Notes & Letters

From Glenn Witmer in Jerusalem: 14 Mar 2002

RED LINES - A Reflection on Recent Events
by Dianne Roe

"They have crossed all of the red lines," said headmistress Fariel Abu Heikel as we met her at Qurtuba elementary girls' school in Hebron Tuesday morning. "Everyone is very afraid."

CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) first met Abu Heikel seven years
ago at the beginning of the Hebron project. Qurtuba School is located on a hillside between the Israeli settlement enclaves of Beit Hadasseh and Tel Rumeida. Abu Heikel, in her position as headmistress, has faced armed Israeli settlers and their stone throwing children. She has risked imprisonment, property destruction, and her personal safety while trying to provide an education for the elementary school girls in the neighborhood.

But Tuesday morning we knew that she was weighing these risks much more carefully. Television reports during the past week have shown the scenes of massive bombing of refugee camps, rounding up residents, cutting electricity, attacking schools, and shooting at ambulances. The number of casualties was mounting precipitously.

I tried to read Abu Heikel's face last week as Kathy Kern and I
met her at the top of Tel Rumeida, with about two dozen school children awaiting permission to go through the checkpoint toward their school. Armed soldiers had stopped them. Would she lead the children on to the school in defiance of the soldiers? We were ready to accompany if she did. After a fifteen minute standoff, Abu Heikel turned back, and the students went home. They were children, and the Israeli military has been known to shoot them.

When children want to go to school, women in labor want to go to a hospital, farmers want to go to their fields, we accompany them, if they request it. As internationals, we have a voice and a constituency to back it up. Shooting internationals, human rights workers or journalists is a red line. But yesterday six international journalists were shot by the Israeli military. One of those, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello died from the tank fire that hit him.

Today CPT visited a hospital in Hebron that had been hit with tank
fire in the northern part of Hebron. My teammates JoAnne Lingle and Mary Lawrence told me that one of the patients they talked with said, "Don't just write a report. We need help NOW!"

This morning as I talked with people in a village near Hebron, they asked me if I had heard the news about a new United Nations resolution, which recommends that Palestine be a state alongside Israel. They also said that Colin Powell criticized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Perhaps the United States and the world are finally seeing the red lines that have been crossed. Our prayer is that we will be able to answer the cries of those who are saying. "We need help NOW!"