Al-Tuwani

Al-Tuwani, January 5, 2005, AM Observers: Monica, LauraAt 7 AM Monica and two members of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT, a North American peace monitoring group) visited the polling station at the school and then went to the hills south of Al-Tuwani to see the people arriving from the south to vote. After a half hour they returned for breakfast. At 9 AM Laura arrived and the people from Operation Dove (OD, an Italian peace monitoring group) went to the school to observe while the CPTers went back out to observe the road.At around 11, two women from MachsomWatch arrived to observe the elections. After a discussion with the men present at the polling station they decided to ride with a man from Al-Tuwani on the road by the Havot Ma'on outpost in order to help the people from Tuba to arrive safely at the polling center, as the voters didn't want to walk an hour and a half on the path to Al Tuwani. Shortly, along the road close to the settlement, they turned around and came back to the village. Five minutes later a settler security vehicle went down the road and parked for a while on the road. Then the MachsomWatch women left the village. In the afternoon another MachsomWatch activist tried to arrange an escort for the people from Tuba, but it was too late for them to leave their houses, so they gave up.At 1 PM Laura and a CPT member went into an area near Havot Ma'on to accompany some shepherds from Mufakra who were grazing sheep, for about two hours. On this occasion no incident occurred. Afterward, while having tea in Mufakra, they were informed that around noon other shepherds had a confrontation with the settler security people, the Israeli army, and the police near the road that the settlers use on the other side of Mufakra.At about 3 PM European observers arrived in Al-Tuwani; they stayed for around 20 minutes. They told a CPTer that the soldiers prevented people from Jinba from coming to Al-Tuwani to vote.At around 5 PM an observer from Holland working for a Protestant NGO came to the teams' home in Al-Tuwani. He was accompanied by people from Yatta and asked questions about the elections and the OD and CPT presence in the village.