BEIT DAJAN, West Bank, 5 May 2005 — With blood pouring down his face, 70-year-old Aziz Hneini staggered down the steep hillside in search of help, his limbs aching after a brutal beating by a gang of young Jewish settlers. With a big gash on his head and his left shoulder and lower body badly beaten, Hneini spent four days in hospital before being discharged.

After returning to his home near the West Bank city of Nablus, Hneini recalls how he was set upon by a group of five men from the Elon Moreh settlement as he tended his sheep. “They called to me in Hebrew but I didn’t understand and they started attacking me,” says the shepherd. “I tried to ward off the blows with my cane, but they grabbed it and it broke. Three of them started hitting me with the broken stick and with stones while the other two stood watching.”

The incident was one of a growing number of attacks by radical settlers, which are often overlooked by the Israeli police and army. Since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, an increasing number of Palestinians have been beaten by gangs of settlers. Others have had trees cut down, their livestock stolen or poisoned, and property destroyed.

“I remember when this land was occupied by the British and by the Jordanians, but this government is different,” Hneini told Israeli police while en route to hospital. “It lets citizens do what they want.” Hneini does not hold out much hope that the police, who are responsible for all settler-related issues in the West Bank, will act against his aggressors, and no one has yet been charged in connection with the assault.

However, a West Bank police spokesman denied that the number of anti-Palestinian attacks was on the increase and insisted that the investigation was ongoing. “He (Hneni) was shown a number of pictures and identified one suspect, a resident of Elon Moreh. He (the suspect) was called in for questioning and denied all knowledge of the incident,” said Moshe Fintzy. “When we have more evidence we of course will press more charges,” he added.

A newly formed Israeli rights watchdog, Yesh Din, which is also probing Hneini’s case, is hoping to challenge the absence of law enforcement which enables settlers to act with impunity. Staffed by some 35 activists, mostly women, their aim is to pressure the police, army and courts to protect innocent Palestinians.

Although such incidents occur across the West Bank, the situation around Nablus appears particularly bad. In late September, a settler from Itamar shot dead a Palestinian minibus driver on a road east of Nablus. At the time, the settler claimed he shot the driver for trying to run him off the road. But Ahmed Ishtayeh, a shepherd who was also in the vehicle, told AFP the settler forced the minibus to stop then fired point blank at the driver. The settler is now on trial for manslaughter.

Ishtayeh himself was also beaten by an armed settler before having some of his sheep and two sheepdogs shot dead in a case due for trial shortly. “This area is under Israeli security control — we are at their mercy and they just won’t help us,” he said.

Last week, a team from Yesh Din drove deep into the village of Akraba, south of Nablus, to meet two Palestinians who had their ID cards stolen by armed settlers. Holding the two at gunpoint, the settlers took their identity cards, smashed their mobile phone and slashed the tires on their tractor and trailer. Although the two filed a complaint, they say police have not lifted a finger. Yesh Din’s lawyer Michael Sfard says the group has evidence of “widespread police refusal to register Palestinians’ complaints against settlers”.

“Many of the police stations are inside settlements so the Palestinians have no physical access, and policemen see their role as only managing settler complaints,” he says.

Another problem is that many of the police are themselves settlers, seeing the Palestinians “as enemies coming to lodge complaints against their brothers”. “It is very shameful thing that there is absolutely no rule of law here,” says 77-year-old Ruth Kedar, one of the founders of Yesh Din. “The settlers have been able to get away with almost anything.”