Hebron- city of bloodshed, still contested

(Saeed, on the roof top of his family's house, contested by settlers next door.)

"Jerusalem's problems are easy compared to Hebron's," Bashar, a quiet-voiced Palestinian who's currently looking for work, said.

We were standing on a roof top overlooking the Jewish settlement that has occupied the center of the old Arab Souk (market) since 1980. Adjacent to the rooftop is a modern looking settler's building.

The Palestinian residents say the settlers next door tried to buy their building, offering first half a million dollars, then a million and when the residents still refused, a flaming molotov was tossed in the top room. That was almost a year ago. You can still see the scorches on the floor. On the rooftop there are bullet holes in a small water tank.

Site of conflict

Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank. On the outskirts is a still productive agricultural and textile zone, with about 170,000 Palestinian residents. Closer to the old city, the tension simmers. Since the second Intifada, when Palestinian and Israel forces clashed daily, friction between religious-motivated settlers and Palestinian residents is never more than one incident away from violence.

(Gates and barbed wire surround the settlement in the city center.)

Here lies Abraham, the patriarch to both Judaism and Islam. Abraham's wife Sarah, his son's Issac and Jacob, and their wives Rebecca and Leah are also entombed in the cave of Patriarchs, which King Herod built a holy fortress on top of.

Then a church was built on it, which was later converted into a mosque, that the Crusaders reconverted into a church, only to have Saladin re-conquer and rebuild a mosque on top of. This land is written all over the Old Testament, and if there's any certainty, both sides will continue to shed blood for it.

(A sign in the old city settlement proclaiming Jewish entitlement to the land they occupy.)

Hebron's modern history is also shaped by violence. In 1929 60 something Jews were murdered in a pogrom incited by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Jews were evacuated by the British; some were saved by Arab neighbors. An orthodox settler community returned after the six-day war in 1967 and settled into the city center in 1980. They've dug in ever since.

There are five Jewish settlements in Hebron. The teens in the contested house can name them, and also the number of settlers- at least 500 in the old city center and another 7,000 in settlements on hill tops around the city. They are protected by thousands of Israeli soldiers.

The teens also say the name- Baruch Goldstein, a Broolyn-born, extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians gathered for Friday prayers before he was beaten to death in 1994. One of the settlements outside the city supposedly still has a shrine in his honor, although the official shrine was ordered to be bulldozed and the right wing party he was a member of was banned in Israel.

Depends on who you ask

"They really want this house," Bashar said, referring to the settlers next door. "If they take this house, the can take other houses."

The contesting of ownership of Palestinian houses by Jewish settlers is nothing new. Inside Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, one hears stories of settlers contesting the ownership of a Palestinian houses based on records dating from before the six-day war, some even from Ottoman times. Israeli courts side are predisposed to siding with settlers. Israeli Defense forces guard the reoccupation of the houses by settlers.

One of the young residents of the house in Hebron, Saeed said 11 people still live there, including his mother and younger siblings. "We live in a lot of fear," the teenager said, "we can't go and leave the house."

(A settler in the old city.)

Three Europeans in bright blue jackets with red patches passed us in the old Souk. They were civilian observers from Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), founded immediately after the '94 massacre with the mission to report human rights abuses through both the Palestinian and Israeli diplomatic channels.

I asked how the tensions were in Hebron currently. The TIPH volunteers appeared reluctant to be perceived as taking sides, or say anything negative against the settlers.

One woman, an Arabic speaker from Norway said, it is clear the settlers are "trying to expand." She also mentioned how the Israeli courts decide over land ownership disputes is "unclear," especially in the area designated as H2, which the Israelis officially control.

As the sun set, and Sabbath was about to being, we made our way into the old city's settlement. It was like an abandoned movie set. The shuttered shops bore spray painted Stars of David, whether as sign of warning or ownership. Some Jewish settlers in the center of the square met us briefly. We were eager to talk to them. Despite their traditional clothes and beards, some claimed Miami and New York accents. But they rush to a waiting van to before we could ask them much.

The last settler in the square didn't seem to mind us hanging around. "This is the best place in the world, but there are terrorists.

Last night they shot down here with M-16s."

Some would wonder whether he meant the Palestinians or Israeli soldiers. Depends who you ask.

(As Israeli soldier at a guard post inside the old city settlement.)

"They're going for every day of the week," bombs rock Baghdad, 127 killed

(Iraqi security forces and rescuers search for survivors at the site of a bomb attack near the new Finance Ministry in Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 8 2009 (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

The blast slammed like a gigantic gavel. It threw doors open and sucked them shut again. Windows rattled in their casements. Too close and powerful to shrug off, but nothing compared to what was happening outside our compound's blast walls.

Iraqi colleagues ran outside the building to scan the sky for smoke. It was rising in the distance (see picture). Most were already on their phones to check on family members. One colleague said his brother had been injured in the neighborhood. Another said his brother, who just missed being hit, helped pile some wounded in his car and was sped them to a local hospital. Today we learned a woman was waiting for her father who never came to pick her up. He was driving by as one of the bombs detonated.

A series of five bombs, at least three suicide, rocked Baghdad leaving 121 dead, the NYT reported. Car bombs struck- near a college, a court complex in western Baghdad, a mosque and a market and a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry in what appeared to be a larger and as equally deadly a coordinated assault as the Oct. 25th bombing. Offices of the Ministry of Labor and the Finance Ministry, which had moved to a new location after the massive October bombing were, hit again.

An expat Iraqi colleague described his convoy missing the first bomb in the Dora neighborhood by minutes. The guards at the next checkpoint waived them through fearing the bombers were targeting their convoy.

Today we happened to go to an oil refinery in Dora, the neighborhood where the first bomb detonated. The Director General was rolling a metal ball the size of a marble in his hands as we talked. It came from the bomb in Adimiya, he said. I imagined what that kind of shrapnel would do to a human body.

The bombings bear the signs of an Al-Qaeda in Iraq operation, all sources say, but in an evolving strategy targeting government ministries and offices in order to incite public outrage at the Maliki government for failing to provide the promised security and sow fear before the elections.

The election disagreements between parties and ethnic groups were just resolved this week. National elections are planned for March. Baghdadis say the bombings will continue until then, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Crudely written leaflets were found at some sites about a week before bombs struck, one local said. This kind of hand washing on the part of extremists before they attack has been reported throughout the war. Rumors also abound that the U.S. military may have picked up on intelligence before the October bombing and informed security contractors not to travel certain roads.

What is painfully true is the bombings, while nowhere near as frequent as a few years ago, have become more horrific in their destruction.

First the August bombing dubbed Bloody Wednesday killed 122, then the October bombing, dubbed Bloody Sunday killed 155. Today's bombing will most like be named Bloody Tuesday.

"They're going for every day of the week," a colleague said, in a nod to the gallows humor that is so common for Iraqis who have to live through this.

Realities- When your buddy gets hit

Just so we remember, as 30,000 or so troops deploy into the Eastern and Southern regions of Afghanistan, where almost all the fighting takes place, the real risks to all soldiers:

The following is a correspondence I came across through a colleague. The names and places have been blanked out to protect the individuals' privacy and to prevent any repercussion from his/her command for posting the correspondence. But I believe it's valuable as it really gets at the trauma of being in the war zone and what perseverance means- to continue doing dangerous a job after seeing your buddy get hurt really badly.

"I must make known that the last 36 hours here have been absolute hell. I was on mission for the last week in a very bad part of ______ . I'll leave further specifics at that, but where I was is not a good area, nor do I hope to return there in the near future..."

"At the root of all this -- my partner, ____, was hit in a mortar attack at the Combat Operating Post (COP) where we were staying. To be quite blunt, his injuries are bad -- he took shrapnel to face, and for now, we know his left eye is lost (the right one is questionable) and his skull has suffered several severe fractures."

"I was in the general vicinity when the rounds hit the COP...maybe 75 meters from his location. When we found him it was an ugly sight. I don't care to relive that experience again -- helping to transport a bloodied-colleague in a stretcher to a nearby Helicopter Landing Zone, only to feel helpless because of the nature of his wounds. All I could do was hold one end of the litter and and support the IV-drip that was running from one of his arms as we loaded him onto the Blackhawk."

"That was the last I saw of him. I know he's now in Bagram -- having undergone two surgeries -- and is being prepped for movement to Germany for further evaluation and care. What happened yesterday though was bad... the aftermath of it all is no more pleasant. Having to collect his belongings and watch as the Army inventories them is unnerving. The process is handled almost as if he's dead. What compounds the frustration is that I'm now the only person left on this _______ Team, waiting for replacements to arrive. Thankfully, my higher-ups are moving me temporarily to another team until the others arrive, but to have this happen under these conditions makes processing this incident no easier."

"I'll be okay though. Everyone here has been very supportive. As I've said to others, it's just the nature of his injuries that eat at me. Everywhere I walk, no matter what I'm doing, those images constantly replay in my head...and in that sense, it's tough. But please, don't be too alarmed by this note. Yes, what happened was absolutely awful, but as I said before, I'll manage. It's just that this is still so fresh, and never did I imagine that I'd be put in a position where I'd have to help rush a colleague to a MEDEVAC after he'd been hit by shrapnel from a mortar that exploded just 20 meters from him. What gets at you is that getting hurt out here is all too easy. I must admit, I'm kinda scared..."

"Well, obviously we run huge risks out here... This Sunday was tough for everyone here. Last update I got on ____ was that he's undergone four surgeries and is in stable condition in Germany. Obviously, his life has no changed forever... I can only imagine the pain this is causing his family. I'll leave it at that..."