08 January 2007
Just a short notice about forthcoming posts.
This Saturday I'm going for a tour of the South Hebron Hill, where the local farmers and shepherds are subject to a concerted campaign by settlers to drive them from their homes. The next week I'll be spending Shabbat (from Friday after noon till Saturday night, it being winter) with the settlers of Hebron. I'll be staying with a family in Kiryat Arba, a large settlement adjacent to the city, then praying at the synagogue in the Hebron settlement in the heart of Hebron. The family are friends of a friend, with whom I'll be going.
My initial instinct to opt for the widest range of activity with Yesh Din makes for interesting experiences. But the course towards which I am writing this blog as a diary requires me to read certain patters of bureaucratic or authoritarian control into some of what I witness. This is proving difficult when constantly switching from one thing to another. So, over the next few months I intent to alternate between a continued variety with Yesh Din and concentrated with the Rabbis. They have a new project focusing on house demolitions in the Jerusalem area. These are cases in which Palestinians have built houses or extensions without the required Israeli planning permission, which can be difficult to attain. These structures are then demolished by the army. By concentrating on this issue, I might be able to again a little more insight than I have done hitherto.
This Saturday I'm going for a tour of the South Hebron Hill, where the local farmers and shepherds are subject to a concerted campaign by settlers to drive them from their homes. The next week I'll be spending Shabbat (from Friday after noon till Saturday night, it being winter) with the settlers of Hebron. I'll be staying with a family in Kiryat Arba, a large settlement adjacent to the city, then praying at the synagogue in the Hebron settlement in the heart of Hebron. The family are friends of a friend, with whom I'll be going.
My initial instinct to opt for the widest range of activity with Yesh Din makes for interesting experiences. But the course towards which I am writing this blog as a diary requires me to read certain patters of bureaucratic or authoritarian control into some of what I witness. This is proving difficult when constantly switching from one thing to another. So, over the next few months I intent to alternate between a continued variety with Yesh Din and concentrated with the Rabbis. They have a new project focusing on house demolitions in the Jerusalem area. These are cases in which Palestinians have built houses or extensions without the required Israeli planning permission, which can be difficult to attain. These structures are then demolished by the army. By concentrating on this issue, I might be able to again a little more insight than I have done hitherto.
