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After the attack on Kiryat Arba on Friday evening, which left two settlers and two Hamas operatives dead, the Palestinians of Hebron H2, frequent witnesses to devastating setter rampages, were expecting the worst. Their fears materialized when at 5 PM Saturday 8 March 2003 dozens of settlers, most of them armed, attacked houses in Tel Rumeida. The area was under curfew at the time; a selective curfew that confines Palestinians to their homes while allowing settlers to commit acts of violence with impunity. Hamdi Basam Abu Eisha (12) from Tel Rumeida was injured during this latest incident. Settlers threw stones at the veranda of his parents? house, seriously wounding the boy on the head. He was evacuated to Alia hospital for treatment.

Elsewhere in Hebron, the houses of Hamas activists who undertook the attack on Kiryat Arba were demolished; thus the families of Hazem Fawzi ilQawasma and Susyan Mohammed Hariz lost their homes. The house of the suicide bomber in Haifa, Mohammed Qumran Qawasma, was also destroyed Saturday.

Moreover, the ?security zone? around Kiryat Arba was expanded, consequently uprooting 200 fruit trees west of Kiryat Arba and a tool shack belonging to landowner Shaker Bana.

Curfew has been imposed continuously on downtown H2 for what amounts now to 112 days, lifted once in a while for a few hours. Overnight Saturday, the army arrested 8 men during house searches. Part of H1 was also under curfew over the weekend.

The roads between Hebron and Bethlehem are closed. An eastern road has been used as an alternative to the main highway Road 60 for a long time now, because the checkpoint at Kfar Etzion intermittently closes Road 60 to Palestinian passengers. On Saturday however, the alternative eastern route was blocked by a ditch dug out by army bulldozers near the settlement of Tekoa.