Palestinian Human Rights Worker Arrested at Qurtuba School in Hebron

ISM, September 12th, 2007: Tel Rumeida, Hebron
At 7.25pm 11.9.07 ISM activists received a phone call saying there was a disturbance outside Qurtuba school. The school is in Tel Rumeida, Hebron opposite the Beit Hadassah settlement.

A group of 10 settler girls were on the school pathway having a BBQ with a gas cylinder and a burner. A Palestinian Human Rights Worker was filming the situation to gain evidence of settler trespass on school land. The police turned up and told the HRW to stop filming. The HRW was then arrested at 7.30pm on a claim of assaulting a police officer. The police confiscated the HRW’s phone and bundled him into the back of a police van. He was taken to Kiryat Arba police station.

The arrest was caught on film by ISM activists. Attempts were made by adult settlers to prevent filming of the incident. One activist was spat at by a 10 year old settler girl. Four soldiers watched over the group of settler girls, who were making access for Palestinians to their homes difficult.

The army have consistently failed to prevent settler children from from stoning Palestinian kids as they use the pathway. A large presense of international HRW’s is needed daily to insure safe passage to the school. The school was attacked and set on fire on the 6th of August.

The spurious charges against the Palestinian HRW were dropped and he was released at 11pm. The trespass of land by settler girls and their protection by the army and police is further evidence of settlers advance onto Palestinian property and land in Tel Rumeida district, Hebron.

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On Patrol at Qurtuba Girls School, Hebron
Christina Gibb, January 2006
Usually, it is members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) who patrol for this school, which takes more people and more time than any other, but sometimes CPT is involved too. To make sure that both teachers and girls are getting through unharmed, there need to be internationals stationed at the top of the road down from the Tel Rumeida settlement, by the metal detector checkpoint, at the foot of the steps, on the track and at the school, for the hour before school and the half hour at the end of school.

Teachers (including pregnant ones) were hit by stones, thrown by settlers who had scrambled up onto the path, before term had even started. This led to all the international groups mustering about 10 people to patrol at the beginning of term. The settlers were outraged at this large non-violent quiet-spoken presence, and the army and police declared a ‘closed military zone’.

EAPPI negotiated with the army and police, who said that they themselves will protect the girls and teachers on their way to and from school every day. But they are not always there at the right times. So EAPPI with help from the rest of us internationals, maintain about four people there, to keep them to their word.

Those in sight of Beit Hadassah settlement need to be fairly inconspicuous, as the settlers consider our presence ‘provocative’. Sometimes the police, conspicuously armed of course, park their jeep at the foot of the steps, so the girls have to almost squeeze past. Soldiers stand on the upper track, weapons at the ready, so the girls look down the barrel of a gun as they walk by.

When I tried to talk to one young soldier – he had no English, and I no Hebrew, but finally I talked to a junior officer in French – he was quite oblivious of what this looked like from a child’s point of view. Though the girls are protected, it makes for a very scary scene.

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Hebron's Theater of the Absurd
by: Kathleen Kern
January - March 1996
The Link - Volume 29, Issue 1

Children Under Siege: Assaults, Bottles, Garbage, and the Flag

September 10 was the first day of school for Palestinian students throughout the West Bank. Since the Israelis had handed over responsibilities for education to the Palestinian Authority over the summer, thousands of schools raised the Palestinian flag for the first time. Two hundred and twenty-one schools in Hebron did so without incident.

But when the flag was raised over Qurtuba school, settlers from Beit Hadassah charged onto the school grounds, seized the flag and burned it. They then attacked the school headmistress, Fariel Abu Haikel, striking her in the chest.

A half hour later, Abu Haikel, several teachers and about 150 students from the school marched to the Palestinian Education Department to make a complaint. As they passed Beit Hadassah, the settlers attacked again. One of the aggressors, an adult male, seized a Palestinian flag from the girls, swung it around and then ran at them with it. A female settler threw glass liter bottles at the girls.

Ten girls were taken in ambulances to the hospital and treated for minor injuries. Many others fainted. The newspaper the next day printed pictures of the girls with eyes rolled up in their heads lying limp in the arms of the men who had rushed to help them.

I thought of the many times I had seen settler boys making slashing motions across their throats when Palestinian children walked past them. I thought of the "Death to the Arabs" graffiti I had seen spray painted in dozens of places around the area of the school. And I concluded that the girls who had fainted thought that the settlers from Beit Hadassah were finally making good on their threats.