Quiet

Unlike last summer, this summer in Hebron is a very calm one. We usually only interact with soldiers and settlers on Fridays and Saturdays, during Mosque Patrol (or demos in the villages) and the Settler Tour. We get almost no calls otherwise.
Part of the reason for this is less co-ordination with some of our local partners, another being that Tel Rumeida is still very much restricted to us and another that in some parts of Hebron we do not yet have contacts.
A larger reason is that in areas where we are and have access to, there are much less things going on that happened last year- less arrests, less raids, less attacks.

In a way, that is of course a very good thing.
In another, the relative silence is misleading.
The streets of some parts of H2 are often almost empty, the market sees very little tourists. It reminds me in some cases of a ghost town.
People are afraid to come to the market, after several months ago soldiers shot dead several Palestinian youth and young men, allegedly during stabbing attempts. Business for many of the shopkeepers, who are already strugging to make ends meet, has gone down even more and they face a lot of financial difficulties.
People in Tel Rumeida must show their numbers when entering and leaving their neighbourhood. The soldiers ease and reinforce this rule as they see fit, and there is no way of knowing how long it will take to at the next checkpoint stop.
Every Saturday, Palestinians in the Souq are forced to stand aside for the settlers. Every Friday, attending prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque is an ordeal of getting through stops and bodysearches and being made to stand against the wall or being trapped between automated gates.
There are water shortages in Hebron, as there are across the rest of the West Bank, whether H1 or H2.

We hear of Israeli Army raids on villages around Ramallah, where in the past two weeks, two teenage Palestinian boys had been shot during clashes, one who is now dead.
While the everyday harassment and assaults by settlers and soldiers seem to have decreased, to describe the situation as "peaceful" would be misleading.