Sammi in Hebron

Sammi was one of two brothers whose family graciously allowed our group into their home and organized homestays for us for the night. Sammi lives in Hebron which is in the southwestern corner of the West Bank (visible on the profile map). The city of Hebron contains 180,00 residents and 300,000-500,000 people in the metropolitan area and is nearly all Muslim. There are between 500-1000 Jewish settlers in Hebron, and they reside close to the city center in a total of four settlements. In the mid-1990's, Hebron was broken up into two areas H1 (Palestinian Authority controlled) and H2 (Israeli controlled). The H2 zone contains all of the Israelis in Hebron and roughly 25,000 Palestinians. In terms of size, 80% of the land area in Hebron is H1 and 20% is H2. Therefore, roughly 0.5% of the population controls 20% of the land area in the city.......Rewind

Part 1 - During the 1st Entifada, 1987-1993, Sammi was a young boy, no more than 10 years old. He was playing soccer on the street with some of his friends and during the game a car of Israeli settlers drove past them on the street. The settlers stopped, got out of the car, and proceeded to beat Sammi. Not only did Sammi get assaulted as a child, he had to suffer the humiliation of urinating in his own pants. It is important to note that during the 1st Intifada there were no suicide bombers and the revolt was largely nonviolent......Fast forward

Part 2 - In 2003, during the 2nd Intifada, Sammi was outside of his home on the street and several Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers approached him. They told him they were looking for twelve kids who were throwing rocks. The soliders asked Sammi where kids were, and he replied that he had no idea what they were talking about. The soliders told Sami to go find the kids. He retorted, you're the police you find them. Not liking his response, they took Sammi into a garage where they proceeded to severly beat him with their fists, legs, and butt ends of their M-16s. The severity of the assault left Sammi bedridden for two days.