[1763] in peace2
HEBRON DISTRICT: Settlers Interfere with Wheat Harvest
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Felix F AuYeung)
Sun May 26 15:28:49 2002
To: peace-announce@mit.edu
Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 15:21:52 -0400
Message-ID: <20020526.152814.-328435.7.FelixAuYeung@juno.com>
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From: Felix F AuYeung <felixauyeung@juno.com>
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "John Kelly" <jkelly@hungercenter.org>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 12:07:44 -0400
HEBRON DISTRICT: Settlers Interfere with Wheat Harvest
by KR Kamphoefner, May 21, 2002
Christian Peacemaker Teams
On the afternoon of May 20, in the southern Hebron district, two Israeli
settler youth, accompanied by a settler security guard, ordered their
dogs to attack groups of about thirty Palestinian farmers harvesting
their
wheat and and demanded that the farmers stop working. The two armed
settlers claimed the land belonged to them. One Palestinian woman
reported to CPTers Greg Rollins and Kathy Kamphoefner, who were helping
with the harvest, that one of the settlers pushed her down.
The farmers' land lay just south of a new outpost settlement that has
been named Avigail, south of Yatta. The village head reported that the
Palestinian farmers had received permission to harvest from the Israeli
Civil Administration, which oversees the West Bank, earlier in the week.
Rollins and Kamphoefner greeted the two twenty-something settlers and
asked them to stop haranguing the farmers. The two settlers ran around
the field, kicked apart piles of cut wheat stalks and unloaded one truck
already full of the newly cut wheat. The CPTers stood between the
Israelis and Palestinians when the arguments became more heated. A
handful of Israeli soldiers and more settlers arrived. Israeli army
Captain Gul said the area was a closed military zone, until he could get
a decision from his commander on the problem.
When the official from the Civil Administration arrived, the settlers
and the farmers told their perspectives. After about two hours of work
stoppage, soldiers told the farmers and CPTers that work could resume.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military prevented a Rabbi for Human Rights
contingent from traveling to the area for about two hours. When the
Israeli group arrived by mid-afternoon, the remaining settlers left. The
Rabbis for Human Rights supporters pitched in with the harvesting.
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