What life is like in the South Hebron Hills

It's rare that mainstream (and well-known) media come down and do stories on the situation in the South Hebron Hills – but it does happen. Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times was in the area recently and wrote this article about his visit.

Just this past week the New York Times also released this video about his visit, and it really shows the extremes between the standard of life available to Israeli settlers in the area and Palestinian residents.

The video opens with the Omar Abu-Jundiya family in their cave in Tuba. A couple of nights ago a teammate and I visited this family and spent the night. And as always, this is where I've had the best tea that I've ever had in Palestine! The kids in this family were the first ones that CPTers accompanied to and from school when the project in At-Tuwani village opened. The international accompaniment of the children didn't last long because of attacks by settlers. So for the past 6 years these children have been accompanied by either the Israeli military or police on part of the road they take to school as it goes in-between an Israeli settlement and an Israeli settler outpost – and the settlers have continued to harass and attack these children even while they are being escorted. It's a bit crazy – rather than hold the settlers accountable for their actions, and removing the illegal settlement outpost – the band-aid solution of a military escort continues.

Anyway, back to the Abu-Jundiya family. Part way into the Kristof video, Ahmed Abu-Jundiya is interviewed – he has just graduated from high school and often shepherds his family's flock in the early morning. He is also a videographer for the 'Shooting Back' project of B'tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Last week Wednesday Ahmed was shepherding and several settlers came and stole one of his family's sheep. As a result of the video that Achmed took of the incident the Israeli police were able to identify the settlers and Achmed's father went with the police to retrieve the sheep from the settlement. While Ahmed and his father Omar were at the Israeli police station filing a complaint against the settlers (Ahmed for 5 hours), one of the settlers came in and filled a counter complaint against Omar (which is bogus as Omar wasn't even at the incident). At first the police didn't want to give Ahmed a copy of his complaint, but the B'tselem field worker who accompanied Ahmed insisted on a copy as if the case goes to court and Palestinians don't have a copy of the complaint that they filed the Israeli police have sometimes claimed that none was filed. And then the complaint of the settler is the only one for which there is paperwork for and the case would go badly for the Palestinians. In instances such as this with both the Palestinians and the settler filing complaints the case will mostly likely be thrown out by a judge – and the settlers will not be prosecuted for stealing a sheep. Here is the video that Achmed captured.