A large part of ISM's work is done in Hebron. I summed up the situation there in a blog entry I wrote in 2014, an excerpt of which I will be pasting below. Sadly, very little has changed.
"Hebron is a city that is divided into two zones- H1 and H2. H1 is administered by the Palestinian Authority, yet it has limited power. The Israeli Army can- and does- enter it frequently, often sparking clashes.
In H2, a population of some 30,000 Palestinians (according to Wikipedia), live under the boot of a military occupation, that was put in place to protect several hundred Israeli settlers who have moved in there soon after the West Bank was conquered by Israel in 1967. To be fair, there used to be a Jewish presence in Hebron until 1929, when some extremists who were Palestinians from outside the city murdered several dozen Jews and forced the others to evacuate the city.
It is also worth noting that during this pogrom, other Palestinian inhabitants of Hebron helped hide their Jewish neighbours. The settlers who arrived after '67 were not the families of these people.
The settlers take over homes, and from them make the lives of Palestinians as difficult as possible. Rocks are thrown at children on their way to school. Water, bleach and even urine is dumped on people doing business in the market below. When settlers go on a parade, the Israeli Army cordons off whole sections of H2, severely disrupting business that for many shopkeepers is necessary to survive. The Israeli Army holds up Palestinians at checkpoints, and attacks any who dare to protest. Homes are also destroyed, as well as farms on the outskirts of this city.
The daily mistreatment and humiliations cause resentment and anger, and lead to demonstrations, some of them violent, where rocks are thrown at the army. When this happens, the soldiers will shoot rubber bullets, teargas cannisters, and sometimes live ammunition at the kids and young men confronting them.
http://mighty-stream123.blogspot.com/2014/07/hebron-life-under-military-occupation.html
Up until last year, ISM had an apartment in H2 Hebron, in a neighbourhood called Tel Rumeida. The Palestinians in Tel Rumeida are literally only a few steps away from one of the settlements, and experience regular army and settler violence and intimidation.
The apartment lived in by ISM was on the street, and we would come out of it whenever abuses were happening, often outside our window.
In November 2015, the Israeli Army made the area a "closed military zone". Palestinians who live there were given numbers that they needed to show to soldiers as they exit and enter their own neighbourhood- without any guarantee of how long it might take to be allowed to come back after a trip to do some groceries to another part of the city. No Palestinian who doesn't live there was allowed to enter, not even people visiting their families.
Later during that month, Israeli soldiers forced ISM to evacuate the apartment, soon after an ISM volunteer documented them shooting and killing a Palestinian man who was walking away from them, refuting a claim later made by the soldiers that he had knife and they acted in "self defence".
The Closed Military Zone was partially lifted in May, which meant that non-residents are allowed to go in, with limited approval by the Israeli military. Sometimes ISMers are allowed to enter the neighbourhood, sometimes we are not. The same applies to other visitors, including relatives and friends.
Our apartment is currently in H1 Hebron, which is technically under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority... although there too the Israeli Army enters if they feel they have a reason, albeit more rarely.
As I have learned from the people on the team, the last few days have been fairly quiet, with no Palestinian reports of army or settler violence. This is good, and God willing may it continue to be this way. Even better is an end to the occupation.
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