Hebron

Despite chronic attacks on their homes and property by settlers, while Israeli forces continue to confiscate more and more land to serve the nearby settlement, the Jaber family hold fast to both their heritage and their future.

Settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has risen 40 percent since 2010, and 165 percent since 2009, according to the UN. Protesting a wave of settler attacks on her home and property, one elderly Palestinian woman in Hebron went on hunger strike.

Palestinian schoolchildren and their teachers face violent settler attacks and Israeli army movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Abdel-Alim Da’na, a leader of the PFLP and a professor at Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron, speaks to Ben Lorber about his experience in Israel’s prisons.

Palestinian women in Hebron have formed a traditional handicrafts cooperative to preserve cultural heritage and provide stable income for dozens of families hit hard by the economic effects of Israel’s occupation.

On 7 January, five Israeli soldiers invaded Subhya Qawasme’s home. Her husband, Amr, was shot to death while he was sleeping in their bed as Subhya prayed beside him. Amr Qawasme was 66 years old. He was a former construction worker, a father of 12 and a grandfather of 37. Charlotte Silver reports for The Electronic Intifada.

The Palestinian families which live along Route 60 in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank have no recourse when settlers attack. The area is under full Israeli civil and military control leaving the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority relatively helpless in dealing with problems caused by Israeli settlers. Joseph Dana reports from Hebron.

Amir smiled when I asked him to tell me his favorite color. Sitting in his family’s living room last Thursday afternoon in the Old City of Hebron, the ten-year-old softly replied, “green.” Hours after our interview Israeli soldiers would break into the house and snatch Amir from his bed. The Electronic Intifada contributor Nora Barrows-Friedman writes from the occupied West Bank.

Our sobering taste of life in Hebron included other devastating stories and the presence of Israeli guard towers, camouflage netting, checkpoints, a wall spray painted with graffiti that included a tribute to the Golani brigade, one of the Israeli army’s most aggressively violent units, and to Betar, a right-wing youth organization. I passed a concrete block obstructing the road, spray painted with an arrow and the words “This is apartheid.” Alice Rothchild writes from Hebron.

The word “revenge” is scrawled in Hebrew on a Palestinian school in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The windows are covered with screens and the play yard obstructed with more screens tipped with barbed wire, to obstruct the stones regularly pelted down by Jewish settlers. Sarah Lazare and Clare Bayard write from Hebron, occupied West Bank.