I apologize for the long delay, I really have no good excuse, so here we go again…
One of the groups we met with the next day in Hebron before leaving for At Tuwani was the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, which is the first and only organization in Hebron to address issues around women’s rights, domestic abuse, education to raise awareness around these issues, and creating safe houses for women who might be running from “honor deaths” (which is the culture’s form of making a family clean if a woman has been raped, been in adultery, or has had sex outside of marriage by killing the woman). It has caught on among some people, but as the traditions are very ingrained in the culture, it has been met with opposition for the most part, and they receive no funding from within Hebron and are forced to seek funds from international groups. The second photo is of a group of university students going through the organization’s training program, who will then go out to train others in schools and various places.
From Hebron we travelled to At Tuwani, a small outlying village SW from Hebron where CPT has their full-time operation. At this location CPT is an international presence, documenting (through photo and video footage) the injuries caused to Palestinians by the Jewish settlers while they accompany shepards grazing their flocks, and monitor children walking to school who are often attacked and stoned by settlers (we’re talking little kids, not high schoolers). Sometimes this helps, sometimes CPT folks are attacked as well.
Below we are taking off on a hour and a half walk to a demolished village, which ended up being just a walk since we found out (late in the game) that we had been walking the wrong direction.
The following images are what we saw from the road we were travelling on, which happened to be an Israeli road (which they call “clean roads” since they don’t allow Palestinians to travel on them).
Olive groves were everywhere, but many of the Palestinians can’t harvest them due to the military claiming the land as a “closed military zone” (without any reason why, and often around the time of harvest), or the settlers attack and or destory the groves.
Above you can see Palestinians actually plowing the fields. Many times they have to do this quickly becuase settlers and military will come in and stop them if they realize what they are doing. A field on the backside of the hill in Tuwani had just been plowed in around two or so hours so as to avoid this. They brought in many tractors and made one continuous sweep through the valley really quickly, then high tailed it out of there. It looked like a very impressive job for being done so quickly, although it is rather sad to realize they were forced to work in such a manner.
Above is a man riding into the nearby village on his donkey, and below is a young shepard with his flock.
The above image is of jet clouds produced by the below fighter planes that littered the sky like seagulls at the coast. They would create a circle like so that would be a marker for tanks on the ground to travel to, at which point some military order was carried out, such as demolishing a home or village. Often we would hear the sub-sonic boom of the planes when they passed the speed of sound.
A nearby village (above). Upon returning to Tuwani after our long walk we turned around to see the night closing in (below).
That night we were fed at the house that many of the delegates slept at. They rolled out butcher paper as a table cloth on the floor, and then brought in home made humus, pita bread, vegetables, olives, and it was amazing! We heard a story of one of the full time CPT folks accidentally thinking they were supposed to be for her feet, but she was quickly corrected by the women she was with and has never used it as such since.
That night I slept outside over at the CPT apartment with a few of the full timers, and a couple of the delegates. But before turning in I took this 30 second exposure, including Orion and a few other familiar constellations.
by Joel
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