorities granted verbal permission for them to build, but would not put it in writing. Now yesterday the police came and took everyone's IDs and threatened them with arrest. Only the settlers from Ma'on could have called the police. So the police are this responsive to settlers calling, but have done nothing about the settler attacks on us. Eventually the civil authority was called, and he again told the police that Tuwani could build the clinic. The police let everyone go, but told them they could not work on the clinic or they would be arrested.

So, who is in charge? Israeli civil authorities, or settlers? We think it is the settlers, who in fact act like armed paramilitary groups making their own rules. The army and police are afraid of them. Obviously, so are the Palestinians. Settlers control about half of the land inside the green line, meaning inside the borders of the occupied territories, and continue to illegally grab more. We read in the newspaper this morning that Sharon's government is negotiating with the US over dismantlement of illegal settlement outposts, like the one that my attackers came from, and they have agreed to leave large settlement areas alone for the time being. Meaing they will not dismantle them. So you can see how much influence the US government has over this situation. Our government pretty much controls it.

I have been wondering lately how many Israeli citizens vote in our elections. I have come across soldiers and settlers who are American. The Haaretz reporter who interviewed me was from Florida, and she talked openly about voting. The last time I was at the consulate there were several groups of Israeli citizens applying for US social security benefits, because they are also US citizens.

With respect to my case, if we want to call it that, I believe that the US Consulate is pressuring the police to act, but is not getting anywhere. I spoke to the consular official yesterday, and he told me he met with the police on Friday, and the police told him that they do not have the time to pursue this investigation. Notice that they had the time to threaten CPTers and Palestinians with arrest for building a medical clinic. An important fact is that these police officers are based at a station located inside another settlement, Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Kiryat Arba is the oldest Jewish settlement inside the occupied territories. They tell us now that the investigation has been shifted to Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence. We do not yet know what they will do. I think that pressure has to be placed on the Israelis at a much higher level before anyone will act, and we are working with some members of Congress to get that to happen.

I do not know if it will do any good, because it seems that too many people are too invested in keeping the truth about the settlements from getting out. I think that if most Americans knew the extent of the violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians perpetrated by the settlements, then they would be outraged and would not want their tax dollars used to fund it. Tomorrow I go back to Tuwani for the first time since the attack. I will only go for the day, for a team meeting. I cannot yet stay there, because I cannot use what we call the squatty potties and I cannot yet sleep on the floor, because of my knee. But I am walking pretty well, so I can now do most of the things I was doing before. Not ready for a bike ride yet, but I hope to be sometime soon.

Hebron Life

I am writing from Jerusalem. I came in on Saturday night by myself, because I just needed some alone time. Saturday night I sat on the rooftop of a pizza place in the Christian quarter of the Old City sipping wine and enjoying the view of Jerusalem. I think it was the first time that I really felt I was in the Holy Land. Of course, the scenery is better at night because you can't see the dust... The wine was a treat, because there is no alcohol in Hebron. The pizza was pretty bad, but I also had a salad with lettuce in it! I have really been missing the lettuce. Then I took a hot shower.

Sunday I went to West Jerusalem, the Israeli side. It was my first time visiting this section of Jerusalem. We just don't get over there because we are here for such short time periods, and our business is in East Jerusalem. Going to West Jerusalem felt like going back to the West, with modern shopping malls and fast food. I ate at a vegetarian restaurant and had my second salad with lettuce in it. I also had spinanch lasagne and some tofu on the side! Later we took a service van (pronounced servees, with the accent on the second syllable) to Tel Aviv to visit the beach, and I swam in the Mediteranean in my underwear (forgot a bathing suit).

This morning I ate at my favorite pastry shop next to the internet cafe in the Arab section of the Old City. I would never usually eat so much pastry, but they do incredible things with pistachios, and I have been losing weight, so it probably doesn't matter. I can't think why, because it seems like all I do is eat, and falafel is not exactly low-fat.

Hebron is still pretty well locked down, except that now the Jerusalem service vans are getting all the way through, making getting to Jerusalem much simpler. Somebody dug out a pass through one of the blockades so that the service vans can pass, but no other vehicles are going through. I'm not sure I understand the system; the van driver paid 5 shekels to a Palestinian guy minding the blockade when we went through. There are still "flying checkpoints" on the way, and at one point we were stopped and all the men had to get out of the van to be searched and ID checked. It must be so humiliating for them.

Last week several of us went to visit the Jabbar family. One brother, Atta, has suffered 2 home demolitions. Now he is in his third house, but last year some nearby settlers took over the house at gunpoint and claimed it was their synagogue. After several months the family got a court order and was able to move back in. But the settlers had done much damage to the home and they had to reconstruct parts of the inside. The couple is about my age, but they look older than my parents. The last few years have taken a huge toll.

Another brother, Jaudi, spent twelve years farming a hillside belonging to his family. Then the army came with orders to seize the land for the nearby Jewish settlement, and they built a wall separating him from his land and preventing him from farming it. A few years later he tried to build an extension onto the family home to give more space to his family (he has 7 children and is living with his parents and sister), and the army bulldozed it. They are all living together in a 3-bedroom house.

After the home demolition, someone from CPT lived with the family for three months. Jaudi talked to us about how much that meant to him, just the moral support. He said we have been important to him to talk to, because he needs to talk about it or he will go crazy. He said that with those two actions, all his dreams died, and nothing in life is sweet for him any more. He wanted the farm for his children. There is some farmland left, but now, because of the closure of the entire West Bank, he can't sell any of his produce in Israel, which was the main market.

Last week we set up a regular check point watch at the army check point near our apartment (called Beit Romano). We live between two checkpoints, Beit Romano and Ibrahimi Mosque, and the army base is just behind us. We are spending two hours every day monitoring and recording what the soldiers do. This means recording ID checks, searches, and detentions,and monitoring whether their behavior is appropriate to the Palestinians they stop. The soldiers do not like it, and seem rather intimidated by our presence. Once, when I was there, they repositioned themselves so we could not see them. The Palestinians are pleased that we are there, and the fact that the soldiers are intimidated makes me think it is a good idea.

I had an unpleasant encounter with a soldier the other day. I was doing a street patrol with my teammate on Rosh Hashanah, when there is a lot of settler traffic through the Old City and a higher possibility of confrontation. When we were returning through a checkpoint called Gate 5 a soldier stopped us and said we couldn't pass, that we would have to wait because there was some kind of military exercise going on. In other words, we couldn't walk back to our own home.

Usually I try to be civil to the soldiers but not exactly friendly (why should I be nice to someone who is pointing a gun at me?) because I don't want there to be problems for the Palestinians they are detaining. But this time there were no Palestinians, and he was detaining me. So I told him that he was violating my rights by detaining me. He said he was only doing his job, and I told him that he did not have to follow orders that are illegal. To make a long story short, the encounter upset him, so he decided not to let us pass at all. If we were Palestinian we would probably still be there. As it was, we walked away from him and entered by a different gate, where there was no trouble.

I feel that since confronting the soldiers is something that Palestinians cannot do, but I can do, then I should do it, to try and encourage them to have some kind of conscience. They are still human beings, first and foremost.

Also during the Rosh Hashanah holiday my teammate and I decided to walk along Worshipper's Way. This is an ancient path that leads to Abraham's Cave, now the site of a synagogue on one side and a mosque on the other. The path leads to the synagogue side, and it is said that it is a path that Abraham probably walked. There are ancient houses and ruins of houses there. Recently the soldiers dumped fill dirt on the path in order to widen it, and some think, to pave it. In places the dirt is so high it covers over the doorways and windows of Palestinian homes. When we were there, the place was infested with soldiers, and I was saddened by it. A lot of settlers from a nearby settlement were walking the path that day, and the soldiers were there to keep the Palestinians away.

Desperation and Despair

It is getting worse here. They have locked down the entire West Bank until after Yom Kippur. What that means practically is that our movement is restricted, and the movement of Palestinians even more so. More people have been arrested and killed, and we hear what sounds like tank fire every night.

The Israelis are doing this in retaliation for suicide bombings. Based on what I have experienced here, my feeling is that suicide bombings are more about suicide than bombing. If you understand it as a suicide, then you will have a clear picture of the situation of desperation and despair that Palestinians are living.

I am feeling angry about Western attitudes. The United States justified dropping nuclear weapons on Japan because of Pearl Harbor---along with fire-bombing Tokyo. We justify invading and occupying two countries after 9/11, killing thousands and torturing many. But we are shocked and appalled at a small number of violent resisters to murder, military occupation, land confiscation, home demolitions, torture, and mass detention? I don't get it.

Just to be clear: As I am sure you all know, I think the Palestinians would be far better served by mass nonviolent resistance in the style of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and I wish they had the leadership that would take them there. I wish for the same nonviolent leadership in the United States.

On Tuesday we went to the small Palestinian village of Suseya at the invitation of farmers because they wanted to draw water from their well. In order to do that, they have to get a permit from the Israeli army, even though it is their own well on their own private land. In the past, even though they hold a permit, armed Israeli settlers from nearby have stopped them, so they wanted accompaniment.

The water-drawing went without incident, but while we were there we received a call from a nearby village. Israeli settlers were uprooting and dragging away olive trees from the village grove. The olive trees are their livelihood. By the time we got there, the settlers had taken away 40 trees, leaving the grove in ruins. We did manage to get it on Israeli radio, but too late to stop the settlers.

On the way home, we had to do our usual driving all over the place to find a way back into Hebron. We got dropped off at Beit Anun, a place where many come and go. We found the Israeli army there preventing Palestinians from crossing over to the blocked road into Hebron. They were letting people in, but one by one. The men were stopped; the women were let by. One man said to us, "I need a sex change operation. Then they would let me across. I am not a man anyway. If I were a man, I would not be in this situation."

Many Palestinians are now avoiding the roads and cutting through vineyards on the outskirts of Hebron to get in to the city. As we drive by, we can see lines of people snaking through the grapevines. The army does not stop this, proving that the whole thing is more about harassment than actual closure.

Yesterday we were returning from a visit and the cab took us to the only blocked road where there was no army truck. There were vegetable trucks parked on either side of the blockade, transferring their products from outside the city to trucks that could take them inside (see the photo above). The drivers were throwing heads of cauliflower at each other across the barrier.

We have passed a number of ambulances that were detained by Israeli soldiers. The villagers in Suseya tell us stories about trying to get to the hospital in an emergency. They are prevented by law from using the paved road to the nearby city because it is a settler road--Palestinians cannot drive on it. So the ambulance cannot come to them. They have to go to the hospital by donkey.

Have I mentioned the license plate system? Palestinians have green and white license plates, and those cars can't go on many roads (settler roads) and can't go into Jerusalem. Yellow and black license plates can go anywhere. These are for Israelis and the few Palestinians who have Jerusalem IDs. People also have ID cards with different colors, designating where one is allowed to move. This is a lot like the Soviet Union, the very system that many of these Jews escaped from for Israel.

Yesterday we visited two families who have home demolition orders because their land is located near an Israeli settlement. In both cases it is private land, owned by the people who live there. The Israeli army can just demolish homes on private land! One family has three small children. The father is the offspring of refugees from the 1948 occupation. He went to Saudia Arabia to earn enough money to come home to Palestine and buy land and a home for his family. Now he works as a hairdresser, although nobody in his community has any money, so they use the barter system. The mother has a university degree in computer science and speaks beautiful English, but she can't find work. They have lived with a demolition order for four years; they never know when the bulldozer will show up.

The other family is wealthier and has a big plot of land with grapes and fruit trees. But they have to get a permit to harvest their crops, and the army will only let them do it one day each week. They have 30 tons of grapes they can't harvest! But even if they could harvest them, they cannot sell them because of the West Bank closure. The market for them would be in Israel, and they can't get them through.

I hope I am giving you a sense of the despair and desperation here. The Palestinians are not the terrorists.

Lockdown in Hebron

Hebron is in lockdown. Lockdown is a term used in U.S. jails when inmates are locked in their cells and cannot walk around the common areas or go outside. Sometimes they do it just to get an accurate count; other times it is punishment imposed after some kind of incident. In Hebron, the "incident" was last week's suicide bombers, who lived in Hebron.

The Israeli army had previously blocked most of the roads in and out of Hebron,but now they have finished the job. They have locked us down.

There are currently 4,082,300 registered Palestinian refugees, 32% are living in camps. Refugees make up 32.6% of the population of the West Bank. Over 60% of Palestinians live on less than $2.15 per day, the official poverty level here. There are 98 Israeli army check points and 99 road blocks, and the worst affected areas are Ramallah and Hebron. 50% of the total land mass of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers. This land was confiscated from Palestinians.

This military occupation is harsh, leaving people in despair and without hope. But Palestinians retain their self-respect, and almost everyone here is engaged in some form of nonviolent resistance. Some people are also engaged in violent resistance.

One form of nonviolent resistance involves the roadblocks. We can get out of town by taking a cab to a roadblock, then climbing over the pile of rocks and dirt, then catching another cab waiting on the other side. We have to repeat this 2, sometimes 3, times to get to Jerusalem. Returning from Jerusalem on Sunday, we found that the army had put up yetanother barrier: barbed wire. We took a cab to the roadblock, climbed over it, then took a cab to the barbed wire, then walked around three sets of coiled barbed wire in the road about a half block apart. Then we caught another cab.

The whole town is being punished for the action of two residents. Another form of collective punishment involves aggressive I.D.checks. There are military check points all over Hebron, and Palestinian men are routinely detained. This activity has picked up noticeably since the suicide bombing. Today we witnessed Israeli border police parading aline of 35 or so young Palestinian men toward the check point nearest our apartments. The police made them squat in a line for an hour. When someone asked the officer in charge why the men were detained, his reply was, "because I want to."

The image of Hebron as a jail and the Israelis as our jailers fits the situation here. The violence of the jailer is well-known but rarely punished, while the violence of the inmate results in severe punishment for the whole population. The only difference is that most people here never committed a crime. They landed in this jail due to geography, international politics, ethnic origin, religion, and bad luck.

Introduction to Hebron

Hebron is home to the buriel site of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, and the worship space above it dates from at least Herod's time. As such it is a holy site. The Old City of Hebron, the location of the buriel site, was for centuries the home of Muslims and Jews who lived there peacefully until 1929, during the time that it was a British colony. In 1929 there was a massacre of Jews by Arabs, and 67 Jews were killed. Over 400 were saved because they were hidden by their Palestinian neighbors (although this is never pointed out in Israeli literature about it). This event is a point of grief for both sides.

After the massacre, the British forced the rest of the Jews out, saying they could no longer be protected. In 1979, the Israelis established their first settlement in Hebron, claiming that it was an ancient Jewish site and forcing out the Palestinians who lived in the places they wished to settle. Today there are 4 Jewish settlements in Hebron, all with confiscated land. One is located right in the Old City, built literally on top of Palestinian homes, forcing the residents to flee.

In 1994 there was a massacre of Palestinians by a fanatical rabbi from New York, who opened fire on Muslims at prayer in the mosque located on top of the holy buriel sites. 27 Palestinians were killed by him, and an equal number were killed by Israeli soldiers who were brought in. The rabbi was killed by 3 Palestinian men who beat him with a fire extinguisher (the only weapon they had) in order to stop the killing. The three men were killed by Israeli soldiers.

Since that time the buriel site has been split in half--one part for Jews and one part for Muslims, with a wall between. Currently, the settlers are bulldozing several 700-year-old Palestinian near the site to make way for a new road from their settlement to the synagogue. Palestinians are forbidden to use these settler roads.

Until just a few months ago, there was constant violence between Palestinians and Jews in the Palestinian market area of the Old City and on a main road in town that was used for commerce, but was also used by the settlers to get to their homes. The CPT apartment is located in the market area, just off that main road. However, a few months ago, the Israelis changed tactics a bit and closed off the road completely to Palestinians and blocked the market area off from the road. This effectively shut down the market and forced most of the vendors out to another part of the city.

The idea is to get all the Palestinians out of the old city altogether, even though they own their homes and shops there. Many have left, of course, but others are staying, keeping their shops open as a kind of nonviolent resistance. Israeli soldiers are stationed around the Old City to protect the settlers, although reports from CPT and other international groups state that most of the violence originates from the settlers.

It seems to me that the settlers are a scary bunch with a lot of political power. They often sit at the Hebron check points, and along with the soldiers, are armed with machine guns. Their large guns intimidate the hell out of me, and I guess that is the point.

I do understand why Jewish people want their own state, because of centuries of suffering violent oppression as an ethnic minority. However, I don't understand getting it by doing the exact same thing to another ethnic group.