This morning I watched a settler boy beat on a Palestinian girl as she was making her way home from school. There were six border police close by that did nothing to intervene.

Since Monday I have been in Tel Rumeida, a small neighborhood in the H2 area of the city of Hebron. The designation H2 means it is under Israeli control, which means the IDF (Isreali Defense Forces), the Israeli Police and the Border Police are the formal authorities. (H1 is officially under Palestinian control.) There are military outposts throughout the neighborhood. Palestinian residents are only allowed to travel by foot and are often stopped at the outposts where Israeli soldiers check their ids and bags. A checkpoint with metal detectors stands at the border of the H1 and H2 area.

There are two settlements in the immediate area, Tel Rumeida settlement, and the Beit Hadassah settlement. One of them, the Tel Rumeida Settlement, is just down the road from the apartment building where I am staying with other human rights workers (HRW). Internationals are not allowed into the settlement area, and there is a military post just before it, which they won’t let you get close to. Settler violence and harassment toward Palestinians often happen in and just around the settlement areas, which was the case this morning. I was standing near a military post beside the apartment. The military post beside the settlement is only a block away. The settler boy was sitting on a curb on the opposite side of the second military post when he attacked the girl. As an international I couldn’t go very far, however an Israeli HRW was standing beside me when the attack happened. As an Israeli he is allowed in the settlement zone and ran forward, however he was stopped by the border police and threatened with arrest.

A couple hours later I was standing near the Beit Hadassah settlement just across the street from the Qurtuba Girls School where around 100 Palestinian students from the area go to school. Settlers sometimes throw stones at the kids as they are going to and from school, so a few human rights organizations put folks in the area in an attempt to protect the children as well as document human rights abuses. I was standing not far from the checkpoint when border police pulled up beside me and the HRW I was standing with. We were asked what we were doing there. We described our work, telling him we were there to help protect the safety of the children. Our passports were briefly taken and we were threatened with arrest.

Below is a picture of four kids from Tel Rumeida and the military outpost I was standing near when we saw the attack on the Palestinian girl. Palestinians get their bags checked as they go past the outpost.