Big protest today

Marwan, at the Holy Land Trust, told me that we might be going to a protest today. Tracy was rather concerned, so I asked Marwan if he had had problems in the past. 

He tells me that during the 1st Intifada he was arrested 8 times and, on one occasion, spent 26 months in prison on one occasion. Things have got easier and he has only been arrested seven times since working at the Holy Land Trust. Mostly he is held for a few hours, sometimes for a day, and then released. 

He told me of the time in March 2010 when went with a group of around 250 people and three donkeys to exercise their right to process down the Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday. They got 500 yards past the main checkpoint going out of Bethlehem towards Jerusalem (which the international traffic uses) before thousands of soldiers arrived. He was arrested and spent 5 days in custody, while the internationals there were released after a few hours. The donkeys were also held in custody for 2 days. Marwan appeared before the judge and had to pay a fine of 3000 shekels for entering Israel without a permit. He was also banned from getting a permit to go into Israel for 4 years. Marwan also had to pay the cost of keeping the donkeys in custody. 

Today there is a huge protest in Hebron. Twenty years ago on 25 February, an extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein entered the Mosque during morning prayer in his reservist army uniform. He opened fire on the worshippers and murdered 29 Palestinians and injured more than 100 people before he was overpowered. He was killed with a fire extinguisher.

Following this, the Mosque was split into two and now the building is part Mosque, part Synagogue. This place has remained one of the most tense in the West Bank. There is a Jewish Settlement right in the heart of the Old City. The main Palestinian shopping street in the Old City, Shuhada Street has been closed to provide protection for the Settlers. Palestinians have to go through a turnstile checkpoint to access Shuhada Street and it is patrolled by israeli soldiers. 

This protest will probably be violent and so we are not going.