"I Am Not Leaving My Home."

This afternoon we went to Al-Fawwar refugee camp. The families there were expelled from their villages over 50 years ago when Israel became a state. They first lived in tents. Then they built small concrete squares. Now many families have added onto the original square. Two families asked us to come. Both needed medical help, which we cannot provide. But we can suggest help from other organizations and because they are refugees, the UN provides some very limited medical care. The mother of the first family told of her exhausting trip to Jerusalem to have a surgery done on her baby boy. Her son shares the same name as one of Saddam Hussein’s sons so the military detained her and her young son for hours. The oldest daughter, a 10th grader, needs to go to Jerusalem to the hospital for a nose problem, but the family is afraid of going through a similar ordeal again. Her brother, a 4th grader, showed us scars on his leg where Israeli soldiers kicked and cut him. One day on his way home from school some Palestinian children threw stones at the soldiers. The soldiers chased him and beat him. However, he claims that he was not one of the children who threw stones.

A few hours ago, after we returned home from al-Fawwar, our next door neighbor and translator who joined us in Al-Fawwar today, knocked on our door. She said calmly, “I just wanted to let you know that I have been attacked by settlers.” We asked if she was ok and she said that she was eating dinner and settlers began throwing stones at her window. One went through and broke the glass. We went over to her house and saw glass scattered on the floor and a stone sitting in front of the sofa. She climbed out on the balcony and showed us the other stones that did not make it through her window. Her front door is on the main road, Shuhada Street, that Palestinians are not allowed to use. She cannot open her front door (we all share a back door) and sometimes she hears settlers beating on the door, trying to “encourage” her to leave. She thinks they are hassling her because she recently moved into her apartment. Before she began renting it, it had been abandoned for a while. It is not uncommon for settlers to take over abandoned buildings here in Hebron. Our neighbor is a strong and determined woman. She wanted to have her window, which faces settler-only Shuhada St., open for air (although she has metal shutters that could stay shut over the windows). She said, “Why do they do things like this?” My teammate said, “I guess they want to frighten you into leaving.” And our neighbor, who had just heard stories in Al-Fawwar from people who were forced from their homes, laughed and said, “Well, they must not know me. They should throw stones somewhere else if that is what they want. I am not leaving my home.”