Testimony of Nidal Farid al-‘Awiwi, 39, married, with Nine children, resident of the old city of Hebron “Casbah”

Testimony of Nidal Farid al-‘Awiwi, 39, married, with Nine children, resident of the old city of Hebron “Casbah”





Nidal Awiwi has nine children, ranging in age from a year and a half to eighteen years old. He lives in an apartment in an old building that he inherited. The building is in the Casbah, at the entrance to the old vegetable market, and is close to the Avraham Avinu Israeli settlement. His apartment has three rooms, plus a kitchen and bathroom. Two rooms are on the third floor, and there is a small third room that we built on the roof. They live in the rooms on the third floor because the army set up an observation post on the roof and doesn’t allow us to go into the room on the roof.
He’s an inspector for the Hebron Municipality. And he earns NIS 1,112 a month. Since 15 November 2002, he has been unable to work because of the curfew Israel imposed on the neighborhood.
He moved into this apartment 12 years ago. During this entire period, they have suffered from abuse and there property has been damaged. Settlers and soldiers bother them all the time. The harassment increased after the al-Aqsa intifada began. They are under curfew most of the time, which greatly affects there living conditions. He used to work at the Abu Eisha car dealership, where he used to earn NIS 1,600 a month. The agency was located in Area H-2, but it closed down.
The curfew makes it almost impossible for his wife and him to meet with friends and family. They are like prisoners in there house. The last time he visited my parents was during the holiday. Sometimes, more than two months go by before he was able to visit them.
There financial situation has deteriorated, and he do not earn enough to meet there needs. he had to disconnect the telephone and do not have money to buy furniture and replace items that were worn out. As for food, they eat the minimum necessary.

The prolonged curfew and harassment has also affected there neighbors, some of whom have moved to Area H-1. On the two-hundred-meter section of the road between the entrance to the Casbah’s and his house, only six of the twenty-three families remain. Two hundred and forty shops located in the area between the entrance of the Casbah and the Tomb of the Patriarchs has closed. A large number of shop owners who shut down their businesses opened new businesses or moved to shops in Area H-1. Even the market is closed now. It wasn’t enough for the army that the shops were closed for a long time; in the past two weeks, the army has welded shut the doors of more than twenty shops near the Avraham Avinu settlement.

The abuse that his family and him have suffered began before the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada. On 26 August 1998, his wife and him were hospitalized for smoke inhalation, after settlers from the Avraham Avinu settlement torched the bottom part of there house. During the intifada, on 4 August 2002, a soldier assaulted his son Sa’id, 14, and pushed him into a steel gate, fracturing his skull. He, too, was hospitalized. On 5 September 2002, a soldier threw a large rock, weighing more than three kilograms, at hisson Ghazi, 3, when he was riding on a bicycle with his brother Sa’id near the house during a break in the curfew. Ghazi’s left thigh was broken in two places, and he was hospitalized as a result.
On 22 December 2002, a Sunday, the IDF blocked the entrance to the vegetable market with dirt and stones. The dirt and stones piled up in front there house, and they were unable to open the gate. His entire family was at home except for his daughters Sa’ad, 9, and Sohad, 6, who were at school. It took four days before they were able to return home. The Hebron Municipality removed the dirt. The army had declared a curfew on that Sunday and did not allow municipal workers to from remove the dirt that day. The army also cut off the electricity. And he asked an army officer to allow the municipal maintenance workers to turn the electricity back on, but he refused. They were left without electricity for ten days. Finally, the municipality reconnected them, using another power cable because the cable that was disconnected passed through the Avraham Avinu settlement.
The soldiers at the observation point on the roof of our house come into our house about two times a week. They used to come in once a day, claiming that the reason was to search the house.

On the day that the settler Natanel Azuri was buried, settlers went up on the roofs of the houses near his house. The children were unable to go to the bathroom, because the settlers outside could see everybody who went to the bathroom. Then he called the municipality and explained the problem to the mayor. He told him that he would call an officer in the Israel Police Force, and ask him to help. An hour later, the officer and an officer in the Border Police came to the house. They were carrying a metal box. They said that they could not allow them to go to the bathroom. They gave them the box, and said that we should use it instead of the bathroom. The Border Police officer said that, if he were in his place, he would buy a rifle and use it – anything rather than have to live like this.
This is just some of what they go through living in this house. He says he think that their [the army’s] actions toward his family are intended to make him move out. He cannot leave the house. First of all, he do not own another house, and he do not earn enough to rent another place. Also, he thinks that if he left, the settlers will take over the house, and he doesn’t want that to happen.