Palestinians: First displaced, then attacked

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 Jerusalem. The gray-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 Intifada, 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 sympathized 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 Intifada 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 organization 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 epicenter 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 center of Hebron, where settlers were described as terrorizing 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 armored 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 yards 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."