29 sept 2011
Dozens of Settlers Attack Village in Salfit
Dozens of Settlers Attack Village in Salfit
|
Dozens of armed settlers, under the protection of the Israeli soldiers, Thursday attacked the village of Yasouf, east of Salfit in the northern West Bank, firing their weapons into the air in an attempt to terrorize the Palestinian residents, according to WAFA’s correspondent.
Witnesses said that dozens of Settlers headed from the settlement of Taffuh towards the north side of the village and fired automatic weapons into the air in order to terrorize the Palestinian farmers to force them to leave their lands, leading to confrontations between the village residents and the settlers, no injuries were reported. The attack took place while the soldiers were watching, who did not intervene to stop the settlers and simply surrounded the village and sealed it off. |
In
a related matter, a number of settlers from the settlement of
Yitzhar, near Nablus, vandalized water pipelines in Madama, a village
south of Nablus, according to the village council, Ihab Al Qut.
He said that almost 30 settlers gathered near the village’s water spring and destroyed the water pipelines that provide water to the agricultural lands.
Settlers Destroy 55 Olive Trees South of Hebron
Jewish settlers Thursday from Shima, a settlement built illegally on the land of Ad Dahriyeh, a town south of Hebron, destroyed 55 fruitful olive trees and wrote several threatening slogans to Palestinian residents, according to security sources.
Sources said that settlers attacked an area located between two agricultural valleys in the town, destroying 55 fruitful olive trees and writing threatening slogans to Palestinians such as ‘you will pay the price’.
To be noted, this is the third Israeli attack on the town in less than two years.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17590
He said that almost 30 settlers gathered near the village’s water spring and destroyed the water pipelines that provide water to the agricultural lands.
Settlers Destroy 55 Olive Trees South of Hebron
Jewish settlers Thursday from Shima, a settlement built illegally on the land of Ad Dahriyeh, a town south of Hebron, destroyed 55 fruitful olive trees and wrote several threatening slogans to Palestinian residents, according to security sources.
Sources said that settlers attacked an area located between two agricultural valleys in the town, destroying 55 fruitful olive trees and writing threatening slogans to Palestinians such as ‘you will pay the price’.
To be noted, this is the third Israeli attack on the town in less than two years.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17590
28 sept 2011
Guard Committees Deter Israeli Settlers Attack
Guard Committees Deter Israeli Settlers Attack
|
The local guard committees foiled on Tuesday night an attack by Israeli settlers that targeted the residents of Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeideh, in Hebron.
Around one hundred settlers gathered and toured from al-Shuhada’ street, and other neighborhoods in Hebron and headed to Tel Rumeideh. Dozens of Palestinian volunteers gathered to stop the settlers, however the settlers fled the scene. The local guards committees are groups of Palestinian volunteers who try to guard their cities and villagers from settler attacks. "Youth against settlement” is the group who organized the local guards committee in Hebron. The youth patrolled the city, day and night to keep watch of the city. |
Issa Amro, the coordinator of the group, believes the Israeli Authorities give support to the settlers to escalate attacks against Palestinians.
“I do not rule out that the Israeli government to help the settlers attack the Palestinians. However the Palestinians must be fully aware especially that Jewish holidays are nearing, and we have to be united to face any possible attack from the settlers."
http://www.imemc.org/article/62132
IDF probe finds serious shortcomings in incident that led to Palestinian man's death
Palestinian man shot to death by Israel Defense Forces troops near Kusra in the West Bank; area around Kusra has been scene of tensions involving Palestinians and settlers.
Serious shortcomings have been found in Israel Defense Forces soldiers' handling of an incident in which a Palestinian was shot to death by troops in the West Bank village of Kusra on Friday, an army investigation has revealed.
Prior to the shooting on Friday a group of about 15 settlers went down into the dry riverbed near Kusra to pray, although a brigade commander in the area had identified the location as a potential flash point in advance and moved troops to the area. Despite the fact that the commander had the authority to declare the valley next to Kusra where the settlers were headed a closed military zone, he did not do so and allowed the settlers to come close to the edge of the village.
The area around Kusra has been the scene of repeated incidents involving Palestinians and settlers. One recent incident involved an arson attempt at a mosque in Kusra. Following the mosque incident, some of the villagers in Kusra formed a civil guard of sorts. When they spotted settlers descending into the valley on Friday, they recruited hundreds of villagers to come to the scene. When the Palestinians began throwing stones at the settlers, the IDF intervened to try to separate the two groups.
At one point, a force of IDF troops stationed in the village began to withdraw, but due to a misunderstanding, left a small group of soldiers still in the village. The remaining soldiers came under attack with rocks thrown by villagers, and most of them suffered injuries, most of them light. At that point a company commander and three other IDF troops rescued the besieged soldiers, but then they, too, came under a hail of rocks from short range. It was only when the use of tear gas failed to disperse the crowd that an order was made to use live weapon fire.
According to the interim findings of the investigation, a soldier directed two shots at the lower part of the body of the Palestinian who was shot in the incident after he was identified as the leader of the crowd. He was hit around the hips, but the bullet exited from his neck and he died.
The incident occurred just hours before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke to the UN General Assembly in a bid for Palestinian membership of the international organization. Abbas mentioned the killing in his address in New York.
“I do not rule out that the Israeli government to help the settlers attack the Palestinians. However the Palestinians must be fully aware especially that Jewish holidays are nearing, and we have to be united to face any possible attack from the settlers."
http://www.imemc.org/article/62132
IDF probe finds serious shortcomings in incident that led to Palestinian man's death
Palestinian man shot to death by Israel Defense Forces troops near Kusra in the West Bank; area around Kusra has been scene of tensions involving Palestinians and settlers.
Serious shortcomings have been found in Israel Defense Forces soldiers' handling of an incident in which a Palestinian was shot to death by troops in the West Bank village of Kusra on Friday, an army investigation has revealed.
Prior to the shooting on Friday a group of about 15 settlers went down into the dry riverbed near Kusra to pray, although a brigade commander in the area had identified the location as a potential flash point in advance and moved troops to the area. Despite the fact that the commander had the authority to declare the valley next to Kusra where the settlers were headed a closed military zone, he did not do so and allowed the settlers to come close to the edge of the village.
The area around Kusra has been the scene of repeated incidents involving Palestinians and settlers. One recent incident involved an arson attempt at a mosque in Kusra. Following the mosque incident, some of the villagers in Kusra formed a civil guard of sorts. When they spotted settlers descending into the valley on Friday, they recruited hundreds of villagers to come to the scene. When the Palestinians began throwing stones at the settlers, the IDF intervened to try to separate the two groups.
At one point, a force of IDF troops stationed in the village began to withdraw, but due to a misunderstanding, left a small group of soldiers still in the village. The remaining soldiers came under attack with rocks thrown by villagers, and most of them suffered injuries, most of them light. At that point a company commander and three other IDF troops rescued the besieged soldiers, but then they, too, came under a hail of rocks from short range. It was only when the use of tear gas failed to disperse the crowd that an order was made to use live weapon fire.
According to the interim findings of the investigation, a soldier directed two shots at the lower part of the body of the Palestinian who was shot in the incident after he was identified as the leader of the crowd. He was hit around the hips, but the bullet exited from his neck and he died.
The incident occurred just hours before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke to the UN General Assembly in a bid for Palestinian membership of the international organization. Abbas mentioned the killing in his address in New York.
27 sept 2011
Settler kills Palestinian boy in hit-and-run incident
An eight-year-old Palestinian boy died on Monday after he was critically injured in a hit-and-run incident involving a Jewish settler on Friday in the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil.
The boy, Fareed Jabir, was hit while walking on a sidewalk in the Buq’a section of Al-Khalil and was later taken to a hospital in nearby Kiryat Arba and then to Hadassah hospital due to the graveness of his injuries.
More and more settler violence has raged across the West Bank after PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas applied for full Palestinian membership in the UN, including in neighborhoods in Al-Khalil.
Settlers attacked Palestinian homes in Al-Khalil’s Ja’bari, Jabir, and Mashariqa neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails at windows on Tuesday morning.
A recent surge in attacks followed Israeli police reports that a car accident that killed a Jewish settler and his son was caused by a Palestinian stone-thrower.
A spokesman for settlers in Kiryat Arba accused police of concealing the actual cause of death for two days in an endeavor to maintain a calm among settlers as the world was preoccupied by speeches by PA President Abbas and Israeli PM Netanyahu at the UN.
An eight-year old Palestinian boy sustained vrious injuries in attacks by settlers in Al-Khalil’s Mashariqa neighborhood, where locals’ movement was restricted by barricades set up on roads.
Settlers amassed just outside of Karmi Tzur settlement at Halhoul-Kiryat Arba junction and stoned Palestinian vehicles entering and exiting Al-Khalil and Halhoul, stopping traffic there for hours.
Settlers gather south of Bethlehem, block cars
Israeli settlers gathered on Tuesday at the junction between the Tuqu village southeast of Bethlehem and prevented some cars from passing through, witnesses said.
Onlookers told Ma’an that dozens of settlers went out in a march near Tuqu junction and forbade the Palestinian cars from passing by throwing stones toward them.
In Jurat Ash-Sham'a village south of Bethlehem, settler security guards detained Salem Ali Hussein, 65, while he was on his way to pick grapes, said anti-wall activist Hassan Barjyeh.
He was later taken by the Israeli army to the Etzion military base before being released.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=424195
26 sept 2011
Israeli settlers harras Palestinian farmer
Settler kills Palestinian boy in hit-and-run incident
An eight-year-old Palestinian boy died on Monday after he was critically injured in a hit-and-run incident involving a Jewish settler on Friday in the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil.
The boy, Fareed Jabir, was hit while walking on a sidewalk in the Buq’a section of Al-Khalil and was later taken to a hospital in nearby Kiryat Arba and then to Hadassah hospital due to the graveness of his injuries.
More and more settler violence has raged across the West Bank after PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas applied for full Palestinian membership in the UN, including in neighborhoods in Al-Khalil.
Settlers attacked Palestinian homes in Al-Khalil’s Ja’bari, Jabir, and Mashariqa neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails at windows on Tuesday morning.
A recent surge in attacks followed Israeli police reports that a car accident that killed a Jewish settler and his son was caused by a Palestinian stone-thrower.
A spokesman for settlers in Kiryat Arba accused police of concealing the actual cause of death for two days in an endeavor to maintain a calm among settlers as the world was preoccupied by speeches by PA President Abbas and Israeli PM Netanyahu at the UN.
An eight-year old Palestinian boy sustained vrious injuries in attacks by settlers in Al-Khalil’s Mashariqa neighborhood, where locals’ movement was restricted by barricades set up on roads.
Settlers amassed just outside of Karmi Tzur settlement at Halhoul-Kiryat Arba junction and stoned Palestinian vehicles entering and exiting Al-Khalil and Halhoul, stopping traffic there for hours.
Settlers gather south of Bethlehem, block cars
Israeli settlers gathered on Tuesday at the junction between the Tuqu village southeast of Bethlehem and prevented some cars from passing through, witnesses said.
Onlookers told Ma’an that dozens of settlers went out in a march near Tuqu junction and forbade the Palestinian cars from passing by throwing stones toward them.
In Jurat Ash-Sham'a village south of Bethlehem, settler security guards detained Salem Ali Hussein, 65, while he was on his way to pick grapes, said anti-wall activist Hassan Barjyeh.
He was later taken by the Israeli army to the Etzion military base before being released.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=424195
26 sept 2011
Israeli settlers harras Palestinian farmer
|
Settlers Raid, Stone Houses in Hebron
Jewish settlers raided and stoned Palestinians’ houses on Sunday night in the Old City of Hebron, spreading panic among residents, according to security sources.
Israeli soldiers erected checkpoints at the entrances of Hebron and inspected Palestinians' vehicles and identification documents.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17518
Settlers hang anti-Arab posters on West Bank roads
Jewish settlers on Sunday hung posters displaying anti-Arab slogans on the main road between Hebron and Jerusalem, local officials said.
The mayor of al-Khader, near Bethlehem, Ramzi Salah told Ma'an that some of the slogans read; "this is the land of our fathers and grandfathers," and "this is the land of Israel."
The posters were displayed near settlements along route 60 between Hebron and Jerusalem, as well as near the village of Jaba and in the East Jerusalem towns of Eizariya and Abu Dis, Salah added.
Member of local anti-wall committee in al-Khader Ahmad Salah told Ma'an that some of the posters along route 60 read "we will slaughter Arabs." Posters were also displayed on the fence surrounding Efrat settlement south of Bethlehem, he added.
In a separate incident, settlers in Hebron attempted to raid Palestinian neighborhoods on Sunday evening. A Ma'an reporter quoted local sources as saying that armed settlers tried to attack Palestinian residents near Kiryat Arba but Israeli forces intervened to prevent the attack.
There has been a surge in settler attacks against Palestinians over the last month.
On Sunday, dozens of Israeli settlers uprooted over 400 Palestinian-owned olive trees near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian Authority official said.
On Friday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered Qusra, near Nablus.
In September, settlers in Nablus have vandalized two mosques and an Israeli army base, uprooted olive trees and set fire to cars.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423642
Jewish settlers raided and stoned Palestinians’ houses on Sunday night in the Old City of Hebron, spreading panic among residents, according to security sources.
Israeli soldiers erected checkpoints at the entrances of Hebron and inspected Palestinians' vehicles and identification documents.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17518
Settlers hang anti-Arab posters on West Bank roads
Jewish settlers on Sunday hung posters displaying anti-Arab slogans on the main road between Hebron and Jerusalem, local officials said.
The mayor of al-Khader, near Bethlehem, Ramzi Salah told Ma'an that some of the slogans read; "this is the land of our fathers and grandfathers," and "this is the land of Israel."
The posters were displayed near settlements along route 60 between Hebron and Jerusalem, as well as near the village of Jaba and in the East Jerusalem towns of Eizariya and Abu Dis, Salah added.
Member of local anti-wall committee in al-Khader Ahmad Salah told Ma'an that some of the posters along route 60 read "we will slaughter Arabs." Posters were also displayed on the fence surrounding Efrat settlement south of Bethlehem, he added.
In a separate incident, settlers in Hebron attempted to raid Palestinian neighborhoods on Sunday evening. A Ma'an reporter quoted local sources as saying that armed settlers tried to attack Palestinian residents near Kiryat Arba but Israeli forces intervened to prevent the attack.
There has been a surge in settler attacks against Palestinians over the last month.
On Sunday, dozens of Israeli settlers uprooted over 400 Palestinian-owned olive trees near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian Authority official said.
On Friday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered Qusra, near Nablus.
In September, settlers in Nablus have vandalized two mosques and an Israeli army base, uprooted olive trees and set fire to cars.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423642
25 sept 2011
Palestinian killed as West Bank unrest continues
A surge of violence triggered by the PLO’s request for UN membership has left one Palestinian dead and scores injured as they fell into clashes with Israeli military forces and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
The clashes come amid an escalation of Jewish settler attacks and calls by Palestinian groups for a third intifada (uprising) and to respond to violence by Israeli forces.
Palestinian Authority security forces carried out a wide-ranging arrest campaign ahead of Friday, when PA president Mahmoud Abbas formally petitioned for full Palestinian membership in the UN, rounding up some 50 Hamas supporters in the West Bank and summoning more than 500 in a two-day period, as the PASF vowed to crush outbreaks of mass protests that could turn into clashes with Israeli military forces.
Regardless of the measures, clashes erupted in Jerusalem’s Arab Ras al-Amud district after Israeli soldiers provoked worshipers there, as well as in other areas in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank.
One man was killed in Qusra village, southeast of Nablus, and others were injured by teargas and rubber bullets fired by IOF troops in a Palestinian response to attacks by Jewish settlers.
On Sunday, Israeli occupation forces carried out a string of arrests in Al-Eizariyya near Jerusalem and Jewish settlers continued an onslaught of attacks across the West Bank, including on Palestinian villages south of Nablus city.
Locals reported that settlers ambushed Palestinian motorists on a main road south of Nablus stoning vehicles.
In separate incidents, settlers set fire to olive groves on the outskirts of Burin village, near Nablus, as villagers there were compelled into clashes with a joint force of Jewish settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers.
On Saturday, a Palestinian motorist from Nahalin village was left with bruises in a crash that came after a group of Jewish settlers from nearby Beitar Illit pelted his vehicle with stones.
Also on Sunday, informed Palestinian sources said a vehicle was struck by stones while passing a road to Jewish settlement Yitzhar, south of Nablus city. The owner of the vehicle has not been identified, according to the report.
Israeli Police Arrests Palestinian Child, Extremist Settlers Go on provocative Marches in Jerusalem
Israeli occupation special police units Sunday arrested a child, 7, near the sit-in tent in al-Bustan, a neighborhood in Silwan, a town east of Jerusalem, during confrontations, according to witnesses.
Witnesses said Israeli forces raided Silwan and immediately started firing toxic and tear gas canisters, indiscriminately, at the residents’ homes, without any known reasons.
They added that there are violent confrontations in al-Bustan, a neighborhood in Silwan, south of al-Aqsa Mosque, which is spreading to surrounding areas.
Israeli forces ascended on rooftops and harassed the residents, witnesses said.
In a related matter, a group of extremist settlers expropriated the old city of Jerusalem with provocative marches toured a number of streets in Jerusalem, in direction of the Western Wall to celebrate the 'Day of Atonement', Jewish Yom Kippur – New Year.
The settlers were accompanied by Israeli forces and police reinforcement, while raising Israeli flags in the midst of wild and noisy dances, and provocative harassments against the Jerusalemites and their properties, witnesses said.
These groups try to hold consecutive marches around al-Aqsa mosque, in the midst of calls from extremist right-wing Jewish leaders to break into al-Aqsa mosque, in order to put the foundation stone for the alleged temple mount.
While the diplomats haggle, deadly tensions are mounting in the nascent Palestine
The quest for Palestinian statehood at the UN has worsened a climate of fear on the ground in the West Bank
The settlers come down the hill from the outpost, mostly on foot, but occasionally on horseback or in tractors or 4x4s. They carry Israeli flags, and sometimes bring guns, shovels and dogs. There may be as few as three or as many as 40. They taunt the local villagers and sometimes attack them. Often the Israeli army arrives and trains its weapons on the villagers.
In Qusra, deep among the terraced hills of the West Bank, fear is on the rise. "The settlers are provoking us continuously," said Hani Abu Reidi, head of the village council. "They uproot olive trees, kill our sheep, burn our mosques and curse our prophet. They want to drag us into the sphere of violence. We do not want to go there."
As the Palestinian quest for statehood looks set to be mired in diplomatic back rooms for weeks or months, tension on the ground is mounting. Both Palestinian villagers and Jewish settlers say each other is responsible for a spike in attacks over the past fortnight; mostly small-scale incidents such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails and insults. Both sides claim the other is preparing to invade their communities and attack their people. It has created an edgy climate of fear and menace, and is a forewarning of potential battles to come if the struggle for the land moves up a gear with impending Palestinian statehood.
OCHA: Israeli Settler Violence against Palestinians Continues to Escalate
Settlers have escalated attacks against Palestinians and their property during the week between September 14 and 20, resulting in injury to four Palestinians and damage to around 990 olive trees, Sunday said the weekly report of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA).
It said that this escalation comes in the context of a request by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for UN membership.
Settlers from Esh Kodesh, an Israeli Settlemtn outpost clashed with Palestinian residents in Qusra, a village in Nablus in the northern West Bank, during which a Palestinian was shot and injured with live ammunition. Also in Nablus, settlers from the settlement of Itamar physically assaulted and injured three Palestinians who were driving near the settlement.
During the reporting period, OCHA documented eight settler attacks that led to extensive damage of Palestinian-owned property. Settlers cut down, uprooted or set fire to around 990 trees, mainly olive trees, most of which were located on Palestinian land in the vicinity of settlements in the Qalqiliya, Salfit and Ramallah governorates; Since the beginning of 2011, over 6,600 trees belonging to Palestinians have been vandalized by settlers.
It said that Demolition of structures and issuance of demolition orders by the Israeli authorities in Area C of the West Bank have continued; five structures, including a residence, two sections of roads (2.5 meters long) and two animal shelters, were demolished in Al ‘Aqaba, a village in Tubas governorate, due to lack of Israeli-issued building permits. As a result, 23 people, including 11 children, were displaced, some of whom had been previously displaced and were living in animal shelters, and around 300 others were otherwise affected.
The Israeli authorities issued demolition and eviction orders against five structures belonging to a Bedouin community living in ‘Anata, a village in Jerusalem. These included four residences and a kindergarten, in which 45 children are enrolled. Other orders affected five residential structures in Al Buweib, a village in Hebron and two residences and two animal shacks in Al Farsiya, a community in Tubas governorate.
Many communities, which are located in Area C of the West Bank, remain at risk of forced displacement, said OCHA.
It said that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to fishing areas beyond three nautical miles from the shore and to areas up to 1,500 meters from the fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip continue to disrupt the lives and to hinder the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinians.
Electricity blackouts throughout the Gaza Strip continue, with power cuts reaching six to eight hours per day. Basic services including health provision, water supply and waste water management continue to be directly affected by the lack of electricity, said OCHA.
During the reporting period, a total of 4,528 people left Gaza through the Rafah Crossing controlled by Egypt, and 2,286 entered Gaza. This is an increase compared to the number of people who crossed into Egypt in recent weeks, however, it remains below the number of people who crossed per week in the first five months of 2006, before the partial closure of the crossing, when an average of 650 people crossed daily each way, said OCHA.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17507
PA: Settlers uproot 400 olive trees near Nablus
Dozens of Israeli settlers on Sunday uprooted over 400 Palestinian-owned olive trees near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Settlement Affairs official Ghassan Doughlas said settlers attacked fields between Qusra and Duma villages south of Nablus.
On Friday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered Qusra.
The incident comes amid a surge in settler violence in the northern district, including village raids, attacks on Palestinians and their property and the vandalism of two mosques in recent weeks.
In Qusra on Sept. 5, settlers torched a mosque and spray-painted anti-Arab slogans and the Star of David.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423422
Israeli police: Settlers killed by stones thrown at car
An Israeli settler and his 18-month-old son were killed when the man lost control of his car after being hit by stones hurled by Palestinians, Israeli police said Sunday.
"Preliminary results of the investigation lead us to conclude that the father was hit in the head by a stone, which made him lose control of the vehicle," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, adding the crash occurred Friday.
The settler, 25-year-old Israeli-American Asher Palmer, and his son Yonathan lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Police had initially ruled out an attack against the car.
On the day of the crash, Palestinians had hurled stones at settlers' vehicles, particularly in the region where the settler and the child were killed.
There were also clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and police in several West Bank localities, the day when the Palestinian leadership officially applied for UN membership for Palestine.
A Palestinian was killed and three others injured that same day near Nablus in the northern West Bank by Israeli army fire in the wake of clashes between Palestinian villagers and Israeli settlers.
At the funeral of Palmer and his son on Sunday in the Jewish cemetery of Hebron where several hundred were gathered, Danny Dayan, a leader of the settlers, accused Israeli authorities of intentionally trying to cover up the cause of the deaths by presenting it as an accident.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423618
Palestinian killed as West Bank unrest continues
A surge of violence triggered by the PLO’s request for UN membership has left one Palestinian dead and scores injured as they fell into clashes with Israeli military forces and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
The clashes come amid an escalation of Jewish settler attacks and calls by Palestinian groups for a third intifada (uprising) and to respond to violence by Israeli forces.
Palestinian Authority security forces carried out a wide-ranging arrest campaign ahead of Friday, when PA president Mahmoud Abbas formally petitioned for full Palestinian membership in the UN, rounding up some 50 Hamas supporters in the West Bank and summoning more than 500 in a two-day period, as the PASF vowed to crush outbreaks of mass protests that could turn into clashes with Israeli military forces.
Regardless of the measures, clashes erupted in Jerusalem’s Arab Ras al-Amud district after Israeli soldiers provoked worshipers there, as well as in other areas in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank.
One man was killed in Qusra village, southeast of Nablus, and others were injured by teargas and rubber bullets fired by IOF troops in a Palestinian response to attacks by Jewish settlers.
On Sunday, Israeli occupation forces carried out a string of arrests in Al-Eizariyya near Jerusalem and Jewish settlers continued an onslaught of attacks across the West Bank, including on Palestinian villages south of Nablus city.
Locals reported that settlers ambushed Palestinian motorists on a main road south of Nablus stoning vehicles.
In separate incidents, settlers set fire to olive groves on the outskirts of Burin village, near Nablus, as villagers there were compelled into clashes with a joint force of Jewish settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers.
On Saturday, a Palestinian motorist from Nahalin village was left with bruises in a crash that came after a group of Jewish settlers from nearby Beitar Illit pelted his vehicle with stones.
Also on Sunday, informed Palestinian sources said a vehicle was struck by stones while passing a road to Jewish settlement Yitzhar, south of Nablus city. The owner of the vehicle has not been identified, according to the report.
Israeli Police Arrests Palestinian Child, Extremist Settlers Go on provocative Marches in Jerusalem
Israeli occupation special police units Sunday arrested a child, 7, near the sit-in tent in al-Bustan, a neighborhood in Silwan, a town east of Jerusalem, during confrontations, according to witnesses.
Witnesses said Israeli forces raided Silwan and immediately started firing toxic and tear gas canisters, indiscriminately, at the residents’ homes, without any known reasons.
They added that there are violent confrontations in al-Bustan, a neighborhood in Silwan, south of al-Aqsa Mosque, which is spreading to surrounding areas.
Israeli forces ascended on rooftops and harassed the residents, witnesses said.
In a related matter, a group of extremist settlers expropriated the old city of Jerusalem with provocative marches toured a number of streets in Jerusalem, in direction of the Western Wall to celebrate the 'Day of Atonement', Jewish Yom Kippur – New Year.
The settlers were accompanied by Israeli forces and police reinforcement, while raising Israeli flags in the midst of wild and noisy dances, and provocative harassments against the Jerusalemites and their properties, witnesses said.
These groups try to hold consecutive marches around al-Aqsa mosque, in the midst of calls from extremist right-wing Jewish leaders to break into al-Aqsa mosque, in order to put the foundation stone for the alleged temple mount.
While the diplomats haggle, deadly tensions are mounting in the nascent Palestine
The quest for Palestinian statehood at the UN has worsened a climate of fear on the ground in the West Bank
The settlers come down the hill from the outpost, mostly on foot, but occasionally on horseback or in tractors or 4x4s. They carry Israeli flags, and sometimes bring guns, shovels and dogs. There may be as few as three or as many as 40. They taunt the local villagers and sometimes attack them. Often the Israeli army arrives and trains its weapons on the villagers.
In Qusra, deep among the terraced hills of the West Bank, fear is on the rise. "The settlers are provoking us continuously," said Hani Abu Reidi, head of the village council. "They uproot olive trees, kill our sheep, burn our mosques and curse our prophet. They want to drag us into the sphere of violence. We do not want to go there."
As the Palestinian quest for statehood looks set to be mired in diplomatic back rooms for weeks or months, tension on the ground is mounting. Both Palestinian villagers and Jewish settlers say each other is responsible for a spike in attacks over the past fortnight; mostly small-scale incidents such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails and insults. Both sides claim the other is preparing to invade their communities and attack their people. It has created an edgy climate of fear and menace, and is a forewarning of potential battles to come if the struggle for the land moves up a gear with impending Palestinian statehood.
OCHA: Israeli Settler Violence against Palestinians Continues to Escalate
Settlers have escalated attacks against Palestinians and their property during the week between September 14 and 20, resulting in injury to four Palestinians and damage to around 990 olive trees, Sunday said the weekly report of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA).
It said that this escalation comes in the context of a request by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for UN membership.
Settlers from Esh Kodesh, an Israeli Settlemtn outpost clashed with Palestinian residents in Qusra, a village in Nablus in the northern West Bank, during which a Palestinian was shot and injured with live ammunition. Also in Nablus, settlers from the settlement of Itamar physically assaulted and injured three Palestinians who were driving near the settlement.
During the reporting period, OCHA documented eight settler attacks that led to extensive damage of Palestinian-owned property. Settlers cut down, uprooted or set fire to around 990 trees, mainly olive trees, most of which were located on Palestinian land in the vicinity of settlements in the Qalqiliya, Salfit and Ramallah governorates; Since the beginning of 2011, over 6,600 trees belonging to Palestinians have been vandalized by settlers.
It said that Demolition of structures and issuance of demolition orders by the Israeli authorities in Area C of the West Bank have continued; five structures, including a residence, two sections of roads (2.5 meters long) and two animal shelters, were demolished in Al ‘Aqaba, a village in Tubas governorate, due to lack of Israeli-issued building permits. As a result, 23 people, including 11 children, were displaced, some of whom had been previously displaced and were living in animal shelters, and around 300 others were otherwise affected.
The Israeli authorities issued demolition and eviction orders against five structures belonging to a Bedouin community living in ‘Anata, a village in Jerusalem. These included four residences and a kindergarten, in which 45 children are enrolled. Other orders affected five residential structures in Al Buweib, a village in Hebron and two residences and two animal shacks in Al Farsiya, a community in Tubas governorate.
Many communities, which are located in Area C of the West Bank, remain at risk of forced displacement, said OCHA.
It said that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to fishing areas beyond three nautical miles from the shore and to areas up to 1,500 meters from the fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip continue to disrupt the lives and to hinder the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinians.
Electricity blackouts throughout the Gaza Strip continue, with power cuts reaching six to eight hours per day. Basic services including health provision, water supply and waste water management continue to be directly affected by the lack of electricity, said OCHA.
During the reporting period, a total of 4,528 people left Gaza through the Rafah Crossing controlled by Egypt, and 2,286 entered Gaza. This is an increase compared to the number of people who crossed into Egypt in recent weeks, however, it remains below the number of people who crossed per week in the first five months of 2006, before the partial closure of the crossing, when an average of 650 people crossed daily each way, said OCHA.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17507
PA: Settlers uproot 400 olive trees near Nablus
Dozens of Israeli settlers on Sunday uprooted over 400 Palestinian-owned olive trees near Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Settlement Affairs official Ghassan Doughlas said settlers attacked fields between Qusra and Duma villages south of Nablus.
On Friday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered Qusra.
The incident comes amid a surge in settler violence in the northern district, including village raids, attacks on Palestinians and their property and the vandalism of two mosques in recent weeks.
In Qusra on Sept. 5, settlers torched a mosque and spray-painted anti-Arab slogans and the Star of David.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423422
Israeli police: Settlers killed by stones thrown at car
An Israeli settler and his 18-month-old son were killed when the man lost control of his car after being hit by stones hurled by Palestinians, Israeli police said Sunday.
"Preliminary results of the investigation lead us to conclude that the father was hit in the head by a stone, which made him lose control of the vehicle," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, adding the crash occurred Friday.
The settler, 25-year-old Israeli-American Asher Palmer, and his son Yonathan lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Police had initially ruled out an attack against the car.
On the day of the crash, Palestinians had hurled stones at settlers' vehicles, particularly in the region where the settler and the child were killed.
There were also clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and police in several West Bank localities, the day when the Palestinian leadership officially applied for UN membership for Palestine.
A Palestinian was killed and three others injured that same day near Nablus in the northern West Bank by Israeli army fire in the wake of clashes between Palestinian villagers and Israeli settlers.
At the funeral of Palmer and his son on Sunday in the Jewish cemetery of Hebron where several hundred were gathered, Danny Dayan, a leader of the settlers, accused Israeli authorities of intentionally trying to cover up the cause of the deaths by presenting it as an accident.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423618
24 sept 2011
Voices from the Occupation: F.D. - Settler/Soldier Violence
Name: F.D.
Date of incident: 23 September 2011
Age: 15
Location: Qusra, Nablus, West Bank
Nature of incident: Settler/Soldier violence
On 23 September 2011, a 15-year-old boy from Qusra, is hospitalised after being detained and beaten for approximately five hours by Israeli soldiers during a settler attack on his village.
F.D. (15) lives in the West Bank village of Qusra, approximately 25 km south of Nablus City. At around 2:00 pm on Friday 23 September 2011, F.D. was “at home in the house when I heard a call through the mosque loudspeakers to head south of the village to stop the settlers who were uprooting olive trees and destroying villagers’ lands. The settlers were from the settlement of Esh Kodesh, which is built on our lands. Our village is repeatedly attacked by settlers,” he says.
F.D. immediately headed to the site of the confrontations. “By the time I got there, there were around 30 to 40 settlers in white clothes. Some had their faces covered in white. Some were carrying weapons; others were holding sticks and shovels. I saw some of them cutting the olive trees. There were around seven military jeeps and around 30 armed soldiers there but they did not stop the settlers from cutting or destroying the trees. They were there to protect the settlers. The soldiers fired stun grenades to scare us away but we kept going and threw stones at the settlers to stop them.” More and more villagers came to defend their lands and eventually, the settlers retreated. “Then,” F.D. explains, “the soldiers started chasing us, firing live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades. They chased us to send us back into the village. Our villagers fought back by throwing stones at the soldiers.”
F.D. ran back towards the village but was apprehended by two soldiers, who ordered him to stop. “I heard one of them saying he would shoot and kill me. I was so scared that I stopped. Then, they grabbed me and started hitting me with their rifles all over my body until I fell.” F.D. was taken to stand next to an Israeli army jeep, where his hands were tied with plastic cords and the beating continued: “I was so scared, I thought they were going to shoot me or arrest me. I was shaking with fear.” When he asked why they were beating him they beat him more. “They were beating me with the barrel of their rifles, as well as kicking, punching and slapping me.”After 15 minutes, he was blindfolded and put inside a jeep. “Inside,” he recalls, “they sat on my back and the rest of my body. They stepped all over me and kept beating me with the barrels of their rifles until I passed out.” The soldiers brought another young villager (18) to the jeep and beat him also. “Then, I felt the jeep moving and stopping every 200 metres or so. Whenever it stopped, the soldiers would beat us.”
The two were kept inside the jeep until 7:30pm. “I thought they were going to shoot us or hand us over to the settlers,” F.D. remembers, “especially when the soldiers pulled us out of the jeep in the settlement. From under the blindfold I could see five settlers trying to get at us to beat us, but the soldiers stopped them. That terrified me because if they handed us to the settlers, the settlers would certainly kill us.” F.D. listened to the soldiers arguing with each other about what to do. “One of the soldiers told us in Arabic that some of them did not want to release us.” When the soldiers took off the blindfolds, F.D. noticed “five settlers nearby shouting at us in Hebrew and trying to get at us.” F.D. and the other young Palestinian headed back towards the village. “We were very scared of the settlers and that one of the soldiers would shoot us, so we walked fast but couldn’t run because we were in so much pain.” When they eventually reached the village, they were brought to hospital in Nablus for treatment.
Speaking to DCI the following day, F.D. says: “I am still hospitalised. I am waiting to be x-rayed to make sure there are no fractures or any other implications. The doctors told me that my previous tests indicate I am fine, but I have some bruising.”
Qusra suffers regular settler attacks. Two weeks prior to this attack, on Monday, 5 September 2011, settlers entered the village and burned a mosque. On Tuesday 11 October, the UN expressed concern about these attacks: “Qusra has been targeted by settlers at least six times in the past six weeks. The attacks took various forms and are emblematic of the phenomenon of settler violence throughout the West Bank. […] Two of the most recent examples include the shooting dead of a Palestinian civilian by an IDF soldier in Qusra on 23 September. On the same day, two Palestinian minors were detained for two hours during which they were allegedly beaten up and humiliated by the IDF soldiers before being released.” The day after the attack, a village spokesman stated in The Guardian newspaper: "The settlers are provoking us continuously; [...] they uproot olive trees, kill our sheep, burn our mosques and curse our prophet. They want to drag us into the sphere of violence. We do not want to go there."
http://fwd4.me/0LXQ
Israeli Troops Arrest Two Palestinians, Settlers Fire on Shepherds near Bethlehem
Israeli troops arrested two Palestinians after shooting their car on Saturday morning at Tekoa junction near Bethlehem, while Israeli settlers opened fire on Palestinian shepherds.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian state news wire Wafa that Israeli soldiers manning the Tekoa checkpoint east of Bethlehem shot at a car approaching the checkpoint, then arrested 41-year-old Mohammed Ghanam and his 17-year-old son Qamr. Both were from the village of Dura in Hebron governorate.
Also on Saturday morning, Israeli settlers from the illegal settlement of Amous shot at Palestinian shepherds near the village of Tuqu’. Eyewitnesses told Wafa that since the Israeli military instantly declared the area a closed military zone, they could not find out if anyone was injured.
One Palestinian killed_ many injured by Israeli forces
Voices from the Occupation: F.D. - Settler/Soldier Violence
Name: F.D.
Date of incident: 23 September 2011
Age: 15
Location: Qusra, Nablus, West Bank
Nature of incident: Settler/Soldier violence
On 23 September 2011, a 15-year-old boy from Qusra, is hospitalised after being detained and beaten for approximately five hours by Israeli soldiers during a settler attack on his village.
F.D. (15) lives in the West Bank village of Qusra, approximately 25 km south of Nablus City. At around 2:00 pm on Friday 23 September 2011, F.D. was “at home in the house when I heard a call through the mosque loudspeakers to head south of the village to stop the settlers who were uprooting olive trees and destroying villagers’ lands. The settlers were from the settlement of Esh Kodesh, which is built on our lands. Our village is repeatedly attacked by settlers,” he says.
F.D. immediately headed to the site of the confrontations. “By the time I got there, there were around 30 to 40 settlers in white clothes. Some had their faces covered in white. Some were carrying weapons; others were holding sticks and shovels. I saw some of them cutting the olive trees. There were around seven military jeeps and around 30 armed soldiers there but they did not stop the settlers from cutting or destroying the trees. They were there to protect the settlers. The soldiers fired stun grenades to scare us away but we kept going and threw stones at the settlers to stop them.” More and more villagers came to defend their lands and eventually, the settlers retreated. “Then,” F.D. explains, “the soldiers started chasing us, firing live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades. They chased us to send us back into the village. Our villagers fought back by throwing stones at the soldiers.”
F.D. ran back towards the village but was apprehended by two soldiers, who ordered him to stop. “I heard one of them saying he would shoot and kill me. I was so scared that I stopped. Then, they grabbed me and started hitting me with their rifles all over my body until I fell.” F.D. was taken to stand next to an Israeli army jeep, where his hands were tied with plastic cords and the beating continued: “I was so scared, I thought they were going to shoot me or arrest me. I was shaking with fear.” When he asked why they were beating him they beat him more. “They were beating me with the barrel of their rifles, as well as kicking, punching and slapping me.”After 15 minutes, he was blindfolded and put inside a jeep. “Inside,” he recalls, “they sat on my back and the rest of my body. They stepped all over me and kept beating me with the barrels of their rifles until I passed out.” The soldiers brought another young villager (18) to the jeep and beat him also. “Then, I felt the jeep moving and stopping every 200 metres or so. Whenever it stopped, the soldiers would beat us.”
The two were kept inside the jeep until 7:30pm. “I thought they were going to shoot us or hand us over to the settlers,” F.D. remembers, “especially when the soldiers pulled us out of the jeep in the settlement. From under the blindfold I could see five settlers trying to get at us to beat us, but the soldiers stopped them. That terrified me because if they handed us to the settlers, the settlers would certainly kill us.” F.D. listened to the soldiers arguing with each other about what to do. “One of the soldiers told us in Arabic that some of them did not want to release us.” When the soldiers took off the blindfolds, F.D. noticed “five settlers nearby shouting at us in Hebrew and trying to get at us.” F.D. and the other young Palestinian headed back towards the village. “We were very scared of the settlers and that one of the soldiers would shoot us, so we walked fast but couldn’t run because we were in so much pain.” When they eventually reached the village, they were brought to hospital in Nablus for treatment.
Speaking to DCI the following day, F.D. says: “I am still hospitalised. I am waiting to be x-rayed to make sure there are no fractures or any other implications. The doctors told me that my previous tests indicate I am fine, but I have some bruising.”
Qusra suffers regular settler attacks. Two weeks prior to this attack, on Monday, 5 September 2011, settlers entered the village and burned a mosque. On Tuesday 11 October, the UN expressed concern about these attacks: “Qusra has been targeted by settlers at least six times in the past six weeks. The attacks took various forms and are emblematic of the phenomenon of settler violence throughout the West Bank. […] Two of the most recent examples include the shooting dead of a Palestinian civilian by an IDF soldier in Qusra on 23 September. On the same day, two Palestinian minors were detained for two hours during which they were allegedly beaten up and humiliated by the IDF soldiers before being released.” The day after the attack, a village spokesman stated in The Guardian newspaper: "The settlers are provoking us continuously; [...] they uproot olive trees, kill our sheep, burn our mosques and curse our prophet. They want to drag us into the sphere of violence. We do not want to go there."
http://fwd4.me/0LXQ
Israeli Troops Arrest Two Palestinians, Settlers Fire on Shepherds near Bethlehem
Israeli troops arrested two Palestinians after shooting their car on Saturday morning at Tekoa junction near Bethlehem, while Israeli settlers opened fire on Palestinian shepherds.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian state news wire Wafa that Israeli soldiers manning the Tekoa checkpoint east of Bethlehem shot at a car approaching the checkpoint, then arrested 41-year-old Mohammed Ghanam and his 17-year-old son Qamr. Both were from the village of Dura in Hebron governorate.
Also on Saturday morning, Israeli settlers from the illegal settlement of Amous shot at Palestinian shepherds near the village of Tuqu’. Eyewitnesses told Wafa that since the Israeli military instantly declared the area a closed military zone, they could not find out if anyone was injured.
One Palestinian killed_ many injured by Israeli forces
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Israeli settlers attacked the village of Qusra, South of Nablus on Friday, and attempted uprooting the village's olive trees, the main source of income for many of the Palestinian villagers.
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Islamic Movement warns of fresh Al-Aqsa Mosque entries
The Islamic Movement in 1948 occupied Palestine has warned that the Israelis would make their next move on Al-Aqsa Mosque as the public is preoccupied with controversy over the PLO chairman’s current bid to seek UN membership for the Palestinians.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish organizations backed by international Jewish agencies, evangelicals, and the Israeli establishment have called for entering Al-Aqsa Mosque during upcoming Jewish holidays, a Saturday statement by the Islamic Movement said.
This comes in anticipation of the opening of many tunnels connecting Al-Aqsa Mosque to East Jerusalem’s Silwan district as well as with Islamic and Umayyad artifacts falsely claimed by the Israelis as Jewish.
The statement warns that such steps are aimed at creating a de facto situation with Jewish dominance of Muslim holy sites as has already taken place with the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil.
Such policies no longer avail at a time when every Palestinian knows that Palestine is an exclusive right of the Palestinians, the statement says.
“Attempts aimed at conferring legitimacy for Israel by covering the land with biblical encodings will not avail, and the Israeli establishment will pay the price for violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement says.
“The repeated entries of the mosque by fascists and rightists of all compositions under the protection of Israeli police and various security forces will not give you the right even on a single grain of dust or air in Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the Islamic Movement said, addressing the Israelis.
Jewish settlers set Palestinian farmland on fire
Dozens of dunums of Palestinian farmland in Hawara village, south of Nablus, were set ablaze by Jewish settlers, local sources reported.
They said that the arson attack took place on Friday night, adding that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) were nearby and did not move to stop the attack.
Meanwhile, IOF soldiers arrested a Palestinian citizen and his teen daughter after firing at their car at Taku crossing south of Bethlehem province on Saturday morning, eyewitnesses said.
They said that two IOF jeeps were parking near that crossing when the 43-year-old man was driving with his 17-year-old daughter by his side. The soldiers fired at them and their car turned turtle, the witnesses added.
In another incident near Taku, Jewish settlers opened fire at Palestinian shepherds while rearing their sheep, locals said, adding that the IOF soldiers closed off the area.
Settlers, Palestinians clash near Nablus
Clashes erupted Saturday between Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents of the Burin village near Nablus in the northern West Bank, witnesses and the Israeli army said.
Locals told a Ma'an correspondent that residents of the illegal Yitzhar settlement stormed the entrance to Burin, threw rocks at villagers and smashed the windscreen of a car.
Israeli soldiers arrived to the scene and fired tear gas and stun grenades, locals said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israeli civilians came to a road near Burin, and that forces fired riot dispersal means in response to clashes.
The violence came a day after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered the Nablus-area Qusra village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423233
The Islamic Movement in 1948 occupied Palestine has warned that the Israelis would make their next move on Al-Aqsa Mosque as the public is preoccupied with controversy over the PLO chairman’s current bid to seek UN membership for the Palestinians.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish organizations backed by international Jewish agencies, evangelicals, and the Israeli establishment have called for entering Al-Aqsa Mosque during upcoming Jewish holidays, a Saturday statement by the Islamic Movement said.
This comes in anticipation of the opening of many tunnels connecting Al-Aqsa Mosque to East Jerusalem’s Silwan district as well as with Islamic and Umayyad artifacts falsely claimed by the Israelis as Jewish.
The statement warns that such steps are aimed at creating a de facto situation with Jewish dominance of Muslim holy sites as has already taken place with the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil.
Such policies no longer avail at a time when every Palestinian knows that Palestine is an exclusive right of the Palestinians, the statement says.
“Attempts aimed at conferring legitimacy for Israel by covering the land with biblical encodings will not avail, and the Israeli establishment will pay the price for violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement says.
“The repeated entries of the mosque by fascists and rightists of all compositions under the protection of Israeli police and various security forces will not give you the right even on a single grain of dust or air in Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the Islamic Movement said, addressing the Israelis.
Jewish settlers set Palestinian farmland on fire
Dozens of dunums of Palestinian farmland in Hawara village, south of Nablus, were set ablaze by Jewish settlers, local sources reported.
They said that the arson attack took place on Friday night, adding that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) were nearby and did not move to stop the attack.
Meanwhile, IOF soldiers arrested a Palestinian citizen and his teen daughter after firing at their car at Taku crossing south of Bethlehem province on Saturday morning, eyewitnesses said.
They said that two IOF jeeps were parking near that crossing when the 43-year-old man was driving with his 17-year-old daughter by his side. The soldiers fired at them and their car turned turtle, the witnesses added.
In another incident near Taku, Jewish settlers opened fire at Palestinian shepherds while rearing their sheep, locals said, adding that the IOF soldiers closed off the area.
Settlers, Palestinians clash near Nablus
Clashes erupted Saturday between Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents of the Burin village near Nablus in the northern West Bank, witnesses and the Israeli army said.
Locals told a Ma'an correspondent that residents of the illegal Yitzhar settlement stormed the entrance to Burin, threw rocks at villagers and smashed the windscreen of a car.
Israeli soldiers arrived to the scene and fired tear gas and stun grenades, locals said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israeli civilians came to a road near Burin, and that forces fired riot dispersal means in response to clashes.
The violence came a day after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Issam Kamal Odeh, 33, during clashes sparked by settlers who entered the Nablus-area Qusra village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=423233
23 sept 2011
Palestinians: IDF killed villager
Troops, Arab rioters clash in West Bank; Palestinians say Arab man shot in neck. Several protestors detained, IDF soldier lightly hurt.
Tensions rising: A 36-year-old resident of the West Bank village of Kusra was killed Friday by IDF fire during clashes between local villagers and settlers, Palestinian sources said.
The IDF is looking into the circumstances of the incident. Army officials said the report is credible as it was received from Palestinian security authorities. The military confirmed soldiers used live fire in the clashes.
According to the Palestinians, the man, Issam Badran, was shot in the neck from close range.
Earlier, an IDF soldier sustained light wounds after being stoned at the village, south of Nablus. A clash ensued at the site between a group of settlers and local Palestinians who hurled stones at each other. Another 300 Palestinians later arrived at the site and hurled stones at troops called to the area, who responded with crowd dispersal means.
Friday afternoon, clashes broke out at the Qalandia Checkpoint as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were making their final preparations for their battle of words at the UN General Assembly in New York. Masked men threw rocks at security forces at the checkpoint
Meanwhile in east Jerusalem, Border Guard officers arrested three teens in Beit Hanina after they set tires on fire and threw rocks at security officers. Two more teens were arrested when they attempted to forcefully enter the Temple Mount.
The IDF reported Friday that there were four major points of clashes: Around 100 people are rioting near Qalandia, 50 Palestinians, Israeli and foreign citizens are protesting near Bilin west of Ramallah, an additional 60 people are protesting in Na'alin and 120 are protesting near Nabi Salah.
Rocks are being thrown at security forces at each of the locations and security forces are using crowd dispersal measures.
The thousands of Friday worshipers who took part in the Temple Mount prayers were dispersed witout further incident. Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino and Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch arrived at the Western Wall on Friday to be on hand to monitor the developing situation.
There are concerns that Palestinian factors will try to riot in problematic areas in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in response to their disappointment over what they believe was US President Barack Obama's pro-Israeli speech. Talking to Ynet, police sources said they believed there was a likelihood of clashes with security forces at the Kalandia checkpoint following Friday morning prayers.
Thousands of policemen, Border Guard officers and police special forces will deploy around the Temple Mount and the Jerusalem region in order to maintain order when Friday prayers on the Temple Mount are over. The IDF said that there are two critical timeframes for friction: After Friday prayers and Abbas' speech in the UN.
Jerusalem police have decided to restrict the age of Temple Mount worshipers to men over the age of 50 and only those who carry Israeli ID cards. No restrictions will be placed on women wishing to enter the mount.
A source within the Jerusalem police said that "a firm hand approach will be used against any attempt to break the peace." Though he added there was no concrete evidence of any planned clashes "but if order is broken we will know how to act".
The Fatah is planning to give Abbas a significant morale boost and has established an operations room to oversea the 194 (the number the Palestinian state would receive in the UN if recognized) events and rallies in the West Bank.
The main rallies will commence at 6 pm in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Jenin where Abbas' speech will be broadcast live on big screens. Thousands are expected to arrive in east Jerusalem to watch the Palestinian president's speech at the Damascus Gate.
Palestinian security forces will also be on high alert on Friday and will deploy additional forces in order to prevent clashes between Palestinians and settlers.
Prepared for foreign media and Facebook, Protests on Tuesday at Qalandiya checkpoint near Jerusalem
While Wednesday's rallies passed with relative calm, this time around there are greater fears of violent responses from the Palestinians as Obama's UN speech has created a great deal of disappointment and frustration on the Palestinian street.
In addition to the special "independence events" the Palestinians also plan on holding the usual Friday protests against the separation fence, yet this time organizers promise it will be bigger and in the spirit of the September events.
Meanwhile, the IDF has not only boosted the number of troops in the West Bank, it is also on high alert in the PR arena. Documentation teams will be deployed throughout the West Bank with cellular devices that are equipped with "live view" technology for the foreign media and social networks. A special operations room has been established for that purpose at the IDF's filming unit.
In the Gaza Strip it would seem that it is business as usual – no special event have been planned ahead of the UN statehood bid as Hamas opposes the move.
22 sept 2011
Settlers run over a Palestinian child near Qeriat Arba’, Hebron
Hebron-The Red Star of David drove a Palestinian child to the hospital after he was run over by an Israeli car. The car belonged to two settlers who fled the scene.
Confrontations took place between Palestinian citizens and the Israeli army when the army prohibited citizens from getting closer to the scene of the crime.
According to a PNN correspondent in Hebron, the Israeli army closed all entrances to the city, erected flying checkpoints in different entrances and started checking the citizen’s IDs
Hit-and-run injures child in Hebron
An eight-year-old boy sustained serious injuries after being struck by a vehicle in east Hebron on Friday morning, eyewitnesses said.
Taleb Jaber was left bleeding as the Israeli-plated car fled the scene by al-Baqaa village near the army-controlled H2 area in the West Bank city's east, locals said.
Israeli forces summoned an ambulance and evacuated the child to a hospital inside the settlement Kiryat Arba, they said. An army spokeswoman said this report fit with her understanding of events.
But Jaber's grandfather told Ma'an the incident was deliberate and not a car accident. He said the Israeli army had prevented the Palestinian Red Crescent from attending to the child.
Locals said that youths clashed with troops after the incident. The army spokeswoman said she did not have reports of clashes, but two Palestinians were detained for pushing a police officer following the incident.
Jewish settler runs over Palestinian child east of al-Khalil
Eight-year old Farid Taleb Jaber was seriously injured Friday afternoon as a result of a hit and run by a car driven by a Jewish settler in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil.
The settler drove the car into the boy who was walking onto the pavement in the eastern neighbourhood of Baqaa and did not stop.
IOF troops and an Israeli ambulance arrived at the scene and the boy was taken to Keryat Arba hospital but was then taken to Ein Karem Hadassa hospital because his injuries are serious.
Clashes broke out between IOF troops and local youth in the same area after the incident. The occupation troops beat locals up bruising some of them and arrested Farid Jaber and Yahya Jaber both relatives of the child who was run over by the settler.
Settlers attacks on Palestinians close to Jewish colonies in the West Bank have been on the rise lately.
IOF troops kill Palestinian man in Qusra
Settlers run over a Palestinian child near Qeriat Arba’, Hebron
Hebron-The Red Star of David drove a Palestinian child to the hospital after he was run over by an Israeli car. The car belonged to two settlers who fled the scene.
Confrontations took place between Palestinian citizens and the Israeli army when the army prohibited citizens from getting closer to the scene of the crime.
According to a PNN correspondent in Hebron, the Israeli army closed all entrances to the city, erected flying checkpoints in different entrances and started checking the citizen’s IDs
Hit-and-run injures child in Hebron
An eight-year-old boy sustained serious injuries after being struck by a vehicle in east Hebron on Friday morning, eyewitnesses said.
Taleb Jaber was left bleeding as the Israeli-plated car fled the scene by al-Baqaa village near the army-controlled H2 area in the West Bank city's east, locals said.
Israeli forces summoned an ambulance and evacuated the child to a hospital inside the settlement Kiryat Arba, they said. An army spokeswoman said this report fit with her understanding of events.
But Jaber's grandfather told Ma'an the incident was deliberate and not a car accident. He said the Israeli army had prevented the Palestinian Red Crescent from attending to the child.
Locals said that youths clashed with troops after the incident. The army spokeswoman said she did not have reports of clashes, but two Palestinians were detained for pushing a police officer following the incident.
Jewish settler runs over Palestinian child east of al-Khalil
Eight-year old Farid Taleb Jaber was seriously injured Friday afternoon as a result of a hit and run by a car driven by a Jewish settler in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil.
The settler drove the car into the boy who was walking onto the pavement in the eastern neighbourhood of Baqaa and did not stop.
IOF troops and an Israeli ambulance arrived at the scene and the boy was taken to Keryat Arba hospital but was then taken to Ein Karem Hadassa hospital because his injuries are serious.
Clashes broke out between IOF troops and local youth in the same area after the incident. The occupation troops beat locals up bruising some of them and arrested Farid Jaber and Yahya Jaber both relatives of the child who was run over by the settler.
Settlers attacks on Palestinians close to Jewish colonies in the West Bank have been on the rise lately.
IOF troops kill Palestinian man in Qusra
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Man shot dead in West Bank village hours before Mahmoud Abbas's request to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state.
A Palestinian man has been shot dead in a clash with Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. Hours before President Mahmoud Abbas's address to the United Nations general assembly and his formal request for recognition of a Palestinian state, the man, identified as Issam Badran, 35, was shot in the neck, according to witnesses including an Associated Press reporter. The incident began with a warning broadcast made over mosque speakers in Qusra of an approach by settlers from a nearby outpost. Scores of village men and youths headed towards a hill where around 20 settlers |
had gathered, waving Israeli flags. Israeli troops arrived and fired tear gas, then live rounds. Settlers also fired their weapons.
Qusra has been the scene of repeated incursions by settlers in recent weeks, including an attack on a mosque in which tyres were set alight inside the building and the walls defaced with Hebrew graffiti.
Elsewhere, sporadic clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli military broke out in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank on Friday.
Several hundred young Palestinians, swathed in Palestinian flags, their faces covered with scarves, gathered at Qalandiya checkpoint to throw stones, in defiance of Abbas's call for non-violent demonstration.
"We're not listening to Abu Mazen [Abbas], we never do," said one 20-year-old student, clutching several rocks in his hand. "Really we're just playing. It's a game we play every week. We want to send a message that after 60 years of occupation, we're still here."
One group of youths marched towards a line of Israeli troops holding aloft an American flag with the word "veto" printed on before torching it. Others threw rocks and miniature molotov cocktails at the advancing soldiers.
On the other side of the separation wall, Israeli police reported five arrests in East Jerusalem for rock throwing in an afternoon described by spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld as "relatively quiet".
The arrest of Hamze Jaber, 17, in the neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud sparked outrage. "He did nothing. He just saw the soldiers, got scared and ran. They chased him and jumped on him. Now he'll be in prison for maybe two months," said Jamil Abu Madi, 27, a local who struggled to hold back furious young boys from throwing stones at retreating Israeli soldiers.
"They closed Al-Aqsa mosque today so we just prayed on the street. Why? Because of a Palestinian state? We just want to live."
In the village of Nabi Saleh, protesters burned Israeli flags and posters of US president Barack Obama in an expression of rage over his UN speech this week, widely seen as overtly sympathetic to Israel. Police fired teargas at the protesters.
There were further clashes in the villages of Bil'in and Ni'lin. Confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli troops in West Bank villages are a routine Friday occurrence.
Report: Israeli settlers give women weapons training
Israeli settlers began a weapons training program for women in the settlements on Wednesday, Israeli media said.
The training started with a five hour course on the use of guns and M16 rifles for six women from Pnei Kedem, a Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank district of Hebron, according to Hebrew language daily Maariv.
The course is for self-defense and family protection if Palestinians attack the settlements, the report said, adding that the project will expand in preparation for possible clashes with Palestinians.
Palestinian villagers and officials have reported an escalation of attacks from settlers in the West Bank in the lead-up to the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN.
Israeli settlers refuse an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, and rallied on Tuesday to express "our sovereignty on the land," settler spokesman David Haivri said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=422472
Report: Settler official calls for speedy construction
A settlement official on Friday called for accelerated construction of settler facilities in case the diplomatic wrangling over the Palestinian UN bid leads to a freeze on settlement building, Israeli media said.
The Hebrew-language daily Maariv said the president of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc near the West Bank city of Bethlehem encouraged speedy building as the UN bid goes to deliberation.
The Palestinian proposal for full UN membership is due to be submitted by President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Secretary General on Friday.
Settlers are nervous that the diplomatic pressure on the parties to renew negotiations and sidestep a vote on Palestinian membership of the UN will push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze construction in the Jewish-only communities.
On Friday, Abbas reiterated his position that Palestinian negotiators would not return to talks unless Israel stopped building on land Palestinians want for a future state.
The last round of US-brokered negotiations collapsed shortly after their relaunch in September 2010, when Netanyahu declined to renew a 10-month partial settlement freeze.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=422867
IOF and settlers terrorize Jenin villages
IOF troops stormed, at dawn Thursday, several Palestinian localities in the flashpoint area west of Jenin city in the occupied West Bank without report of arrests.
Locals reported that the IOF troops raided the villages of Araqa, Barqin, Kafr Dan and Yamoun to the West of Jenin and setup a number of checkpoints.
IOF troops entered the city of Jenin and were stationed around Al-Quds University until morning hours.
Meanwhile, Jewish settlers continued to gather on Ya’bad-Araba road in the region in a bid to raid those villages and terrorise their inhabitants as part of a recent surge in settler attacks in that area.
Calls for organising committees to defend Jerusalem against settler attacks
The popular national conference for Jerusalem has called for the formation of committees aimed at defending Jerusalem neighborhoods under threat of settler attacks.
"What is happening in Jerusalem in terms of daily measures [by the occupation] forms a serious challenge to anyone for whom Jerusalem represents a religious, cultural and human depth which cannot be separated from other Palestinian rights which cannot be compromised at any price," the conference said in a statement on Wednesday.
The conference further condemned the occupation's "racist" policies in occupied Jerusalem, the most prominent of which is the "aggressive" expansion of settlements.
“The clarity of objectives and ways [to achieve them] forms an obvious incentive to rally around the leadership on the basis of [preserving] Palestinian fundamentals."
Qusra has been the scene of repeated incursions by settlers in recent weeks, including an attack on a mosque in which tyres were set alight inside the building and the walls defaced with Hebrew graffiti.
Elsewhere, sporadic clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli military broke out in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank on Friday.
Several hundred young Palestinians, swathed in Palestinian flags, their faces covered with scarves, gathered at Qalandiya checkpoint to throw stones, in defiance of Abbas's call for non-violent demonstration.
"We're not listening to Abu Mazen [Abbas], we never do," said one 20-year-old student, clutching several rocks in his hand. "Really we're just playing. It's a game we play every week. We want to send a message that after 60 years of occupation, we're still here."
One group of youths marched towards a line of Israeli troops holding aloft an American flag with the word "veto" printed on before torching it. Others threw rocks and miniature molotov cocktails at the advancing soldiers.
On the other side of the separation wall, Israeli police reported five arrests in East Jerusalem for rock throwing in an afternoon described by spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld as "relatively quiet".
The arrest of Hamze Jaber, 17, in the neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud sparked outrage. "He did nothing. He just saw the soldiers, got scared and ran. They chased him and jumped on him. Now he'll be in prison for maybe two months," said Jamil Abu Madi, 27, a local who struggled to hold back furious young boys from throwing stones at retreating Israeli soldiers.
"They closed Al-Aqsa mosque today so we just prayed on the street. Why? Because of a Palestinian state? We just want to live."
In the village of Nabi Saleh, protesters burned Israeli flags and posters of US president Barack Obama in an expression of rage over his UN speech this week, widely seen as overtly sympathetic to Israel. Police fired teargas at the protesters.
There were further clashes in the villages of Bil'in and Ni'lin. Confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli troops in West Bank villages are a routine Friday occurrence.
Report: Israeli settlers give women weapons training
Israeli settlers began a weapons training program for women in the settlements on Wednesday, Israeli media said.
The training started with a five hour course on the use of guns and M16 rifles for six women from Pnei Kedem, a Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank district of Hebron, according to Hebrew language daily Maariv.
The course is for self-defense and family protection if Palestinians attack the settlements, the report said, adding that the project will expand in preparation for possible clashes with Palestinians.
Palestinian villagers and officials have reported an escalation of attacks from settlers in the West Bank in the lead-up to the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN.
Israeli settlers refuse an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, and rallied on Tuesday to express "our sovereignty on the land," settler spokesman David Haivri said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=422472
Report: Settler official calls for speedy construction
A settlement official on Friday called for accelerated construction of settler facilities in case the diplomatic wrangling over the Palestinian UN bid leads to a freeze on settlement building, Israeli media said.
The Hebrew-language daily Maariv said the president of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc near the West Bank city of Bethlehem encouraged speedy building as the UN bid goes to deliberation.
The Palestinian proposal for full UN membership is due to be submitted by President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Secretary General on Friday.
Settlers are nervous that the diplomatic pressure on the parties to renew negotiations and sidestep a vote on Palestinian membership of the UN will push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze construction in the Jewish-only communities.
On Friday, Abbas reiterated his position that Palestinian negotiators would not return to talks unless Israel stopped building on land Palestinians want for a future state.
The last round of US-brokered negotiations collapsed shortly after their relaunch in September 2010, when Netanyahu declined to renew a 10-month partial settlement freeze.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=422867
IOF and settlers terrorize Jenin villages
IOF troops stormed, at dawn Thursday, several Palestinian localities in the flashpoint area west of Jenin city in the occupied West Bank without report of arrests.
Locals reported that the IOF troops raided the villages of Araqa, Barqin, Kafr Dan and Yamoun to the West of Jenin and setup a number of checkpoints.
IOF troops entered the city of Jenin and were stationed around Al-Quds University until morning hours.
Meanwhile, Jewish settlers continued to gather on Ya’bad-Araba road in the region in a bid to raid those villages and terrorise their inhabitants as part of a recent surge in settler attacks in that area.
Calls for organising committees to defend Jerusalem against settler attacks
The popular national conference for Jerusalem has called for the formation of committees aimed at defending Jerusalem neighborhoods under threat of settler attacks.
"What is happening in Jerusalem in terms of daily measures [by the occupation] forms a serious challenge to anyone for whom Jerusalem represents a religious, cultural and human depth which cannot be separated from other Palestinian rights which cannot be compromised at any price," the conference said in a statement on Wednesday.
The conference further condemned the occupation's "racist" policies in occupied Jerusalem, the most prominent of which is the "aggressive" expansion of settlements.
“The clarity of objectives and ways [to achieve them] forms an obvious incentive to rally around the leadership on the basis of [preserving] Palestinian fundamentals."
21 sept 2011
Settlers assault Al-Khalil woman in recent surge in attacks
Jewish settlers assaulted Wednesday a 44-year-old Palestinian woman in the Old City of Al-Khalil in the latest surge in settler attacks in the West Bank.
She was admitted to the local government hospital where she was being treated for minor injuries including scattered bruises, according to medics.
In a separate incident, Jewish settlers stoned a bus of Palestinians slated to visit family members in the Israeli Negev prison.
The bus was held up for an hour at Negev Junction as the assailants hurled stones and made derogatory remarks. No police arrived at the scene.
Elsewhere, a large group of settlers gathered at Mevo Dotan checkpoint west of Jenin the northern West Bank in an attempt to storm nearby Araba vilage.
The attack was foiled by Israeli soldiers who were in the area and detained Palestinian motorists at the checkpoint.
A similar group of settlers gathered at the same checkpoint in a thwarted attempt to attack nearby Ya’bad village on Tuesday evening.
Hamas MPs in the West Bank have condemned the recent surge in attacks against Palestinian citizens in a statement on Wednesday, accusing Israeli soldiers of providing protection for them.
The statement also criticizes the security arrangements between the Israeli security services and those of the Palestinian Authority, saying that the attacks prove that the security relations were only for the interest of the security of the Israelis and not for Palestinians, as claimed by PA executives.
The statement calls on the PA security forces to fulfill its obligations in defending Palestinian civilians against repeated settler attacks.
IOF troops, Jewish settlers block worshipers from heading to Ibrahimi Mosque
Palestinian citizens clashed with Jewish settlers, backed by Israeli occupation forces, in Al-Khalil on Wednesday after they tried to block worshipers from heading to the Ibrahimi mosque for prayers.
Dozens of Jewish settlers organized a provocative march toward the mosque’s gates while chanting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans and blocked entry of worshipers into the mosque.
The settlers and the Palestinians threw stones at each other and the clashes spread to four suburbs surrounding the Ibrahimi mosque.
IOF soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the youths who threw stones and empty bottles at them.
Large numbers of IOF troops were seen deployed at the entrances to Al-Khalil, as border police patrols roamed the streets of the Old City and chased young men throwing stones.
Settlers Escalating West Bank Attacks in Protest of Palestinian UN Bid
West Bank settlers are organising demonstrations and protests against the Palestinian initiative to gain UN state recognition. On Tuesday 20 September, these attacks occurred primarily in the northern West Bank.
Dozens of settlers from Itzhar in the southern Nablus District attempted to enter the village of Asera Al-Qebliyya, and clashes occurred in the village entrance as residents acted to defend their homes and families. Israeli soldiers who came to the area also opened fire on local residents, injuring 14 year old Aref Aref in his back with a live bullet. Also injured were 18 year old Imran Sababh and journalist Ayman Nobani, who was stoned in his chest by the settlers. The settlers further set fire to several gardens and fields in the village, and Palestinian civil defense teams and fire-brigades extinguished the fires.
In the town of Ya'bod near Jenin, some 100 settlers gathered at noon on the main road near the settlement of Mevo Dotan and threw stones at passing Palestinians cars. Israeli soldiers subsequently closed the road and prevented Palestinians from using it.
In the city of Qalqilya, dozens of settlers burned some 400 olive trees near the northern entrance of the city, and Palestinians fire-brigades and civil defense teams extinguished the fire.
In the Ramallah District, tens of settlers from the area’s settlements gathered from the morning near the northern entrance of the city, near Beit El,and attempted to enter Ramallah. The Israeli army prevented them from doing so, and the settlers then began throwing stones at Palestinian cars traveling on the main road, East of the AlJalazon refugee camp. Settlers and soldiers later completely closed this road and additional cars were stoned.Israeli soldiers closed the main road between Ramallah and Nablus when tens of settlers from Itamar demonstrated near the Hawwara checkpoint and stoned numerous Palestinians cars.
Settlers assault Al-Khalil woman in recent surge in attacks
Jewish settlers assaulted Wednesday a 44-year-old Palestinian woman in the Old City of Al-Khalil in the latest surge in settler attacks in the West Bank.
She was admitted to the local government hospital where she was being treated for minor injuries including scattered bruises, according to medics.
In a separate incident, Jewish settlers stoned a bus of Palestinians slated to visit family members in the Israeli Negev prison.
The bus was held up for an hour at Negev Junction as the assailants hurled stones and made derogatory remarks. No police arrived at the scene.
Elsewhere, a large group of settlers gathered at Mevo Dotan checkpoint west of Jenin the northern West Bank in an attempt to storm nearby Araba vilage.
The attack was foiled by Israeli soldiers who were in the area and detained Palestinian motorists at the checkpoint.
A similar group of settlers gathered at the same checkpoint in a thwarted attempt to attack nearby Ya’bad village on Tuesday evening.
Hamas MPs in the West Bank have condemned the recent surge in attacks against Palestinian citizens in a statement on Wednesday, accusing Israeli soldiers of providing protection for them.
The statement also criticizes the security arrangements between the Israeli security services and those of the Palestinian Authority, saying that the attacks prove that the security relations were only for the interest of the security of the Israelis and not for Palestinians, as claimed by PA executives.
The statement calls on the PA security forces to fulfill its obligations in defending Palestinian civilians against repeated settler attacks.
IOF troops, Jewish settlers block worshipers from heading to Ibrahimi Mosque
Palestinian citizens clashed with Jewish settlers, backed by Israeli occupation forces, in Al-Khalil on Wednesday after they tried to block worshipers from heading to the Ibrahimi mosque for prayers.
Dozens of Jewish settlers organized a provocative march toward the mosque’s gates while chanting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans and blocked entry of worshipers into the mosque.
The settlers and the Palestinians threw stones at each other and the clashes spread to four suburbs surrounding the Ibrahimi mosque.
IOF soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the youths who threw stones and empty bottles at them.
Large numbers of IOF troops were seen deployed at the entrances to Al-Khalil, as border police patrols roamed the streets of the Old City and chased young men throwing stones.
Settlers Escalating West Bank Attacks in Protest of Palestinian UN Bid
West Bank settlers are organising demonstrations and protests against the Palestinian initiative to gain UN state recognition. On Tuesday 20 September, these attacks occurred primarily in the northern West Bank.
Dozens of settlers from Itzhar in the southern Nablus District attempted to enter the village of Asera Al-Qebliyya, and clashes occurred in the village entrance as residents acted to defend their homes and families. Israeli soldiers who came to the area also opened fire on local residents, injuring 14 year old Aref Aref in his back with a live bullet. Also injured were 18 year old Imran Sababh and journalist Ayman Nobani, who was stoned in his chest by the settlers. The settlers further set fire to several gardens and fields in the village, and Palestinian civil defense teams and fire-brigades extinguished the fires.
In the town of Ya'bod near Jenin, some 100 settlers gathered at noon on the main road near the settlement of Mevo Dotan and threw stones at passing Palestinians cars. Israeli soldiers subsequently closed the road and prevented Palestinians from using it.
In the city of Qalqilya, dozens of settlers burned some 400 olive trees near the northern entrance of the city, and Palestinians fire-brigades and civil defense teams extinguished the fire.
In the Ramallah District, tens of settlers from the area’s settlements gathered from the morning near the northern entrance of the city, near Beit El,and attempted to enter Ramallah. The Israeli army prevented them from doing so, and the settlers then began throwing stones at Palestinian cars traveling on the main road, East of the AlJalazon refugee camp. Settlers and soldiers later completely closed this road and additional cars were stoned.Israeli soldiers closed the main road between Ramallah and Nablus when tens of settlers from Itamar demonstrated near the Hawwara checkpoint and stoned numerous Palestinians cars.
20 sept 2011
Medics: Teen hurt as settlers storm Nablus village
A 14-year-old Palestinian was hurt by Israeli forces on Tuesday during clashes with settlers in Asira Al-Qibliya village south of Nablus, witnesses and medics said.
Medics said Israeli forces shot Aref Aref in the back, during confrontations which erupted after dozens of settlers marched on the village. AFP said he was hurt by a tear-gas canister.
A journalist, Ayman An-Noubany, was also injured by a rock, medics said, adding that they were both taken to Rafedia Hospital in Nablus.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said forces used "riot dispersal means" to respond to clashes in the village.
She was not aware that any teenagers were shot at, but said a Palestinian man was injured "probably by a rock hurled by an Israeli civilian."
Palestinian fire fighters said they extinguished a blaze in the garden of a home in Asira Al-Qibiliya.
The fire was believed to have been sparked by a tear gas grenade, a civil defense report said.
Volunteers from a watchdog committee set up to document settler attacks said around 40 settlers tried to raid Asira Al-Qibiliya, and that they were protected by Israeli forces.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421982
Settlers pelt homes in outbreak of attacks ahead of UN bid
Jewish settlers pelted homes in the West Bank village of Asira al-Qibliyya, southwest of Nablus, in a dangerous outbreak of racial attacks coinciding with a bid by Palestinian politicians to get full membership in the UN.
Locals said a group of settlers held a rally that began in nearby Yitzhar settlement, reputed for its extremism, and stoned houses in Asira al-Qibliyya as the march progressed in that direction.
The sources added that a cameraman was hit in the chest with a rock as he tried to document the attack.
Palestinians residing in the settlement-infested region south of Nablus have reported a burst of settler attacks in conjunction with the launch of massive rallies headed for Itamar settlement as announced by settlers.
The rally is expected to inflame the sentiments of the local Palestinian population, especially in flashpoint areas where frequent friction with settlers takes place..
The rally was called for by Jewish rabbis in opposition to the Palestinians’ request for statehood at the UN.
On Monday, Jewish settlers set fire to dozens of dunams area of land in Einabus south of Nablus in the framework of those attacks.
MIGRON OUTPOST HOUSE DEMOLITIONS SENDS SHOCKWAVES
Medics: Teen hurt as settlers storm Nablus village
A 14-year-old Palestinian was hurt by Israeli forces on Tuesday during clashes with settlers in Asira Al-Qibliya village south of Nablus, witnesses and medics said.
Medics said Israeli forces shot Aref Aref in the back, during confrontations which erupted after dozens of settlers marched on the village. AFP said he was hurt by a tear-gas canister.
A journalist, Ayman An-Noubany, was also injured by a rock, medics said, adding that they were both taken to Rafedia Hospital in Nablus.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said forces used "riot dispersal means" to respond to clashes in the village.
She was not aware that any teenagers were shot at, but said a Palestinian man was injured "probably by a rock hurled by an Israeli civilian."
Palestinian fire fighters said they extinguished a blaze in the garden of a home in Asira Al-Qibiliya.
The fire was believed to have been sparked by a tear gas grenade, a civil defense report said.
Volunteers from a watchdog committee set up to document settler attacks said around 40 settlers tried to raid Asira Al-Qibiliya, and that they were protected by Israeli forces.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421982
Settlers pelt homes in outbreak of attacks ahead of UN bid
Jewish settlers pelted homes in the West Bank village of Asira al-Qibliyya, southwest of Nablus, in a dangerous outbreak of racial attacks coinciding with a bid by Palestinian politicians to get full membership in the UN.
Locals said a group of settlers held a rally that began in nearby Yitzhar settlement, reputed for its extremism, and stoned houses in Asira al-Qibliyya as the march progressed in that direction.
The sources added that a cameraman was hit in the chest with a rock as he tried to document the attack.
Palestinians residing in the settlement-infested region south of Nablus have reported a burst of settler attacks in conjunction with the launch of massive rallies headed for Itamar settlement as announced by settlers.
The rally is expected to inflame the sentiments of the local Palestinian population, especially in flashpoint areas where frequent friction with settlers takes place..
The rally was called for by Jewish rabbis in opposition to the Palestinians’ request for statehood at the UN.
On Monday, Jewish settlers set fire to dozens of dunams area of land in Einabus south of Nablus in the framework of those attacks.
MIGRON OUTPOST HOUSE DEMOLITIONS SENDS SHOCKWAVES
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As Palestinians prepare to make their bid for statehood at the United Nations, issues on the ground such as land are still far from resolved between them and the Israelis. Peace negotiations stumbled almost a year ago over the issue of settlement construction.
The Israeli government had frozen settlement activity for ten months but put an end to that halt despite Palestinians insisting that it be extended to come back to the negotiating table. Since then, Israeli constructions have doubled in the West Bank according to a leftist Israeli NGO called Peace Now. That organization recently filed a suit calling for the removal of several homes in the Migron outpost in the West Bank. They won their case, but in doing so, triggered a series of reprisal attacks most likely committed by hardline settlers who call it the price tag policy. |
It consists in attacking Palestinian property every time the Israeli government takes action against any settlement. In very little time, Migron therefore cristallized much of the conflict, the main actors of which are settlers, Palestinians, the Israeli government, but also Israeli leftist NGO's such as Peace Now.
Update: Israeli settler rabbi slams 'price tag' violence
A prominent settler rabbi on Monday slammed so-called "price tag" acts of violence against Palestinians and the Israeli army, saying they undermined Jewish presence in the occupied West Bank.
"We condemn the actions termed 'price tag' against the IDF [Israeli army], mosques and innocent Arabs," says a petition penned by Rabbi Yaakov Medan, one of the heads of the Har Etzion yeshiva, or Jewish seminary, near the southern town of Bethlehem.
"These deeds are totally unacceptable from a moral and national perspective, and endanger the entire settlement movement in Judea and Samaria," it reads, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
Hardline settlers have adopted what they call a "price tag" policy under which they attack Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government measures against settlements.
Israeli troops and police this month demolished three homes in the settlement outpost of Migron, spurring a wave of attacks against Palestinian property, including an attempt to torch a mosque.
Unidentified vandals also attacked vehicles at an Israeli military base near Ramallah, slashing tyres and spraying them with the words "price tag" and pouring sugar into fuel tanks.
Medan is one of the most prominent national-religious rabbis in Israel and has been an outspoken opponent of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"We wish to strengthen the IDF in its actions against this atrocious lawlessness, that undermines the basis of our existence here," Medan wrote, urging settlers to do everything "to prevent such deeds" and expose those behind them.
"This mode of action -- harming innocent people, burning mosques -- cannot be tolerated," he told AFP.
"I understand their frustrations and resentment but they have crossed all the red lines," he said.
So far, Israeli police, who are responsible for all settler-related issues, have questioned several people over the attacks but no-one has been arrested.
"We are here to stay and can live with most of the Arabs in peace and good neighbourly relations."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421732
Witnesses: Settlers set fire to fields in Qalqiliya
Residents of the illegal Zufin settlement on Tuesday set fire to fields behind an area of the separation wall in Qalqiliya, witnesses said.
Witnesses reported seeing a group of settlers in the area before a vast area of olive fields was set alight.
They said Palestinian firefighters were denied access to the area by Israeli soldiers stationed at a gate in the separation wall, which completely encircles the city of Qalqiliya.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421910
Jewish settlers set fire to Palestinian fields
Jewish settlers, who have recently organized themselves in armed cells, set fire to Palestinian cultivated fields in Ainabous village, south of Nablus, on Monday night, locals reported.
Ghassan Daghlas, in charge of Israeli settlement activity north of the West Bank, said that the blaze destroyed tens of dunums.
He said that the settlers were still planning more attacks in the area.
Jewish settlers have lately escalated attacks on Palestinians and their land in the West Bank in response to calls by their leaders.
Report: Settlers pelt Palestinian car with stones
A group of Israeli settlers from the Bet El settlement near Ramallah hurled stones at a Palestinian truck driver on Monday, causing damage to the vehicle.
The driver of the vehicle, Zahir Daana, told Ma'an that he was traveling to Tulkarem when the settlers attacked him. He was not hurt in the attack.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421802
Refusing to Die in Silence: New campaign launched against "settler" attacks
Update: Israeli settler rabbi slams 'price tag' violence
A prominent settler rabbi on Monday slammed so-called "price tag" acts of violence against Palestinians and the Israeli army, saying they undermined Jewish presence in the occupied West Bank.
"We condemn the actions termed 'price tag' against the IDF [Israeli army], mosques and innocent Arabs," says a petition penned by Rabbi Yaakov Medan, one of the heads of the Har Etzion yeshiva, or Jewish seminary, near the southern town of Bethlehem.
"These deeds are totally unacceptable from a moral and national perspective, and endanger the entire settlement movement in Judea and Samaria," it reads, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
Hardline settlers have adopted what they call a "price tag" policy under which they attack Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government measures against settlements.
Israeli troops and police this month demolished three homes in the settlement outpost of Migron, spurring a wave of attacks against Palestinian property, including an attempt to torch a mosque.
Unidentified vandals also attacked vehicles at an Israeli military base near Ramallah, slashing tyres and spraying them with the words "price tag" and pouring sugar into fuel tanks.
Medan is one of the most prominent national-religious rabbis in Israel and has been an outspoken opponent of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"We wish to strengthen the IDF in its actions against this atrocious lawlessness, that undermines the basis of our existence here," Medan wrote, urging settlers to do everything "to prevent such deeds" and expose those behind them.
"This mode of action -- harming innocent people, burning mosques -- cannot be tolerated," he told AFP.
"I understand their frustrations and resentment but they have crossed all the red lines," he said.
So far, Israeli police, who are responsible for all settler-related issues, have questioned several people over the attacks but no-one has been arrested.
"We are here to stay and can live with most of the Arabs in peace and good neighbourly relations."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421732
Witnesses: Settlers set fire to fields in Qalqiliya
Residents of the illegal Zufin settlement on Tuesday set fire to fields behind an area of the separation wall in Qalqiliya, witnesses said.
Witnesses reported seeing a group of settlers in the area before a vast area of olive fields was set alight.
They said Palestinian firefighters were denied access to the area by Israeli soldiers stationed at a gate in the separation wall, which completely encircles the city of Qalqiliya.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421910
Jewish settlers set fire to Palestinian fields
Jewish settlers, who have recently organized themselves in armed cells, set fire to Palestinian cultivated fields in Ainabous village, south of Nablus, on Monday night, locals reported.
Ghassan Daghlas, in charge of Israeli settlement activity north of the West Bank, said that the blaze destroyed tens of dunums.
He said that the settlers were still planning more attacks in the area.
Jewish settlers have lately escalated attacks on Palestinians and their land in the West Bank in response to calls by their leaders.
Report: Settlers pelt Palestinian car with stones
A group of Israeli settlers from the Bet El settlement near Ramallah hurled stones at a Palestinian truck driver on Monday, causing damage to the vehicle.
The driver of the vehicle, Zahir Daana, told Ma'an that he was traveling to Tulkarem when the settlers attacked him. He was not hurt in the attack.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421802
Refusing to Die in Silence: New campaign launched against "settler" attacks
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19 sept 2011
Settlers Attack Burin Village, Run Over Boy in Jama’in
On Sunday evening, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Burin, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, firing live ammunition until late at night.
Witnesses said that settlers attacked the house of Mohammed Najar on the edge of the village, tried to break in and opened fire on the residents. Village security committees confronted and stopped the settlers.
In the Nablus-area village of Jama’in, Palestinian official news wire Wafa reported that an Israeli settler ran over a Palestinian youth.
Eyewitnesses said that settler intentionally hit Ahmed Abdulfatah Haj Ali, age unknown, near the southern entrance of the village before fleeing the scene.
Medics at Yasser Arafat Hospital in Salfit said that the Haj Ali suffered from serious injuries but was stable.
SETTLERS ATTACK ON ACTIVIST
Settlers Attack Burin Village, Run Over Boy in Jama’in
On Sunday evening, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Burin, south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, firing live ammunition until late at night.
Witnesses said that settlers attacked the house of Mohammed Najar on the edge of the village, tried to break in and opened fire on the residents. Village security committees confronted and stopped the settlers.
In the Nablus-area village of Jama’in, Palestinian official news wire Wafa reported that an Israeli settler ran over a Palestinian youth.
Eyewitnesses said that settler intentionally hit Ahmed Abdulfatah Haj Ali, age unknown, near the southern entrance of the village before fleeing the scene.
Medics at Yasser Arafat Hospital in Salfit said that the Haj Ali suffered from serious injuries but was stable.
SETTLERS ATTACK ON ACTIVIST
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Settler suspected of IDF base vandalism
Israel Police's International Crime Investigations Unit arrests a 27-year-old right-wing activist on suspicion of involvement in West Bank IDF base vandalism incident in early September; Event evidently a 'price tag' response to demolition of settlement homes.
"Price Tag" strikes again: The Police International Crime Investigations Unit has arrested a right-wing activist on suspicion of involvement in a vandalism incident at a West Bank IDF base earlier this month.
The suspect is a 27-year-old resident of the Eli settlement. The incident is said to have been a "price tag" response to the demolition of settlement homes.
"My client denies all ties to the charges," the suspect's attorney, Adi Keidar, said. "This measure aims to please the police commissioner. The detainee has no part in the incident."
A source close to the suspect told Ynet: "He's a young man, a bit talkative and a jabberer, boasts about things he didn't do. Maybe the Police's International Crime Investigations Unit is thinking about a second Margol (Margalit Tzanani) case. But this guy has nothing to do with violent activities, just talks too much."
Earlier in September, anonymous vandals broke into a military base in the Binyamin region, cut the cables of IDF jeeps, damaged vehicle tires and spray painted them with the words "Ramat Migron". At least 11 vehicles were damaged.
The price tag actions came in response to the demolition of structures in the Migron outpost earlier this month.
A military official estimated that it would have been nearly impossible to penetrate the base without being exposed and believes that soldiers cooperated and even took part in the price tag acts.
The base walls near the jeeps were spray painted with slogans: "Binyamin Brigade Commander – bad for the Jews" and "Regards from the hills".
IDF Chief of Staff Major-General Benny Gantz condemned the incident. "This vandalism act was carried out by a group of extremist criminals. All of us - commanders, soldiers and civilians – remember and keep remiding that the IDF isn't the enemy. The IDF is the defender operating in accordance with the law and with the guidance provided by the Israeli government. I'm sure the perpetrators will be caught."
Launching Largest Popular Campaign to Counter Settlers’ Attacks in West Bank
The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee Monday launched the biggest popular campaign called ‘Refusing to Die in Silence’ to document and stop settler attacks on Palestinians in a non-violent way.
Mohammad Khatib, a member of the popular committee in the West Bank village of Bil’in said that this campaign started due to settlers’ increasing attacks, under the protection of the Israeli army, on Palestinians and their properties.
He added that the campaign will include Palestinian, Israeli and international activists, who will patrol the West Bank, documenting and trying to prevent settlers’ attacks against Palestinians.
Several cars carrying reporters will drive around the clock in areas that are threatened of settlers’ attacks. This crew will have a toll-free number so that Palestinians can contact them in case of any attacks.
Khatib said that the campaign will provide all possible assistance to the affected Palestinians, stressing the risk in the crews’ work since they will be in the front lines during any attacks.
The campaign aims to scare off the settlers by making them know that there are media crews on standby around the clock to document their attacks, as well as to give Palestinians reassurance that they can contact these crews at any time for help.
The crews will be directed from a control room in Ramallah, which will receive the Palestinian residents’ calls and distribute the tasks among the crews according to their locations.
The Israeli army is training Jewish settlers in the West Bank and supplying them with tear gas and stun grenades in preparation for “Operation Summer Seeds,” which aims to ready the Israeli army for Palestinian “mass disorder’, coinciding with the Palestinian bid to gain full United Nations membership of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders later this week.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17411
Jewish Settlers Build New Road South of Hebron, Seizing Palestinian Land
Jewish settlers Monday built a new dirt road and surrounded it with barbered wires, adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Sosiya, which was built illegally on Palestinians’ land south of the town of Yatta, in southern Hebron, according to witnesses.
The Popular Committee Coordinator in Yatta, Rateb al-Jabour told WAFA that the new road’s length reached almost 2.5 Kilometers which took about 10 dunums of Palestinian land.
He said that settlers also destroyed a number of olive trees, while they were opening the road, adjacent to Khirbet Um Nir, in Hebron governorate, south of the West Bank.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17408
Palestinians set up 'settler attack' watchdog
Palestinian and international activists on Monday launched a campaign to monitor what they said are growing attacks on Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers.
The campaign, launched by activists from the grassroots Palestinian Popular Committees, would see a group of volunteers documenting attacks by Jewish settlers, spokesman Jonathan Pollak told AFP.
"The idea is that groups of volunteers -- initially four -- will be on call, ready to quickly respond," Pollak said.
They would record evidence of any attacks or vandalism and make their footage and reporting available to media and rights groups, he said.
The campaign was launched after a recent surge in attacks following the Israeli army's demolition of homes in illegal settlement outposts and rising tension over the Palestinian bid for full UN membership.
In the past 10 days, mosques, cars and agricultural land have been vandalised in at least nine separate incidents blamed on Jewish settlers.
In one attack, burning tyres were rolled into a mosque in an attempt to burn it down and Hebrew slogans were inscribed on the building's walls.
Two other mosques and a West Bank university were targeted, as was the Jerusalem home of an Israeli woman working for an anti-settlement group, and vandals also damaged vehicles on an Israeli army base near Ramallah.
The surge in attacks comes as the Palestinians prepare to seek full UN membership for their state later this week in a move fiercely opposed by Israel.
The West Bank's most radical settlers have for some time adopted what they call a "price tag" policy, under which they attack Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government measures against settlements.
Mohamed Khatib, coordinator of the Popular Committees, said there was a growing need for monitoring of settler activity in the West Bank, pointing to settler interference with the campaign's launch on Monday.
Organisers had planned a news conference at a spring they say is on private Palestinian land, but were prevented from accessing the location when settlers arrived at the scene, Khatib said.
"The recent increase in settler attacks and the army's unwillingness to prevent them has forced us to organise to try to prevent and deal with them ourselves," he said, stressing all action would be "peaceful and unarmed."
"What happened today is a clearest example of that need... when the settlers arrived it was us that the army prevented from staying there, while ignoring the settlers."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421206
Outbreak of settler attacks in the West Bank
Ammunition was fired at houses and a local in Jama’in, south of Nablus, was hit by a car in an outbreak of attacks on Monday after Israeli occupation authorities urged Jewish settlers in the West Bank to gear up for clashes with Palestinians.
No injuries were reported after Jewish settlers fired rounds at the home of Saeed al-Najjar, a local in Burin, south of Nablus, said Ghassan Daghlas, an official tasked with monitoring settlement activity in the West Bank.
Daghlas added that a large group of Jewish settlers tried to enter Awarta village, also south of Nablus, but were repelled by locals.
At noon Monday, settlers under protection of Israeli military forces set up two prefabricated homes with caravans at the site of dismantled settlement Homesh on the outskirts of Burqa, north of Nablus.
Palestinians in nearby villages harbor fears that the move served as a precursor of plans to restore the settlement after its evacuation in 2005.
Elsewhere, settlers from Rafafa used electric saws to cut down some 500 olive and fig trees near Dayr Istiya in western Salfit governorate.
In a separate incident, a resident of Jama’in, north of Salfit, was run down by a Jewish motorist on a bypass road near Jama’in village.
Witnesses said the collision was premeditated, adding that the assailant fled the scene.
Medics in Yasser Arafat hospital in Salfit said the victim Ahmed Abdul-Fattah Hajj Ali sustained serious injuries in the collision but described his condition as stable.
There has been a burst of settler attacks in the West Bank after the Israeli armed forces allowed settlers to arm themselves and brace for clashes with Palestinians.
PA Calls for “Vigilance and Caution," Palestinians Await Week of Settler Provocations
by Brendan Work
As Israeli settlers prepare armed marches on West Bank cities in advance of Friday’s Palestinian statehood bid presentation at the UN, Palestinians say they are wary of increased attacks but unafraid. On Sunday the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot revealed that radical settlers had planned at least three “sovereignty marches” for Tuesday afternoon near Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus with the expressed intent of “[making] it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are.”
“The Israelis are trying to disrupt the festivities,” said Maher Ghoneim, the PA Minister of Wall and Settlement Affairs. “They are trying to escalate matters and shuffle the cards. We won’t fall into the trap.”
Ghoneim called for “vigilance and caution” and peaceful demonstrations throughout the week, which will culminate with President Mahmoud Abbas’ presentation of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN Security Council on Friday. A vote is expected in a matter of weeks, but the United States has confirmed it will veto the bid.
Meanwhile, settlers quoted by Yedioth Ahronot said they “won’t hesitate to use live ammunition” against Palestinians who approach illegal settlements in the West Bank, but in an effort to “make it clear to everyone who this country belongs to,” they will take the initiative and march on Tuesday from the settlements of Beit El, Kiryat Arba, and Itamar to the nearest Israeli army District Coordination Offices (DCO). Each of DCOs, however, is near a major Palestinian city: Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus, respectively.
"We're going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are,” settler Itamar Ben-Gvir told Yedioth Ahronot. “We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
On Sunday, Palestinian official news wire Wafa reported that a group of settlers retook the evacuated outpost of Homish, in the south of the Jenin governorate in the northern West Bank. The Israeli army dismantled the settlement over the summer, but unnamed local sources told Wafa that they saw Israeli soldiers guarded the settlers as they moved back into Homish.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) concluded in a July 2011 report that “settler-related incidents resulting in Palestinian injuries and damage to property” had risen 57% already and would likely double the 2010 incidence rate. Palestinians expect settler violence to rise sharply with the statehood bid and the upcoming olive season in October.
“I’m sure it will be worse this year when the olive season comes,” said Samih Yusef, a Palestinian in the village of Tuqu’ to the south of Bethlehem. “We haven’t been able to go our olive trees for seven or eight years. Every time someone goes, they shoot at them.”
The settlement two kilometers to the south of Yusef’s village is Tekoa and to the east lies Noqdim, where rightist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman lives. Neither settlement has promised to aid in Tuesday’s “sovereignty marches,” but Yusef said he did not believe his neighbors were any better.
“They’re all the same, they have the same mindset,” he said.
Wafa also reported on Sunday an increased presence of police and at least one “Jewish extremist group” at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. In September 2000, former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s visit to the site, known in Jewish tradition as the Temple Mount, touched off the Second Intifada.
PA: Settlers shoot at homes in Burin village, Nablus
Settlers opened fired on Palestinian homes late Sunday in the village of Burin in southern Nablus, Palestinian Authority officials said.
PA settlement affairs official Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that armed settlers shot at the village after midnight on Sunday.
The home of Said Najjar was hit in the attack, Doughlas said
Local guard committees witnessed the attack and contacted Palestinian officials.
In a separate incident on Sunday, settlers tried to raid the village of Awarta in Nablus. Israeli forces prevented the settlers from entering the village in a stand off which lasted 3 hours, witnesses said.
The latest attacks comes amid a recent surge in settler violence in the Nablus district.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
On Sept. 5 settlers broke into Qusra village mosque, smashing windows, burning tires inside the building, and spray-painting walls with offensive slogans.
Village council head Hani Ismail told Ma’an on Tuesday that young men volunteered to guard the entrances to the village after the attacks, and had blocked further groups of armed settlers from entering the village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421501
Witnesses: Settlers uproot over 500 trees in Salfit
Israeli settlers uprooted over 500 olive and fig trees in Deir Istiya village in Salfit on Monday morning, witnesses said.
Onlookers said residents of the Revava settlement chopped down trees using a chainsaw in Qarawat Bani Hassan village near Deir Istiya.
The village mayor said the field belonged to Daoud Yousef Harb, a resident of Deir Isitya.
Farmer Harb Rayan, who worked on the land, told Ma'an that over 500 trees were uprooted and the 23-acre field was completely destroyed.
Rayan blamed settlers from the nearby Revava settlement, noting that tire tracks from settler jeeps were left in the dirt.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421568
Israel Police's International Crime Investigations Unit arrests a 27-year-old right-wing activist on suspicion of involvement in West Bank IDF base vandalism incident in early September; Event evidently a 'price tag' response to demolition of settlement homes.
"Price Tag" strikes again: The Police International Crime Investigations Unit has arrested a right-wing activist on suspicion of involvement in a vandalism incident at a West Bank IDF base earlier this month.
The suspect is a 27-year-old resident of the Eli settlement. The incident is said to have been a "price tag" response to the demolition of settlement homes.
"My client denies all ties to the charges," the suspect's attorney, Adi Keidar, said. "This measure aims to please the police commissioner. The detainee has no part in the incident."
A source close to the suspect told Ynet: "He's a young man, a bit talkative and a jabberer, boasts about things he didn't do. Maybe the Police's International Crime Investigations Unit is thinking about a second Margol (Margalit Tzanani) case. But this guy has nothing to do with violent activities, just talks too much."
Earlier in September, anonymous vandals broke into a military base in the Binyamin region, cut the cables of IDF jeeps, damaged vehicle tires and spray painted them with the words "Ramat Migron". At least 11 vehicles were damaged.
The price tag actions came in response to the demolition of structures in the Migron outpost earlier this month.
A military official estimated that it would have been nearly impossible to penetrate the base without being exposed and believes that soldiers cooperated and even took part in the price tag acts.
The base walls near the jeeps were spray painted with slogans: "Binyamin Brigade Commander – bad for the Jews" and "Regards from the hills".
IDF Chief of Staff Major-General Benny Gantz condemned the incident. "This vandalism act was carried out by a group of extremist criminals. All of us - commanders, soldiers and civilians – remember and keep remiding that the IDF isn't the enemy. The IDF is the defender operating in accordance with the law and with the guidance provided by the Israeli government. I'm sure the perpetrators will be caught."
Launching Largest Popular Campaign to Counter Settlers’ Attacks in West Bank
The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee Monday launched the biggest popular campaign called ‘Refusing to Die in Silence’ to document and stop settler attacks on Palestinians in a non-violent way.
Mohammad Khatib, a member of the popular committee in the West Bank village of Bil’in said that this campaign started due to settlers’ increasing attacks, under the protection of the Israeli army, on Palestinians and their properties.
He added that the campaign will include Palestinian, Israeli and international activists, who will patrol the West Bank, documenting and trying to prevent settlers’ attacks against Palestinians.
Several cars carrying reporters will drive around the clock in areas that are threatened of settlers’ attacks. This crew will have a toll-free number so that Palestinians can contact them in case of any attacks.
Khatib said that the campaign will provide all possible assistance to the affected Palestinians, stressing the risk in the crews’ work since they will be in the front lines during any attacks.
The campaign aims to scare off the settlers by making them know that there are media crews on standby around the clock to document their attacks, as well as to give Palestinians reassurance that they can contact these crews at any time for help.
The crews will be directed from a control room in Ramallah, which will receive the Palestinian residents’ calls and distribute the tasks among the crews according to their locations.
The Israeli army is training Jewish settlers in the West Bank and supplying them with tear gas and stun grenades in preparation for “Operation Summer Seeds,” which aims to ready the Israeli army for Palestinian “mass disorder’, coinciding with the Palestinian bid to gain full United Nations membership of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders later this week.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17411
Jewish Settlers Build New Road South of Hebron, Seizing Palestinian Land
Jewish settlers Monday built a new dirt road and surrounded it with barbered wires, adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Sosiya, which was built illegally on Palestinians’ land south of the town of Yatta, in southern Hebron, according to witnesses.
The Popular Committee Coordinator in Yatta, Rateb al-Jabour told WAFA that the new road’s length reached almost 2.5 Kilometers which took about 10 dunums of Palestinian land.
He said that settlers also destroyed a number of olive trees, while they were opening the road, adjacent to Khirbet Um Nir, in Hebron governorate, south of the West Bank.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17408
Palestinians set up 'settler attack' watchdog
Palestinian and international activists on Monday launched a campaign to monitor what they said are growing attacks on Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers.
The campaign, launched by activists from the grassroots Palestinian Popular Committees, would see a group of volunteers documenting attacks by Jewish settlers, spokesman Jonathan Pollak told AFP.
"The idea is that groups of volunteers -- initially four -- will be on call, ready to quickly respond," Pollak said.
They would record evidence of any attacks or vandalism and make their footage and reporting available to media and rights groups, he said.
The campaign was launched after a recent surge in attacks following the Israeli army's demolition of homes in illegal settlement outposts and rising tension over the Palestinian bid for full UN membership.
In the past 10 days, mosques, cars and agricultural land have been vandalised in at least nine separate incidents blamed on Jewish settlers.
In one attack, burning tyres were rolled into a mosque in an attempt to burn it down and Hebrew slogans were inscribed on the building's walls.
Two other mosques and a West Bank university were targeted, as was the Jerusalem home of an Israeli woman working for an anti-settlement group, and vandals also damaged vehicles on an Israeli army base near Ramallah.
The surge in attacks comes as the Palestinians prepare to seek full UN membership for their state later this week in a move fiercely opposed by Israel.
The West Bank's most radical settlers have for some time adopted what they call a "price tag" policy, under which they attack Palestinians and their property in response to Israeli government measures against settlements.
Mohamed Khatib, coordinator of the Popular Committees, said there was a growing need for monitoring of settler activity in the West Bank, pointing to settler interference with the campaign's launch on Monday.
Organisers had planned a news conference at a spring they say is on private Palestinian land, but were prevented from accessing the location when settlers arrived at the scene, Khatib said.
"The recent increase in settler attacks and the army's unwillingness to prevent them has forced us to organise to try to prevent and deal with them ourselves," he said, stressing all action would be "peaceful and unarmed."
"What happened today is a clearest example of that need... when the settlers arrived it was us that the army prevented from staying there, while ignoring the settlers."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421206
Outbreak of settler attacks in the West Bank
Ammunition was fired at houses and a local in Jama’in, south of Nablus, was hit by a car in an outbreak of attacks on Monday after Israeli occupation authorities urged Jewish settlers in the West Bank to gear up for clashes with Palestinians.
No injuries were reported after Jewish settlers fired rounds at the home of Saeed al-Najjar, a local in Burin, south of Nablus, said Ghassan Daghlas, an official tasked with monitoring settlement activity in the West Bank.
Daghlas added that a large group of Jewish settlers tried to enter Awarta village, also south of Nablus, but were repelled by locals.
At noon Monday, settlers under protection of Israeli military forces set up two prefabricated homes with caravans at the site of dismantled settlement Homesh on the outskirts of Burqa, north of Nablus.
Palestinians in nearby villages harbor fears that the move served as a precursor of plans to restore the settlement after its evacuation in 2005.
Elsewhere, settlers from Rafafa used electric saws to cut down some 500 olive and fig trees near Dayr Istiya in western Salfit governorate.
In a separate incident, a resident of Jama’in, north of Salfit, was run down by a Jewish motorist on a bypass road near Jama’in village.
Witnesses said the collision was premeditated, adding that the assailant fled the scene.
Medics in Yasser Arafat hospital in Salfit said the victim Ahmed Abdul-Fattah Hajj Ali sustained serious injuries in the collision but described his condition as stable.
There has been a burst of settler attacks in the West Bank after the Israeli armed forces allowed settlers to arm themselves and brace for clashes with Palestinians.
PA Calls for “Vigilance and Caution," Palestinians Await Week of Settler Provocations
by Brendan Work
As Israeli settlers prepare armed marches on West Bank cities in advance of Friday’s Palestinian statehood bid presentation at the UN, Palestinians say they are wary of increased attacks but unafraid. On Sunday the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot revealed that radical settlers had planned at least three “sovereignty marches” for Tuesday afternoon near Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus with the expressed intent of “[making] it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are.”
“The Israelis are trying to disrupt the festivities,” said Maher Ghoneim, the PA Minister of Wall and Settlement Affairs. “They are trying to escalate matters and shuffle the cards. We won’t fall into the trap.”
Ghoneim called for “vigilance and caution” and peaceful demonstrations throughout the week, which will culminate with President Mahmoud Abbas’ presentation of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN Security Council on Friday. A vote is expected in a matter of weeks, but the United States has confirmed it will veto the bid.
Meanwhile, settlers quoted by Yedioth Ahronot said they “won’t hesitate to use live ammunition” against Palestinians who approach illegal settlements in the West Bank, but in an effort to “make it clear to everyone who this country belongs to,” they will take the initiative and march on Tuesday from the settlements of Beit El, Kiryat Arba, and Itamar to the nearest Israeli army District Coordination Offices (DCO). Each of DCOs, however, is near a major Palestinian city: Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus, respectively.
"We're going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are,” settler Itamar Ben-Gvir told Yedioth Ahronot. “We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
On Sunday, Palestinian official news wire Wafa reported that a group of settlers retook the evacuated outpost of Homish, in the south of the Jenin governorate in the northern West Bank. The Israeli army dismantled the settlement over the summer, but unnamed local sources told Wafa that they saw Israeli soldiers guarded the settlers as they moved back into Homish.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) concluded in a July 2011 report that “settler-related incidents resulting in Palestinian injuries and damage to property” had risen 57% already and would likely double the 2010 incidence rate. Palestinians expect settler violence to rise sharply with the statehood bid and the upcoming olive season in October.
“I’m sure it will be worse this year when the olive season comes,” said Samih Yusef, a Palestinian in the village of Tuqu’ to the south of Bethlehem. “We haven’t been able to go our olive trees for seven or eight years. Every time someone goes, they shoot at them.”
The settlement two kilometers to the south of Yusef’s village is Tekoa and to the east lies Noqdim, where rightist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman lives. Neither settlement has promised to aid in Tuesday’s “sovereignty marches,” but Yusef said he did not believe his neighbors were any better.
“They’re all the same, they have the same mindset,” he said.
Wafa also reported on Sunday an increased presence of police and at least one “Jewish extremist group” at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. In September 2000, former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s visit to the site, known in Jewish tradition as the Temple Mount, touched off the Second Intifada.
PA: Settlers shoot at homes in Burin village, Nablus
Settlers opened fired on Palestinian homes late Sunday in the village of Burin in southern Nablus, Palestinian Authority officials said.
PA settlement affairs official Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that armed settlers shot at the village after midnight on Sunday.
The home of Said Najjar was hit in the attack, Doughlas said
Local guard committees witnessed the attack and contacted Palestinian officials.
In a separate incident on Sunday, settlers tried to raid the village of Awarta in Nablus. Israeli forces prevented the settlers from entering the village in a stand off which lasted 3 hours, witnesses said.
The latest attacks comes amid a recent surge in settler violence in the Nablus district.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
On Sept. 5 settlers broke into Qusra village mosque, smashing windows, burning tires inside the building, and spray-painting walls with offensive slogans.
Village council head Hani Ismail told Ma’an on Tuesday that young men volunteered to guard the entrances to the village after the attacks, and had blocked further groups of armed settlers from entering the village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421501
Witnesses: Settlers uproot over 500 trees in Salfit
Israeli settlers uprooted over 500 olive and fig trees in Deir Istiya village in Salfit on Monday morning, witnesses said.
Onlookers said residents of the Revava settlement chopped down trees using a chainsaw in Qarawat Bani Hassan village near Deir Istiya.
The village mayor said the field belonged to Daoud Yousef Harb, a resident of Deir Isitya.
Farmer Harb Rayan, who worked on the land, told Ma'an that over 500 trees were uprooted and the 23-acre field was completely destroyed.
Rayan blamed settlers from the nearby Revava settlement, noting that tire tracks from settler jeeps were left in the dirt.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421568
18 sept 2011
Jewish Settlers Run Over Disabled Palestinian, Abduct Another
Jewish settlers ran over a disabled Palestinian on Sunday and abducted another on Saturday night in the West Bank.
A Jewish settler Sunday ran over a physically disabled Palestinian man on the main road in Beit Ummar, a town north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and fled the scene, said a local official.
Spokesman of the National Committee Against the Wall and Settlement in Beit Ummar, Mohammad Awad, said that Natheer Sabarneh, 36, was hit as he headed to work and sustained injuries to his head and body. He was transferred to hospital.
Jewish settlers, under Israeli army protection, abducted a Palestinian man on Saturday night from his vehicle along the road between Aqraba and Yanon, villages east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to local sources.
Witnesses said the whereabouts of the Palestinian man remain unknown.
Jewish settlers have been leading a massive campaign against the Palestinians lately, including physical assaults and open fire at unarmed Palestinians, attacks on mosques as well as setting fire to Palestinian cars and properties, all in retaliation to the Palestinian bid to gain full United Nations membership of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders later this month.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17385
Youth organization sets up settler monitoring group
Young activists have set up a coordination center to monitor Israeli settler attacks in Hebron ahead of the Palestinian membership at the UN.
The group, including Palestinian and international volunteers, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, and university students, will work around the clock to follow up rights violations against Hebron citizens, grassroots organization Youth Against Settlements said Saturday.
Group coordinator Issa Amr said the center, which is monitoring settler websites, was set up in response to Palestinians’ fears of organized attack from settlers in the area.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians around the bid for full membership of the United Nations.
Amr said the group was collecting information on how to deal with attack dogs, and will hold meetings with communities near settlements.
Volunteers and journalists will be sent to particularly vulnerable families to document attacks, Amr said.
Hebron, once the Palestinians’ largest commercial center, is divided between Israeli and Palestinian control, and the city’s Palestinians residents say they face severe movement restrictions and daily violence from the small group of Jewish settlers living in its center.
Youth Against Settlements describes itself as a national non-partisan youth group using popular action and resistance to monitor rights violations by Israeli settlers in Hebron.
Report: Settlers plan march to Palestinian towns
Israeli settlers are preparing to march on Israeli army command offices and Palestinian towns in the West Bank starting Tuesday afternoon, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
Dubbed "sovereignty marches," settlers are protesting the Palestinian's bid for full membership at the UN, Israeli website Ynet said.
Far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir told the site that settlers were "going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are."
"We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
The news site quoted a settlement security officer saying they were prepared to use live ammunition on Palestinian demonstrators, as settlers felt the Israeli army were "too trusting" of Palestinian security to deter potential marches on the settlements.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians around the bid for full membership of the United Nations.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
In a Nablus-area village under repeated attack from settlers, the local council has established a voluntary village guard to fend off settler raids into the community.
Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti has warned that settlers "could commit massacres against the Palestinians" following an escalation in settler attacks in early September.
Barghouthi said the attacks were "part of a plan" to use settlers to attack Palestinians. Noting that the Israeli army was providing settlers with military facilities, he said the army was participating in "organized crime" with settlers in the West Bank.
Ultra-orthodox Jews enter Al-Aqsa Mosque
Tension ran high in Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning after Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) opened the holy site up to ultra-orthodox Jews.
The Israeli police stood guard to protect batches of Jews who continuously entered the mosque, the third holiest in Islam, throughout the day, in the framework of a “foreign tourist program”.
Occupation troops were deployed heavily at the compound's gates as well as in the nearby Arab Old City of Jerusalem. Israeli forces set up new checkpoints on the roads leading to the mosque and stopped and searched Palestinian buses.
The unwelcomed entry has drawn condemnation from the Palestinians.
In a joint statement, Hamas politicians in the West Bank said the string of entries was aimed at challenging the Islamic identity of the mosque and claiming it as Jewish, calling on the masses and officials to act urgently to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Foundation: Rightists enter Al-Aqsa Mosque
Religious and right-wing Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage said.
Israeli police looked on as around 18 religious and far-right Israelis entered in the morning and another 40 entered in the afternoon, the foundation said in a statement.
The Al-Aqsa compound, containing the mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is the third holiest site in Islam and abuts the site where Jews believe the ancient Second Temple stood.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421324
Jewish settlers set Palestinian fields on fire
Jewish settlers set Palestinian cultivated land on fire in Seelat Al-Dhaher village south of Jenin city on afternoon Saturday, eyewitnesses reported.
They said that 15 settlers burst into the village’s groves under Israeli military escort and dropped incendiary material on the land. They added that fire broke out and spread over a large area due to the presence of dry weed before fire brigades managed to put it off.
They noted that a big number of settlers on Friday chased a young shepherd near the village, also near the site of the evacuated Homesh settlement, and tried to kidnap him but he succeeded in running away.
Settlers routinely return to the settlement, which was evacuated in 2005, and assault Palestinians present near its location.
Sabri: Israel responsible for Jewish raid of Al-Aqsa Mosque
Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, Ekrima Sabri, held the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) responsible for the actions of extremist Jewish groups that are planning on raiding Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday.
“Extremist Jewish groups continue to exacerbate the situation in A-Aqsa Mosque and try from time to time to break into it claiming that they have right to this mosque!” Sheikh Sabri said in a statement on Saturday, asserting that the entire mosque is for the Muslims alone, a fact that could not be changed by the courts or negotiations.
Meanwhile, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cario Ahmed al-Tayyib issued a separate statement calling on the Muslims and Arabs to unite in the face of what he described as “Zionist plans targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) closed Saturday morning all crossings leading to the occupied Jerusalem in fear of protests erupting after the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed he would go ahead with plans to ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state.
The IOF has been taking what Palestinians sources called “very tight measures” on checkpoints, erecting concrete barricades on roads bridging Jerusalem to all outlying areas.
Elsewhere, the IOF shut down a checkpoint near Bilal ibn Rabah mosque, known by Jews as Rachel’s Tomb, in Bethlehem governorate, where measures have also been tightened on the movement of the Palestinian population towards Jerusalem.
In a statement, former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem Khalid Abu Arafeh described the situation in the holy city as “potentially explosive”.
He said that Israel isolates the city whenever some event takes place because of the war crimes the Zionist entity has committed there. He also attributed the current state of panic to the fact that the Israeli occupation authorities have treated the city as entirely Jewish, although the world has always considered the city as occupied.
“Today, in particular, the IOF added a double dose of threat under the pretext of the Palestinians’ intent to go to the United Nations and ask for recognition of a Palestinian state,” Abu Arafeh said.
He went on to describe the IOF grip on the city as “unprecedented”, saying that it placed screens and barbed wire and readied 50 tons of dirty water to cope with protests.
Jewish Settlers Break into Evacuated Settlement in Jenin
Jewish settlers Sunday at dawn broke into the evacuated Homesh settlement, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, under Israeli army protection, said security sources.
Homesh was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s plan to remove some settlements from the West Bank, but settlers often return to the settlement in an attempt to rebuild it.
The Israeli army intensified its presence along the Jenin-Nablus main road and to the south of Jenin. Soldiers broke into Fahma, a village southwest of Jenin, and put up a checkpoint at its entrance.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17383
Settlers threaten to march into PA territory
West Bank settlers, radical rightists, prepare for 'sovereignty marches' into PA land to protest against UN bid, saying they 'won't hesitate to use live ammunition.' Police, IDF gear for expected riots.
West Bank settlers have begun preparing for mass marches into Palestinian Authority territories in what they dubbed as "sovereignty marches," in an attempt to protest against the upcoming Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.
The settlers are concerned that the IDF would be "too trusting" in the Palestinian security forces if the Palestinians decide to riot and get too close to the Jewish settlements.
"The IDF orders are unclear as to what would happen if Palestinian rioters approach too close to the settlements," said a security officer at one of the settlements.
"We won't allow Palestinian rioters to enter the settlements, cause damage to our property or heaven forbid – injure someone. In such cases, we won't hesitate to use live ammunition."
The settler rallies are set to begin Tuesday afternoon, as participants plan to make their way towards the IDF District Coordination and Liaison Command. A protest is also slated to take place on the streets of Tel Aviv. In addition, right wing extremists are expected to head in the direction of Palestinian communities in order to shift the conflict into PA territories.
The West Bank regional and settlers' councils planned to hold the marches in three separate locations: From Itamar to Nablus, from Beit El to the closest IDF District Coordination and Liaison and from Kiryat Arba to Manoach Mountain.
Tens of thousands of Israeli flags will be distributed by the West Bank regional councils and hung from the settlers' cars.
Gershon Mesika, head of the Shomron Regional Council, remarked that he was not flustered by the Palestinian diplomacy concerning the UN. "Most of the decisions made by the UN during the past decades were against the State of Israel. The entire world has come to realize it's an automatic majority. As Ben-Gurion said, it doesn't matter what the non-Jews say, it only matters what the Jews do."
Hilltop Youth leader Meir Bertler expressed his hope that Israel would annex the West Bank settlements. "As far as we're concerned, we're going to feel right at home in the West Bank, and this week we'll hold marches, begin construction and show our presence in order to make it clear to everyone exactly who this country belongs to."
Far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir stressed that his counterparts will not be "waiting at home so the Arabs might get close to their fences."
"We're going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are. We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
Police, IDF prepare for worst
Meanwhile, security and police forces have begun preparing themselves for expected riots in the West Bank. Thousands of police officers have undergone training for possible scenarios, including riots, mass rallies and attempts to break into West Bank settlements.
Police forces are also taking into account possible terror attacks and massive rocket firing from the Gaza Strip ahead of the upcoming UN bid.
However, at this point IDF officials predict that with the exception of local incidents, the mass marches and rallies will not turn violent.
Meanwhile, IDF forces are preparing to stop the demonstrations in case the Palestinian forces fail to prevent them. GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi has instructed his forces to show restraint.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4123495,00.html
17 sept 2011
Jewish Settlers Set Fire to Palestinian Farms
Extremist Jewish settlers Saturday set fire to Palestinian farms adjacent to the evacuated Homesh settlement, south of Jenin, said security sources.
They said 15 settlers broke into the area under Israeli army protection, verbally assaulting local residents and setting fire to fields near the settlement.
Homesh was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s plan to remove few settlements in the West Bank, but settlers often return to the settlements in an attempt to rebuild it.
Sources said Israel intensified its military presence around Arrabah and Sanour, villages south of Jenin.
Settlers attack PA employee, family near Bethlehem
A group of Israeli settlers on Saturday morning attacked a Palestinian family in their car after they picked grapes from their field near Efrat settlement south of Bethlehem.
The deputy director of the Bethlehem office of the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of education, Bassam Jabir, from Al-Khader, told Ma’an he and his family were attacked on the bypass road known as Route 60.
Jabir explained that he went to pick grapes along with his mother, his brothers and sons from their field near the village of Jurat Ash-Shama south of Bethlehem. After they finished and drove back, a group of settlers from behind the fence surrounding Efrat threw rocks at the car. The windshield was smashed, but nobody was hurt, Jabir said.
He added that as stones started to hit the car, he lost control at first, but managed to speed away, and later he informed the Palestinian security and the liaison office in Bethlehem about the attack.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420886
The radical settler threat
Special: IDF lieutenant who was part of messianic camp says Israel faces grave danger.
Micha Regev says that he is an anxious citizen. When the IDF Lieutenant (res.) hears talk of settlement evacuation, he is overwhelmed by horrific scenarios. For example: Settlers firing at soldiers and Palestinians. Such scenarios, he says, are not unthinkable. Some people are already working on formulating them.
“We are facing a much graver danger than the murder of a prime minister,” he says. “The radicals may reach the stage of rebellion, and possibly even mass suicide.” Regev’s words merit extra attention because once upon a time he was there himself, a religious youngster with fire in his eyes who joined the IDF in order to turn it into a “religious messianic army.”
The 54-year-old Regev was born to a national religious family. When he was 15, he joined his friends in archeological digs near Gush Etzion. There, he first met settler leader Hanan Porat and was captivated by the appeal of salvation.
“Porat, a master of words and brimming with charisma, promised that we are close to the Messiah’s arrival and that the Six-Day War was a divine miracle en route to complete salvation,” he recalls. “We admired every word that came out of his mouth. In retrospect I realized that we, the youths, were the fuel of that revolution.”
After completing his studies at a high school yeshiva, Regev joined the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem and on his breaks helped his friends advance the settlement enterprise. “When the group of salvation believers expanded we learned that with a little determination and plenty of disregard for the law we can gain land and a housing solution almost for free in a new settlement. The government’s helplessness turned this phenomenon into a strategic threat for the rule of law and State’s pillars,” he writes in his recently published book.
Regev performed his military service at the Golani elite reconnaissance unit, also viewing it as a messianic mission. “In preparation sessions ahead of enlistment, representatives of the salvation movement repeated the idea of sanctifying the military by turning it into a religious messianic army…the message was that we should take up key positions,” he says.
Warning to Rabin
Yet eventually things started to change for Regev: “In one of our training sessions I discovered for the first time kibbutz members celebrating the Shavuot holiday. I was stunned; I discovered secular people who were no less moral and impressive than us, the settlement pioneers.”
Regev says that Egyptian President Sadat’s visit to Israel in 1977 and Prime Minister Begin’s call “no more war, no more bloodshed” were the turning point in his life. The words that impressed him so deeply sounded disastrous to his rabbis, and question marks began to crack the faith he grew up with. Despite this, he continued to serve in the army as a proud religious commander, sporting a beard and taking part in a series of secret operations.
Lebanon, which was part of Regev’s life for 20 years, claimed the lives of his young brother, Daniel, who was killed in 1982 and was awarded a citation posthumously. “During the Shiva, the realization that there is no point in sacrificing life for the sake of delusional notions took shape within me. Risking soldiers for the sake of Joseph’s Tomb or the Kasbah in Nablus seemed senseless to me. If God wants to demand sacrifice from us, he should do it with His own voice, as He did with Abraham,” Regev says.
In 1984, after a Jewish underground that killed Arabs was uncovered in the West Bank, with two of its members being former close friends, Regev’s ties to his past were completely undermined. “It was clear to me that the zealousness of salvation is not a truthful path and that salvation theory is unfounded,” he says. He removed the kippah from his head, moved to Mitzpe Abirim in the Galilee to raise cattle, and today lives there with his wife and three sons.
In November 1993, a few months after the Oslo agreement was signed, Regev was a cadet in a division commanders’ course. When Prime Minister Rabin arrived to address the soldiers, the cadets were asked to prepare questions. When it was Regev’s turn, he turned to Rabin and said: “I’m a very close associate of the settlers and fear that your life and the lives of other officials are in danger.”
“Rabin shook his head, smiled his modest smile and told me that Israel has excellent security services and that there was no reason for concern,” Regev recounts. “I realized that my message wasn’t grasped. I got up again and told him that his response is so wrong that I feel like crying.”
‘The rabbis sinned’
“The Oslo Accords provoked immense hatred in the Right. My settler friends made an effort to explain to me that Rabin, who is about to hand over parts of our homeland to foreigners, is a traitor, and that in an enlightened state he would be sentenced to death,” Regev says. Referring to Rabin’s assassination, he says: “It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger and it doesn’t matter that the rabbis said the murderer did not come from their midst. The sin of this murder hangs over the rabbis, who turned an elected prime minister into a traitor and criminal.”
Yet the danger has not passed. The opposite is true, as the voice of the “salvation rabbis” grows louder. Regev decided not to remain silent, and for some two years wrote his book, The Intoxication of Salvation.” “I wrote the book as an active partner in the religious salvation movement based on the doctrine of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and his followers, who view our era as a period of messianic salvation, with those who stand in the way being criminals. For years I was a part of it, until I sobered up,” he says.
“I can’t forget the boy who was evacuated from his Gush Katif home during the Gaza disengagement and urged IDF soldiers to kill him. I have no doubt he meant it, because for months the rabbis told him that evacuation is worse than death,” Regev says. “I also can’t forget the marches of children with a yellow Star of David on their clothes, as if IDF soldiers were Nazi thugs. While this was a minority, it was backed by the ideologists of salvation messianism. To my regret, in recent years we are seeing radicalization among national rabbis too, who seemingly accept the authority of the State and of democracy.
“The fact that Rabbi Dov Lior, for example, viewed Jewish killer Baruch Goldstein as a saint shocked but didn’t surprise me, because the rabbi represents all the dangers inherent in the salvation movement,” Regev says. “The fact that he is an eminent rabbi with immense knowledge only makes the danger even graver and proves this is not a marginal group. Its hard core leads a mystical, violent line. Torah laws are more important for them than the State and than democracy, and in the wake of a trigger like settlement evacuation they may resort to unprecedented violence.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4123412,00.html
16 sept 2011
Palestinian shot by armed settlers
One Palestinian has been wounded in a clash with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as Palestinians prepare to seek International Criminal Court intervention over the issue of illegal settlements.
One Palestinian and an Israeli settler were wounded on Friday in clashes in the village of Kusra in the northern West Bank, AFP reported.
Palestinian officials said the incident took place when around a dozen settlers tried to enter Kusra but were stopped by residents who feared they were about to be attacked. One settler drew a pistol and shot a Palestinian in the leg.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the clash took place in a disputed area outside Kusra between residents and people from the nearby settlement of Esh Hakodesh. She said the wounded Israeli had been stabbed and confirmed a Palestinian resident had also been shot.
The clash comes at a time when Israeli settlers are enraged by the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations, and fear that Palestinian may resort to the International Criminal Court to put an end to the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has mobilized three battalions of reservists -- some 1,500 personnel - and reinforced units already deployed in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli army has also reported upped its presence around the settlements in the West Bank.
On September 9, extremist Israelis attacked the Palestinian town of Birzeit near the West Bank city of Ramallah and sprayed graffiti on the walls of a mosque and a university.
Palestinian security officials that "Death to the Arabs" and slogans insulting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) were painted in Hebrew.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/199483.html
Jewish settler wound a Palestinian man near Nablus
Attacks by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians have been on the rise lately, the latest of which was an attack on Friday against the village of Qusra to the south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, wounding a Palestinian man.
Ghasan Daghlas, the PA official responsible for the settlements’ file on the northern West Bank, said: “The wounded man is Fathallah Abu Reeda”. About the attack he said that eyewitnesses from the village said that a group of armed settlers infiltrated into the southern part of village from nearby settlement outposts. The infiltrators were discovered by local young men who captured them.
Eyewitnesses said that the village guard committees released the settlers. After being released, one of the settlers started shooting. Residents came out of their homes to defend their village.
Following the incident, IOF troops on about 15 military vehicles advanced towards the village through the Jaloud-Qusra road and blocked the road.
Eyewitnesses said that locals clashed with the occupation forces which were deployed around the village.
Settlers assault Palestinian child after kidnapping him south of Jenin
A gang of young Jewish settlers attacked on Thursday night a young Palestinian boy in a village to south of Jenin. They then took him to the dismantled Haumash settlement and assaulted him before releasing him late at night.
Locals said that a group of settlers ambushed Khalil Hamamrah, 16 years, at the fringes of the village, they kidnapped and assaulted him before the IOF transferred him to the PA’s liaison office.
The boy said that the assailants were settlers in their teens and they want to rebuild the settlement which was evacuated in 2005 by the Israeli occupation authorities, adding that they threatened him and beat him.
AFEH warns of Plans by Jewish groups to storm the Aqsa Mosque
The Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) warned of calls made by Jewish groups for the storming of the Aqsa Mosque early next week as part of their attempts to build the alleged temple.
AFEH said in a statement on Thursday that a group of Jewish organizations called the "Movement for the establishment of the Temple" have distributed leaflets and launched online campaigns calling for Jews to participate in the so called "temple conference" to be held in Jerusalem on Sunday. The invitation called on Jews to break into Al-Aqsa Mosque at noon the same day.
The statement also said that Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom, will attend amid calls to "accelerate" the building of "the Temple" on the ruins of the mosque.
AFEH urged Palestinians to confront the Zionist plans by keeping regular presence at the Aqsa Mosque to deter such attacks.
Israel storms Nablus village after settler assault
Israeli settlers assaulted a Nablus village Friday morning, leading to clashes with Israeli forces injuring 11 Palestinians.
After the settlers were removed by Israeli police, Israeli forces raided Qusra village injuring six villagers with rubber bullets, a Ma'an correspondent said.
Forces surrounded a house sheltering European press agency cameraman Alaa Bedarneh was filming the earlier settler attack, the correspondent reported.
Three children inside the house suffered tear gas inhalation during the military raid, and Bedarneh was injured in the hand, he said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said the journalist's agency had requested the army remove him from the village, and he was taken to safety.
Around 20 people were hurling rocks at forces, and the border police were operating in the village, she said, without giving further details.
Settler attack
PA official monitoring settlement activity Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that earlier in the day around ten settlers from neighboring settlement Migdalim came into Qusra village south of Nablus.
Fathallah Abu Rida, 25, was injured when settlers shot him in the leg, Doughlas said.
Village guard units established in recent weeks held the settlers at the scene for 30 minutes, before Israeli police arrived and removed settlers from the village, he added.
Israel police say settler wounded in knifing
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an a settler was injured after an argument broke out between two settlers and a 50-year-old Palestinian in an open area near Qusra.
"The Palestinian pulled out a knife and the settler reacted by shooting the Palestinian in the leg," he said.
The injured settler and Palestinian were taken to hospitals, he added, saying police who arrived on the scene had opened an investigation into the incident.
Settler assaults increasing in West Bank
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
On Sept. 5 settlers broke into Qusra village mosque, smashing windows, burning tires inside the building, and spray-painting walls with offensive slogans.
Village council head Hani Ismail told Ma’an on Tuesday that young men volunteered to guard the entrances to the village after the attacks, and had blocked further groups of armed settlers from entering the village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420705
Religious Zionism rabbis unite for Migron
Hundreds of rabbis invited to attend emergency meeting following demolition of three houses last week in unauthorized settlement. Rally's organizers slam PM Netanyahu, call him 'expert in betraying voters' trust'.
Dozens of rabbis have confirmed their participation in an emergency meeting scheduled to be held Monday in the unauthorized settlement of Migron in the Binyamin region, following the demolition of three houses last week and ahead of the planned razing of dozens of other structures.
Tzohar Chairman Rabbi David Stav confirmed that the organization's president, Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, will represent Tzohar at the meeting. "We are taking part in the effort to organize a meeting with the prime minister on this issue," Stav told Ynet.
Hundreds of rabbis have been invited to the rally, which will be attended by representatives of different Religious Zionism streams, including senior members of the Tzohar organization, which usually avoids engaging in political issues.
'Religious Zionism united thanks to Bibi'
Apart from Rabbi Ariel, speeches will also be delivered by Rabbis Haim Drukman, Dov Lior, Zalman Baruch Melamed and Nahum Eliezer Rabinovich – all senior Religious Zionism leaders, as well as Migron Rabbi Itai Halevi and Mateh Binyamin Council head Avi Roeh.
The rabbis will later hold an open discussion along with other religious leaders on ways to save the Migron houses. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu will conduct a children's prayer.
The rally was initiated by two rabbinical organizations" Derech Emunah and the Teaching House for Public Affairs. The first body brings together hundreds of right-wing rabbis and is identified as the National Union's rabbis' council.
The organization was headed in the past by Chief Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu, who were considered the leaders of Religious Zionism. The organization's activity weakened following Rabbi Shapira's death, but has been resumed in the past two years.
Harel Cohen, the organization's secretary-general and one of the meeting's organizers, told Ynet that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have to be thanked for the event's success.
"Bibi is an expert in betraying the trust of his Israel-loving voters, uniting Religious Zionism and its rabbis," he said.
The meeting's organizers say the issues on the agenda have not been determined yet, but that they are convinced that refusing orders during the evacuation of Jewish communities will be a major topic.
According to the organizers, last week was the first time since the State's establishment that settlers' permanent houses were destroyed in the middle of the night.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4122983,00.html
2 wounded in clash between settlers and Palestinians
Palestinian man reportedly suffered serious injuries after he was shot by settler; another settler was lightly wounded during altercation; army sources: one of volatile scenarios that could lead to deterioration.
A week before the Palestinians submit their statehood bid at the United Nations Security Council, tensions on the ground are beginning to rise: In a clash that erupted between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank Friday morning, a Palestinian man reportedly suffered serious injuries after he was shot by a settler.
Another settler was lightly wounded during the altercation, which took place between the village of Kusra and the Eish Kadosh outpost, after he was stabbed.
Palestinian sources claim that a group of settlers headed towards the village seeking to confront or attack villagers.
A group of Palestinians, who belong to a security team that was established in the village to defend against settler attacks, stopped a number of them during which the violence broke out.
The Palestinians said that the injured man was evacuated to a hospital in Nablus.
Military sources admitted that the Friday morning clash was one of the dangerous scenarios the defense establishment was preparing for ahead of the Palestinian statehood move at the UN. “We are at the start of a highly volatile period in which any such incident could become a slippery slope leading to a deteriorating situation,” they said.
"Mohammad is a pig" spray-painted on Kusra village mosque
The village of Kusra was the target of one of the settlers’ price tag operations in retaliation for the razing of a number of structures in the outpost of Migron.
"After the mosque was vandalized, we decided to put together a group of 15-20 residents who will patrol at night and alert (the authorities) if settlers infiltrate the village in order to damage homes or public buildings," Mayor Hani Ismail told Ynet.
Meanwhile, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and ammunition were discovered in an abandoned Palestinian car near the Shvei Ami outpost in Samaria. Police sappers arrived at the scene as IDF units began investigating the incident.
15 sept 2011
Students clash with Israeli settlers, forces in Hebron camp
A group of students clashed with Israeli settlers and forces near Hebron on Thursday, after demonstrating in al-Arrub refugee camp in support of the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN.
Ahmad Yousef Abu Ghazy, 15, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet, and several others suffered tear gas inhalation, locals told Ma'an.
They said Israeli settlers attempted to gather near the camp, and Israeli soldiers arrived to break up clashes.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was not aware of the incident.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said on Thursday that the recent "significant increase in settler violence and aggression against Palestinians" risked triggering further clashes ahead of the Palestinians' submission of a request to join the UN.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420398
Settler attacks raise West Bank tension ahead of UN
By Tom Perry
An escalation in Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank risks triggering retaliation, a Palestinian official said on Thursday, pointing to a growing risk to stability in the region.
Incidents over the past two weeks have included acts of vandalism against three West Bank mosques, increasing tension just a week before the Palestinians seek recognition of statehood at the United Nations.
In some villages, Palestinians are organizing neighborhood watch groups in an effort at deterrence. The governor of Nablus, an area where villages are often targeted, ordered the formation of the unarmed volunteer groups last week.
"We are very much concerned by the significant increase in settler violence and aggression against Palestinians," Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.
"In the last 10 days, there have been a few incidents almost every day. The continuity of violence is playing the role of inciting Palestinians for a violent response," he said. "That might bring us back to the vicious circle of violence that we all wanted to avoid."
Three cars were torched in the early hours of Thursday morning in the village of Beit Furik, just outside Nablus -- an area home to some of the most ideological members of the settler movement.
Beit Furik Mayor Atef Hanani said it was the first time settlers had staged such an attack in the village. "People are on guard," he added. "We need to take a stand to defend ourselves and our property."
One apparent trigger for the latest wave was the Israeli authorities' removal of buildings at an unauthorized settler outpost on Sept. 5.
The name of the settlement, Migron, was daubed on the walls of a mosque which was set ablaze in the village of Qusra the same day. In the past, such attacks have been seen as a form of reprisal by the settlers.
Risk of "major escalation"
The UN agency OCHA, which documents such incidents, has recorded a rise in settler violence this year compared to last.
But the frequency appears to have gone up further still this month. In the Nablus area, six cars have been torched in a week. In a normal month, the average is one, said Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settler violence.
The Israeli authorities' action against Migron also appeared to explain an act of vandalism on Sept. 7 at a West Bank army base. Pro-settler graffiti was daubed on walls there.
Asked about the wave of attacks, an Israeli police spokesman said there was a decision to set up "a special investigations task force to deal with the large number of incidents that have taken place over a short space of time".
Palestinians fear more trouble in the days leading up to Sept. 23, when their president plans to ask the United Nations to admit Palestine as a full member state.
The step amounts to an attempt to gain UN recognition of a state on land occupied by Israel in a 1967 war and to which many settlers stake a biblical claim.
"The atmosphere is very, very tense," said Hani Abu Murad, the mayor of Qusra, where the mosque was set ablaze on Sept. 5. Elsewhere, graffiti was daubed on the walls of at least two other mosques, one of them in Birzeit, just outside Ramallah.
Between 15 and 20 volunteers have been taking part in the neighborhood watch group set up in the village, Abu Murad said. Their presence appeared to have scared off settlers who had approached again a few days ago, he said.
The volunteers' instructions are to phone the governor of Nablus in case of trouble, he said. The governor in turn contacts the Israeli army.
But the villagers have little faith in the Israeli security forces, criticized for not doing enough to rein in settlers.
"There is a long term systemic failure to protect Palestinians and their property from the violence of Israeli citizens in the occupied territories," said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
"The actual impact of one of these attacks is much larger than just the localized problem. It could lead to a major escalation."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420566
West Bank settlers ready for Palestinian violence
Jewish settlers from the southern West Bank held a final security exercise on Wednesday, in preparation for possible violence after a planned Palestinian statehood bid later this month.
Civil security response teams from Kiryat Arba and the Jewish settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron practiced several scenarios including a Palestinian march infiltrating a settlement security fence and an attack on a school.
Tens of Kiryat Arba high-school students participated in the drill, imitating the Palestinian infiltrators calling for the death of Jews and covering their faces.
Israeli security forces regularly train settlers emergency response teams, who are at times the first to arrive to violent scenes as the killing of five settler family members in the northern West Bank in March. The Israeli army is also the one providing response teams with weapons.
Israeli military spokesperson unit denied the military was involved in any manner in Wednesday's drill.
"We are holding a mock drill preparing for what is about to happen...the violence by the Arabs after after the UN announcement," a teen posing as a Palestinian protester told Reuters television during the drill.
"What they did here is Arabs arriving to the settlement's fence, as we are supposed to be seeing in September, and also an infiltration of terrorists into a religious school compound," explained Ofer Ohana, CEO of rescue service in the Judea and Samaria region.
"I want to add that ten years ago right in this spot there was an infiltration of terrorists, that thank God has ended in a miracle... with God's help, that all events will end in this way when the terrorists are killed and we have no casualties," Ohana added.
Israel is wary of large-scale protests by Palestinians as their leaders sidestep stalled peace talks by appealing for United Nations statehood recognition this month. A similar deadlock in 2000 triggered a Palestinian revolt that Israel fueled with military crackdowns, resulting in a heavy death toll among unarmed protesters.
The administration of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denied seeking bloodshed and Israeli officials said it was too early to know how this month's showdown at the United Nations would resonate locally.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420496
Jewish settlers attack Palestinian citizens, burn cars
Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian citizens and their cars in Nablus province before dawn Thursday and Wednesday morning wounding three civilians and burning four cars, local sources reported.
They said that settlers from Itamar settlement attacked a car while on its way from Nablus to Bethlehem, injured its three occupants including a 50-year-old man, and burnt their car.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses said that settlers stormed the Beit Forik village, east of Nablus city, shortly after midnight Wednesday and torched three cars totally burning them.
In another development, settlers in Kiryat Arba settlement in Al-Khalil exercised on means of dispersing Palestinian marches using firearms.
The Israeli TV channel 10 screened part of those exercises where tens of armed settlers were seen simulating penetration of a Palestinian march while firing at and assaulting participants.
PA: Settlers torch 3 Palestinian cars east of Nablus
Israeli settlers burnt 3 Palestinian cars overnight Wednesday in Beit Furik village east of Nablus, Palestinian Authority officials said.
PA settlement affairs official Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that settlers from Itamar set fire to three cars which were parked at the entrance to the village.
The latest attack comes amid a recent surge in settler violence in the Nablus district.
Israeli settlers from the illegal Yitzhar settlement attacked two Palestinians on Tuesday evening. Both victims were treated for serious injuries in Rafedia Hospital.
In September, settlers in Nablus have vandalized two mosques and an Israeli army base, uprooted olive trees and set fire to cars.
Meanwhile, news reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
Annual figures compiled by Israeli rights group Yesh Din have repeatedly shown that nine out of 10 Israeli police investigations of settler crimes fail to lead to a prosecution.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420328
Settlers attempt to raid Jenin village, 2 Palestinians detained
Dozens of settlers tried to raid the village of Arraba in Jenin overnight Wednesday, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli forces were stationed on the western side of the village to prevent dozens of settlers from the adjacent Mevo Dotan settlement from entering, Palestinian security sources told Ma'an.
The settlers were reportedly planning to hold a demonstration but were forbidden from doing so by Israeli forces.
In a separate incident in Jenin, Israeli forces detained Bilia Farid Awad, 43, on Wednesday after raiding his shop in Siris village.
Israeli soldiers also raided the home of Fawzi Sharqawi in Az-Zababida village and handed summons orders to his four sons to visit Israeli intelligence.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said that two people in Jenin had been detained on Wednesday for "security questioning."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420411
IOF attack nonviolent protest in al Khalil, injuries reported
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked on Thursday a nonviolent protest in the Al Arroub refugee camp, in the southern West Bank city of Al Khalil (Hebron), and injured several residents, including one child.
Palestinian medical sources in the occupied West Bank reported that the wounded child, Ahmad Abu Ghazi, 15, was shot by a rubber-coated bullet in his foot; several residents were treated for the effects of teargas inhalation. No arrests were reported.
Palestinian media sources reported that dozens of students marched on Thursday morning in support of the Palestinian bid at the United Nations, and that soldiers attacked the protest, leading to clashes..
Israeli extremist settlers also gathered near the camp, and clashed with dozens of residents.
Erekat condemns increase in armed settler attacks
PLO official Saeb Erekat said Thursday that home demolitions by Israeli forces and attacks by Israeli settlers "only adds to our determination [to request membership of the UN]."
Erekat, the former chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Israel of trying to derail the UN bid by escalating the situation on the ground, a statement from his office said.
The official slammed Israel's demolition of houses in al-Aqaba village in the West Bank's Jordan Valley on Thursday, noting that five Palestinian homes were demolished in September.
"These home demolitions are further proof of Israel’s commitment to its policies of occupation and annexation. These actions entrench the occupation and bolster those who are interested in perpetuating conflict in the region," Erekat said.
The official said 51 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians had been recorded in two weeks, pointing to the increase in "number, frequency, and ferocity of attacks."
"Israeli settlers are armed with guns and impunity," he noted, expressing concern at reports that the Israeli army was supplying weapons to the settlers.
Erekat warned: "Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement enterprise are a threat to Palestinian aspirations and lives. They must be stopped."
"We are going to the United Nations. This increase in Israeli violence, brutality, and racism only adds to our determination.
"The PLO is turning to the international community to advance our people’s national goals and protect the prospects of peace from this kind of aggression," he added.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420614
Jewish Settlers Run Over Disabled Palestinian, Abduct Another
Jewish settlers ran over a disabled Palestinian on Sunday and abducted another on Saturday night in the West Bank.
A Jewish settler Sunday ran over a physically disabled Palestinian man on the main road in Beit Ummar, a town north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and fled the scene, said a local official.
Spokesman of the National Committee Against the Wall and Settlement in Beit Ummar, Mohammad Awad, said that Natheer Sabarneh, 36, was hit as he headed to work and sustained injuries to his head and body. He was transferred to hospital.
Jewish settlers, under Israeli army protection, abducted a Palestinian man on Saturday night from his vehicle along the road between Aqraba and Yanon, villages east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to local sources.
Witnesses said the whereabouts of the Palestinian man remain unknown.
Jewish settlers have been leading a massive campaign against the Palestinians lately, including physical assaults and open fire at unarmed Palestinians, attacks on mosques as well as setting fire to Palestinian cars and properties, all in retaliation to the Palestinian bid to gain full United Nations membership of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders later this month.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17385
Youth organization sets up settler monitoring group
Young activists have set up a coordination center to monitor Israeli settler attacks in Hebron ahead of the Palestinian membership at the UN.
The group, including Palestinian and international volunteers, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, and university students, will work around the clock to follow up rights violations against Hebron citizens, grassroots organization Youth Against Settlements said Saturday.
Group coordinator Issa Amr said the center, which is monitoring settler websites, was set up in response to Palestinians’ fears of organized attack from settlers in the area.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians around the bid for full membership of the United Nations.
Amr said the group was collecting information on how to deal with attack dogs, and will hold meetings with communities near settlements.
Volunteers and journalists will be sent to particularly vulnerable families to document attacks, Amr said.
Hebron, once the Palestinians’ largest commercial center, is divided between Israeli and Palestinian control, and the city’s Palestinians residents say they face severe movement restrictions and daily violence from the small group of Jewish settlers living in its center.
Youth Against Settlements describes itself as a national non-partisan youth group using popular action and resistance to monitor rights violations by Israeli settlers in Hebron.
Report: Settlers plan march to Palestinian towns
Israeli settlers are preparing to march on Israeli army command offices and Palestinian towns in the West Bank starting Tuesday afternoon, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
Dubbed "sovereignty marches," settlers are protesting the Palestinian's bid for full membership at the UN, Israeli website Ynet said.
Far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir told the site that settlers were "going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are."
"We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
The news site quoted a settlement security officer saying they were prepared to use live ammunition on Palestinian demonstrators, as settlers felt the Israeli army were "too trusting" of Palestinian security to deter potential marches on the settlements.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians around the bid for full membership of the United Nations.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
In a Nablus-area village under repeated attack from settlers, the local council has established a voluntary village guard to fend off settler raids into the community.
Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti has warned that settlers "could commit massacres against the Palestinians" following an escalation in settler attacks in early September.
Barghouthi said the attacks were "part of a plan" to use settlers to attack Palestinians. Noting that the Israeli army was providing settlers with military facilities, he said the army was participating in "organized crime" with settlers in the West Bank.
Ultra-orthodox Jews enter Al-Aqsa Mosque
Tension ran high in Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning after Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) opened the holy site up to ultra-orthodox Jews.
The Israeli police stood guard to protect batches of Jews who continuously entered the mosque, the third holiest in Islam, throughout the day, in the framework of a “foreign tourist program”.
Occupation troops were deployed heavily at the compound's gates as well as in the nearby Arab Old City of Jerusalem. Israeli forces set up new checkpoints on the roads leading to the mosque and stopped and searched Palestinian buses.
The unwelcomed entry has drawn condemnation from the Palestinians.
In a joint statement, Hamas politicians in the West Bank said the string of entries was aimed at challenging the Islamic identity of the mosque and claiming it as Jewish, calling on the masses and officials to act urgently to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Foundation: Rightists enter Al-Aqsa Mosque
Religious and right-wing Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage said.
Israeli police looked on as around 18 religious and far-right Israelis entered in the morning and another 40 entered in the afternoon, the foundation said in a statement.
The Al-Aqsa compound, containing the mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is the third holiest site in Islam and abuts the site where Jews believe the ancient Second Temple stood.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=421324
Jewish settlers set Palestinian fields on fire
Jewish settlers set Palestinian cultivated land on fire in Seelat Al-Dhaher village south of Jenin city on afternoon Saturday, eyewitnesses reported.
They said that 15 settlers burst into the village’s groves under Israeli military escort and dropped incendiary material on the land. They added that fire broke out and spread over a large area due to the presence of dry weed before fire brigades managed to put it off.
They noted that a big number of settlers on Friday chased a young shepherd near the village, also near the site of the evacuated Homesh settlement, and tried to kidnap him but he succeeded in running away.
Settlers routinely return to the settlement, which was evacuated in 2005, and assault Palestinians present near its location.
Sabri: Israel responsible for Jewish raid of Al-Aqsa Mosque
Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, Ekrima Sabri, held the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) responsible for the actions of extremist Jewish groups that are planning on raiding Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday.
“Extremist Jewish groups continue to exacerbate the situation in A-Aqsa Mosque and try from time to time to break into it claiming that they have right to this mosque!” Sheikh Sabri said in a statement on Saturday, asserting that the entire mosque is for the Muslims alone, a fact that could not be changed by the courts or negotiations.
Meanwhile, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cario Ahmed al-Tayyib issued a separate statement calling on the Muslims and Arabs to unite in the face of what he described as “Zionist plans targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) closed Saturday morning all crossings leading to the occupied Jerusalem in fear of protests erupting after the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed he would go ahead with plans to ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state.
The IOF has been taking what Palestinians sources called “very tight measures” on checkpoints, erecting concrete barricades on roads bridging Jerusalem to all outlying areas.
Elsewhere, the IOF shut down a checkpoint near Bilal ibn Rabah mosque, known by Jews as Rachel’s Tomb, in Bethlehem governorate, where measures have also been tightened on the movement of the Palestinian population towards Jerusalem.
In a statement, former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem Khalid Abu Arafeh described the situation in the holy city as “potentially explosive”.
He said that Israel isolates the city whenever some event takes place because of the war crimes the Zionist entity has committed there. He also attributed the current state of panic to the fact that the Israeli occupation authorities have treated the city as entirely Jewish, although the world has always considered the city as occupied.
“Today, in particular, the IOF added a double dose of threat under the pretext of the Palestinians’ intent to go to the United Nations and ask for recognition of a Palestinian state,” Abu Arafeh said.
He went on to describe the IOF grip on the city as “unprecedented”, saying that it placed screens and barbed wire and readied 50 tons of dirty water to cope with protests.
Jewish Settlers Break into Evacuated Settlement in Jenin
Jewish settlers Sunday at dawn broke into the evacuated Homesh settlement, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, under Israeli army protection, said security sources.
Homesh was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s plan to remove some settlements from the West Bank, but settlers often return to the settlement in an attempt to rebuild it.
The Israeli army intensified its presence along the Jenin-Nablus main road and to the south of Jenin. Soldiers broke into Fahma, a village southwest of Jenin, and put up a checkpoint at its entrance.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=17383
Settlers threaten to march into PA territory
West Bank settlers, radical rightists, prepare for 'sovereignty marches' into PA land to protest against UN bid, saying they 'won't hesitate to use live ammunition.' Police, IDF gear for expected riots.
West Bank settlers have begun preparing for mass marches into Palestinian Authority territories in what they dubbed as "sovereignty marches," in an attempt to protest against the upcoming Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.
The settlers are concerned that the IDF would be "too trusting" in the Palestinian security forces if the Palestinians decide to riot and get too close to the Jewish settlements.
"The IDF orders are unclear as to what would happen if Palestinian rioters approach too close to the settlements," said a security officer at one of the settlements.
"We won't allow Palestinian rioters to enter the settlements, cause damage to our property or heaven forbid – injure someone. In such cases, we won't hesitate to use live ammunition."
The settler rallies are set to begin Tuesday afternoon, as participants plan to make their way towards the IDF District Coordination and Liaison Command. A protest is also slated to take place on the streets of Tel Aviv. In addition, right wing extremists are expected to head in the direction of Palestinian communities in order to shift the conflict into PA territories.
The West Bank regional and settlers' councils planned to hold the marches in three separate locations: From Itamar to Nablus, from Beit El to the closest IDF District Coordination and Liaison and from Kiryat Arba to Manoach Mountain.
Tens of thousands of Israeli flags will be distributed by the West Bank regional councils and hung from the settlers' cars.
Gershon Mesika, head of the Shomron Regional Council, remarked that he was not flustered by the Palestinian diplomacy concerning the UN. "Most of the decisions made by the UN during the past decades were against the State of Israel. The entire world has come to realize it's an automatic majority. As Ben-Gurion said, it doesn't matter what the non-Jews say, it only matters what the Jews do."
Hilltop Youth leader Meir Bertler expressed his hope that Israel would annex the West Bank settlements. "As far as we're concerned, we're going to feel right at home in the West Bank, and this week we'll hold marches, begin construction and show our presence in order to make it clear to everyone exactly who this country belongs to."
Far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir stressed that his counterparts will not be "waiting at home so the Arabs might get close to their fences."
"We're going to go out and make it clear to the Arabs who the home owners are. We're going to take the initiative and march towards Palestinian towns."
Police, IDF prepare for worst
Meanwhile, security and police forces have begun preparing themselves for expected riots in the West Bank. Thousands of police officers have undergone training for possible scenarios, including riots, mass rallies and attempts to break into West Bank settlements.
Police forces are also taking into account possible terror attacks and massive rocket firing from the Gaza Strip ahead of the upcoming UN bid.
However, at this point IDF officials predict that with the exception of local incidents, the mass marches and rallies will not turn violent.
Meanwhile, IDF forces are preparing to stop the demonstrations in case the Palestinian forces fail to prevent them. GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi has instructed his forces to show restraint.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4123495,00.html
17 sept 2011
Jewish Settlers Set Fire to Palestinian Farms
Extremist Jewish settlers Saturday set fire to Palestinian farms adjacent to the evacuated Homesh settlement, south of Jenin, said security sources.
They said 15 settlers broke into the area under Israeli army protection, verbally assaulting local residents and setting fire to fields near the settlement.
Homesh was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s plan to remove few settlements in the West Bank, but settlers often return to the settlements in an attempt to rebuild it.
Sources said Israel intensified its military presence around Arrabah and Sanour, villages south of Jenin.
Settlers attack PA employee, family near Bethlehem
A group of Israeli settlers on Saturday morning attacked a Palestinian family in their car after they picked grapes from their field near Efrat settlement south of Bethlehem.
The deputy director of the Bethlehem office of the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of education, Bassam Jabir, from Al-Khader, told Ma’an he and his family were attacked on the bypass road known as Route 60.
Jabir explained that he went to pick grapes along with his mother, his brothers and sons from their field near the village of Jurat Ash-Shama south of Bethlehem. After they finished and drove back, a group of settlers from behind the fence surrounding Efrat threw rocks at the car. The windshield was smashed, but nobody was hurt, Jabir said.
He added that as stones started to hit the car, he lost control at first, but managed to speed away, and later he informed the Palestinian security and the liaison office in Bethlehem about the attack.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420886
The radical settler threat
Special: IDF lieutenant who was part of messianic camp says Israel faces grave danger.
Micha Regev says that he is an anxious citizen. When the IDF Lieutenant (res.) hears talk of settlement evacuation, he is overwhelmed by horrific scenarios. For example: Settlers firing at soldiers and Palestinians. Such scenarios, he says, are not unthinkable. Some people are already working on formulating them.
“We are facing a much graver danger than the murder of a prime minister,” he says. “The radicals may reach the stage of rebellion, and possibly even mass suicide.” Regev’s words merit extra attention because once upon a time he was there himself, a religious youngster with fire in his eyes who joined the IDF in order to turn it into a “religious messianic army.”
The 54-year-old Regev was born to a national religious family. When he was 15, he joined his friends in archeological digs near Gush Etzion. There, he first met settler leader Hanan Porat and was captivated by the appeal of salvation.
“Porat, a master of words and brimming with charisma, promised that we are close to the Messiah’s arrival and that the Six-Day War was a divine miracle en route to complete salvation,” he recalls. “We admired every word that came out of his mouth. In retrospect I realized that we, the youths, were the fuel of that revolution.”
After completing his studies at a high school yeshiva, Regev joined the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem and on his breaks helped his friends advance the settlement enterprise. “When the group of salvation believers expanded we learned that with a little determination and plenty of disregard for the law we can gain land and a housing solution almost for free in a new settlement. The government’s helplessness turned this phenomenon into a strategic threat for the rule of law and State’s pillars,” he writes in his recently published book.
Regev performed his military service at the Golani elite reconnaissance unit, also viewing it as a messianic mission. “In preparation sessions ahead of enlistment, representatives of the salvation movement repeated the idea of sanctifying the military by turning it into a religious messianic army…the message was that we should take up key positions,” he says.
Warning to Rabin
Yet eventually things started to change for Regev: “In one of our training sessions I discovered for the first time kibbutz members celebrating the Shavuot holiday. I was stunned; I discovered secular people who were no less moral and impressive than us, the settlement pioneers.”
Regev says that Egyptian President Sadat’s visit to Israel in 1977 and Prime Minister Begin’s call “no more war, no more bloodshed” were the turning point in his life. The words that impressed him so deeply sounded disastrous to his rabbis, and question marks began to crack the faith he grew up with. Despite this, he continued to serve in the army as a proud religious commander, sporting a beard and taking part in a series of secret operations.
Lebanon, which was part of Regev’s life for 20 years, claimed the lives of his young brother, Daniel, who was killed in 1982 and was awarded a citation posthumously. “During the Shiva, the realization that there is no point in sacrificing life for the sake of delusional notions took shape within me. Risking soldiers for the sake of Joseph’s Tomb or the Kasbah in Nablus seemed senseless to me. If God wants to demand sacrifice from us, he should do it with His own voice, as He did with Abraham,” Regev says.
In 1984, after a Jewish underground that killed Arabs was uncovered in the West Bank, with two of its members being former close friends, Regev’s ties to his past were completely undermined. “It was clear to me that the zealousness of salvation is not a truthful path and that salvation theory is unfounded,” he says. He removed the kippah from his head, moved to Mitzpe Abirim in the Galilee to raise cattle, and today lives there with his wife and three sons.
In November 1993, a few months after the Oslo agreement was signed, Regev was a cadet in a division commanders’ course. When Prime Minister Rabin arrived to address the soldiers, the cadets were asked to prepare questions. When it was Regev’s turn, he turned to Rabin and said: “I’m a very close associate of the settlers and fear that your life and the lives of other officials are in danger.”
“Rabin shook his head, smiled his modest smile and told me that Israel has excellent security services and that there was no reason for concern,” Regev recounts. “I realized that my message wasn’t grasped. I got up again and told him that his response is so wrong that I feel like crying.”
‘The rabbis sinned’
“The Oslo Accords provoked immense hatred in the Right. My settler friends made an effort to explain to me that Rabin, who is about to hand over parts of our homeland to foreigners, is a traitor, and that in an enlightened state he would be sentenced to death,” Regev says. Referring to Rabin’s assassination, he says: “It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger and it doesn’t matter that the rabbis said the murderer did not come from their midst. The sin of this murder hangs over the rabbis, who turned an elected prime minister into a traitor and criminal.”
Yet the danger has not passed. The opposite is true, as the voice of the “salvation rabbis” grows louder. Regev decided not to remain silent, and for some two years wrote his book, The Intoxication of Salvation.” “I wrote the book as an active partner in the religious salvation movement based on the doctrine of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and his followers, who view our era as a period of messianic salvation, with those who stand in the way being criminals. For years I was a part of it, until I sobered up,” he says.
“I can’t forget the boy who was evacuated from his Gush Katif home during the Gaza disengagement and urged IDF soldiers to kill him. I have no doubt he meant it, because for months the rabbis told him that evacuation is worse than death,” Regev says. “I also can’t forget the marches of children with a yellow Star of David on their clothes, as if IDF soldiers were Nazi thugs. While this was a minority, it was backed by the ideologists of salvation messianism. To my regret, in recent years we are seeing radicalization among national rabbis too, who seemingly accept the authority of the State and of democracy.
“The fact that Rabbi Dov Lior, for example, viewed Jewish killer Baruch Goldstein as a saint shocked but didn’t surprise me, because the rabbi represents all the dangers inherent in the salvation movement,” Regev says. “The fact that he is an eminent rabbi with immense knowledge only makes the danger even graver and proves this is not a marginal group. Its hard core leads a mystical, violent line. Torah laws are more important for them than the State and than democracy, and in the wake of a trigger like settlement evacuation they may resort to unprecedented violence.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4123412,00.html
16 sept 2011
Palestinian shot by armed settlers
One Palestinian has been wounded in a clash with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as Palestinians prepare to seek International Criminal Court intervention over the issue of illegal settlements.
One Palestinian and an Israeli settler were wounded on Friday in clashes in the village of Kusra in the northern West Bank, AFP reported.
Palestinian officials said the incident took place when around a dozen settlers tried to enter Kusra but were stopped by residents who feared they were about to be attacked. One settler drew a pistol and shot a Palestinian in the leg.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the clash took place in a disputed area outside Kusra between residents and people from the nearby settlement of Esh Hakodesh. She said the wounded Israeli had been stabbed and confirmed a Palestinian resident had also been shot.
The clash comes at a time when Israeli settlers are enraged by the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations, and fear that Palestinian may resort to the International Criminal Court to put an end to the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has mobilized three battalions of reservists -- some 1,500 personnel - and reinforced units already deployed in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli army has also reported upped its presence around the settlements in the West Bank.
On September 9, extremist Israelis attacked the Palestinian town of Birzeit near the West Bank city of Ramallah and sprayed graffiti on the walls of a mosque and a university.
Palestinian security officials that "Death to the Arabs" and slogans insulting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) were painted in Hebrew.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/199483.html
Jewish settler wound a Palestinian man near Nablus
Attacks by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians have been on the rise lately, the latest of which was an attack on Friday against the village of Qusra to the south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, wounding a Palestinian man.
Ghasan Daghlas, the PA official responsible for the settlements’ file on the northern West Bank, said: “The wounded man is Fathallah Abu Reeda”. About the attack he said that eyewitnesses from the village said that a group of armed settlers infiltrated into the southern part of village from nearby settlement outposts. The infiltrators were discovered by local young men who captured them.
Eyewitnesses said that the village guard committees released the settlers. After being released, one of the settlers started shooting. Residents came out of their homes to defend their village.
Following the incident, IOF troops on about 15 military vehicles advanced towards the village through the Jaloud-Qusra road and blocked the road.
Eyewitnesses said that locals clashed with the occupation forces which were deployed around the village.
Settlers assault Palestinian child after kidnapping him south of Jenin
A gang of young Jewish settlers attacked on Thursday night a young Palestinian boy in a village to south of Jenin. They then took him to the dismantled Haumash settlement and assaulted him before releasing him late at night.
Locals said that a group of settlers ambushed Khalil Hamamrah, 16 years, at the fringes of the village, they kidnapped and assaulted him before the IOF transferred him to the PA’s liaison office.
The boy said that the assailants were settlers in their teens and they want to rebuild the settlement which was evacuated in 2005 by the Israeli occupation authorities, adding that they threatened him and beat him.
AFEH warns of Plans by Jewish groups to storm the Aqsa Mosque
The Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) warned of calls made by Jewish groups for the storming of the Aqsa Mosque early next week as part of their attempts to build the alleged temple.
AFEH said in a statement on Thursday that a group of Jewish organizations called the "Movement for the establishment of the Temple" have distributed leaflets and launched online campaigns calling for Jews to participate in the so called "temple conference" to be held in Jerusalem on Sunday. The invitation called on Jews to break into Al-Aqsa Mosque at noon the same day.
The statement also said that Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom, will attend amid calls to "accelerate" the building of "the Temple" on the ruins of the mosque.
AFEH urged Palestinians to confront the Zionist plans by keeping regular presence at the Aqsa Mosque to deter such attacks.
Israel storms Nablus village after settler assault
Israeli settlers assaulted a Nablus village Friday morning, leading to clashes with Israeli forces injuring 11 Palestinians.
After the settlers were removed by Israeli police, Israeli forces raided Qusra village injuring six villagers with rubber bullets, a Ma'an correspondent said.
Forces surrounded a house sheltering European press agency cameraman Alaa Bedarneh was filming the earlier settler attack, the correspondent reported.
Three children inside the house suffered tear gas inhalation during the military raid, and Bedarneh was injured in the hand, he said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said the journalist's agency had requested the army remove him from the village, and he was taken to safety.
Around 20 people were hurling rocks at forces, and the border police were operating in the village, she said, without giving further details.
Settler attack
PA official monitoring settlement activity Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that earlier in the day around ten settlers from neighboring settlement Migdalim came into Qusra village south of Nablus.
Fathallah Abu Rida, 25, was injured when settlers shot him in the leg, Doughlas said.
Village guard units established in recent weeks held the settlers at the scene for 30 minutes, before Israeli police arrived and removed settlers from the village, he added.
Israel police say settler wounded in knifing
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an a settler was injured after an argument broke out between two settlers and a 50-year-old Palestinian in an open area near Qusra.
"The Palestinian pulled out a knife and the settler reacted by shooting the Palestinian in the leg," he said.
The injured settler and Palestinian were taken to hospitals, he added, saying police who arrived on the scene had opened an investigation into the incident.
Settler assaults increasing in West Bank
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib warned on Thursday that a serious increase in settler violence towards West Bank Palestinians threatened escalation of the situation ahead of the Palestinians' bid for membership of the UN.
News reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
On Sept. 5 settlers broke into Qusra village mosque, smashing windows, burning tires inside the building, and spray-painting walls with offensive slogans.
Village council head Hani Ismail told Ma’an on Tuesday that young men volunteered to guard the entrances to the village after the attacks, and had blocked further groups of armed settlers from entering the village.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420705
Religious Zionism rabbis unite for Migron
Hundreds of rabbis invited to attend emergency meeting following demolition of three houses last week in unauthorized settlement. Rally's organizers slam PM Netanyahu, call him 'expert in betraying voters' trust'.
Dozens of rabbis have confirmed their participation in an emergency meeting scheduled to be held Monday in the unauthorized settlement of Migron in the Binyamin region, following the demolition of three houses last week and ahead of the planned razing of dozens of other structures.
Tzohar Chairman Rabbi David Stav confirmed that the organization's president, Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, will represent Tzohar at the meeting. "We are taking part in the effort to organize a meeting with the prime minister on this issue," Stav told Ynet.
Hundreds of rabbis have been invited to the rally, which will be attended by representatives of different Religious Zionism streams, including senior members of the Tzohar organization, which usually avoids engaging in political issues.
'Religious Zionism united thanks to Bibi'
Apart from Rabbi Ariel, speeches will also be delivered by Rabbis Haim Drukman, Dov Lior, Zalman Baruch Melamed and Nahum Eliezer Rabinovich – all senior Religious Zionism leaders, as well as Migron Rabbi Itai Halevi and Mateh Binyamin Council head Avi Roeh.
The rabbis will later hold an open discussion along with other religious leaders on ways to save the Migron houses. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu will conduct a children's prayer.
The rally was initiated by two rabbinical organizations" Derech Emunah and the Teaching House for Public Affairs. The first body brings together hundreds of right-wing rabbis and is identified as the National Union's rabbis' council.
The organization was headed in the past by Chief Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu, who were considered the leaders of Religious Zionism. The organization's activity weakened following Rabbi Shapira's death, but has been resumed in the past two years.
Harel Cohen, the organization's secretary-general and one of the meeting's organizers, told Ynet that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have to be thanked for the event's success.
"Bibi is an expert in betraying the trust of his Israel-loving voters, uniting Religious Zionism and its rabbis," he said.
The meeting's organizers say the issues on the agenda have not been determined yet, but that they are convinced that refusing orders during the evacuation of Jewish communities will be a major topic.
According to the organizers, last week was the first time since the State's establishment that settlers' permanent houses were destroyed in the middle of the night.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4122983,00.html
2 wounded in clash between settlers and Palestinians
Palestinian man reportedly suffered serious injuries after he was shot by settler; another settler was lightly wounded during altercation; army sources: one of volatile scenarios that could lead to deterioration.
A week before the Palestinians submit their statehood bid at the United Nations Security Council, tensions on the ground are beginning to rise: In a clash that erupted between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank Friday morning, a Palestinian man reportedly suffered serious injuries after he was shot by a settler.
Another settler was lightly wounded during the altercation, which took place between the village of Kusra and the Eish Kadosh outpost, after he was stabbed.
Palestinian sources claim that a group of settlers headed towards the village seeking to confront or attack villagers.
A group of Palestinians, who belong to a security team that was established in the village to defend against settler attacks, stopped a number of them during which the violence broke out.
The Palestinians said that the injured man was evacuated to a hospital in Nablus.
Military sources admitted that the Friday morning clash was one of the dangerous scenarios the defense establishment was preparing for ahead of the Palestinian statehood move at the UN. “We are at the start of a highly volatile period in which any such incident could become a slippery slope leading to a deteriorating situation,” they said.
"Mohammad is a pig" spray-painted on Kusra village mosque
The village of Kusra was the target of one of the settlers’ price tag operations in retaliation for the razing of a number of structures in the outpost of Migron.
"After the mosque was vandalized, we decided to put together a group of 15-20 residents who will patrol at night and alert (the authorities) if settlers infiltrate the village in order to damage homes or public buildings," Mayor Hani Ismail told Ynet.
Meanwhile, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and ammunition were discovered in an abandoned Palestinian car near the Shvei Ami outpost in Samaria. Police sappers arrived at the scene as IDF units began investigating the incident.
15 sept 2011
Students clash with Israeli settlers, forces in Hebron camp
A group of students clashed with Israeli settlers and forces near Hebron on Thursday, after demonstrating in al-Arrub refugee camp in support of the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN.
Ahmad Yousef Abu Ghazy, 15, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet, and several others suffered tear gas inhalation, locals told Ma'an.
They said Israeli settlers attempted to gather near the camp, and Israeli soldiers arrived to break up clashes.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was not aware of the incident.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said on Thursday that the recent "significant increase in settler violence and aggression against Palestinians" risked triggering further clashes ahead of the Palestinians' submission of a request to join the UN.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420398
Settler attacks raise West Bank tension ahead of UN
By Tom Perry
An escalation in Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank risks triggering retaliation, a Palestinian official said on Thursday, pointing to a growing risk to stability in the region.
Incidents over the past two weeks have included acts of vandalism against three West Bank mosques, increasing tension just a week before the Palestinians seek recognition of statehood at the United Nations.
In some villages, Palestinians are organizing neighborhood watch groups in an effort at deterrence. The governor of Nablus, an area where villages are often targeted, ordered the formation of the unarmed volunteer groups last week.
"We are very much concerned by the significant increase in settler violence and aggression against Palestinians," Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.
"In the last 10 days, there have been a few incidents almost every day. The continuity of violence is playing the role of inciting Palestinians for a violent response," he said. "That might bring us back to the vicious circle of violence that we all wanted to avoid."
Three cars were torched in the early hours of Thursday morning in the village of Beit Furik, just outside Nablus -- an area home to some of the most ideological members of the settler movement.
Beit Furik Mayor Atef Hanani said it was the first time settlers had staged such an attack in the village. "People are on guard," he added. "We need to take a stand to defend ourselves and our property."
One apparent trigger for the latest wave was the Israeli authorities' removal of buildings at an unauthorized settler outpost on Sept. 5.
The name of the settlement, Migron, was daubed on the walls of a mosque which was set ablaze in the village of Qusra the same day. In the past, such attacks have been seen as a form of reprisal by the settlers.
Risk of "major escalation"
The UN agency OCHA, which documents such incidents, has recorded a rise in settler violence this year compared to last.
But the frequency appears to have gone up further still this month. In the Nablus area, six cars have been torched in a week. In a normal month, the average is one, said Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settler violence.
The Israeli authorities' action against Migron also appeared to explain an act of vandalism on Sept. 7 at a West Bank army base. Pro-settler graffiti was daubed on walls there.
Asked about the wave of attacks, an Israeli police spokesman said there was a decision to set up "a special investigations task force to deal with the large number of incidents that have taken place over a short space of time".
Palestinians fear more trouble in the days leading up to Sept. 23, when their president plans to ask the United Nations to admit Palestine as a full member state.
The step amounts to an attempt to gain UN recognition of a state on land occupied by Israel in a 1967 war and to which many settlers stake a biblical claim.
"The atmosphere is very, very tense," said Hani Abu Murad, the mayor of Qusra, where the mosque was set ablaze on Sept. 5. Elsewhere, graffiti was daubed on the walls of at least two other mosques, one of them in Birzeit, just outside Ramallah.
Between 15 and 20 volunteers have been taking part in the neighborhood watch group set up in the village, Abu Murad said. Their presence appeared to have scared off settlers who had approached again a few days ago, he said.
The volunteers' instructions are to phone the governor of Nablus in case of trouble, he said. The governor in turn contacts the Israeli army.
But the villagers have little faith in the Israeli security forces, criticized for not doing enough to rein in settlers.
"There is a long term systemic failure to protect Palestinians and their property from the violence of Israeli citizens in the occupied territories," said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
"The actual impact of one of these attacks is much larger than just the localized problem. It could lead to a major escalation."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420566
West Bank settlers ready for Palestinian violence
Jewish settlers from the southern West Bank held a final security exercise on Wednesday, in preparation for possible violence after a planned Palestinian statehood bid later this month.
Civil security response teams from Kiryat Arba and the Jewish settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron practiced several scenarios including a Palestinian march infiltrating a settlement security fence and an attack on a school.
Tens of Kiryat Arba high-school students participated in the drill, imitating the Palestinian infiltrators calling for the death of Jews and covering their faces.
Israeli security forces regularly train settlers emergency response teams, who are at times the first to arrive to violent scenes as the killing of five settler family members in the northern West Bank in March. The Israeli army is also the one providing response teams with weapons.
Israeli military spokesperson unit denied the military was involved in any manner in Wednesday's drill.
"We are holding a mock drill preparing for what is about to happen...the violence by the Arabs after after the UN announcement," a teen posing as a Palestinian protester told Reuters television during the drill.
"What they did here is Arabs arriving to the settlement's fence, as we are supposed to be seeing in September, and also an infiltration of terrorists into a religious school compound," explained Ofer Ohana, CEO of rescue service in the Judea and Samaria region.
"I want to add that ten years ago right in this spot there was an infiltration of terrorists, that thank God has ended in a miracle... with God's help, that all events will end in this way when the terrorists are killed and we have no casualties," Ohana added.
Israel is wary of large-scale protests by Palestinians as their leaders sidestep stalled peace talks by appealing for United Nations statehood recognition this month. A similar deadlock in 2000 triggered a Palestinian revolt that Israel fueled with military crackdowns, resulting in a heavy death toll among unarmed protesters.
The administration of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denied seeking bloodshed and Israeli officials said it was too early to know how this month's showdown at the United Nations would resonate locally.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420496
Jewish settlers attack Palestinian citizens, burn cars
Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian citizens and their cars in Nablus province before dawn Thursday and Wednesday morning wounding three civilians and burning four cars, local sources reported.
They said that settlers from Itamar settlement attacked a car while on its way from Nablus to Bethlehem, injured its three occupants including a 50-year-old man, and burnt their car.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses said that settlers stormed the Beit Forik village, east of Nablus city, shortly after midnight Wednesday and torched three cars totally burning them.
In another development, settlers in Kiryat Arba settlement in Al-Khalil exercised on means of dispersing Palestinian marches using firearms.
The Israeli TV channel 10 screened part of those exercises where tens of armed settlers were seen simulating penetration of a Palestinian march while firing at and assaulting participants.
PA: Settlers torch 3 Palestinian cars east of Nablus
Israeli settlers burnt 3 Palestinian cars overnight Wednesday in Beit Furik village east of Nablus, Palestinian Authority officials said.
PA settlement affairs official Ghassan Doughlas told Ma'an that settlers from Itamar set fire to three cars which were parked at the entrance to the village.
The latest attack comes amid a recent surge in settler violence in the Nablus district.
Israeli settlers from the illegal Yitzhar settlement attacked two Palestinians on Tuesday evening. Both victims were treated for serious injuries in Rafedia Hospital.
In September, settlers in Nablus have vandalized two mosques and an Israeli army base, uprooted olive trees and set fire to cars.
Meanwhile, news reports said two weeks ago that Israeli forces were arming settlers with tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and even trained dogs to counter potential attacks by the Palestinians.
Annual figures compiled by Israeli rights group Yesh Din have repeatedly shown that nine out of 10 Israeli police investigations of settler crimes fail to lead to a prosecution.
Some 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians in the same territory.
All settlements are considered illegal under international law.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420328
Settlers attempt to raid Jenin village, 2 Palestinians detained
Dozens of settlers tried to raid the village of Arraba in Jenin overnight Wednesday, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli forces were stationed on the western side of the village to prevent dozens of settlers from the adjacent Mevo Dotan settlement from entering, Palestinian security sources told Ma'an.
The settlers were reportedly planning to hold a demonstration but were forbidden from doing so by Israeli forces.
In a separate incident in Jenin, Israeli forces detained Bilia Farid Awad, 43, on Wednesday after raiding his shop in Siris village.
Israeli soldiers also raided the home of Fawzi Sharqawi in Az-Zababida village and handed summons orders to his four sons to visit Israeli intelligence.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said that two people in Jenin had been detained on Wednesday for "security questioning."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420411
IOF attack nonviolent protest in al Khalil, injuries reported
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked on Thursday a nonviolent protest in the Al Arroub refugee camp, in the southern West Bank city of Al Khalil (Hebron), and injured several residents, including one child.
Palestinian medical sources in the occupied West Bank reported that the wounded child, Ahmad Abu Ghazi, 15, was shot by a rubber-coated bullet in his foot; several residents were treated for the effects of teargas inhalation. No arrests were reported.
Palestinian media sources reported that dozens of students marched on Thursday morning in support of the Palestinian bid at the United Nations, and that soldiers attacked the protest, leading to clashes..
Israeli extremist settlers also gathered near the camp, and clashed with dozens of residents.
Erekat condemns increase in armed settler attacks
PLO official Saeb Erekat said Thursday that home demolitions by Israeli forces and attacks by Israeli settlers "only adds to our determination [to request membership of the UN]."
Erekat, the former chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Israel of trying to derail the UN bid by escalating the situation on the ground, a statement from his office said.
The official slammed Israel's demolition of houses in al-Aqaba village in the West Bank's Jordan Valley on Thursday, noting that five Palestinian homes were demolished in September.
"These home demolitions are further proof of Israel’s commitment to its policies of occupation and annexation. These actions entrench the occupation and bolster those who are interested in perpetuating conflict in the region," Erekat said.
The official said 51 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians had been recorded in two weeks, pointing to the increase in "number, frequency, and ferocity of attacks."
"Israeli settlers are armed with guns and impunity," he noted, expressing concern at reports that the Israeli army was supplying weapons to the settlers.
Erekat warned: "Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement enterprise are a threat to Palestinian aspirations and lives. They must be stopped."
"We are going to the United Nations. This increase in Israeli violence, brutality, and racism only adds to our determination.
"The PLO is turning to the international community to advance our people’s national goals and protect the prospects of peace from this kind of aggression," he added.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=420614