Israeli Police Let Settlers Go on Rampage: Israeli Rights Group
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Israeli police stood idly by while armed Jewish settlers attacked Palestinians, says B'Tselem |
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, August 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli rights
group B'Tselem published a report Thursday, August 8, accusing the
Israeli police of standing idly while armed fanatic Jewish settlers
attacked Palestinians for two days in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil
(Hebron).
Based
on testimonies by Israeli and Palestinian witnesses, B'Tselem, which
monitors human rights in the occupied territories, produced a 20-page
report entitled "Standing idly by: Non-enforcement of the law on
settlers" that indicted the Israeli police forces' lack of
performance in containing the settlers, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
A
Palestinian girl was shot dead and 23 other Palestinians were injured
Sunday, July 28, by Jewish settlers who went on the rampage through
the West Bank city of Al-khalil, causing widespread fear and panic
among the Palestinian civilians.
As
she stood on her balcony near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Nivin Musa
Jamjoum, 14, was shot in the head, by a mob of Jewish settlers. The
place, also known as the Machpelah Cave, is a contested religious site
in Hebron where a Jewish fanatic shot dead 29 Palestinians in 1994,
said AFP.
Jamjoum‘s
brother was also wounded, but only slightly.
Twelve
other Palestinians were injured by the fanatic settlers, including a
family of six riding a horse-drawn cart, which was rammed by settlers
in a car on a by-pass road, eyewitnesses said.
Two
others, one of them a man in his 20s, were suffering from gunshot
wounds, while a nine-year-old was beaten up and stabbed, witnesses
added.
Another
Palestinian youth was stabbed and later evacuated for medical
treatment.
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| 14-year-old
slain Palestinian Nivin taken to hospital |
Eleven
other people, including an Israeli policeman, were injured in the
rioting. Israel army radio said the policeman was injured in the face
by settlers.
The
settlers also took over a three-story Palestinian house, confining the
Abu Nagiba al-Sharbati family to a single room, while a second
Palestinian house was torched and badly damaged.
The
burned house, a three-story building belonging to the Abu Samir
al-Sharbati family, contained a large collection of antiquities. The
family was evicted before the house was torched.
Settlers
were also shooting and throwing stones at Palestinian houses near the
Jewish enclave of Avraham Avinu after the funeral of an Israeli
soldier and resident of the area who was killed Friday, July 26, in a
Palestinian road ambush.
Colonel
Moshe Givati, an aide to Israel's right-wing Public Security Minister
Uzi Landau, was at the funeral and said he had seen "brutal
acts" by the settlers, dismissing their claim that they were
acting in self-defense after Palestinian provocations.
Givati
was quoted last week by the daily Haaretz as describing the
incident as a "pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no
provocation on the Palestinian side."
"At
most, and I even doubt that, a small rock was thrown from the
direction of the Palestinians. And that was enough. That was the
signal for the thugs to charge," he told the Israeli daily.
He
said most of the troublemakers were from hard line settlement outposts
set up near the northern West Bank.
The
B'Tselem report quotes the brother of the slain Palestinian girl and
various other victims of the two-day violence in which settlers
"injured more than ten other Palestinians, took control of a
house [in which they still remain] and damaged property in some twenty
other houses."
The
report also quotes a soldier who witnessed the incidents as he was
attending the funeral of one of the victims of a road ambush.
"My
impression was that the security forces, who were there en masse,
didn't really make an effort to stop the settlers' actions ... they
didn't want to confront the settlers but rather let them vent
anger," the soldier told B'Tselem, according to AFP.
Most
of Al-Khalil passed under Palestinian control in 1997, but Israel
retained control over the city center where around 400 hardline
settlers live in heavily armed enclaves alongside some 120,000
Palestinians.
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