Sunday, 24 February 2008

tel rumeida



My e-mail in-box was busy this last week, with reports and updates

from the violence reduction presence of the red-capped Christian

Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Hebron, all relating to recent death threats

against three of their members.

I've read CPT reports for some time now, and both these and the CPT

archives represent an oasis of information coming out of a desert of

silence. In Hebron we had endured both the "we work with the

authorities and cannot comment" silence of the International Committee

of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the "Our reports are passed on to

committees [somewhere]" silence of the mostly Norweigen Temporary

International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). TIPH unfortunately means

"spit" in Arabic, and silence - which is what ultimately results from

no-publish human rights mandates - is what keeps the violators happy

and makes you want to make the same sound as the name.


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