Jewish settlers are terrorising Palestinians, says Israeli general
Catrina Stewart
18 July 2011
independent.co.uk
A senior Israeli army commander has warned that unchecked "Jewish terror" against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank threatens to plunge the territory into another conflict. In unusually outspoken comments, Major General Avi Mizrahi took aim at extremist Israeli settlers, and said the yeshiva, or religious seminary, in Yitzhar, one of the most radical Jewish strongholds in the West Bank, should be closed, calling it a source of terror against Palestinians. The general's comments are likely to put him at odds with Israel's pro-settler government, which has resisted US-led efforts to curb settlement expansion in a bid to revive stalled peace talks. The foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, himself lives in a West Bank settlement. All settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.
The army has anxiously watched an upsurge in violence by hardline settlers, who in recent months have set fire to a West Bank mosque, burned Palestinian olive groves, and vandalised Palestinian property. Settlers have killed three Palestinians this year. "What's happening in the field is terrorism," General Mizrahi told Channel 2's Meet the Press, and it "needs to be dealt with." The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), he said, fears "terrorism against Palestinians is likely to ignite the territories."
The general's criticism points to frustration within the army's high command at their ability to check violent settlers. Palestinians and Israeli NGOs frequently accuse the army of siding with settlers in conflagrations with Palestinians, prompting the army to respond that it is obliged to protect its citizens and does not set policy. The number of violent incidents has spiked in recent months, partly because of the murder earlier this year of five members, including three children, from one Jewish family in Itamar, a settlement near Nablus. Two Palestinians were charged with the crime.
Human rights groups suggest that the more radical settlers, many of whom oppose a two-state solution on the premise that the whole of Israel is bequeathed to them by God, are agitating against Palestinian moves to seek statehood recognition at the United Nations in September. Some fear that the surge in violent attacks against Palestinians could compound rising frustrations with the stalled peace process and trigger more violent riots.
"The army is very afraid that [action by settlers] at a critical moment could set off a Third Intifada," said Adam Keller, spokesman for Israeli human rights body Gush Shalom, referring to a mass Palestinian uprising. "The fact that the army is nervous is making the settlers more aggressive," he said The Israeli commander General Mizrahi blamed the courts for failing to rein in the most radical of the settlers – a small proportion of the roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers who are living beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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A rare example of honesty which will promptly be ignored by mainstream corporate media.
thanks for that major - it will be handy on other sites where people refuse to believe that the Settlers are anything other than decent people trying to live their lives...
10yr old Palestinian boy attacked; police arrest 13 settlers
Yair Altman
20th August 2011
ynetnews.com
A 10-year-old Palestinian boy sustained moderate wounds Saturday after masked men assaulted him near the West Bank outpost of Ramat Migron. Police forces detained 13 settlers on suspicion of involvement in the incident.
The initial Palestinian report on the assault was received by Israel's Civil Administration in the territories. IDF forces rushed to the site, located the wounded boy and alerted police. Police officers quickly launched a manhunt for suspects.
The injured boy is a member of the Bedouin community in the Judean Desert and was herding sheep at the site. He was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital by the Palestinian Red Crescent. Medical officials said the boy sustained blows to his head and cuts. Police officials discovered metal rods at the site of the incident apparently used by the assailants.
While the circumstances of the incident were not initially clear, the Judea and Samaria police detained 13 settler suspects, who were not cooperating with authorities. All the detained suspects are teenagers, aged 16 to 18, police officials said.
Settlers set fire to West Bank mosque after Israel demolishes illegal structures in Migron Palestinian Authority condemns attack, says incident is not the first of its kind to be carried out by settlers against mosques, hours after Israel Police destroys three homes in settlement outpost of Migron.
By Chaim Levinson and Avi Issacharoff
haaretz.com
5th September 2011
A mosque in the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus, was set on fire Monday morning, hours after Israeli police officers destroyed three illegal structures in the settlement outpost of Migron. According to Palestinian sources, a group of settlers arrived at the village mosque at approximately 3 A.M., threw burning tires toward it, and broke several of its windows. The event is the latest in a series of clashes between settlers and Palestinians in the region.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, stating that it is not the first of its kind to be carried out by settlers against mosques in the West Bank, and called on the Middle East Quartet to get involved. According to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, settlers also threw rocks at Palestinian vehicles near the settlement of Yitzhar, resulting in several instances of smashed windows.
The settler attack comes on the heels of response of the demolition of three buildings early Monday morning in the West Bank settlement outpost Migron, 14 kilometers north of Jerusalem. Around 200 settlers assembled and tried to make their way to the structures, hoping to stop the bulldozers in their tracks. Six youths were arrested.
The incident began an hour past midnight, when the police officers began emptying the buildings of their contents. While this was taking place, Regavim, a settlers' advocacy group, petitioned the Supreme Court, asking for a court injunction stopping the demolition. Justice Neil Hendel, who heard the petition, granted the advocacy group a 12-hour delay, halting the demolition.
The respite turned out to be short-lived, as a few hours later, the Supreme Court issued another order which sanctioned the demolition, and rendering the previous injunction void. The three buildings, built this year, were ordered to be destroyed by the Supreme Court, following a petition issued by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. The state initially said it would comply with the court ruling by mid-July, and later postponed the demolition to an unspecified date during September.
Danny Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council of West Bank settlements, who arrived at the scene, said “the decision to demolish the houses was made by the government not the court, thus the responsibility for this futile action lay with the government. It is still not too late for the Prime Minister to reverse the decision.”
Israel fears settlers in West Bank are using terror tactics
Catrina Stewart
14 September 2011
independent.co.uk
Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, says that Jewish extremists are forming new "terrorist" groups that are deliberately targeting Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, intelligence sources were quoted as saying yesterday. Israeli officials have watched with alarm a sudden spike in attacks by Jewish zealots, particularly West Bank settlers, on Palestinian and Israeli property and personnel following the Israeli army's demolition of several homes in Migron, an illegal Jewish outpost in the occupied West Bank, 10 days ago. Tensions are also rising because of Palestinian plans to seek membership of the United Nations in New York next week, a move that right-wing Israelis fear could lead to an eventual evacuation of West Bank settlements, viewed as illegal under international law, to make way for an independent state.
Shin Bet sources told the liberal Ha'aretz newspaper that the Jewish groups were essentially engaged in "terrorist activity" by planning attacks, conducting covert surveillance of Palestinian villages, and gathering data on Israeli activists. The disclosure reveals growing unease among the security forces at their inability to contain increasingly militant settlers, seemingly bent on exacting revenge for every move against them through so-called "price tag" attacks – where Palestinian property is destroyed for every hostile move towards the settlers by the Israeli authorities.
In recent days, settlers are suspected of defacing two Palestinian mosques, uprooting and setting fire to olive trees, torching cars and daubing graffiti on the walls of a Palestinian university in Birzeit. Vandals also broke into an Israeli army base, slashing tyres and spray painting "price tag" on army vehicles, and wrecked the engines of bulldozers used for the demolitions in Migron.
At the home of an Israeli activist who works for Israel's Peace Now, which monitors the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the assailants' slogans included "Migron forever" and "Death to traitors". "They want to silence us, to scare us. It's not going to happen," said the activist, who did not want to be named. In a statement, Peace Now called for "emergency measures against what is becoming the new Jewish underground".
Ideologically-motivated settlers, who believe they have a divine right to the West Bank, represent some of the most right-wing opinion in Israel. Though a majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, many settlers remain fiercely opposed to either a bi-national state or to Palestinian statehood, doubting that the two peoples could exist peacefully side by side. "We need to erase the idea of a Palestinian state from people's minds and convince the world that Islam is a danger," Michael Ben-Ari, a right-wing politician and settler, told a workshop this week.
Israeli agency urges funding to be cut from extremist settler college
Donald Macintyre
28 September 2011
independent.co.uk
Israel's domestic intelligence agency is urging the government to stop funding a religious college in a Jewish West Bank settlement after warning that its senior rabbis are encouraging students to attack Palestinians. The intelligence agency, Shin Bet, pressed a month ago for an immediate block on the annual £226,000 grant for the religious college, or yeshiva, in the notoriously extreme settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus. The Education Ministry has reportedly yet to take a decision despite two meetings with Shin Bet.
Residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Asira El Qbilya say the masked, club-wielding teenage settlers who invaded it last week came from Yitzhar. The Israeli military disclosed last month that it had issued restraining orders on 12 settlers from the Yitzhar area for "violent and clandestine activity" targeting Palestinians in the West Bank, including endangering lives by "igniting... mosques, vehicles and buildings".
The head of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva complex in the settlement, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, has been filmed accompanying students who threw stones at a Palestinian village. Rabbi Shapira is the author of The King's Torah, a book which suggests that Jewish law on occasion permits the killing of non-Jews.
There was heightened tension in parts of the West Bank last week as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, submitted his application for UN recognition. A Palestinian was shot dead in Qusra, also near Nablus, by Israeli troops after confronting villagers who gathered in response to a settler invasion. A Jewish settler and his one-year-old son were killed in a car crash near Hebron, which the police say was probably caused by Palestinians throwing stones.
Meanwhile, the US joined Palestinian leaders in condemning Israeli government approval yesterday for the construction of 1,100 new homes in the Jerusalem area settlement of Gilo. It came only days after the international quartet of the US, EU, Russia and the UN urged the parties to "refrain from provocative actions" that might jeopardise future negotiations. A US State Department official said Washington saw the "continued expansion of settlements" as "corrosive not only to peace efforts and a two-state solution, but to Israel's future itself".
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If even the domestic intelligence agency is opposed to settlers receiving state funding, you know they must be extreme.
Israeli companies can profit from West Bank resources, court rules
Supreme court says international law does not fit the 'reality on the ground' of long-term Israeli occupation
Harriet Sherwood in Kochav HaShachar
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 January 2012 14.51 GMT
Israeli companies are entitled to exploit the West Bank's natural resources for economic gain, according to a supreme court ruling that says international law must be adapted to the "reality on the ground" of long-term occupation.
The supreme court rejected a petition brought by an Israeli human rights organisation against the quarrying of stone by Israeli companies in the West Bank. Yesh Din claimed that the quarrying was illegal under international law because it exploited the natural resources of the occupied territory for the benefit of the occupying power.
But the court ruled last week that in a prolonged occupation the economic development of the occupied territory could not be frozen indefinitely. It added that the quarrying firms were not destroying the "capital" of the West Bank's natural resources, and were providing employment to Palestinians.
Existing Israeli-owned quarries should be allowed to continue operating, but no new ones should open, the court ruled, reflecting the Israeli government's position.
Yesh Din said the ruling could be applied to other economic aspects of the occupation, such as water resources and the appropriation of archeological artefacts.
Its petition against the state of Israel and 10 Israeli companies operating quarries in the West Bank demanded a halt to all Israeli quarrying and mining activity, and that no new licences be issued. It said Israeli quarrying in the West Bank was illegal and "executed through brutal economic exploitation of occupied territory for the needs of the state of Israel, the occupying power".
Yesh Din quoted an Israeli interior ministry document from 2008, which said that most mines and quarries in Area C of the West Bank (around 60% of the territory that is under Israeli military control) are owned by Israeli companies. Three-quarters of the total yield is sold in Israel.
Michael Sfard, Yesh Din's legal adviser, said: "Quarrying natural resources in an occupied territory for the benefit of the occupying state is pillage, and the court's reasoning that a long-term occupation should be treated differently cannot legalise an economic activity that harms the occupied residents."
Hanna Barag of Yesh Din said the ruling was "dangerous". The judgment was based on the assumption that the length of the occupation meant that Israel could adapt international law. "It allows Israel to literally steal the land," she said. Israel has occupied the West Bank for more than 44 years.
At a quarry close to the Israeli settlement of Kochav HaShacher, deep in the West Bank, director Ami Soshani dismissed Yesh Din's arguments, saying Palestinians benefited from the company's operations.
The land on which the quarry is sited was taken over by Israel. Owned by the settlement and managed by a separate company, the quarry is overlooked by the Palestinian village of Kfar Malek.
It extracts around half a million tonnes of dolomite each year, and 20 of its 25 employees are Palestinians. Soshani says that most of its output stays in the West Bank, sold either to settlements or Palestinian concrete factories.
"For the Palestinians, this is an important centre. Palestinian construction companies know they are not cheated and get a good product. The Palestinian workers here did not support the court action because they knew it could affect their livelihoods," he said.
The land itself, he said, had been promised to the Jews. "This is our inheritance, we got this land from God." There was no reason why Jews and Palestinians couldn't "stay together and live together" on the land, he added.
Shoshani said his major concern was for the environment. "This kind of quarrying is damaging. It is an ugly wound on the landscape." A geological survey found there was potential for a further 20 years of quarrying at the site.
In response to the ruling, Yesh Din said "manipulation of the rule prohibiting the harming of property in occupied territory creates a legal basis for irreparable economic exploitation of occupied territory… On its face, the new rule allows the occupier (in a long-term occupation) to make endless use of the variety of objects found in the occupied territory: to pump its water sources, to transfer its archeological artefacts to elsewhere outside the territory, to use areas within it for garbage disposal, to sell public real estate, and more."
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Legalized theft. I guess that's why it's called Apartheid.
Israel bars 12 "extremist" settlers from West Bank
By Yolande Knell BBC News, Jerusalem
5 January 2012 Last updated at 11:02 ET
Israeli police have issued restraining orders to a dozen settlers barring them from entering the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military described the group as "extremists" suspected of involvement in violence targeting Palestinians and Israeli forces.
The bans run for up to nine months.
Israeli authorities have announced plans to stop so-called "price tag" attacks carried out by Jewish extremists in response for any action taken against settlement expansion.
There has recently been a series in arson attacks on mosques and a reported rise in vandalism against private Palestinian property.
Israeli military bases in the West Bank have also been targeted. Israeli soldiers are based in the territory to protect Jewish settlers but are also responsible for carrying out demolition orders of illegal outposts.
According to Israeli public radio restraining orders were handed out in two right-wing settlements close to Nablus, Yizhar and Elon More, and three outposts.
The IDF statement said they were the result of "a specific security necessity", issued "after exhausting all other alternatives."
It said the Shin Bet internal security service had gathered information that "the group of extremists has been involved in leading, directing and executing violent and clandestine activity targeting Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and security forces operating in the area, therefore endangering lives and disrupting public order".
"New steps"
Last month, after an incident at an Israeli army base, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said a list of administrative measures was being taken.
A Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron argues with an Israeli soldier Israeli soldiers are brought in to stop clashes between settlers and Palestinians
Under the new regulations, the army will now have the authority to detain offenders, as well as the police, and they will be tried in military courts rather than in civilian courts.
In the past, Israeli police have made arrests of individuals suspected of being behind "price tag" violence but none has been charged.
The Palestinians have criticised what they see as a lack of serious action by Israel to stop the attacks on their communities.
There are more than a hundred Jewish settlements in the West Bank, territory that Israel captured in the 1967 war. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
There are also dozens of outposts which were never authorised by the Israeli government.
Palestinian officials demand a halt to settlement construction in occupied territory which they describe as "an obstacle to peace".
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"Do come back for at least a few months." Problem fixed.
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