Israeli troops kill armed Palestinian shepherd (IHT)

Reuters
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
By Wael al-Ahmed
Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank killed a 68-year-old Palestinian shepherd on Wednesday who was carrying a shotgun as protection against rustlers.
The Israeli army said Mohammed Abahereh opened fire at soldiers on routine patrol and they shot back, killing him.
Abahereh's son, Taher, who was helping him herd the sheep in the early morning darkness in al-Yamoun village, said rustlers had tried in the past to steal the animals.
"He was locking the gate and he heard something around us. He thought that it was thieves, so he went out with his shotgun and was shot immediately," Taher said.
The son said he had not seen the shooting but had heard the gunfire. He voiced doubts his father had shot at the soldiers.
"My father has never used his gun," he said, accusing the troops of leaving the shepherd to bleed to death and preventing an ambulance from reaching the area quickly.
An Israeli military spokesman denied the allegation.
"The troops did not prevent the evacuation and even guided the Red Crescent ambulance to the area so that it could get there as soon as possible," the spokesman said.
Israeli forces maintain a network of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank and carry out patrols and raids against Palestinian militants.
The Palestinian Authority, engaged in peace talks with Israel, says Israeli military activity hampers its own efforts to exert security control in West Bank towns and villages.
(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Palestinians won't be driven off says Fayyad (IHT)

Reuters
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
By Wafa Amr
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad joined West Bank farmers to pick olives on Wednesday and slammed assaults by Jewish settlers on the harvesters as "terrorism."
Fayyad rolled up his shirt sleeves and climbed up a ladder to help an old woman pluck olives from her tree in Mazra al-Gharbiyeh, a village north of the West Bank city of Ramallah which is surrounded by Jewish settlements.
His visit was "a clear message that we are here to stay," the Palestinian premier said.
"The settlers being here in itself is illegitimate. And on top of that they engage in acts of violence against our citizens, particularly at this time of year when they pick olives, with all that the olive tree signifies to our people," Fayyad told Reuters.
"This is nothing short of terrorism by the settlers."
Fayyad said the olive tree was not only a source of income for most Palestinians, but more importantly a "symbol of the determination of the Palestinian people to stay on their land and to preserve and defend it."
About 300,000 Jews live in settlements built by Israel in occupied West Bank land captured in the 1967 Six Day war.
Settlement expansion has seriously obstructed U.S.-sponsored peace talks. The Palestinians say they cannot achieve a viable, contiguous state of their own alongside Israel if the territory they secure is riddled with Jewish settlements and outposts.
Palestinians, the United Nations and Israeli leaders have expressed concern in the past month about an increase in violence by hardline Jewish settlers, who believe they have a divine right to the land.
The violence is seen partly as a warning to the Israeli government that some settlers will not go quietly if Israel agrees to return West Bank land as part of a peace settlement of the 60-year-old conflict.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday "the assaults by hooligans in the area ... deserve condemnation," but Israeli troops could not be everywhere to protect harvesters.
Israel had deployed forces to permit the harvest to proceed in peace, Barak told Israeli Army Radio. But Palestinians say the army does little to stop settler assaults and often breaks up clashes by forcing the farmers to leave the area.
An editorial in the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz on Wednesday said Barak was offering a "dubious excuse" for what it considered criminal failure to uphold the law.
Settlers had been "stealing the land of powerless farmers for decades" and were not averse to stealing their fruit as well. "This year, as every year, fairly small groups manage to reach the olive groves, where they beat, steal then return home safely," the paper said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday condemned settler attacks and pledged to fund the planting of a million trees to make the rocky West Bank terrain greener.
(Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

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Israel slams assaults on Palestinian olive harvest (IHT)

Reuters
Monday, October 20, 2008
JERUSALEM: Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak condemned Monday "assaults by hooligans" disrupting Palestinian olive picking in the occupied West Bank, but said Israeli security could not protect the harvesters everywhere.
Israel has deployed forces in a "supreme effort" to let the harvest proceed despite attacks by Jewish settlers in some olive groves this month, Barak told Israel's Army Radio.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters Sunday that the disruption of the harvest was "a dangerous Israeli escalation." He pledged to fund the plantings of a million trees to make the rocky West Bank terrain greener.
Asked about Abbas's remarks, Barak said "the assaults by hooligans in the area ... deserve condemnation."
"But there are hundreds of sites where the olive harvest takes place and it isn't possible to be everywhere," Barak added. He also urged Palestinians to coordinate with Israeli security forces to ensure they could harvest olives safely.
Olives are an important cash crop for thousands of Palestinians among the three million Palestinians living in the territory captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
About 300,000 Jews live in settlements built by Israel in the territory, an issue that has bedevilled Western-backed peace talks for decades. Palestinians say settlements rob them of land they need for a viable state.
Israeli soldiers intervened to chase away dozens of settlers who assaulted olive harvesters near the West Bank town of Qalqilya Sunday, Palestinian witnesses said.
But another harvest near the West Bank town of Hebron was called off Saturday after several settlers assaulted two photographers and a foreign peace activist. Police restored order by forcing everyone to leave the area.
(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

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Battle for Land

In West Bank, attack on Arabs is filmed
KHIRBET SUSIYA, West Bank: The conflict between Arabs and Jews over grazing land and water wells in the ancient, arid hills south of Hebron in the West Bank has a distinctly biblical feel, like the flimsy tent encampments and dank caves in which some local Palestinian farming families dwell.But the primeval feud took on a modern twist this month when Muna Nawajaa, one of the two wives of a Palestinian shepherd from Khirbet Susiya, used a hand-held video camera to capture footage of what appeared to be masked Jewish settlers viciously beating members of her family with clubs - images that have since been broadcast by news networks all over the world.Nawajaa, 24, the mother of a four-month-old, said it was the first scene she had ever filmed.Had it not been for the camera - one of about 100 handed out in the West Bank by the Israeli human rights group Btselem to document violent incidents - the assault June 8 might have ended up like many others that have occurred in these parts: unresolved.But the graphic images and ensuing attention by the news media seem to have spurred the Israeli police.
By Friday, the Judea and Samaria branch had arrested three suspects from the nearby Jewish settlement of Susiya after what a police spokesman described as "an intensive investigation." Two of the three were under 18."The only weapon we have is the media," said Khalil Nawajaa, 61, a patriarch of the clan, which raises livestock and teases wheat, grapes and zucchini out of the sun-baked, thistle-spiked earth, while showing his scars.The Nawajaas maintain a proper home in the sprawling town of Yata, a few kilometers away, but they usually prefer to stick close to their land. The encampment has no electricity. Water is drawn from a well, milk is kept in sheepskins, bread is baked in a traditional outdoor stone oven and extra shelter is provided by an underground cave.Sitting on the floor of a tent in the family's encampment in mid-June, Imran Nawajaa, 33, Khalil's nephew, recalled the morning of the attack.He said was out tending a flock with his young sons when two masked settlers rode up on a tractor and ordered him, in Hebrew, to leave."I said, 'This is my land, this is my flock, I'm not going anywhere,"' he related. "They told me, 'If you are a man, stay here for another 10 minutes,' then they left."Imran sent for Muna, who had been taught to use the camera by her brother. She arrived on the scene with Imran's wife, Rabiha, and Khalil and his wife, Tamam.The camera captures four lean men, their heads swathed in colorful cloth, striding toward the farmers, clubs in hand. In the background are the whitewashed, red-roofed houses of the settlement.One masked man strikes Imran with a series of swift, hard blows. There is a fleeting frame of another assailant grappling with Khalil before the camera shuts down.Muna said she partly hid the camera under her scarf while filming from a nearby rise, until she got scared. "I was thinking of my baby. He was alone in the tent. I also ran away to call for help," she said, explaining why the footage ends abruptly after the first blows.Other shepherds helped the dazed and bleeding farmers down to the main road. There they flagged down an Israeli Army jeep, which called for an ambulance, and the videocassette was handed over to the police.Tamam, 60, was taken to an Israeli hospital with a broken cheekbone and a gash on her right hand. Khalil, who received a head wound, and Imran, who said he had briefly lost consciousness, were treated in Hebron.The violence was foreshadowed. Khalil said that a year ago, he tried to shoo settlers' sheep away from his newly planted wheat when two settlers grabbed him and smashed his face with a stone, knocking out a front tooth.Khalil was unable to identify his attackers from any of the photographs in the police files so they closed the case, he said.The south Hebron hills are the scene of constant tension, according to Btselem and the police. The fierce competition for sparse resources is compounded by security fears and deeply conflicting national claims.Ancient Susiya contains the ruins of a synagogue dating from the Roman period, attesting to a long and robust Jewish presence here. Jewish settlers started moving in again after Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war.In the persistent war over the land, blood has been spilled on both sides. In 2001, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, Yair Har Sinai, a well-known Jewish shepherd from the settlement of Susiya, was murdered in the Hebron hills.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/23/africa/settlers.php