South Hebron Hills, Thu 4.4.13, Morning
Shift objectives: creative activity in Huda’s kindergarten, Hashem el Daraj, together with Huda
The theme:My body – dolls out of toilet-paper cylinders, kalkar balls and pipe cleaners
It was a day of sandstorms and sudden cold. Many children didn’t come, some arrived with their mother, who stayed because going home in the storm was so hard. 15 children attended.
As we entered, the children were seated in a circle on chairs, and straw mats we had brought some weeks ago. Because of Mohamed’s presence, Huda and the other women covered their faces. Mohamed decided to leave and find something else to do (a pity, since he is such an important part of our activities). Luckily, we had Boteyna, who translated and connected us with Huda and Amana her aunt, who was working as her aide.
We brought dressing-up clothes for acting the story, “Rasha’s Hat”, about a girl with a hat whose feathers were blown away, one after another, until she learned to hold her hat properly and save a feather. On our previous visit we had done this without dressing up and no musical instruments and the children had looked frozen. Today they were more relaxed. This time, they put flowers on themselves and acted the part of the wind.
Then we moved on to the table activities. We made dolls out of cardboard rolls as the body, the kalkar balls as the head, and the pipe cleaners for the arms and the legs and a belt. Huda had prepared material for the dolls’ garment. Finally, we glued eyes on the face and drew hair on the head. It was a bit complicated. Lucky we were three women. Some of the children enjoyed playing with the dolls and coloring the face and dresses. Some seemed bored. In the end, Huda decided would leave the dolls in preschool – we strung them up (on hangers Mohamed had made last time). We really need shelves and tables to exhibit the children’s work.
Pictures of the activity (Mira – Gan Huda art activity April 4th, 2013
https://picasaweb.google.com/113044451662544057850?authkey=Gv1sRgCNS_j8qy0sCOGA
“Staff” meeting:
Mohamed joined us – since the children and their mothers had gone home, Huda felt free enough not to cover her face. We talked over tea and cookies and discussed the activities we had planned. Thursday, in two week’s time, we shall make models of houses out of milk cartons. And after that we’re planning to sing children’s songs about ‘Handy from Nazareth’. Huda took it on herself to prepare the materials we had brought for the activities. We also left tools for making things with plastecine – maybe they will start something new even in our absence.
South Hebron Hills
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South Hebron Hills
South Hebron Hills is a large area in the West Bank's southern part.
Yatta is a major city in this area: right in the border zone between the fertile region of Hebron and its surroundings and the desert of the Hebron Hills. Yatta has about 64,000 inhabitants.
The surrounding villages are called Masafer Yatta (Yatta's daughter villages). Their inhabitants subsist on livestock and agriculture. Agriculture is possible only in small plots, especially near streams. Most of the area consists of rocky terraces.Since the beginning of the 1980s, many settlements have been established on the agricultural land cultivated by the Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills region: Carmel, Maon, Susia, Masadot Yehuda, Othniel, and more. Since the settlements were established and Palestinians cultivation areas have been reduced; the residents of the South Hebron Hills have been suffering from harassment by the settlers. Attempts to evict and demolish houses have continued, along with withholding water and electricity. The military and police usually refrain from intervening in violent incidents between settlers and Palestinians do not enforce the law when it comes to the investigation of extensive violent Jewish settlers. The harassment in the South Hebron Hills includes attacking and attempting to burn residential tents, harassing dogs, harming herds, and preventing access to pastures.
There are several checkpoints in the South Hebron Hills, on Routes 317 and 60. In most of them, no military presence is apparent, but rather an array of pillboxes monitor the villages. Roadblocks are frequently set up according to the settlers and the army's needs. These are located at the Zif Junction, the Dura-al Fawwar crossing, and the Sheep Junction at the southern entrance to Hebron.
Updated April 2022
Michal TsadikMay-20-2026The noisy machine that disturbs the IDF
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