The Israel Defense Forces consider it a crime punishable by imprisonment for a Palestinian to possess used IDF weapons, according to an indictment filed by the military prosecutor against Abdullah Abu Rahma of the West Bank town of Bil’in.
Abu Rahma, 39, is coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, which has been holding demonstrations against construction of the separation fence on the village’s land. A teacher by profession, he was arrested by IDF troops on December 10 and indicted in a military court last Tuesday.
In addition to charges of incitement and throwing stones, Abu Rahma was charged with illegal weapons possession due to his alleged possession of M16 rifle bullets and gas and concussion grenades – which, the indictment said, “the accused and his associates used for an exhibition that showed people the means used by the security forces.”
Abu Rahma’s associates confirmed that empty concussion and gas grenades used by the IDF to disperse demonstrators were exhibited in Bil’in, adding that no one tried to conceal the nature of the exhibition. However, they said, M16 bullets were not part of the exhibit, nor were they found in a search of Abu Rahma’s home.
Activists in Bil’in speculated that the M16 allegation stemmed from misinformation given to the army by one of the many young people the army has arrested in recent months. They charge that these arrests are made in an effort to obtain incriminating material against the protest organizers.
In the case of another local protest organizer, Mohammed Khatib, a military court concluded that evidence that he had thrown stones was fabricated, after it turned out that at the time of the alleged infraction, he was abroad.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who met with Abu Rahma and Khatib last summer during a visit to Israel, condemned Abu Rahma’s arrest and indictment on Wednesday and urged the Israeli authorities to release him immediately. Tutu’s summer visit to the region was under the auspices of The Elders, a group of global leaders formed by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
In his statement on Wednesday, Tutu said that he and his fellow delegation members – who included former American president Jimmy Carter, former Irish president Mary Robinson and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland – were “impressed by [Abu Rahma and Khatib’s] commitment to peaceful political action, and their success in challenging the wall that unjustly separates the people of Bil’in from their land and their olive trees.” He called Abu Rahma’s arrest and indictment “part of an escalation by the Israeli military to try to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in.”
Children play in the rubble of their homes in Jabaliya, destroyed by the Israeli offensive in January. Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Polaris/eyevine
Ghiada abu Elaish’s fingers twist in her lap and her eyes cloud over as she recalls the day an Israeli shell killed four of her cousins and left her in a coma for 22 days. She has had almost 12 months to reflect on the tragedy, a time in which hatred and anger might have consumed the 13-year-old. Remarkably, though, not only has she survived shocking injuries and a dozen operations, with many more to come, but she has retained both her sweet nature and faith in a bright future.
Which makes it all the harder for her to return each day after school, dressed in the ubiquitous Palestinian uniform of blue-and-white-striped smock over jeans and trainers, to the scene of the massacre – her family home.
It was Friday 16 January and Ghiada was studying for exams. Her father, a pharmacist, woke from a nap, demanding tea and shouting at the younger children to be quiet. “Suddenly I could hear my cousin downstairs, screaming ‘Dead! Dead!'” A shell had hit the building – a block of five apartments, housing the extended Abu Elaish family – smashing windows and causing extensive damage to the flat below.
In the ensuing panic, Ghiada defied her father and followed him downstairs. “One room was completely black. I saw Aya [my cousin], she was on the ground with wood on top of her. There was a big hole in the wall.”
Ghiada tried pulling Aya out from under the furniture. A second shell struck. “There was a big light for a second,” she says. “I saw some windows smash and I heard screaming all around. A piece of shrapnel hit me. I started to scream for help and then fell down unconscious.”
Ghiada’s father, Atta Mohammed abu Elaish, rushed into the room. “I saw bodies without heads and legs. I saw my daughter. I saw her mother screaming.” He ran outside to call an ambulance. “The Israelis stopped the ambulances 250 metres from the house. Some boys from the street came to start ferrying the bodies and the injured out of the building.”
The attack was one of countless assaults during Israel’s 23 days of war on Gaza – Operation Cast Lead – that began on 27 December. But it was also one of the most notorious because Ghiada’s uncle – Aya’s father – was a doctor who worked in Israeli hospitals and was well known to Israeli viewers for advocating peace and reconciliation. All through the conflict, Dr Izzeldin abu Elaish gave regular eyewitness accounts by phone in fluent Hebrew to Israeli television. Within minutes of the attack on his own family, he was back on the phone to a journalist in a Tel Aviv studio, weeping and begging for help as Israeli viewers listened: “My daughters have been killed.”
Indeed, they had: Bissan, 20, Miar, 15, and Aya, 14, were dead, along with another cousin, 17-year-old Nour. Ghiada was in a critical condition; another of the doctor’s daughters was also wounded.
The injured girls – thanks to that live TV broadcast – were unusually and swiftly evacuated to a hospital in Tel Aviv, where Ghiada was found to be suffering from multiple problems with her heart, kidneys, stomach and legs. She remained in hospital in Israel for four and a half months.
Now, Ghiada says, she thinks about that day “always”, but tries not to let others see her pain. “When I am crying, I go to my room and cry alone,” she says. Does she feel angry? No, she says, just sad. And she plans to stay put in Gaza: “Maybe others would like to emigrate, but that’s not for me.”
Toll of death and destruction
But if Ghiada expresses no bitterness, her father insists she is angry and so is the rest of the family. “It’s very hard for us,” he says. “That accident took Bissan, Nour, Miar, Aya – and my brother.” Dr Abu Elaish has left Gaza for Canada. “He is the eldest brother, the father of the family, and now he’s gone. How can we forgive?”
The shelling of the Abu Elaish family was unusual in that it caught the attention of the Israeli public, but what Ghiada continues to endure 12 months on is shared by many of Gaza’s 750,000 children – half of its population.
More than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the 23 days of the Israeli assault, including several hundred children. The actual number is in dispute. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documented 313 deaths, almost 40% of them less than 10 years old. Other Palestinian groups say the toll was much higher. More than 1,600 children were injured.
But the 23-day war is only part of the story. The long history of Israeli assaults on Gaza, and the two-and-a-half-year-long blockade of the territory after Hamas took power, has exacted a toll on almost every aspect of children’s lives: schooling, housing, leisure time, what they eat, what they wear, how they see the future.
A Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) survey earlier this year found that about 75% of children over the age of six were suffering from one or more symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Almost one in 10 ticked off every criteria.
“The majority of children suffer many psychological and social consequences,” says Dr Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist with GCMHP. “Insecurity and feelings of helplessness and powerlessness are overwhelming. We observed children becoming more anxious – sleep disturbances, nightmares, night terror, regressive behaviour such as clinging to parents, bed wetting, becoming more restless and hyperactive, refusal to sleep alone, all the time wanting to be with their parents, overwhelmed by fears and worries. Some start to be more aggressive.”
Dr Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, professor of psychiatry at al-Quds university in Gaza, says the conflict has a different impact on boys and girls. “Girls have more anxiety and depression, boys are more hyperactive.”
Some children no longer look on their homes as a place of safety, security and comfort. Others don’t even have a home to go to. The Israeli bombardment damaged or destroyed more than 20,000 houses, forcing some families into tents and others into crowding in with relatives. Hamas distributed money to displaced families to rebuild their homes but the Israeli blockade has created a desperate shortage of materials. Almost one year later, some children still have no roof over their head.
Hanan Attar, a slight 10-year-old wearing flip-flops several sizes too big for her small feet, is wistful as she recalls the house destroyed by an Israeli tank shell. “We had land, my father is a farmer,” she says. “We used to grow watermelons, but the land was too close to the border and we can’t get there now.”
Home is now a tent on a patch of scrubby sand, shared by 10 members of her family, including a 50-day-old baby sister with a pinched face and a tin of formula milk perched on her rusting iron crib. The baby, Haneen, is seriously underweight at only 3kg, and is not growing. Her mother, Arfa, 40, cannot breastfeed because she is taking medication for back problems; the formula costs 45 shekels (£7.50) a tin, money that the family has to borrow. The father, too, is sick as well as unemployed. He reaches on top of a tall fridge that dominates the tent to pull down a sheaf of x-rays showing how his leg, broken in the conflict, is pinned together with metal.
“We are civilians, we don’t belong to any faction,” he says. “What are we guilty of so that we have to live like this? I spent my entire life building up my home. In one hour everything was gone.”
Hanan doesn’t complain about the tent, but says “the house was better”. She adds: “A snake came one night and bit my mother. I can’t sleep at night; I’m scared of the snakes and the dogs.”
Meals are cooked on a Calor gas stove; the toilets – a hut donated by an Arab charity – are shared by all the families in the compound of tents. “There are big queues,” says Hanan. Winter is coming; the tent is “freezing”, she says.
There is a community of tent families, circled round the shared lavatories. The children play as all children do, kicking a football, wrestling, dragging sticks through the sand. The families are doing their best in near-impossible circumstances. Some families have even planted small gardens in the scrub: corn and a few flowers.
But Hanan – who wants to be a doctor so she can treat the sick – says she spends most of her time in the tent with her seven brothers and sisters. Do they think they will ever go back to a proper home? “God knows,” says Arfa.
Overcrowding, lack of privacy and poverty are contributing to what some in Gaza call the “mental siege” . Tensions within families are increasing, say Gaza’s mental health experts. “Some parents themselves have depression and anxiety. Some become more aggressive towards their children,” says Zeyada.
John Ging, director of UN operations in Gaza, puts it like this: “Parents are sitting there in their homes, very upset and very frustrated at the their situation, and that is of course having ramifications for the home environment.” Has there been an increase in domestic violence? “Of course . . . children are losing respect because of the breakdown of the role-model structure. They see their parents as incapable of providing for them, they’re seeing their parents as a failure.”
Lost childhoods
Part of the problem is the lack of release and entertainment for children. There are few gardens or parks, no cinemas or theatres, many sports facilities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombing, and one of Gaza’s great natural advantages – a 25-mile stretch of sandy beach facing the Mediterranean – is hiding a fresh danger.
In the summer months, families flock to the beach on Fridays and Saturdays. The sight of children splashing in the waves is cheering until one remembers that every day 20m gallons of raw sewage is pumped into the water. Since Gaza’s sewage processing plant was bombed after the kidnap of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in July 2006, there has been no alternative means of disposal. Now, according to Save the Children, children are developing skin diseases as well as bacterial infections from swimming in polluted water.
“There are not enough safe places for children to play,” says Mona al-Shawa, head of the women’s unit at the PCHR. To counter this, the UN organised a hugely popular “Summer Games” during the long school break, despite objections from Hamas about boys and girls mixing together. “There were those on the political side saying kids should be going to summer camps, not doing sport and recreation, but preparing for a future life of militancy,” says Ging.
Ging says schooling has also suffered. Thirty-two of the UN’s 221 schools were damaged in the Israeli assault, plus scores more government ones. None have been repaired because Israel does not allow construction materials into Gaza, saying they could be used to make weapons.
“So the schools, where the windows were blown out or other damage was done, have been cleaned up, made safe, and continue in operation today without the physical repairs because we haven’t been allowed to bring in one pane of glass or one bag of cement since last January,” says Ging.
Israel did permit a consignment of wood into Gaza to make school desks for 8,000 children, but then blocked delivery of the steel necessary to complete them. “Now you see three kids squashed on to a desk,” says Ging. “How are teachers supposed to give each child the attention they need?”
There is also a shortage of school books and pens, and what does arrive mostly has to be smuggled through underground tunnels from Egypt.
The result is children attending overcrowded schools on a double or even triple shift system that has contributed to a continuing decline in education levels. One in five of the 200,000 pupils at the UN’s 221 schools in Gaza failed basic Arabic and maths exams this year.
Engendering extremism
“It’s shocking for them but it’s also alarming for us in terms of the future,” says Ging. “The objective of the [Israeli] policy is to counter extremism. Education is probably the most effective tool through which you will counter extremism, by developing a positive and well-educated mindset. And yet we are being prevented by the policy from educating these children.”
It is, he says, “facilitating the destruction of a civilised society and, worse than that, the development of an extreme society”.
One of the starkest examples of school destruction is the American International school, Gaza’s elite fee-paying institution in Beit Lahiya, which was bombed in the early hours of the morning of 3 January. The Israeli military claimed it was being used as a rocket-launching site. Now, where once stood science laboratories, computer rooms, a music centre and sports fields, there is a mountain of crushed masonry, twisted metal girders, broken glass and droppings from the sheep that roam the deserted site. To the side of what was once the main building lies a row of burned-out schoolbuses. The odd fragment of textbook can be seen amid the rubble.
Then there is the difficulty of trying to concentrate in class when children are clawed by hunger. Three-quarters of Gazans rely on food handouts, according to the UN. Save the Children says it is seeing newborn babies suffering from malnutrition. Anaemia, especially among girls, is common.
The UN has started feeding children in its schools because, says Ging, “they’re coming to school without breakfast and therefore their attention span is very short and the academic results will then reflect that”.
Food, at least, is something that is relatively easy to fix. There are many less tangible issues that concern child experts, such as a lack of healthy role models. “During the war, children could see that their parents could not fulfil their needs,” says Zeyada. “They see their fathers as weak, powerless. They see parents can’t give them feelings of security, can’t protect them. So they look towards other figures. That might be God as an absolute power – so children might go towards religion, become more fanatic. Some identify with fighters from Hamas and other groups.
“Without hope, we are moving fast towards more aggressive children, more fanatics. If the siege ended you would see positive changes among children. They [Israel] are creating their enemies. They are pushing a new generation of children to believe in violence as a way of solving their difficulties. They are creating their own enemies of the future.”
In September 2007 Israel declared Gaza a “hostile entity”. “I said at that time, and I continue to say it, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Ging. “You designate it as a hostile entity, you treat it as a hostile entity and in fact what happens is you generate hostility. And that’s precisely what we have been witnessing here at the grassroots level for the last two and a half years under this illegal siege . . . We have more extremism in Gaza every single day.”
Yet through it all, it is striking how many Palestinians cling to a belief in a better future. For all her traumas, Ghiada hasn’t given up. She attends a thrice-weekly English lesson after school to improve her chances of fulfilling her dreams.
The teacher hands Ghiada a question to answer to the class in English: If you were a colour, what colour would you choose? The girl doesn’t hesitate. “Red,” she tells the class.
The teacher asks the students what the colour red means to them. Blood, suggests one; danger, says another, both witnesses to last year’s carnage. Ghiada considers for a moment, then replies: “It makes me happy. It’s the colour of love.”
And what will Ghiada do with her English? She wants to be an airline pilot, she says.
Ironically that’s one career choice that will certainly require emigration: Gaza has no aeroplanes and the runway of its only airport was bulldozed to rubble by the Israeli army years ago.
The 23-day war in numbers
Statistics from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
• 1,420 Palestinians killed, 446 of them children
• 5,320 injured, 1,855 of them children
• 4,000 houses destroyed
• 16,000 houses damaged
• 94.6% of children aged six-17 heard the sound of sonic jetfighters
• 91.7% of them heard shelling by artillery
• 92% saw mutilated bodies on TV
• 80% were deprived of water or electricity
• 50.7% left home for a safer place
• 25.9% report one symptom of PTSD
• 39.3% report more than one symptom
• 9.8% report full criteria of PTSD
Statistics from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
• 1,414 Palestinians killed during the conflict, including 313 children, of which: – 31% girls, 69% boys
– 15% under 5; 23.3% 5-10; 62% 11-17
– 73% died from bombs; 19.8% from artillery shells; 5.4% shot; 1.5% from white phosphorous
• 5,300 Palestinians injured, including 1,606 children
• 36 UN schools damaged
• Approximately 20,000 homes completely or partially destroyed
Abdallah Abu Rahmah (right) with Ela Bhatt, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Fernando H Cardoso, Mary Robinson and Gro Brundtland of the Elders during their visit to Bil'in
As part of a recent escalation of political arrests in Bil’in, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee was arrested by Israeli soldiers.
At 2am on Thursday, 10 December 2009, seven Israeli military jeeps pulled over at Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s home in the city of Ramallah. Soldiers raided the house and arrested Abu Rahmah from his bed in the presence of his wife and three children. Abu Rahmah is a high school teacher in the Latin Patriarchate School in Birzeit near Ramallah and coordinator for the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements. A previous raid targeting Abu Rahmah on 15 September 2009 was executed with such exceptional violence, that a soldier was subsequently indicted for assault.
Abdallah has been a member of the Bil’in Popular Committee since its conception in 2004. As coordinator, Abu Rahmah not only regularly organizes and attends the weekly Friday demonstrations but does the media work for the Bil’in struggle. Abdallah has represented the village in engagements around the world to further Bil’in’s cause. He has traveled to Montreal to participate in a speaking tour and the village’s legal case against two Canadian companies building settlements on Bil’in’s land in June 2009, and in December of 2008, he participated in a speaking tour in France and traveled to Germany to accept the the Carl von Ossietzky Medal for outstanding service in the realization of basic and human rights, awarded by the board of trustees of the International League for Human Rights on behalf of Bil’in. Abdallah’s endless work for his village is just a part of his incredible persona, many of us know him personally, as he welcomes thousands of international, Palestinian and Israeli activists when they visit Bil’in.
Abu Rahmah’s arrest is part of an escalation in Israeli military’s attempts to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in, their popular leadership, and the popular struggle as a whole – aimed at crushing demonstrations against the Wall. Recently, Adv. Gaby Lasky, who represents many of Bil’in’s detainees, was informed by the military prosecution that the army intends to use legal measures as a means of ending the demonstrations.
Following Abu Rahmah’s arrest, Adv. Lasky, stated that “My client’s arrest is another blatant illustration of the Israeli authorities’ application of legal procedures for the political persecution of Bil’in residents. The Bil’in demonstrators are being systemically targeted while it is the State that is in contempt of a High Court of Justice ruling; a ruling which affirmed that the protesters have justice on their side and instructed 2 years ago that the route of the Wall in the area be changed, which has not been implemented to date.”
Since 23 June 2009, 31 residents of Bil’in have been detained by the military in a wave of night raids and arrests which began concurrently with preliminary hearings in a lawsuit against two Canadian companies responsible for the construction of an Israeli settlement on Bil’in’s land. The Israeli military is targeting protesters and the leadership of Bil’in’s Popular Committee. Apart from Abdallah, three other committee members were arrested, but all of them were released for lack of evidence. In the case of Mohammed Khatib, the court even found some of the presented evidence to be falsified. In addition to committee members, a leading Bil’in activist, Adeeb Abu Rahmah, who has been detained for over five months, is not suspected of committing any violence, but was indicted with a blanket charge of “incitement”, which was very liberally interpreted in this case to include the organizing of grassroots demonstrations.
While they continue their struggle, they need your support.
What can you do?
Attempts to criminalize the leadership of non-violent protests where curbed in the past with the help of an outpouring of support from people committed to justice from all over the world.
Please protest by contacting your political representatives, as well as your consuls and ambassadors to Israel (http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Israel) to demand that Israel stops targeting non-violent popular resistance and release Abdallah Abu Rahmah and all Bil’in prisoners.
Organise demonstrations outside of Israeli embassies in your countries in condemnation of Israel’s ongoing arrest campaign against non-violent activists and in solidarity with those who remain in Israel’s prisons (All demonstrations can be coordinated through palreports@gmail.com for media support work).
The Popular Committee of Bil’in is in desperate need for funds in order to pay legal fees both for the trial in Montréal and for representing the arrested protesters in the military courts and bail. Please donate to the Bil’in legal fund through PayPal. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation in the US or Canada contact: bilinlegal@gmail.com.
The Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements
Background
Following initial construction of Israel’s wall on Bil’in’s lands in March 2005, residents organized almost daily direct actions and demonstrations against the theft of their lands. Garnering the attention of the international community with their creativity and perseverance, Bil’in has become a symbol for Palestinian popular resistance. Almost five years later, Bil’in continues to have weekly Friday protests.
Located 12 kilometers west of Ramallah and 4 km east of the Green Line, Bil’in is an agricultural village spanning 4,000 dunams (988 acres) with approximately 1,800 residents.
While construction of and opposition to the Wall and began in 2005, the majority of land had been expropriated from Bil’in earlier.
Bil’in embraced legal measures against Israel as part of its multi-lateral resistance to the theft of their livelihoods. The village first turned to the courts in the fall of 2005. Two years after they initiated legal proceedings, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that due to illegal construction in part of Modi’in Illit, unfinished housing could not be completed and that the route of the Wall be moved several hundred meters west, returning 25% of Bil’in’s lands to the village. To date, the high court ruling has not been implemented and construction continues.
In July 2008, Bil’in commenced legal proceedings before the Superior Court of Quebec against Green Park International Inc and Green Mount International Inc for their involvement in constructing, marketing and selling residential units in the Mattityahu East section of Modi’in Illit
In an effort to stop the popular resistance in Bil’in, Israeli authorities intimidate demonstrators with physical violence and arrests.
Israeli armed forces have used sound and shock grenades, water cannons, rubber-coated steel bullets, tear-gas grenades, tear-gas canisters, high velocity tear-gas projectiles, 0.22 caliber live ammunition and live ammunition against protesters.
On 17 April 2009, Bassem Abu Rahma was shot with a high-velocity tear gas projectile in the chest by Israeli forces and subsequently died from his wounds at a Ramallah hospital.
Out of the 78 residents who have been arrested in connection to demonstrations against the Wall, 31 were arrested after the beginning of a night raid campaign on 23 June 2009. Israeli armed forces have been regularly invading homes and forcefully searching for demonstration participants, targeting the leaders of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, as well as teenage boys accused of throwing stones at the Wall. Thirteen currently remain in detention, five of which are minors.
Evacuating the injured Palestinians Friday (Photo: Activestills)
A 20-year-old Palestinian protestor was moderately injured from a bullet fired by the security forces during a rally against the separation fence in the West Bank village of Naalin, Palestinian sources reported Friday.
An Israel Defense Forces official said the man was lightly wounded after being hit in the lower part of his body by a bullet fired from a Ruger rifle, which is used as a crowd dispersal mean. One of the protesters, Yonatan Polk, said he was standing next to the demonstrator that was shot.
“The guy was standing between 50 and 70 meters away from the soldiers, with two barbed-wire fences between them,” he said.
“Both he and the soldiers were standing behind cement blocks, meaning any arguments of their lives being in danger are far from reality. He was hit by a live bullet near his crotch. It’s a policy of using these means in order to create tension and nothing more,” he added.
Dozens of Palestinians, left-wing activists and foreigners took part in the weekly anti-fence demonstrations in the villages of Bilin and Naalin. Some 150 people protested in Naalin and about 80 in Bilin.
According to the IDF, the protestors rioted and hurled stones at the security forces, who responded with tear gas and crowd dispersal means.
Later Friday, the IDF reported that two Molotov cocktails were hurled at Border Guard vehicles in Naalin. There were no reports of damage or injury.
Efrat Weiss, Roee Nahmias and Anat Shalev contributed to this report
An amateur video shocked Palestinians on Tuesday, catching what appeared to be an Israeli settler repeatedly running over a wounded Palestinian at a gas station in Hebron last week.
The Palestinian, an unidentified man shot several times following an alleged knife attack at the station, appeared to be staggering when a silver Mercedes ran him down, stopped, reversed, and ran him over again.
The video was reportedly taken on Thursday, although at the time, Israeli representatives made no mention of the settler’s alleged attack, telling reporters only that a Palestinian man had been shot after he stabbed and lightly injured two settlers.
A military spokesman told Ma’an that after the two Israelis were hurt, a soldier shot and injured the Palestinian, who was taken to the Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem. The settler, on the other hand, was released under house arrest.
That evening, a hospital spokeswoman told Ma’an the Palestinian was undergoing surgery for serious wounds, but did not mention he had been run over and trapped under a car. He was transported by an Israeli ambulance, she noted.
What follows is a partial clip from Al-Jazeera. Click here for an uncut version of the same film.
Warning: contains graphic images.
The full video captures several soldiers standing by as the incident unfolds. Those who run up to the vehicle and appear to take the keys out of the ignition are armed settlers. The Palestinian is left underneath the car screaming as settlers extract the driver. Several seconds later, medics approach the injured man.
According to The Jerusalem Post, police believe the driver was David Mizrachi, an Israeli from the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba and the husband of one of the alleged stabbing victims. He may stand trial for attempted murder, the newspaper reported.
Both incidents come as tensions in settlements rise, with settlers vowing to defy recent orders to slow down certain West Bank construction. Soldiers have also shown an increasing aversion to cracking down on settler behavior, with some announcing their refusal to take part in missions that involve removing settlers from what Israeli courts determine are illegally occupied Palestinian homes or outposts.
Last fall in Hebron, dozens of soldiers were sent to evacuate the Ar-Rajabi home in Hebron, following which a rampaging settler from Kiryat Arba shot a Palestinian at almost point-blank range. The settler was briefly arrested and later released without charge.
