“Their aim is to frighten” — settlers target Palestinians
BY EDITOR – OCTOBER 5, 2011
POSTED IN: NEWS
Settler violence has continued to increase in recent months. Attacks on Palestinian property—notably olive trees, agricultural land and mosques—and physical attacks have intensified.
Tensions in the run up to the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN and the demolition of the illegal settler outpost of Migron are the most recent reasons for the spike in settler violence.
A settler car hit two nursing students, 19-year-old Ahlam Bilal Hamad and her 18-year-old sister, Saja, on the road from Ramallah to Nablus on 4 October. The car hit the two as they were crossing the street, the girls said. They have both been hospitalized.
A Jewish settler ran over a Palestinian man this morning near Frush Beit Dajan, a village east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, local sources said.
On Monday morning Jewish extremists burnt down a mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba Zangariya in the northern Galilee. The building was completely gutted and most of the Korans inside destroyed. The attackers left a message on the wall reading, “Price tag. Palmer. Revenge,” in reference to the death of a Jewish settler named Palmer who was killed in a car crash near Hebron recently. The Israeli police declared the crash was caused by Palestinian youth throwing stones at the car.
Last month, settlers from the illegal outpost of Esh Kodesh set fire to a mosque in Kusra, a village near the West Bank city of Nablus.
In June, Jewish extremists attacked a mosque in the Bedouin village of Ibtin, near the mixed Palestinian-Jewish city of Haifa, on Israel’s northern coastline.
In addition to arson attack on mosques, settlers routinely destroy Palestinians’ olive trees, uprooting or burning them. In the first week of September, for example, OCHA reported the destruction of 390 olive and grape trees, bringing the number of destroyed trees to 6,680 since the start of 2011.
Over 500 olive trees were burned in Ramallah and Hebron on Saturday night, Ma’an News reported.
Eighty-three dunams of land has been burned and 40 dunams of agricultural land flooded in the month of September, Maan also reported.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s security and intelligence body, has discovered evidence of the formation of terrorist cells among settler communities, whose primary objective is the targeting of Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, the Independent reported in September.
Sources from the Shin Bet have said extreme right wing activists are attempting to deter defense officials and civil servants by using intimidation and smear campaigns against them, Ha’aretz reported on Monday.
According to Ha’aretz, defense officials have said that well known far right activists have been involved in the attack on mosques in the West Bank, 12 of whom have been banned from entering the Palestinian territories.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti commented, “What we are witnessing now is organized terrorist settler groups that are attacking Palestinian civilians. These attacks are planned and organized. Their goal [is] to terrorize Palestinian communities.”
