Settlers Increase Attacks On Palestinians In West Bank

BURIN, West Bank — (Released Aug. 17) A stone smashed through the windshield. Falastin Maali, 31, raised her arm to shield the blow, but the rock glanced off her head and struck her 7-year-old daughter, Hadeel, in the backseat.

Maali was released on Monday [8/11] from a hospital in Tel Aviv after doctors performed two operations to stop internal bleeding in her brain. Her 7-month-old fetus survived. Hadeel suffered a fractured skull, but is expected to fully recover.

The attack drew headlines in Israeli media because the suspected assailants are Jewish and the victims Arab.

It was the latest in increasingly bold attacks by Jewish settlers against unarmed Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, Israeli police say.

Settlers and Palestinians have fought a long-running tit-for-tat conflict that has left hundreds dead. What is different in a recent spate of settler violence is that it appears to be in response not to Palestinian attacks but Israeli government attempts to reign in expansion of illegal settlement outposts, according to Israeli human rights groups.

"When a building is evacuated, (settlers) lash out at Palestinians. They're the easy victims," said Sarit Michaeli, communications director for B'Tselem, an Israeli organization that monitors human rights abuses in the occupied territories. "Settlers in a sense widen the areas under their control through the use of intimidation."

The activity has increased as Israeli and Palestinian leaders are negotiating a framework for a peace deal that would carve out most of the West Bank for a future Palestinian state.

Soon after Israel conquered territories from its Arab neighbors in the 1967 war, fortified hilltop Jewish communities sprung up throughout the West Bank. Today, 270,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and another 220,000 in East Jerusalem — on land Palestinians claim should be theirs.

The proximity of Jewish settlements and Palestinian towns and villages has long been a source of tension and violence.

According to complaints filed this summer with Israeli police, settlers allegedly have torched Palestinian homes, burned hundreds of acres of olive groves, stabbed donkeys, poisoned sheep and beat Palestinian shepherds. Some of the attacks have been captured on video.

Settlers have also apparently turned to throwing stones, a tactic popularized by Palestinian youth in the 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation.

Hazam Maali, 35, who was driving with his wife and three daughters to a family wedding in the Palestinian city of Jenin when they were ambushed, speaks fluent Hebrew and works as a representative in the West Bank for the Israeli food company, Strauss Group Ltd.

"There are many good Jews. But now what am I going to tell her?" he said of his daughter, Hadeel. "Where did this stone come from? I'll have to tell her there are people who are not good from here and also from there."

Police questioned two Israeli teens and one adult in connection with the attack. None have been charged and authorities continue to investigate the incident.

The assault occurred on a road that passes between the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar and the Palestinian village of Burin, an area that has become a flashpoint of settler violence, according to Palestinians and Israeli human rights activists. Since mid-June, villagers in Burin say they have been attacked nine times.

Settlers explain the violence as retaliation for Palestinian rock throwing and other attacks.

"In areas where there is friction between Jews and Arabs, when the Arabs attack, people attack back. And it's not the Jews (that) start with it," said Daniella Weiss, a longtime leader in the settler movement.

Israeli police say incidents of Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli vehicles in the West Bank is much more common than Israelis throwing rocks at Palestinian vehicles, but there are no official statistics on such attacks.

In the area of Burin, however, Palestinian attacks are rare, according to Danny Poleg, assistant district commander for the police district of Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank used by the police and settlers.

Burin, population 1,200, sits in a valley south of Nablus and is hemmed by settlements and settlement outposts on the hilltops to the north and south. Palestinian olive, fig and almond groves were bulldozed to clear land to build the settlements, according to the villagers.

Last month, several dozen settlers rioted at two highway junctions in the West Bank, including the one near Burin, police said. Right-wing activists coordinated the actions in response to the Israeli government dismantling an illegal structure built by settlers, Weiss said.

According to Palestinian witnesses in Burin, the settlers set fire to olive groves and cut electricity and telephone lines. Villagers said they threw stones at the "zaaran" — bandits — in order to protect their land. When the Israeli army arrived to break up the clash, one of the Israeli rioters wrested away a soldier's automatic rifle and fired it in the air, police said. The man was arrested.

"We were sitting under the olive tree like we are now ././. and they shot at us. Imagine that," said Hind Abdel Kader, 68. "I gathered my grandkids and held them. I was scared they would be shot."

Israeli police and army say they have stepped up patrols in the area and the army suspended the Yitzhar security coordinator because, in part, he "did not fully cooperate with (army) and other security forces as expected, and prevented the transfer of essential information to these forces," according to an army statement.

The Yitzhar spokesman, Yigal Amitai, did not respond to several requests for comment over three weeks.

But a statement issued by the settlement and quoted in the Hebrew edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz welcomed the increased Israeli security presence.

"This step had been necessary for some time. Maybe it will succeed in reducing the embarrassing actions in which Arabs are throwing stones at Israeli cars," the statement said.

Yitzhar, which means fine olive oil in Hebrew and is mentioned many times in the bible, was founded in 1983 and is home to 130 families, according to the settlement web site. It also includes a yeshiva, or religious seminary.

The Yitzhar web site describes the settlement as "national religious," which is a right-wing movement that combines religion with politics, centered on the belief in the historic religious right of Jews to live on the biblical Land of Israel, which includes the West Bank.

Palestinians say settlers have fired four rockets at Burin within the past month, but Israeli police concluded they were flares.

"They want to see us leaving here. They put all this pressure on us to make us leave," Munir Qadous, 33, said of the settlers. No one has left, he added. "There is no other option. Either live here or die here."

More than 100 settlement outposts in the West Bank are considered illegal by Israeli law. All settlements are considered illegitimate by most international organizations because they are built on occupied land.

According to agreements signed by Israel, the Jewish state is responsible for the security of nearly 1.3 million Palestinians — more than half the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers are under the jurisdiction of Israeli civilian law, while the Palestinians fall under military law.

The West Bank is the second-largest police district in the country, yet it has the least number of officers. Police stations are located on Jewish settlements and officers typically only enter Palestinian villages with an army escort.

Palestinians complain that despite repeatedly filing official complaints to local Israeli authorities, the attacks have continued. The Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, says many settler crimes are never reported because Palestinians have lost faith in the Israeli criminal justice system.

According to a recent report by the organization, in a representative sampling of 205 police investigations into alleged crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians or their property in the West Bank, indictments were filed in just 13 cases and 163 cases were dismissed. The rest were pending.

Israeli police do not track crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians. But, in a press release issued in response to the Yesh Din report, the police said in 2007, 323 cases of "disorder" in the West Bank — committed by settlers, Palestinians and Israeli left-wing activists — resulted in 69 indictments. In 30 of those indictments, the victims were Palestinian.

The Yesh Din report criticized police for not collecting testimony from key Palestinian witnesses, nor verifying Israeli alibis. It also alleged that several cases were closed despite adequate evidence for prosecution.

"There are no functional mechanisms to protect Palestinians from Israeli civilian violence," said Lior Yavne, research director for Yesh Din.

Police officials said they don't distinguish between Palestinians and Israelis when investigating crimes but acknowledged obstacles in pursuing Israeli suspects.

"When you try to get information from a closed community, it's tough," Poleg, the police spokesman in the West Bank, said of investigating right-wing settlers who often view police and soldiers as adversaries.

Settlers typically maraud in disguise, wrapping their heads in white cloths, Palestinians say, and leave few traces, which also makes it difficult to gather evidence.

On the night after settlers rampaged in Burin two weeks ago, a house at edge of the village was set ablaze with a Molotov cocktail. No one was home at the time and no one saw the perpetrators.

Shards of the glass bottle presumably used in the attack had Hebrew writing and villagers said that the bottle was not available locally.

Said Najjar, 31, who rents the house, gave a statement to the police in the settlement of Ariel. He said the police suggested the assailant could have been Palestinian.

"I wish I had enemies," he said. "Then I would know who burned my home."