MIDEAST:
First Displaced, Then Attacked
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32636
Fawzia Sheikh
JERUSALEM, Mar 24 (IPS) - Abed Zatari still sports a black bruise on
his forehead from an attack he suffered 10 days ago - the kind of
account that has become all too common in this West Bank city.
The grey-haired shop-owner in Hebron was heading down Martyrs Street
towards his home when 10 to 15 children of Jewish settlers pummeled
him with stones -- all while Israeli soldiers watched the events
unfold.
"There are hundreds of individual incidents every day," Zatari, who
has endured 10 such attacks in the last year alone told IPS. "Nobody
listens to us. They just take photos and make reports. Nobody helps
us."
Since the beginning of the second Intifadah, or Palestinian uprising
in 2000, Jewish settlers have killed 24 Palestinians in the occupied
territories, says Bassem Eid, director-general of the Palestinian
Human Rights Monitoring Group in Jerusalem.
"No settler has been arrested or charged, or is facing a trial," Eid
told IPS. Although his group is following each case, he said sometimes
efforts are hampered by Palestinian refusal to allow autopsies because
under Islam the dead must be buried immediately.
Because the Israeli government has historically sympathised with
settlers living in the West Bank who it believed were always in
danger, "settlers feel they have a kind of impunity," Eid said.
This is not to say Israel has not brought some settlers to justice.
But aid workers say the punishment often does not fit the crime. They
cite a case in 1997 when a settler was sentenced to six months' jail
for killing a 12-year-old boy who threw stones at him.
Eid said a Palestinian committing the same crime could expect life
imprisonment and demolition of his home.
Settler violence, which Eid said began during the first Intifadah in
1988, has also been known to take the form of shootings or stoning
incidents against Palestinian cars and homes. It has also involved the
dropping of bottles, trash and sometimes concrete slabs from buildings
overlooking Arab souks, or marketplaces, which have kept away
customers and prompted some shop-owners to pack up, he said.
Nina Atallah, head of the monitoring and documentation department at
al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group in the Palestinian
territories, told IPS her organisation has received reports of cases
in which Molotov cocktails were thrown at Palestinian homes, Arab
children were beaten up, olive trees were uprooted or cut, and the
water system poisoned..
Residents of the divided city of Hebron complain that the Israeli army
prevents Palestinian teenagers from entering the souk, often the
epicentre of trouble between Jews and Muslims, and sometimes detains
them for hours.
Jewish violence against Palestinians, much of which is carried out by
youths, is primarily revenge acts provoked by Israeli government
decisions that adversely affect the religious settlers, said Eid. Last
month the Israeli High Court evacuated settlers from a souk in Hebron,
sending settlers on a violent rampage against Palestinians.
A report this month by the United Nations Human Rights Commission on
the state of Palestinian-Israeli relations concluded that settler
violence remains a serious issue most notably in the centre of Hebron,
where settlers were described as terrorising the local population.
Hebron, a quiet city that was once part of the West Bank's industrial
heartland, is home to more than 100,000 Palestinians and about 700
settlers who have "made their life hell," as one aid worker put it.
The city, which saw Jewish doctor Baruch Goldstein shoot to death 29
Arabs in the Tomb of the Patriarchs mosque in 1994 is a maze of
checkpoints separating the Jewish and Muslim worlds.
More soldiers roam the streets than actual settlers, who tend to be
hidden from public view in massive armoured military vehicles that
transport them from place to place. Certain roads bordering Jewish
houses are off-limits to Palestinian cars even though Arab homes are
located in the same vicinity.
Igniting the violence is the circumstance of the two sides living
closer in Hebron than in many West Bank cities. Another source of
friction is the fact that the settlers are not Israeli-born, and hail
from countries like France, the United States, Russia, Spain and
Australia.
The main Jewish settlement in Hebron district is Kiryat Arba. Eid
expects Hebron city settlers to be sent there once Israeli settlements
are closed.
Whether the settlers stay or go is of no consequence to the resolute
Zatari. From his shop located just metres from a military checkpoint,
he said he is not afraid of Jewish attacks designed to send Arabs
fleeing from the city.
"I won't leave. I am a citizen here. We own this land." (END/2006)
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