Holy Land: settlers injure children, destroy grape vines

blood-soaked pavement

Christian and Jewish peace activists have reported several incidents over the last few days in which illegal settlers attacked Palestian people and land.

In the old city in Hebron, two boys, ages 14 and 15, residents of Beit Hadassah Settlement, threw multiple stones, some as large as five inches across, at Palestinians walking past in the market place on 2 June. One nine year old boy was struck with two stones causing a head injury that splattered the sidewalk and storefront with blood. An ambulance arrived to rush the boy to the hospital for emergency care.

An IDF soldier stationed beside the settlement had neither tried to stop the boys nor take any action against the two teens who had hurled these stones at the people shopping below. An Israeli Policeman later called on a resident who saw much of the incident and took information to investigate further into this tragedy.

This same resident's house is back to back with the Beit Hadassah settlement. Besides enduring daily harassment from settles he needs to board his windows toprotect his family from the violence of the settlers. Lately, he reported several incidents, including settlers from Beit Hadassah smashing his car windows and throwing eggs at his store.

Elsewhere, settlers destroyed grapevines belonging to Palestinian farmer near the Bet'Ayn Settlement near Beit Ummar. The farmers said the destruction happened during the night. The field is some distance from the village; therefore, it cannot be monitored every hour. These settlers from Bet'Ayn, according to the people of the village, have a reputation of being aggressive toward the farmers in the area.

Abu Mohammed (Issa), also a farmer of Beit Ummar, works for the farmers' safety. He said there are four settlements surrounding Beit Ummar, and it has become progressively more difficult for the farmers to do the necessary farm preparations, cultivation, and harvesting of the crops in their fields with the settlers' increased activity. Now Bet'Ayn is expanding and creeping closer to the Palestinian village, making any work in the fields still more precarious.

Ta'ayush, an Israeli Peace Activist group, also had four members at this scene. One member spoke about the clever, sure, easy ways that Israel has historically adopted to take more and more Palestinian land and claim it all as state land:

1. Confiscate the grazing land by instituting the law that if the land is not worked for three years, it automatically becomes state land.

2. Declare that all the mountains are state land, for security purposes. The valleys maybe cultivated.

3. The state lands can be declared public lands also. These public lands can then be allotted to groups who want to use them according to the wishes of the state, that is for settlement purposes. (Only one parcel of land since 1967 has been allotted to the Palestinians.)

Another Israeli activist spoke about the tremendous need she sees for Americans to take action-not only for the sake of the Palestinians but for the Israeli people as well.

"The Israelis are blind," she said. "For the Americans to keep supporting Israel with $11,000,000/day to keep the settlements and the military strong here, it is like giving drugs to your girlfriend. It's like putting a drunk person behind the wheel. You must work with your government. It is killing us."

Source: Christian Peacemakers/ICN