JERUSALEM: Hundreds of Jewish settlers (occupiers) are engaged in violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers who get in their way, Israel’s top general in the occupied West Bank said in remarks published yesterday.
“In the past, only a few dozen individuals took part in such activity but today that number has grown into the hundreds. That’s a very significant change,” Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni said in an interview with the Haaretz newspaper.
“These hundreds are engaged in conspiratorial actions against Palestinians and the security forces. It’s a very grave phenomenon,” he said, accusing leaders of the settlers and rabbis, whom he did not name, of encouraging vigilante violence. Shamni’s comments echoed the findings of a recent UN report which recorded 222 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank in the first half of 2008 compared with 291 in all of 2007.
Palestinians have long complained of harassment by the occupiers, including the burning of their olive trees and rock throwing against farmers.
In an incident on Sept. 13, scores of occupiers armed with guns, slingshots, knives and stun grenades attacked the West Bank village of Asira Al-Kibliya, wounding three Palestinians.
Settlers and the Israeli Army said the Asira assault was triggered by the wounding of a nine-year-old settler boy by a Palestinian whom he had disturbed in the act of setting fire to a house in the Yitzhar settlement while the family was away.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reacted strongly to the attack, saying he would not tolerate “pogroms” by Jewish extremists who are determined on religious grounds to stop Israel swapping occupied land for peace. No arrests were made after the attack on Asira.
In the interview, Shamni said Israeli officers and soldiers who have tried to protect Palestinians from attacks have been injured by the occupiers or had their vehicles damaged. Diverting military resources to keep settlers in line, Shamni said, impairs the army’s ability to carry out “security missions” in the West Bank, which include raids against wanted Palestinians.
Palestinians say the military often turns a blind eye to the occupiers’ vigilantism. Some 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem. The areas are home to some 2.5 million Palestinians. “The majority of (settlers) here act normally. We’re talking about a hard core of a few hundred activists,” Shamni said.
Israeli police yesterday detained prominent settler leader and extreme right-wing activist Daniela Weiss for attacking police officers during the evacuation of an illegal settlement outpost near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.
The Israeli Army Radio quoted witnesses as saying that there was no one in the outpost as the forces vacated it, but that right-wing activists came to the area soon afterward. The occupiers were cleared from the area. Two hours later stones were hurled at the security forces at the site, but no injuries were reported.
Meanwhile, a nearby olive grove owned by Palestinians from the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddoum was set on fire.
Two weeks ago Israeli police arrested two Yitzhar settlers for suspicion of torching agricultural land belonging to Palestinians near the village of Madama.
Last week, an Israeli academic who has been an outspoken critic of the occupation of Palestinian lands, was wounded by a pipe bomb outside his Jerusalem home. Olmert said the bombing was evidence of “an evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of violence” threatening Israeli democracy.
— With input from agencies
