By John V. Walsh
February 25 2012 --- "Foreign Intervention in Syria? A Debate with Joshua Landis and Karam Nachar." promised the headline on DemocracyNow! of 2/22. Eagerly I tuned in, hoping to hear a thorough exposé of the machinations of the US Empire in Syria on its march to Iran.
But this was neither exposé nor debate. Both sides, Landis and Nachar, were pro-intervention for "humanitarian" reasons. Nor did the host Amy Goodman or her co-host take these worthies to task for their retrograde views on imperial military action against a sovereign nation that had made no attack on the US. It was yet one more sign that the "progressive" movement in the West has largely abandoned its antiwar, anti-intervention stance.
The segment began with a clip of John McCain advocating yet another war, for the good of the Syrians of course, bombing them to save them. The first guest was Joshua Landis, a prof in Oklahoma whose bio tells us that he "regularly travels to Washington DC to consult with the State Department and other government agencies." The other agencies are not specified, but he speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations and similar venues. Professor Landis represents the anti-intervention voice in the universe of Amy Goodman, but his opening words manifested the limits of that universe: "Well, I’m not opposed to helping the (Syrian) opposition." He continued, "The problem right now, the dangers right now with arming the opposition, is that we’re not sure who to arm."
Confused, I thought surely the next guest would be the anti-interventionist. He was Karam Nachar "cyber-activist" and Princeton Ph.D. candidate, working with Syrian "protesters" via "social media platforms." That means he is safely ensconced in New Jersey far from where U.S. bombs would fall. Perhaps this fellow would say loud and clear the Syrians did not need the interference of the West, did not need sanctions to starve them nor bombs to pulverize their cities. Perhaps he would laud the Chinese/Russian proposal for both sides to stop firing and to negotiate a solution.
But he did not. He also was for intervention by the West. And he did not think the disorganization of the opposition, cited by Landis, justified hesitation or delay in arming that opposition. That and not any principled anti-interventionism distinguished the two sides in this "debate." Said the cyber-activist: "Well, to start with, I disagree with Professor Landis’s portrayal of the situation with the Syrian opposition. It is true that, for instance, in the Syrian National Council, there are a lot of disagreements. But (the opposition is) still frustrated with the leadership of the Syrian National Council because of its inability to solicit more international support…. And I believe that the State Department, Secretary Clinton and the American administration is heading towards that. … It’s going to require a lot of money and a lot of courage and a lot of involvement on the part of the international community. (Emphasis, JW)
And then the boy cyber-activist got nasty: "I am just a little wary that this overemphasis on how leaderless the Syrian opposition is actually a tactic being used of people who actually do not want the regime to be overthrown and who have always actually defended the legitimacy of the Syrian regime, and especially of Bashar al-Assad." There it is. Even if one is for intervention in principle, no delay is to be countenanced. Such people are surely on the side of Bashar Al-Assad.
This is the kind of "debate" we get on "progressive" media outlets. It is not even a debate about whether there should be imperial intervention, once completely verboten on the Left, but when and under what circumstances military intervention should occur. This phony debate should simply be ignored whether it appears on DemocracyNow! or on NPR, increasingly indistinguishable in content and outlook or anywhere else. For a principled explanation of anti-interventionism one can look to Jean Bricmont on the Left or Ron Paul and Justin Raimondo on the libertarian side.
In fairness to Amy Goodman, just a few weeks back on February 7, she hosted the British writer and long time student of Syria, Patrick Seale. Said Seale: "I believe dialogue is the only way out of this. And indeed, the Russians have suggested to both sides to come to Moscow and start a dialogue. But the opposition says, ‘No, we can’t dialogue with Bashar al-Assad. He must be toppled first.’ Well, that’s a dangerous — a dangerous position to adopt." That interview is well worth reading. And Goodman would do well to stick with that instead of shifting over to empty debates between interventionism now versus interventionism later. After repeatedly hosting the CIA consultant Juan Cole to cheer the cruel war on Libya, Goodman now seems to be going down the same path with Syria. It is a sad spectacle and one more indication of how little the "progressives" in the West understand the nature of Humanitarian Imperialism which uses human rights to sell war. It looks like it’s time to abandon Goodman and switch to Alyona.
John Walsh is a scientist who lives in Cambridge, Mass. john.endwar@gmail.com
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Abolishing the Palestinian Authority an Urgent Prerequisite to Liberation
From the Information Clearing House web site
Jeff Halper calls for the abolition of the Palestinian National Authority, which he argues is nothing but a smokescreen to enable Israel to ethnically cleanse itself while the world and Palestinian quislings are preoccupied with the pursuit of the mirage of a two-state solution, something in fact rendered utterly unachievable by Israel’s colonization of the Palestinian territories.
By Jeff Halper
February 19, 2012 "Redress' -- Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centres, livestock pens and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin – Israeli citizens – in the Negev/Naqab. This is merely mopping up, herding the last of the Arabs into their prison cells where, forever, they will cease to be heard or heard from, a non-issue in Israel and, eventually, in the wider world distracted by bigger, more pressing matters.
Forced expulsions and Judaization
An as-yet confidential report submitted by the European consuls in Jerusalem and Ramallah raises urgent concerns over the “forced expulsion” of Palestinians – a particularly strong term for European diplomats to use –from Area C of the West Bank (the 60 per cent of the West Bank under full Israeli control but which today contains less than 5 per cent of the Palestinian population). Focusing particularly on the rise in house demolitions by the Israeli authorities and the growing economic distress of the Palestinians living in Area C, the report mentions the fertile and strategic Jordan Valley (where the Palestinian population has declined from 250,000 to 50,000 since the start of the occupation), plans to relocate 3,000 Jahalin Bedouins to a barren hilltop above the Jerusalem garbage dump and the ongoing but accelerated demolition of Palestinian homes (500 in 2011).
At the same time the “Judaization” of Jerusalem continues apace, a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem steadily isolating the Palestinian parts of the city from the rest of Palestinian society while ghettoizing their inhabitants, more than 100,000 of which now live beyond the [Apartheid] Wall. Some 120 homes were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2011; over the same period the Israeli government announced the construction of close to 7,000 housing units for Jews in East and “Greater” Jerusalem. “If current trends are not stopped and reversed,” said a previous European Union report, “the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders seems more remote than ever. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing…”
In fact, it closed long ago. In terms of settlers and Palestinians, the Israeli government treats the whole country as one. Last year it demolished three times more homes of Israeli citizens (Arabs, of course) than it did in the occupied Palestinian territory. The demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev/Naqab is part of a plan approved by the government to remove 30,000 citizens from their homes and confine them to townships.
None of this concerns “typical” Israelis even if they have heard of it (little appears in the news). For them, the Israeli-Arab conflict was won and forgotten years ago, somewhere around 2004 when George W. Bush informed Ariel Sharon that the US does not expect Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, thus effectively ending the “two-state solution”, and Arafat “mysteriously” died.
Israeli Jewish indifference, US collusion
Since then, despite occasional protests from Europe, the “situation” has been normalized. Israelis enjoy peace and quiet, personal security and a booming economy (with the usual neoliberal problems of fair allocation). The unshakable, bipartisan support of the American government and Congress effectively shields it from any kind of international sanctions. Above all, Israeli Jews have faith that those pesky Arabs living somewhere “over there” beyond the walls and barbed-wire barriers have been pacified and brought under control by the Israeli armed forces. A recent poll found that “security”, the term Israelis use instead of “occupation” or “peace”, was ranked eleventh among the concerns of the Israeli public, trailing well behind employment, crime, corruption, religious-secular differences, housing and other more pressing issues .
A for the international community, the “Quartet” representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN in the non-existent “peace process” has gone completely silent. (Israel refused to table its position on borders and other key negotiating issues by the 26 January “deadline” laid down by the Quartet, and no new meetings are scheduled). The US has abandoned any pretence of an “honest broker”. Months ago, when the US entered its interminable election “season”, Israel received a green light from both the Democrats and Republicans to do whatever it sees fit in the occupied territory. Last May the Republicans invited Binyamin Netanyahu to address Congress and send a clear message to Obama: hands off Israel. That same week, Obama, not to be out-done, addressed an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention and reaffirmed Bush’s promise that Israel will not have to return to the 1967 borders or relinquish its major settlement blocs in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also took the occasion to promise an American veto should the Palestinians request membership in the UN – though that would merely amount to an official acceptance of the two-state treaty that the US claims it has been fostering all these years. No, as far as Israel and Israeli Jews are concerned, the conflict and even the need for pretence is over. The only thing remaining is to divert attention to more “urgent” global matters so that the Palestinian issue completely disappears. Voila Iran.
Palestinian Authority as agency for ethnic cleansing
Oh, but what about the “demographic threat”, that “war of the womb” that will eventually force a solution? Well, as long as Israel has the Palestinian Authority to self-segregate its people, it has nothing to worry about. While the Palestinian Authority plays the “two-state solution” game, Israel can simply herd the Palestinians into the 70 tiny islands of Areas A and B, lock the gates and let the international community feed them – and go about placidly building a Greater Land of Israel with American and European complicity.
Indeed, nothing demonstrates self-segregation more than Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s neoliberal scheme of building a Palestinian – something – “from the ground up.” By building for the well-to-do in new private-sector cities like Rawabi, located safely in Area A, by building new highways (with Japanese and USAID assistance) that respect Israeli “Greater” Jerusalem and channel Palestinian traffic from Ramallah to Bethlehem through faraway Jericho, by expressing a willingness to accept Israeli territorial expansion in exchange for the ability to “do business”, Fayyad has invented yet a new form of neoliberal oppression-by-consent: viable apartheid (viable, at least, for the Palestinian business class). And as in the bantustans of apartheid South Africa, the Palestinian Authority maintains a repressive internal order through its own American-trained/Israeli-approved militia, a second layer of occupation. (During the 2008 assault on Gaza, one of the few places in the world in which there were no demonstrations was the West Bank, where they were forbidden by the Palestinian Authority. The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, crowed that this was evidence of how effectively the Palestinians had been pacified.)
Indeed, by clinging to the two-state solution and continuing to participate in “negotiations” years after they have proven themselves a trap, the Palestinian leadership plays a central role in its own people’s warehousing. The reality – even the fact – of occupation gets buried under the diversions set up by the fraudulent yet unending “peace process”. This only enables Israel to imprison the Palestinians in tiny cells; witness today’s mini-ethnc cleansing, just one of thousands of micro-events that have the cumulative effect of displacement, expulsion, segregation and incarceration. It also enables Israel to then blame the victims for causing their own oppression! When a Palestinian leadership assumes the prerogative to negotiate a political resolution yet lacks any genuine authority or leverage to do so, and when, in addition, it fails to abandon negotiations even after they have been exposed as a trap, it comes dangerously close to being collaborationist. For its part, Israel is off the hook. Instead of going through the motions of establishing an apartheid regime, it simply exploits the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to perpetuate the illusion of negotiations as a smokescreen covering its virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian “inmates”. Once the current mopping up operations are completed, the process of incarceration will be complete.
Today the only alternative agency to the Palestinian Authority is segments of the international civil society. The Arab and Muslim peoples, for whom Palestinian liberation is an integral part of the Arab Spring, stand alongside thousands of political and human rights groups, critical activists, churches, trade unions and intellectuals throughout the world. Crucial as it is for keeping the issue alive and building grassroots support for the Palestinian cause that will steadily “trickle up” and affect governments’ policies, however, civil society advocacy is a stop-gap form of agency, ultimately unable to achieve a just peace by itself. We, too, are trapped in the dead-end personified by the two-state solution, reference to a “peace process” and their attendant “negotiations.” There is no way forward in the current paradigm. We must break out into a world of new possibilities foreclosed by the present options: a “two-state” apartheid regime or warehousing.
Searching for a new paradigm
In my view, while advocacy and grassroots mobilization remain relevant, several tasks stand before us. First, we must endeavour to hasten the collapse of the present situation and subsequently, when new paradigms of genuine justice emerge from the chaos, be primed to push forward an entirely different solution that is currently impossible or inconceivable, be that a single democratic state over the entire country, a binational state, a regional confederation or some other alternative yet to be formulated. The Palestinians themselves must create a genuine, inclusive agency of their own that, following the collapse, can effectively seize the moment. Formulating a clear programme and strategy, they will then be equipped to lead their people to liberation and a just peace, with the support of activists and others the world over.
A necessary and urgent first step towards collapsing the otherwise permanent regime of oppression in Israel/Palestine is that we stop talking about a two-state solution. It’s dead and gone as a political option – if, indeed, it ever really existed. It should be banned from the discourse because reference to an irrelevant “solution” only serves to confuse the discussion. Granted, this will be hard for liberals to do; everyone else, however, has given up on it. Most Palestinians, having once supported it, now realize that Israel will simply not withdraw to a point where a truly viable and sovereign state can emerge. The Israeli government, backed by the Bush-Obama policies on the settlement blocs, doesn’t even make pretence of pursuing it anymore, and the Israeli public is fine with the status quo. Nor does the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians seem to faze the American or European governments, or the Arab League. Even AIPAC has moved on to the “Iranian threat”.
Behind the insistence of the liberal Zionists of J Street, Peace Now, the Peace NGOs Forum, the Peres Center for Peace and others to hang on to a two-state solution at any cost is a not-so-hidden agenda. They seek to preserve Israel as a Jewish state even at the cost of enforcing institutional discrimination against Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. The real meaning of a “Jewish democracy” is living with apartheid and warehousing while protesting against them. The liberals will be the hardest to wean away from the two-state snare. Yet if they don’t abandon it, they run the risk of promoting de facto their own worst nightmare of warehousing while providing the fig-leaf of legitimacy to cover the policies of Israel’s extreme right – all in the name of “peace”. This is what happens when one’s ideology places restrictions on one’s ability to perceive evil or to draw necessary if difficult conclusions. When wishful thinking becomes policy, it not only destroys your effectiveness as a political actor but leads you into positions, policies and alliances that, in the end, are inimical to your own goals and values. Jettisoning all talk of a “two-state solution” removes the major obstacle to clear analysis and the ability to move forward.
Civil society action
With the obfuscation created by the “two-state solution” now out of the way, what emerges as clear as day is naked occupation, an apartheid regime extending across all of historic Palestine/Israel and the spectre of warehousing. Since none of these forms of oppression can ever be legitimized or transformed into something just, the task before us becomes clear: to cause their collapse by any means necessary. There are many ways to do this, just as the African National Congress did. Already, Palestinian, Israeli and international activists are engaging in internal resistance, together with international challenges to occupation represented by the Gaza flotillas and attempts to “crash” Israeli borders. Many civil society actors the world over have mobilized, some around campaigns such as Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), others around direct actions, still others engaged in lobbying the UN and governments through such instruments as the Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and international courts. There have been campaigns to reconvene the tribunal that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, has the authority and duty to impose sanctions on Israel for its gross violations. Dozens of groups and individuals alike are engaging in public speaking, staging “Israel Apartheid Week” on university campuses and working through the media. And much more.
And here is where Palestinian civil society plays a crucial role, a role that cannot be played by non-Palestinians. If it is agreed that the Palestinian Authority must go if we are to get beyond the two-state trap – indeed, the dismantling of the PA being a major part of the collapse of the present system – then this call must originate from within the Palestinian community. Non-Palestinians must join in, of course, but the issue of who represents the Palestinians is their call exclusively.
Non-Palestinians can also suggest various endgames. I’ve written, for example, about a Middle East economic confederation, believing that a regional approach is necessary to address the core issues. The Palestinian International Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) published a collection of 12 possible outcomes. It is obvious, though, that it is the sole prerogative of the Palestinian people to decide what solution, or range of solutions, is acceptable. For this, and to organize effectively so as to bring about a desired outcome, the Palestinians need a new truly representative agency, one that replaces the PA and gives leadership and direction to a broadly-based civil society agency, one that has the authority to negotiate a settlement and actually move on to the implementation of a just peace.
As of now, it appears there is only one agency that possesses that legitimacy and mandate: the Palestinian National Council (PNC) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (although Hamas and the other Islamic parties are not yet part of the PLO). Reconstituting the PNC through new elections would seem the most urgent item on the Palestinian agenda today – without which, in the absence of effective agency, we are all stuck in rear-guard protest actions and Israel prevails. Our current situation, caught in the limbo between seeking the collapse of the oppressive system we have, and having a Palestinian agency that can effectively lead us towards a just resolution, is one of the most perilous we’ve faced. One person’s limbo is another person’s window of opportunity. Say what you will about Israel, it knows how to hustle and exploit even the smallest of opportunities to nail down its control permanently.
“Collapse with agency”, I suggest, could be a title of our refocused efforts to weather the limbo in the political process. Until a reinvigorated PNC or other representative agency can be constituted, a daunting but truly urgent task, Palestinian civil society might coalesce enough to create a kind of interim leadership bureau. This itself might be a daunting task. Most Palestinian leaders have either been killed by Israel or are languishing in Israeli prisons, while Palestinian civil society has been shattered into tiny disconnected and often antagonistic pieces. At home major divisions have been sown between “1948” and “1967” Palestinians; Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank have been effectively severed; and within the West Bank restrictions on movement among a bewildering array of “areas” – A, B, C, C-Restricted, H-1, H-2, nature reserves, closed military areas – have resulted in virtual, largely disconnected Palestinian mini-societies. Political divisions, especially among secular/traditional and Islamic factions, have been nurtured, not least by Israel. Overall, the Palestinian population, exhausted by years of sacrifice and resistance, impoverished and preoccupied with mere survival, has been left largely rudderless as many of its most educated and skilled potential leaders have left or are forbidden by Israel to return.
For its part, the Palestinian leadership has done little to bridge the wider divisions among those falling under PA rule, Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the refugee camps and the world-wide diaspora, divisions that have grown even wider since the PLO and the PNC fell moribund. Indeed, major portions of the Palestinian diaspora (and one may single out especially but not exclusively the large and prosperous communities of Latin America), have disconnected from the national struggle completely. The Palestinians possess some extremely articulate spokespeople and activists, but they tend to be either a collection of individual voices only tenuously tied to grassroots organizations, or grassroots resistance groups such as the Popular Committees that enjoy little political backing or strategic direction.
Ever aware that the struggle for liberation must be led by Palestinians, our collective task at the moment, in my view, is to bring about the collapse of the present situation in Palestine in order to exploit its fundamental unsustainability. The elimination of the Palestinian Authority is one way to precipitate that collapse. It would likely require Israel to physically reoccupy the Palestinian cities and probably Gaza as well (as if they have ever been de-occupied), bringing the reality of raw occupation back to the centre of attention. Such a development would likely inflame Arab and Muslim public opinion, not to mention that of much of the rest of the world, and would create an untenable situation, forcing the hand of the international community. Israel would be put in an indefensible position, thus paving the way for new post-collapse possibilities – this time with an effective and representative Palestinian agency in place and a global movement primed to follow its lead.
But given the underlying unsustainability of the occupation and the repressive system existing throughout historic Palestine – the massive violations of human rights and international law, the disruptive role the conflict plays in the international system and its overt brutality – collapse could come from a variety of places, some of them unsuspected and unrelated to Israel/Palestine. An attack on Iran could reshuffle the cards in the Middle East, and the Arab Spring is still a work in progress. Major disruptions in the flow of oil to the West due an attack on Iran, internal changes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, instability in Russia and even the fact that China has no oil of its own could cause major financial crises worldwide. Sino-American tensions, environmental disasters or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban with unpredictable Indian reactions may all play an indirect yet forceful role. Who knows? Ron Paul, president Gingrich’s newly appointed secretary of state, might end all military, economic and political support for Israel, in which case the occupation (and more) would fall within a month.
Whatever the cause of the collapse – and we must play an active role in bring it about – it is incumbent upon us to be ready, mobilized and organized if we are to seize that historic moment, which might be coming sooner than we expect. Effective and broadly representative Palestinian agency will be critical. Collapse with agency is the only way to get “there” from “here.”
Jeff Halper is an anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist, and co-founder and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
Jeff Halper calls for the abolition of the Palestinian National Authority, which he argues is nothing but a smokescreen to enable Israel to ethnically cleanse itself while the world and Palestinian quislings are preoccupied with the pursuit of the mirage of a two-state solution, something in fact rendered utterly unachievable by Israel’s colonization of the Palestinian territories.
By Jeff Halper
February 19, 2012 "Redress' -- Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centres, livestock pens and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin – Israeli citizens – in the Negev/Naqab. This is merely mopping up, herding the last of the Arabs into their prison cells where, forever, they will cease to be heard or heard from, a non-issue in Israel and, eventually, in the wider world distracted by bigger, more pressing matters.
Forced expulsions and Judaization
An as-yet confidential report submitted by the European consuls in Jerusalem and Ramallah raises urgent concerns over the “forced expulsion” of Palestinians – a particularly strong term for European diplomats to use –from Area C of the West Bank (the 60 per cent of the West Bank under full Israeli control but which today contains less than 5 per cent of the Palestinian population). Focusing particularly on the rise in house demolitions by the Israeli authorities and the growing economic distress of the Palestinians living in Area C, the report mentions the fertile and strategic Jordan Valley (where the Palestinian population has declined from 250,000 to 50,000 since the start of the occupation), plans to relocate 3,000 Jahalin Bedouins to a barren hilltop above the Jerusalem garbage dump and the ongoing but accelerated demolition of Palestinian homes (500 in 2011).
At the same time the “Judaization” of Jerusalem continues apace, a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem steadily isolating the Palestinian parts of the city from the rest of Palestinian society while ghettoizing their inhabitants, more than 100,000 of which now live beyond the [Apartheid] Wall. Some 120 homes were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2011; over the same period the Israeli government announced the construction of close to 7,000 housing units for Jews in East and “Greater” Jerusalem. “If current trends are not stopped and reversed,” said a previous European Union report, “the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders seems more remote than ever. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing…”
In fact, it closed long ago. In terms of settlers and Palestinians, the Israeli government treats the whole country as one. Last year it demolished three times more homes of Israeli citizens (Arabs, of course) than it did in the occupied Palestinian territory. The demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev/Naqab is part of a plan approved by the government to remove 30,000 citizens from their homes and confine them to townships.
None of this concerns “typical” Israelis even if they have heard of it (little appears in the news). For them, the Israeli-Arab conflict was won and forgotten years ago, somewhere around 2004 when George W. Bush informed Ariel Sharon that the US does not expect Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, thus effectively ending the “two-state solution”, and Arafat “mysteriously” died.
Israeli Jewish indifference, US collusion
Since then, despite occasional protests from Europe, the “situation” has been normalized. Israelis enjoy peace and quiet, personal security and a booming economy (with the usual neoliberal problems of fair allocation). The unshakable, bipartisan support of the American government and Congress effectively shields it from any kind of international sanctions. Above all, Israeli Jews have faith that those pesky Arabs living somewhere “over there” beyond the walls and barbed-wire barriers have been pacified and brought under control by the Israeli armed forces. A recent poll found that “security”, the term Israelis use instead of “occupation” or “peace”, was ranked eleventh among the concerns of the Israeli public, trailing well behind employment, crime, corruption, religious-secular differences, housing and other more pressing issues .
A for the international community, the “Quartet” representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN in the non-existent “peace process” has gone completely silent. (Israel refused to table its position on borders and other key negotiating issues by the 26 January “deadline” laid down by the Quartet, and no new meetings are scheduled). The US has abandoned any pretence of an “honest broker”. Months ago, when the US entered its interminable election “season”, Israel received a green light from both the Democrats and Republicans to do whatever it sees fit in the occupied territory. Last May the Republicans invited Binyamin Netanyahu to address Congress and send a clear message to Obama: hands off Israel. That same week, Obama, not to be out-done, addressed an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention and reaffirmed Bush’s promise that Israel will not have to return to the 1967 borders or relinquish its major settlement blocs in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also took the occasion to promise an American veto should the Palestinians request membership in the UN – though that would merely amount to an official acceptance of the two-state treaty that the US claims it has been fostering all these years. No, as far as Israel and Israeli Jews are concerned, the conflict and even the need for pretence is over. The only thing remaining is to divert attention to more “urgent” global matters so that the Palestinian issue completely disappears. Voila Iran.
Palestinian Authority as agency for ethnic cleansing
Oh, but what about the “demographic threat”, that “war of the womb” that will eventually force a solution? Well, as long as Israel has the Palestinian Authority to self-segregate its people, it has nothing to worry about. While the Palestinian Authority plays the “two-state solution” game, Israel can simply herd the Palestinians into the 70 tiny islands of Areas A and B, lock the gates and let the international community feed them – and go about placidly building a Greater Land of Israel with American and European complicity.
Indeed, nothing demonstrates self-segregation more than Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s neoliberal scheme of building a Palestinian – something – “from the ground up.” By building for the well-to-do in new private-sector cities like Rawabi, located safely in Area A, by building new highways (with Japanese and USAID assistance) that respect Israeli “Greater” Jerusalem and channel Palestinian traffic from Ramallah to Bethlehem through faraway Jericho, by expressing a willingness to accept Israeli territorial expansion in exchange for the ability to “do business”, Fayyad has invented yet a new form of neoliberal oppression-by-consent: viable apartheid (viable, at least, for the Palestinian business class). And as in the bantustans of apartheid South Africa, the Palestinian Authority maintains a repressive internal order through its own American-trained/Israeli-approved militia, a second layer of occupation. (During the 2008 assault on Gaza, one of the few places in the world in which there were no demonstrations was the West Bank, where they were forbidden by the Palestinian Authority. The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, crowed that this was evidence of how effectively the Palestinians had been pacified.)
Indeed, by clinging to the two-state solution and continuing to participate in “negotiations” years after they have proven themselves a trap, the Palestinian leadership plays a central role in its own people’s warehousing. The reality – even the fact – of occupation gets buried under the diversions set up by the fraudulent yet unending “peace process”. This only enables Israel to imprison the Palestinians in tiny cells; witness today’s mini-ethnc cleansing, just one of thousands of micro-events that have the cumulative effect of displacement, expulsion, segregation and incarceration. It also enables Israel to then blame the victims for causing their own oppression! When a Palestinian leadership assumes the prerogative to negotiate a political resolution yet lacks any genuine authority or leverage to do so, and when, in addition, it fails to abandon negotiations even after they have been exposed as a trap, it comes dangerously close to being collaborationist. For its part, Israel is off the hook. Instead of going through the motions of establishing an apartheid regime, it simply exploits the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to perpetuate the illusion of negotiations as a smokescreen covering its virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian “inmates”. Once the current mopping up operations are completed, the process of incarceration will be complete.
Today the only alternative agency to the Palestinian Authority is segments of the international civil society. The Arab and Muslim peoples, for whom Palestinian liberation is an integral part of the Arab Spring, stand alongside thousands of political and human rights groups, critical activists, churches, trade unions and intellectuals throughout the world. Crucial as it is for keeping the issue alive and building grassroots support for the Palestinian cause that will steadily “trickle up” and affect governments’ policies, however, civil society advocacy is a stop-gap form of agency, ultimately unable to achieve a just peace by itself. We, too, are trapped in the dead-end personified by the two-state solution, reference to a “peace process” and their attendant “negotiations.” There is no way forward in the current paradigm. We must break out into a world of new possibilities foreclosed by the present options: a “two-state” apartheid regime or warehousing.
Searching for a new paradigm
In my view, while advocacy and grassroots mobilization remain relevant, several tasks stand before us. First, we must endeavour to hasten the collapse of the present situation and subsequently, when new paradigms of genuine justice emerge from the chaos, be primed to push forward an entirely different solution that is currently impossible or inconceivable, be that a single democratic state over the entire country, a binational state, a regional confederation or some other alternative yet to be formulated. The Palestinians themselves must create a genuine, inclusive agency of their own that, following the collapse, can effectively seize the moment. Formulating a clear programme and strategy, they will then be equipped to lead their people to liberation and a just peace, with the support of activists and others the world over.
A necessary and urgent first step towards collapsing the otherwise permanent regime of oppression in Israel/Palestine is that we stop talking about a two-state solution. It’s dead and gone as a political option – if, indeed, it ever really existed. It should be banned from the discourse because reference to an irrelevant “solution” only serves to confuse the discussion. Granted, this will be hard for liberals to do; everyone else, however, has given up on it. Most Palestinians, having once supported it, now realize that Israel will simply not withdraw to a point where a truly viable and sovereign state can emerge. The Israeli government, backed by the Bush-Obama policies on the settlement blocs, doesn’t even make pretence of pursuing it anymore, and the Israeli public is fine with the status quo. Nor does the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians seem to faze the American or European governments, or the Arab League. Even AIPAC has moved on to the “Iranian threat”.
Behind the insistence of the liberal Zionists of J Street, Peace Now, the Peace NGOs Forum, the Peres Center for Peace and others to hang on to a two-state solution at any cost is a not-so-hidden agenda. They seek to preserve Israel as a Jewish state even at the cost of enforcing institutional discrimination against Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. The real meaning of a “Jewish democracy” is living with apartheid and warehousing while protesting against them. The liberals will be the hardest to wean away from the two-state snare. Yet if they don’t abandon it, they run the risk of promoting de facto their own worst nightmare of warehousing while providing the fig-leaf of legitimacy to cover the policies of Israel’s extreme right – all in the name of “peace”. This is what happens when one’s ideology places restrictions on one’s ability to perceive evil or to draw necessary if difficult conclusions. When wishful thinking becomes policy, it not only destroys your effectiveness as a political actor but leads you into positions, policies and alliances that, in the end, are inimical to your own goals and values. Jettisoning all talk of a “two-state solution” removes the major obstacle to clear analysis and the ability to move forward.
Civil society action
With the obfuscation created by the “two-state solution” now out of the way, what emerges as clear as day is naked occupation, an apartheid regime extending across all of historic Palestine/Israel and the spectre of warehousing. Since none of these forms of oppression can ever be legitimized or transformed into something just, the task before us becomes clear: to cause their collapse by any means necessary. There are many ways to do this, just as the African National Congress did. Already, Palestinian, Israeli and international activists are engaging in internal resistance, together with international challenges to occupation represented by the Gaza flotillas and attempts to “crash” Israeli borders. Many civil society actors the world over have mobilized, some around campaigns such as Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), others around direct actions, still others engaged in lobbying the UN and governments through such instruments as the Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and international courts. There have been campaigns to reconvene the tribunal that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, has the authority and duty to impose sanctions on Israel for its gross violations. Dozens of groups and individuals alike are engaging in public speaking, staging “Israel Apartheid Week” on university campuses and working through the media. And much more.
And here is where Palestinian civil society plays a crucial role, a role that cannot be played by non-Palestinians. If it is agreed that the Palestinian Authority must go if we are to get beyond the two-state trap – indeed, the dismantling of the PA being a major part of the collapse of the present system – then this call must originate from within the Palestinian community. Non-Palestinians must join in, of course, but the issue of who represents the Palestinians is their call exclusively.
Non-Palestinians can also suggest various endgames. I’ve written, for example, about a Middle East economic confederation, believing that a regional approach is necessary to address the core issues. The Palestinian International Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) published a collection of 12 possible outcomes. It is obvious, though, that it is the sole prerogative of the Palestinian people to decide what solution, or range of solutions, is acceptable. For this, and to organize effectively so as to bring about a desired outcome, the Palestinians need a new truly representative agency, one that replaces the PA and gives leadership and direction to a broadly-based civil society agency, one that has the authority to negotiate a settlement and actually move on to the implementation of a just peace.
As of now, it appears there is only one agency that possesses that legitimacy and mandate: the Palestinian National Council (PNC) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (although Hamas and the other Islamic parties are not yet part of the PLO). Reconstituting the PNC through new elections would seem the most urgent item on the Palestinian agenda today – without which, in the absence of effective agency, we are all stuck in rear-guard protest actions and Israel prevails. Our current situation, caught in the limbo between seeking the collapse of the oppressive system we have, and having a Palestinian agency that can effectively lead us towards a just resolution, is one of the most perilous we’ve faced. One person’s limbo is another person’s window of opportunity. Say what you will about Israel, it knows how to hustle and exploit even the smallest of opportunities to nail down its control permanently.
“Collapse with agency”, I suggest, could be a title of our refocused efforts to weather the limbo in the political process. Until a reinvigorated PNC or other representative agency can be constituted, a daunting but truly urgent task, Palestinian civil society might coalesce enough to create a kind of interim leadership bureau. This itself might be a daunting task. Most Palestinian leaders have either been killed by Israel or are languishing in Israeli prisons, while Palestinian civil society has been shattered into tiny disconnected and often antagonistic pieces. At home major divisions have been sown between “1948” and “1967” Palestinians; Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank have been effectively severed; and within the West Bank restrictions on movement among a bewildering array of “areas” – A, B, C, C-Restricted, H-1, H-2, nature reserves, closed military areas – have resulted in virtual, largely disconnected Palestinian mini-societies. Political divisions, especially among secular/traditional and Islamic factions, have been nurtured, not least by Israel. Overall, the Palestinian population, exhausted by years of sacrifice and resistance, impoverished and preoccupied with mere survival, has been left largely rudderless as many of its most educated and skilled potential leaders have left or are forbidden by Israel to return.
For its part, the Palestinian leadership has done little to bridge the wider divisions among those falling under PA rule, Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the refugee camps and the world-wide diaspora, divisions that have grown even wider since the PLO and the PNC fell moribund. Indeed, major portions of the Palestinian diaspora (and one may single out especially but not exclusively the large and prosperous communities of Latin America), have disconnected from the national struggle completely. The Palestinians possess some extremely articulate spokespeople and activists, but they tend to be either a collection of individual voices only tenuously tied to grassroots organizations, or grassroots resistance groups such as the Popular Committees that enjoy little political backing or strategic direction.
Ever aware that the struggle for liberation must be led by Palestinians, our collective task at the moment, in my view, is to bring about the collapse of the present situation in Palestine in order to exploit its fundamental unsustainability. The elimination of the Palestinian Authority is one way to precipitate that collapse. It would likely require Israel to physically reoccupy the Palestinian cities and probably Gaza as well (as if they have ever been de-occupied), bringing the reality of raw occupation back to the centre of attention. Such a development would likely inflame Arab and Muslim public opinion, not to mention that of much of the rest of the world, and would create an untenable situation, forcing the hand of the international community. Israel would be put in an indefensible position, thus paving the way for new post-collapse possibilities – this time with an effective and representative Palestinian agency in place and a global movement primed to follow its lead.
But given the underlying unsustainability of the occupation and the repressive system existing throughout historic Palestine – the massive violations of human rights and international law, the disruptive role the conflict plays in the international system and its overt brutality – collapse could come from a variety of places, some of them unsuspected and unrelated to Israel/Palestine. An attack on Iran could reshuffle the cards in the Middle East, and the Arab Spring is still a work in progress. Major disruptions in the flow of oil to the West due an attack on Iran, internal changes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, instability in Russia and even the fact that China has no oil of its own could cause major financial crises worldwide. Sino-American tensions, environmental disasters or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban with unpredictable Indian reactions may all play an indirect yet forceful role. Who knows? Ron Paul, president Gingrich’s newly appointed secretary of state, might end all military, economic and political support for Israel, in which case the occupation (and more) would fall within a month.
Whatever the cause of the collapse – and we must play an active role in bring it about – it is incumbent upon us to be ready, mobilized and organized if we are to seize that historic moment, which might be coming sooner than we expect. Effective and broadly representative Palestinian agency will be critical. Collapse with agency is the only way to get “there” from “here.”
Jeff Halper is an anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist, and co-founder and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
Thursday, February 16, 2012
This is Tom Friedman's Globalized Paradise: Free market slave labor
From truthdig.com
Robert Scheer's Columns
Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us
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Posted on Feb 15, 2012
INFZM.com via Engadget
By Robert Scheer
Four decades ago Richard Nixon, a once famously hawkish Republican president, cut a deal with the Communist overlords of China to reshape the world. The result was a transformation of the global economy in ways that we are only now, with the sharp critiques of Apple’s China operation, beginning to fully comprehend.
At the heart of the deal was a rejection of the basic moral claim of both egalitarian socialism and free market capitalism, the rival ideologies of the Cold War, to empower the individual as the center of decision-making. Instead, the fate of the citizen would come to be determined by an alliance between huge multinational corporations and government elites with scant reference to the needs of ordinary working folk.
It was understood by both parties to this grand concord that monopoly capitalism could be constructed in China to be consistent with the continuance in power of a Communist hierarchy, just as in the West capitalism was consistent with the enrichment of an ostensibly democratic ruling class. Sharp income inequality, the bane of genuine reform movements bearing the names populist, socialist and democratic, came to be the defining mark of the new international order.
The current controversy over Apple’s treatment of its 700,000 foreign workers, mostly in China, is a manifestation of that cross-ideological betrayal. The ironies are manifest. Not the least of which is that businessmen from Taiwan, the bastion of anti-Communist Chinese during the Cold War and still the pretend reason for a U.S. military presence in the region, are the essential organizers of mainland China’s workforce. But in the pursuit of profit, and at a time when the startling success of China’s hybrid communist-capitalist model keeps the U.S. Treasury afloat, few questions are asked.
Indeed, the pressure is now on to better emulate that model within the United States, to keep still more jobs from being shipped abroad. The human rights concerns of the U.S. have by now been opportunistically tailored to exclude any serious concern about the rights of workers to organize unions to make their job conditions more humane. China’s labor practices are now to be admired rather than scorned, lest the American economy decline further in the new world order.
Advertisement
As The New York Times pointed out last month in its devastating overview of Apple’s shift from its once proud claim of making its products in the USA to near total dependence on China: “It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”
Parse that language to find the excuse to run roughshod over environmental protections, workers’ rights and occupational safety standards in order to allow “flexibility” at the massive Foxconn and other plants in China where robotic work is performed by humans under conditions that even Apple has conceded in an internal audit are unacceptable under modern industrial standards.
In reality the multinational corporations prefer China’s state-sponsored model of capitalism, which assures them an endless supply of docile workers unprotected by those pesky unions and restrictive government regulations. As Steve Jobs told President Obama last year, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” The reason that Jobs supplied in his 2011 approved biography is that the Chinese government is so wonderfully acquiescent to the development plans of foreign corporations. Not as in the U.S., where, Jobs claimed, “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it difficult for companies to operate. That the result of China’s deregulation is poisoned air, worker suicide and a massive waste of resources is deemed to be beside the point.
Oddly enough, Jobs, who succeeded in business without attending more than part of a single college semester, also blamed a U.S. educational system “crippled by union work rules” for what he proclaimed to be the sorry state of our domestic labor force. One of the basic human rights being violated by the Chinese government is that of workers to organize unions responsive to their needs; rather, they are at the mercy of phony organizations tolerated by the Communist government. It is sad, and not encouraging, that Jobs endorsed a blatantly anti-union position by claiming that until the teachers’ unions were broken, there would be almost no hope for education reform.
Considering the workforce employed by Apple, one has to question what sort of properly trained graduates Jobs had in mind. If the habits required of Apple’s workforce in China are to be emulated, the U.S. military, or perhaps our outsized prison system, should become the essential schooling system for American workers to better compete with the properly disciplined assemblers of iPhones in China.
Robert Scheer's Columns
Apple’s China Comes Home to Haunt Us
Email this item Email Print this item Print Share this item... Share
Posted on Feb 15, 2012
INFZM.com via Engadget
By Robert Scheer
Four decades ago Richard Nixon, a once famously hawkish Republican president, cut a deal with the Communist overlords of China to reshape the world. The result was a transformation of the global economy in ways that we are only now, with the sharp critiques of Apple’s China operation, beginning to fully comprehend.
At the heart of the deal was a rejection of the basic moral claim of both egalitarian socialism and free market capitalism, the rival ideologies of the Cold War, to empower the individual as the center of decision-making. Instead, the fate of the citizen would come to be determined by an alliance between huge multinational corporations and government elites with scant reference to the needs of ordinary working folk.
It was understood by both parties to this grand concord that monopoly capitalism could be constructed in China to be consistent with the continuance in power of a Communist hierarchy, just as in the West capitalism was consistent with the enrichment of an ostensibly democratic ruling class. Sharp income inequality, the bane of genuine reform movements bearing the names populist, socialist and democratic, came to be the defining mark of the new international order.
The current controversy over Apple’s treatment of its 700,000 foreign workers, mostly in China, is a manifestation of that cross-ideological betrayal. The ironies are manifest. Not the least of which is that businessmen from Taiwan, the bastion of anti-Communist Chinese during the Cold War and still the pretend reason for a U.S. military presence in the region, are the essential organizers of mainland China’s workforce. But in the pursuit of profit, and at a time when the startling success of China’s hybrid communist-capitalist model keeps the U.S. Treasury afloat, few questions are asked.
Indeed, the pressure is now on to better emulate that model within the United States, to keep still more jobs from being shipped abroad. The human rights concerns of the U.S. have by now been opportunistically tailored to exclude any serious concern about the rights of workers to organize unions to make their job conditions more humane. China’s labor practices are now to be admired rather than scorned, lest the American economy decline further in the new world order.
Advertisement
As The New York Times pointed out last month in its devastating overview of Apple’s shift from its once proud claim of making its products in the USA to near total dependence on China: “It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”
Parse that language to find the excuse to run roughshod over environmental protections, workers’ rights and occupational safety standards in order to allow “flexibility” at the massive Foxconn and other plants in China where robotic work is performed by humans under conditions that even Apple has conceded in an internal audit are unacceptable under modern industrial standards.
In reality the multinational corporations prefer China’s state-sponsored model of capitalism, which assures them an endless supply of docile workers unprotected by those pesky unions and restrictive government regulations. As Steve Jobs told President Obama last year, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” The reason that Jobs supplied in his 2011 approved biography is that the Chinese government is so wonderfully acquiescent to the development plans of foreign corporations. Not as in the U.S., where, Jobs claimed, “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it difficult for companies to operate. That the result of China’s deregulation is poisoned air, worker suicide and a massive waste of resources is deemed to be beside the point.
Oddly enough, Jobs, who succeeded in business without attending more than part of a single college semester, also blamed a U.S. educational system “crippled by union work rules” for what he proclaimed to be the sorry state of our domestic labor force. One of the basic human rights being violated by the Chinese government is that of workers to organize unions responsive to their needs; rather, they are at the mercy of phony organizations tolerated by the Communist government. It is sad, and not encouraging, that Jobs endorsed a blatantly anti-union position by claiming that until the teachers’ unions were broken, there would be almost no hope for education reform.
Considering the workforce employed by Apple, one has to question what sort of properly trained graduates Jobs had in mind. If the habits required of Apple’s workforce in China are to be emulated, the U.S. military, or perhaps our outsized prison system, should become the essential schooling system for American workers to better compete with the properly disciplined assemblers of iPhones in China.
Palestine Center Report on the Enormous Increase of West Bank Settler's Violent Attacks on Palestinians
Yousef Munayyer
The Palestine Center
2012
When Settlers Attack
Israeli settler violence is a growing and consistent threat to Palestinian livelihood. Spanning over seven years, with daily data, this analysis explains why, how and when Israeli settler violence happens…
Cover image: The Palestinian village of Urif, in Area B, as seen from the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar less than 3,500 feet away.
The views, facts and interpretations presented in this report are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund. The Palestine Center is the educational program of The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. The material may not be used without permission from The Palestine Center and the author.
When Settlers Attack
© 2012 by the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development
The Palestine Center
2425 Virginia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037 USA
Tel. (202) 338-1290
Fax (202) 333-7742
E-mail: info@palestinecenter.org
Web site: www.thejerusalemfund.org/palestinecenter
Contents
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...i
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………..………...1
Data: Origins and Scope...................................................................................................................................1
Trends and Patterns…………………………………………………………………………………………………..2
General Trend Over Time…………………………………………………………………………………….2
Trends over Space……………………………………………………………………………………………….3
Trends in Tactics………………………………………………………………………………………………...5
Why?............................................................................................................................................................................7
Governorate Cases: Mapping the Violence?........................................................................................10
Illusions of the “Price Tag” Narrative.....................................................................................................22
Recommendations............................................................................................................................................23
To Israel…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...23
To the United States…………………………………………………………………………………………..24
To the Palestinians…………………………………………………………………………………………….24
To Journalists……………………………………………………………………………………………………24
Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......25
Notable Incidents in 2011………………………………………………………………………………...25
Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………………...42
The Most Dangerous Settlements……………………………………………………………………..43
Most Vulnerable Villages………………………………………………………………………………….48
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………………….49
i
Executive Summary
Israeli settler violence presents a direct and consistent threat to Palestinian civilians and their property in the occupied West Bank and instances of Israeli settler violence are on the rise.
From 2010 to 2011 there was a 39 percent increase in incidents of Israel Settler violence. In the five year period from 2007 through 2011 there has been a 315 percent increase. Conversely, over the same 5-year period, there has been a 95 percent decrease in Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
There is a noticeable shift in the proportion of violence as it occurs geographically in the West Bank. In the past, the southern part of the West Bank saw the largest number of instances but in recent years the northern part of the West Bank is becoming increasingly targeted and has overtaken the southern part of the West Bank in terms of number of attacks.
The period of the olive harvest annually brings a peak in violent settler activity. The presence of Palestinian civilians in olive groves, where they are easy targets for unrestrained and violent Israeli settlers, is the main reason why this occurs on an annual basis.
There is a noticeable increase in the frequency and proportion of arson attacks employed by violent settlers. This suggests that violent settlers are increasingly choosing this method of violence and will continue to do so. The percentage of arson among all attack types in 2005 was 6 percent and has risen to 11 percent in 2011.
While minimal variation in Israeli settler violence over time can be explained as a response to Israeli state actions against settlements, like the dismantlement of outposts, the vast majority of Israeli settler violence is not responsorial but rather structural and symptomatic of occupation.
Over 90 percent of all Palestinian villages which have experienced multiple instances of Israeli settler violence are in areas which fall under Israeli security jurisdiction.
The Palestine Center 1 When Settlers Attack
Introduction
Over the duration of the ‘peace process’ the number of Israelis living beyond the Green Line has tripled from about 200,000 in 1990 to well above 650,000 today. Throughout this Israeli expansion into Palestinian territory the usurpation of Palestinian resources continues to be commonplace. However, in recent years the phenomenon of Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians has become a primary concern for the safety and security of Palestinian livelihood. While Israeli settler violence is not new, the extent and frequency with which it is perpetrated today is. This undeniable trend, which has been evident for several years now, seems to be the new normal. For this reason, this study aims to better understand where and how settler violence is happening and what causes it in an effort to understand how best to stop it.
Data: Origins and Scope
The data used in this analysis is largely from daily reports of the Palestine Monitoring Group (PMG) which is “an inter-agency group of Palestinian civilian ministries and security agencies. Established in August 2003, the PMG monitors all aspects of ground conditions in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Occupied Gaza Strip.”1 This resource provides the best readily available data, catalogued on a daily basis, for analysis.2 While the PMG reports record various events, including the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) actions, raids, arrests, incursions and so on, we coded the daily reports for two different types of events: settler violence and Palestinian attacks.
Our aim was to get a better understanding of Israeli settler violence and where, how, how often and why it happens. To make the best attempt at answering the why, we coded Palestinian attacks over the same span of time in an attempt to understand the relationship between the two. Could Israeli settler violence be a response to Palestinian violence? We discuss this in our analysis below. We also sought to understand the relationship between Israeli government actions and settler violence. Coverage of Israeli settler violence often describes ‘price tag’ events, a term settlers use to describe retaliations to Israeli government action that limit the settlers’ political goals. To understand the relationship between these two variables and to grasp just what extent of Israeli settler violence is in fact ‘price tag’ attacks, we coded Israeli state actions against settlements and discuss the relationship between the two below.
The data covers the period from September of 2004 through December of 2011. This seven-plus year span of daily events amounts to over 3,700 separate incidents coded in the settler violence database. We are able to code for many important variables including the date and time of the incident, the type of incident, the location of the incident, the number of injuries or deaths, if any, and the settlement of origin from which the perpetrators departed. For this last variable, settlement of origin, we have data on approximately one third of incidents (N=1,163). Incidents occurred in
1 http://www.nad-plo.org/etemplate.php?id=184
2 Since this data was recorded by the PMG, the Palestine Center cannot independently verify the veracity of every incident. However, trends identified in this data match trends identified by various other independent and international agencies like UN OCHA.
The Palestine Center 2 When Settlers Attack
every governorate of the West Bank. In a later section of this report, we will discuss in detail the specific challenges facing Palestinian victims of settler violence in each governorate.
Trends and Patterns
In this section, we will cover three types of trends in Israeli settler violence that have occurred over the duration of the period reflected in our database.
General Trend Over Time
With the exception of 2005, which saw a flurry of violent settler activity, setter violence has steadily increased year after year. The increase in incidents is particularly significant beginning in 2007. It is important to note in the chart here that data for 2010 is incomplete and includes only the first eleven months of the year,3 while 2011 and all other years are complete.
Two thousand eleven was by far the most violent year, seeing a 39 percent increase over the previous year and a 315 percent increase over a mere five years ago. In early 2011, we identified this trend at an event at the Palestine Center noting: “[There is] a very strong, noticeable increase in Israeli settler violence over the past five years, and mind you 2011 is on pace to beat 2010. We started with an extremely violent two months of 2011 and it shows no indication of slowing down.”4 During this same period above, Palestinian violence in the West Bank drops dramatically (95%).
3 Due to a gap in the available daily reports, December 2010 is missing from our database and aggregate numbers for 2010 were weighted to produce an additional month’s projection.
4 Transcript- Presentation at Palestine Center, April 19th, 2011 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/29175/pid/897
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Incidents Per Year 2005-2011
Incidents
The Palestine Center 3 When Settlers Attack
Trends Over Space
The second important trend is the change in where settler violence is concentrated. The chart below depicts a noticeable shift over the duration of the period reflected in our data. Here, the number of incidents per year in each governorate is shown. Hebron, the southernmost governorate of the West Bank, has long been the locale that has seen the largest single portion of settler violence. Much of this violence is personal and close range type attacks like assault, vehicular assault, harassment or stone throwing. This is largely due to the presence of a small number of particularly ideological Israeli settlers in the heart of a major Palestinian city in the West Bank; Hebron. In the governorate of Hebron, we can separate incidents into two categories to better understand the effect of this small concentration of settlers in the city’s center. Just over 60 percent of incidents in the Hebron governorate occur in the city of Hebron while the remaining 40 percent occur in the surrounding villages.
However, in recent years we’ve begun to notice change in which areas see the most incidents of settler violence. As depicted in the chart below, Nablus, a governorate in the north of the West Bank, is seeing an increasingly larger portion of settler violence than ever before. The polynomials in the chart reflect the trends over time. This northward shift in violence is also evident in other governorates in the north of the West Bank including Ramallah, Qalqilya and Salfit which accounted for about 20 percent of incidents in 2006 and account for 30 percent of incidents so far in 2011.
0
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2004
2005
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Incidents by Governorate per Year
Bethelehem
Hebron
Jenin
Jericho
Jerusalem
Nablus
Qalqilya
Ramallah
Salfit
Tubas
Tulkarem
Poly. (Hebron)
Poly. (Nablus)
The Palestine Center 4 When Settlers Attack
That the proportion of incidents in the north is so high by this point in the year5 is particularly startling as the annual peak of settler violence incidents in the north occurs in the months of October and November during the Palestinian olive harvest.
In the chart below, we look at when and where incidents happen by dividing governorates into north and south regions, with the former including Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Salfit, Tubas and Tulkarem and the latter including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem and Jericho. The governorates in the north region are far more populated with olive trees than those in the south. In fact, some 68 percent of the West Bank land cultivated with olive trees is in the north while 32 percent is in the south.6 You can easily see that the most noticeable gap between the two regions is evident during the olive harvest. This divergence is largely due to the presence of Palestinian civilians in olive groves during the harvest where they become easy targets for Israeli settlers.
In general, the geographic trend north, where rural villages are predominantly targeted, suggests that settlers are exploiting unfettered access to isolated Palestinian villages to perpetrate violence more than ever before.
5 Chart above reflects first 9 months of 2011
6 http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=455
0
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Percentage of Incidents By Region and Month
South
North
Olive Harvest
The Palestine Center 5 When Settlers Attack
11%
32%
11%
4%
5%
12%
25%
Top Incident Types in 2011
Arson
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Vehicular Attack
Shootings
Physical Attacks
Misc.
Trends in Tactics
Israeli settlers have used a variety of methods to attack Palestinian civilians and their property. There are clear variations in the methods used over space and, to a lesser degree, over time. While our database recorded all types of attacks including kidnappings, stabbings, poisonings and many more, this section of the report will focus on the most often occurring attacks which, on an annual basis, account for the majority of Israeli settler violence. Thus far in 2011, for example, the top six attack types depicted in the chart account for approximately 75 percent of all incidents.
Understanding the attack types:
ARSON- This is the deliberate setting to fire of property. The percentage of arson attacks has doubled since 2005 when it made up close to 6 percent of settler attacks. This alarming trend is most evident in the north of the West Bank where through September of 2011 Nablus and Qalqilya alone saw 55 percent of all arsons. In our database, arson attacks, which overwhelmingly target property and often agriculture, have resulted in only ten injuries and immeasurable loss of property.
STONE THROWING- This is the throwing of stones either at civilians or their livestock, vehicles or homes. Like arson, stone throwing has become a more prevalent attack type in recent years having accounted for 20 percent of attacks in 2005 and 32 percent thus far in 2011. A similar geographic shift in this attack type is also noticeable. In 2005, for example, the majority of stone throwing incidents, 55 percent, took place in Hebron while Nablus, Qalqilya and Ramallah combined saw less than 20 percent of these incidents. Today, a near inversion of these numbers is evident with Hebron seeing about 20 percent and Nablus, Qalqilya and Ramallah seeing 58 percent. We’ve recorded 171 injuries as a result of stone throwing.
The Palestine Center 6 When Settlers Attack
DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY- This is simply the deliberate destruction of property excluding arsons. Often, these attacks take the form of uprooting Palestinian crops, particularly olive trees, but can also include other acts like the deliberate destruction of wells or vehicles. Generally speaking, these incidents are divided geographically across the West Bank; however, in recent years northern governorates have seen an increase in their share of such incidents. Destruction of property has resulted in five injuries and the loss of countless Palestinian crops and trees.
VEHICULAR ATTACK- This is the use of vehicles to attack Palestinian civilians or their livestock. Often the most vulnerable members of society fall victim to these types of attacks including children and the elderly. Shepherds and Bedouin who are often grazing their livestock in fields adjacent to roads have fallen prey to these types of attacks as well. These incidents are most prevalent in the Hebron governorate but also increasingly a problem in the northern governorates of Nablus, Qalqilya and Salfit along an Israeli settler road corridor. Vehicular attacks have claimed the lives of ten Palestinian civilians over the period covered by our data and left 208 more injured.
SHOOTINGS- This is self-explanatory. Settlers are largely armed and have used firearms against Palestinian civilians. Geographically, this attack type is distributed throughout the West Bank with the largest number of incidents occurring in Hebron (24 percent) and Nablus (32 percent). Shootings have left fourteen Palestinians dead and 100 more injured during the period for which we have recorded data.
PHYSICAL ATTACKS- These are person-to-person violent attacks. Unlike some of the other attacks, physical attacks require a high degree of proximity to be carried out and for this reason they are most prevalent in the Hebron governorate and particularly in the city of Hebron itself where settlers live in the midst of a Palestinian city. Over 40 percent of physical attacks in our database occurred in Hebron. This type of attack has understandably been the most harmful to Palestinians and has resulted in the death of three civilians and the injury of 675 others in the period covered by our data.
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Why?
What causes Israeli settler violence or rather, what increases the occurrence of settler violence over space and time? We have already established earlier in this report the clear increase in incidents during the olive harvest season. However, settler violence is a consistent phenomenon that occurs on a daily or near daily basis. In 2011, for example, we witnessed an average of 2.6 incidents per day. The question then is what conditions effect increases and decreases in settler violence?
There are three possible explanations for patterns of settler violence. These fall into two categories; the first is responsorial and the second is structural. Two explanations fall under the first category and these are 1) that settler violence is a response to Palestinian attacks or 2) that settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions against settler ideology. This second explanation has been referred to as the ‘price tag’ explanation which borrows from terminology the settlers use to describe their strategy. The strategy, as they describe it, is aimed at exacting a price for each step the state of Israel takes against the settler movement.
The third explanation is structural and has less to do with changing variables over time and everything to do with unchanging security conditions on the ground. This explanation provides that patterns of settler violence can be explained geographically because the stratified security jurisdiction across the West Bank creates pockets where there is little or no deterrent for settler attacks.
In this section we will test these three explanations in the hopes of understanding what best explains patterns of settler violence. To do so, we will employ an analysis of the data we have collected as well as analyze cases in each governorate to better understand these events over geography.
Explanations
Responsorial
Settler violence is a response to Palestinian violence?
Settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions?
Structural
Settler violence is a product of demographics and security arrangements?
The Palestine Center 8 When Settlers Attack
We begin with the first category of explanations: the responsorial. To determine how powerful an explanation these different notions provide we needed to understand the relationship between several variables and trends in Israeli settler violence. We coded for two variables which each can be divided into two sub-variables. These are explained below.
Palestinian Violence/Attacks
We sought to understand if Israeli settler violence is a response to Palestinian violence. To do this, we recorded all instances of Palestinian violence over the time period that corresponds with our settler violence data. This variable was divided into two based on the location of the attack. Attacks emanating from Gaza (overwhelmingly rockets which caused no casualties) were coded separately than attacks in the West Bank. The reason for this is straightforward; we believed that if settler violence was a response to Palestinian attacks it would likely be more connected to attacks in the West Bank which are closer to the actual settlers than attacks from Gaza. Of course, we could not discount the possibility that settler violence is also a response to attacks from Gaza. To understand the individual effects of both of these variables we tested them in the same model.
Israeli Government Actions
We also wanted to understand if Israeli settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions which have been called ‘price tag’ attacks. Settler groups have announced their intentions to attack Palestinians anytime the state of Israel acts against the settlers. Notable instances have come when Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza. During this period, settler violence in the West Bank increased dramatically. Other notable instances were also present over time. To test this, we recorded instances of Israeli government actions against the settlements over the period covered by our database. We divided these into two variables as well. The first was announcements of decisions either by the Israeli Cabinet, the Knesset or the Israeli courts to limit settlement expansion or dismantle settlements or settlement infrastructure. The second was instances of executions of those decisions. We sought to parse these two because we believed settlers might have different responses to executions and announcements. To test the relationship of both to settler violence we included them in our model.
A Responsorial Phenomenon?
After analyzing the data7 using the week as our unit of analysis (369 observations), we were able to understand the effect of both Palestinian attacks and Israeli government actions on settler violence. The number of settler violence incidents in any given week was tested against the number of Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli government actions against the settlers. The results reveal that Palestinian attacks do not have a positive relationship with Israeli settler violence, neither do Israeli government announcements. The only factor which has a positive and statistically significant relationship with settler violence is Israeli government executions. However, this model explains very little of the variation in Israeli settler violence over the seven year span. In fact, 84 percent of weeks in the analysis did not see any Israeli government executions. These cases
7 For tabulated results, see Appendix
The Palestine Center 9 When Settlers Attack
still had significant variation (Mean = 9.1, S.DV. = 7.9). This lends significant evidence to suggest that Israeli settler violence is not a responsorial phenomenon and that the so-called ‘price tag’ attacks only make up a very small part of the explanation behind why settler violence occurs.
So, if settler violence is not explained as a response to other events, what other factors could affect the prevalence of these attacks against Palestinians and their property? We turn next to the geographic and structural explanation.
The Palestine Center 10 When Settlers Attack
Governorate Cases: Mapping the Violence
Below we look at each governorate and show the most common attacking settlements within that governorate and the villages that are more vulnerable and most often targeted. The names of the most vulnerable villages are encircled on the map in yellow and the red arrows show the direction from which attacks on that village come from. These maps allow us to better understand the geography of Israeli settler violence and also give the reader a nuanced understanding of just how intertwined Israeli settlements are among Palestinian villages. Notice the location of the targeted villages and which area of security jurisdiction they overwhelmingly fall in.
Bethlehem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Betar Illit, Efrat, Neve Daniel
Most Common Targets: Artas, Beit Sahur, Husan, Al-Khadr, Nahhalin, Tuqu’
The Palestine Center 11 When Settlers Attack
Hebron
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Bat Ayin, Bat Hadassah, Hagai, Harsina, Karmei Tzur, Kiryat Arba, Maon, Ramat Yishay, Susiya
Most Common Targets: Baqa, Buweira, Beit Ummar, Halhul, Safa, Tuwani, Yatta area
The Palestine Center 12 When Settlers Attack
Jenin
Most Common Attacking Settlements8: Mevo Dotan, Sa Nur, Homesh
Most Common Targets: Yabad, Fanduqumiya, Silat-a-Dahr, Jaba’
8 The settlements of Homesh and SaNur were evacuated in 2005. However, settlers often attempt to come back to restart their settlements in those areas and confront Palestinian civilians. Homesh settlers in particular became more active in attacks after its dismantlement.
The Palestine Center 13 When Settlers Attack
Jericho
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Mitzpeh Yericho, Vered Yericho, Tomer
Most Common Targets: Awja9, Ein Duyuk, Malih, Wadi Qilt, Fasayil
9 Awja sees the majority of settler violence in the governorate and its location on a main settler road has much to do with an overrepresentation of vehicular attacks compared to other governorates.
The Palestine Center 14 When Settlers Attack
Jerusalem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Maale Adumim, Maale Mikhmas, Neve Yakov
Most Common Targets: Mikhmas, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Old City
The Palestine Center 15 When Settlers Attack
Nablus
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Yitzhar, Bracha, Alon Moreh, Itamar
Most Common Targets: Burin, Huwwara, Iraq Burin, Urif, Yanun,Qusra, Qaryut, Salem, Madama, Burqa, Asira Qibliya
The Palestine Center 16 When Settlers Attack
Qalqilya
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Havat Gilad
Most Common Targets: Azzun, Farrata, Immatin, Jinsafut, Jit, Kfur Laqif, Kfur Qaddum
The Palestine Center 17 When Settlers Attack
Ramallah
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Halamish, Beit El, Shilo
Most Common Targets: Turmus Ayya, Mughayyir, Sinjil, Deir Nidham, Beitillu
The Palestine Center 18 When Settlers Attack
Salfit
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Ariel, Kfar Tappuah, Revava, Yakir
Most Common Targets: Bruqin, Deir Istiya, Deir Ballut, Haris, Kufr ad-Dik, Wadi Qana, Yasuf, Zatara.
The Palestine Center 19 When Settlers Attack
Tubas
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Maskiyot, Rotem
Most Common Targets: Ein al Bayda, Malih
The Palestine Center 20 When Settlers Attack
Tulkarem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Einav, Avni Hafetz
Most Common Targets: Ramin, Beit Lid, Kufr Labad
The Palestine Center 21 When Settlers Attack
What becomes evident when looking at the location of the attacking settlements and the targeted villages in each governorate is a fairly consistent pattern of attacking within areas where Israel has security jurisdiction under the agreed upon Oslo Accords framework. Two examples highlight this trend well. In the Nablus governorate (Page 15 ), the extremely active settlement of Bracha is located right next to the Palestinian city of Nablus and its Area A perimeter. Despite proximity to a wide range of targets there, the vast majority of attacks originating from Bracha target the Palestinian villages of Burin and Iraq Burin which are further from the settlement and under Israeli security jurisdiction. Another example is in Jenin (Page 12) where settlers returning to the site of Homesh or Sa Nur or settlers in Mevo Dotan clearly opt to attack targets under Israeli security jurisdiction while many other near-by targets are ignored.
The explanation is simple, as the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem10 notes:
Since the settlements began in the Occupied Territories, the authorities have adopted an undeclared policy of leniency toward Israelis who harm Palestinians and damage Palestinian property. Various state commissions and committees have noted this tendency…Numerous reports and publications issued by human rights organizations in Israel have reached the same conclusion.
A report by another human rights organization11, Yesh Din, weighs in on a similar note revealing:
a total failure of the SJ District [West Bank] Police in investigating Palestinian complaints about Israeli civilians harming them and their property. In 90% of the complaints that were filed the police treatment ended with the investigation filed being closed or the complaints lost…Alongside the SJ district police, the IDF forces in the West Bank also have a great deal of responsibility for the State of Israel’s shirking its duty anchored in martial law to protect the residents of the OPT from the violence of a third party. As noted, the IDF does not view the protection of the Palestinian civilians as one of its missions, and does not explain to its soldiers and commanders their duties in that area. A systematic treatment by the IDF and monitoring of treatment of soldiers who are not filing the army’s orders drafted in the spirit of the Law Enforcement Procedures do not in fact exist.
Settlers perpetuating violence against Palestinians and their property know they are not likely to face any punitive action from the Israeli authorities for their crimes. This is guaranteed in so far as their actions are carried out in areas where Israel has security jurisdiction. Acting under the cover of Israeli impunity, settlers know precisely what areas they can attack without having to worry about any deterrents.
While Israeli government actions against settlements proved significant in generating increases in settler violence in a small percentage of observations, over 90 percent of all villages facing multiple
10 B’Tselem “Human Rights in the Occupied Territories” http://www.btselem.org/download/2009_annual_report_eng.pdf
11 Yesh Din, A Semblance of Law http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/opt_prot_yeshdin_semblance_law_june_2006.pdf
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instances of settler violence in our database (139 villages) are located in areas under Israeli security jurisdiction.
Illusions of the “Price Tag” Narrative
While so-called ‘price tag’ attacks do occur, as we have demonstrated above, these attacks account for a small fraction of the totality of Israeli settler violence. This is not the understanding one would get, however, by reading most of what is written in recent media reports about Israeli settler violence. The narrative around the reporting of such events pits extreme right-wing settlers against the Israeli government which is often presented as condemning the rare acts of hooligans.
Take this recent story in The Atlantic , for example: According to a 2008 Haaretz article, the roots of price tag attacks can be traced to the August 2005 dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip."Ever since then, the extreme right has sought to establish a 'balance of terror,' in which every state action aimed at them--from demolishing a caravan in an outpost to restricting the movements of those suspected of harassing Palestinian olive harvesters--generates an immediate, violent reaction," the left-wing paper wrote at the time. And violence is on the rise. Reuters notes that attacks by settlers against Palestinian property in the West Bank have risen by 57 percent in the first seven months of 2011 compared with the same period last year. The news agency adds that the perpetrators of price tag attacks appear to operate in small groups that resemble terrorist cells, and that no charges have been brought against suspects in price tag incidents. Here the antagonists are the price-taggers who act only when the obligation-abiding Israeli state dismantles an outpost. This twisted narrative leads the reader to believe that the settlers and the Israeli state are facing off against each other and this is the reason why settler violence exists and is on the rise. The Israeli state and its military, which is obligated by international law to protect the civilians in the territory it occupies, is absolved of all responsibility for settler violence. The reality is an inversion of this narrative. It is in fact because the Israeli state overwhelming fails to confront the settlers and provide protection for Palestinians and their property that settlers are emboldened and perpetuate attacks. ‘Price tag’ attacks occur but represent a miniscule portion of settler violence. Yet, in the scant mainstream media coverage of Israeli settler violence, the ‘price tag’ narrative is dominant.
The Palestine Center 23 When Settlers Attack
Recommendations
To Israel
Israel should end all settlement construction and ultimately withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territory. The failure to do this in the interim, however, does not absolve Israel of its obligations to protect Palestinian civilians in the territories it occupies.
The most active and violent settlements are known and the most vulnerable Palestinian villages are also known. Israel must devote targeted military and policing resources to cracking down on settler violence throughout the West Bank but particularly in and around the most dangerous settlements.
In addition to taking proactive measures around the most dangerous settlements to curb Israeli settler violence, Israeli police and the IDF must act to prevent settler violence as it occurs and must stop intervening only as a protective force for the violent settlers.
The government of Israel should make it a priority to overhaul its procedures and policies relating to the investigation of settler violence incidents. Instances of Israeli settler violence must be immediately, thoroughly and credibly investigated with appropriate sentences adjudicated. Punishments for perpetrators of violence should not vary based on the ethnicity or religious background of the perpetrator or target but rather be determined to fit the crime.
The government of Israel should take policy measures to police settlements which are active in settler violence against Palestinian civilians and arrest and punish leaders or preachers who advocate violence within these settlements.
Given that Israel has an obligation to protect Palestinian civilians in occupied territory under international law and that over 90 percent of incidents of Israeli settler violence happen in areas where Israel has security jurisdiction, Israel bears the most significant and direct responsibility to combat settler violence.
The Palestine Center 24 When Settlers Attack
To the United States
The government of the United States should press the government of Israel in both private and public forums to immediately enact policies to curb Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians and their property.
The United States should also conduct an internal review of any U.S. taxpayer dollars which are going to fund Israeli settlements and prohibit any such funding. Particular attention should be paid to American charities which may exploit non-profit status to collect donations and direct U.S. tax dollars toward settlements.
To the Palestinians
With the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank being clearly known, Palestinian leaders should devote resources to protect isolated villages even if armed security forces are not permitted. Such resources can include training for villagers on how to resist, document and record settler violence as well as medical and emergency resources like environmentally safe extinguishants.
To Journalists
While covering ‘price tag’ settler violence is important, focusing coverage of settler violence on these incidents misrepresents the scope as well as the cause of this phenomenon. It is Israeli government inaction and not actions that allow most settler violence to occur. This report is meant to serve as a reference point on Israeli settler violence and journalists covering the issue would do well to use it and other comprehensive reports as a departure point for reporting.
The Palestine Center 25 When Settlers Attack
Appendix
Notable Incidents in 2011
January
4 January: Settlers killed two sheep belonging to Palestinians in the village of Qusra in the governorate of Nablus.
8 January: Settlers uprooted 100 olive tree seedlings in the village of Qusra in Nablus.
9 January: Settlers used chemical compounds to destroy 25 olive trees in Mughayyir, a village within the Ramallah district.
14 January: Settlers came into the village of Qusra in Nablus and opened gunfire on Palestinians, injuring six.
16 January: Settlers in the Baqa’a Valley near Hebron opened gunfire on villagers injuring one 17-year old Palestinian.
24 January: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian and inflicted injuries.
24 January: In the village of Tuwani near Hebron, settlers opened gunfire on the village killing two sheep.
27 January: Settlers from Maskiyyot entered the village of Ein Al Hilwa and physically attacked two Palestinians. Both sustained injuries as a result.
28 January: Settlers from Beitar Elit entered Nahhalin in the governorate of Bethlehem and attacked Palestinians. One civilian was injured as a result.
28 January: Settlers in Hebron physically attacked an eleven-year old in the Old City. The child was injured in the attack.
28 January: Settlers attacked Palestinians near the settlement of Susiya. Two civilians were injured as a result.
28 January: Settlers from the Bracha settlement opened gunfire on residents living in the Iraq Burin village. Seventeen-year old Maher Hamza Qadous was killed as a result of the gunfire.
29 January: Settlers from Beit Ayin opened fire on villagers from Safa in the district of Hebron. One Palestinian was wounded and 17-year old Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl was killed in the attack.
29 January: Settlers physically attacked Palestinians in the village of Surif in Hebron. Two villagers were injured in the attack.
30 January: Settlers attacked a Palestinian in Fasayil, a village in the Jericho governorate. The victim sustained injuries in the attack.
The Palestine Center 26 When Settlers Attack
February
4 February: Settlers near Beit Ummar in the Hebron district threw stones at Palestinian civilians. Two people were injured in the attack.
11 February: Settlers in the Old City of Jerusalem severely beat and stabbed two civilians. One Palestinian was critically wounded while Hussam Al-Rweidi was killed in the attack.
15 February: A Palestinian was physically attacked in Mikhmas. Attackers came from the nearby Ma’ale Mikhmas settlement.
15 February: Settlers set fire to 250 olive trees near the village of Safa in the district of Hebron.
16 February: Settlers from Kaida opened gunfire on Palestinians in the village of Jalud. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
19 February: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a Palestinian. The Palestinian was injured in the attack.
20 February: Settlers from Maskiyyot physically attacked Palestinians in Ein Al Hilwa. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
20 February: Settlers entered the village of Qusra in the Nablus governorate and cut down approximately 250 olive trees.
22 February: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked Palestinians resulting in two individuals being injured.
23 February: Settlers from Bracha entered the village of Burin, physically attacked Palestinians and set fire to two vehicles. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
25 February: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Urif near Nablus and uprooted 25 olive trees belonging to Hussein Abdul Fattah Safadi.
26 February: Settlers from Bracha entered Burin and physically attacked Palestinians injuring one.
March
1 March: Settlers from Karnei Shomron threw stones at vehicles on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. One civilian was injured in the attack.
1 March: A settler vehicle ran over a three-year old child in Lubban Al Gharbi, a village in the Ramallah governorate. The child was critically wounded as a result.
1 March: A settler vehicle ran over a six-year old child in Hebron’s Old City. The child was critically wounded as a result.
1 March: Settlers entered the village of Huwwara and set fire to a two-story home.
3 March: Settlers from the Nahli’el settlement entered the village of Beitullu near Ramallah and set fire to one vehicle.
The Palestine Center 27 When Settlers Attack
4 March: Settlers from Shavot Rachel entered the Palestinian village of Jalud and uprooted 350 olive tree seedlings.
4 March: Settlers threw stones at homes in the village of Burin near Nablus. Three homes sustained damage in the attack
6 March: Settlers from Bracha entered Iraq Burin in the Nablus district and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured in the attack.
6 March: Settlers entered Dura Al Qar near Ramallah and kidnapped three children.
6 March: Settlers entered Kfar Laqif in the Qalqiliya governorate and threw stones at vehicles. One vehicle was damaged as a result.
8 March: Settlers entered Qusra village near Nablus and physically attacked Palestinians. The Israel army intervened and also opened fire on Palestinians. Nine were injured as a result.
10 March: Settlers from Eili Zahav entered the Deir Ballut village in the district of Salfit and cut down 25 olive trees.
24 March: Settlers entered the village of Taybeh in Ramallah and threw stones at Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
24 March: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinians in Nablus. Two were injured in the attack
26 March: Settlers entered Burqa and physically attacked a Palestinian security officer. The officer sustained injuries as a result.
27 March: Settlers from Karnei Shomron threw stones at cars on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. Two vehicles were damaged and one Palestinian was injured in the attack.
27 March: Settlers from Shilo threw stones at Palestinians in Ramallah. Two Palestinians sustained injuries.
28 March: A settler ran over a four-year old girl in the village of Turrama near Hebron. She was critically wounded as a result.
29 March: A settler drove their vehicle into a herd of sheep outside the Tuqu village in Bethlehem. Ten sheep were killed as a result.
31 March: Settlers from Halamish threw stones at Palestinians in the district of Ramallah. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
31 March: A settler vehicle ran over a three-year old girl in Hebron’s Old City. She was critically injured as a result.
31 March: Settlers near the Homesh outpost entered the district of Jenin and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured as a result.
The Palestine Center 28 When Settlers Attack
April
2 April: A settler vehicle rammed a civilian vehicle near the settlement of Yitzhar. The Palestinian driver was hospitalized after their car flipped.
3 April: A settler vehicle rammed a taxi at the Hamra checkpoint in Jericho. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
4 April: Settlers entered the village of Mughayyir and physically attacked Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
10 April: Settlers entered the village of Asira Al Qibliya and threw stones and glass bottles at Palestinians, set fire to one vehicle and destroyed an electricity generator. Two Palestinians were injured as a result.
12 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian causing injuries.
12 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron set fire to two vendor stalls.
13 April: A settler vehicle in the Old City of Hebron hit five-year old Hala Uthman Id’eis as she rode her bike. She was hospitalized as a result of the attack.
14 April: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian in the village of Hajja. The victim was transported to the hospital for treatment.
15 April: Settlers from Shilo entered Turmus’ Ayya and physically attacked Palestinians. Four were injured in the attack.
17 April: Settlers threw stones at homes and vehicles in Hebron’s Old City. Two windows and one windshield were destroyed in the attack.
17 April: A settler vehicle entered the village of Yanoun and drove into a herd of sheep. Three sheep were killed in the attack.
18 April: Settlers from Susiya entered Hebron and physically attacked Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
20 April: Settlers entered Iraq Burin and threw stones at Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
20 April: Settlers from Bracha entered the village of Burin and physically attacked Palestinians. Four were injured as a result.
24 April: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City destroyed a windshield belonging to a Palestinian.
25 April: Settlers entered Burin and physically attacked a Palestinian man. He sustained injuries in the attack.
25 April: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a 65-year old man. He sustained injuries in the attack
25 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron sprayed gases at Palestinian civilians. Two suffered from suffocation as a result of the attack.
The Palestine Center 29 When Settlers Attack
25 April: Settlers threw stones on villagers in Huwwara. Three were injured as a result, including one twelve-year old youth.
25 April: Settlers entered Burin and set fire to a Palestinians vehicle. The vehicle was destroyed as a result.
25 April: Settlers in Sheikh Jarrah sprayed gases into the eyes of three children. The children sustained injuries in the attack.
28 April: Settlers from Yitzhar physically attacked Palestinians in the Nablus district. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
28 April: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Haris. One windshield was smashed in the attack.
29 April: Settlers physically attacked Palestinians near the Yitzhar settlement. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
30 April: Settlers from Ytizhar threw stones at cars in the Nablus governorate. Three windshields were destroyed in the attack.
May
1 May: Settlers from Bracha threw stones at villagers in Burin. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
1 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Jit. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
5 May: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and physically attacked Palestinians. One civilian was injured in the attack.
5 May: Settlers attacked Palestinians in the Nablus district. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
8 May: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron attempted to kidnap a four-year old child. The child was injured in the incident.
8 May: Settlers in Shiekh Jarrah threw stones at Palestinian children. One child was injured in the attack.
10 May: Settlers entered Haris near Salfit and threw stones at vehicles. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
14 May: Settlers near Kokhav Hashahar threw stones at vehicles in the Ramallah district. Four vehicles were damaged in the attack.
15 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. One windshield was destroyed and one Palestinian was injured in the attack.
15 May: Settlers from Havat Gilad entered Jit village and physically attacked Palestinians. Three civilians were injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 30 When Settlers Attack
16 May: Settlers entered Nahhalin village in the Bethlehem governorate and threw stones at vehicles. Two windshields were destroyed in the attack.
16 May: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the event.
17 May: Settlers raided an orphanage in the village of Thuri. The settlers proceeded to detain the principal and deputy of the orphanage. Three Palestinians were injured in the operation.
17 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Duma in the district of Nablus. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
20 May: Settlers entered Beitillu and cut down 35 olive trees. They also physically attacked the owner of the olive trees. The Palestinian owner sustained severe injuries in the attack.
21 May: Settlers entered Asira Al Qibliya and physically attacked Palestinian residents. Three Palestinians were injured in the attack.
21 May: Settlers from Yitzhar entered the village of Urif in the Nablus district and detained two residents of the village.
23 May: Settlers entered Kafr Qaddam near Qalqiliya and cut down 60 olive trees.
23 May: Settlers entered the Bethlehem district and threw stones at vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
24 May: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Madama and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
28 May: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered the Hebron village of Beit Ummar and destroyed Palestinian crops. Among the crops destroyed were 17 olive seedlings, three olive trees and 20 grapevines.
28 May: A settler vehicle on Road #60 near Bethlehem ran over a five-year old girl. She was critically wounded and hospitalized as a result.
29 May: Settlers from Kafr Tappuah attacked Palestinians in the governorate of Salfit. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
29 May: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
30 May: A settler vehicle on Road #60 in the Bethlehem governorate hit a man and his nine-year old son. Both sustained injuries in the attack.
31 May: Settlers near Susiya attacked Palestinians in the Hebron district in southern Palestine. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 31 When Settlers Attack
June
1 June: Settlers wielding iron tools and bars attacked Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem. Three Palestinians were injured in the attack.
1 June: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered Safa and uprooted fifteen grapevines belonging to Palestinian villagers.
3 June: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
3 June: A settler vehicle ran over a six-year old in the village of Shuqba in the Ramallah governorate. The child was critically injured in the attack.
3 June: Settlers threw stones at villagers in Far’ata village near Qalqilya. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
5 June: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the Old City of Hebron. One vehicle was damaged and one Palestinian was injured.
5 June: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered Safa and destroyed 35 grapevines belonging to Palestinian villagers.
5 June: Settlers threw stones at homes in the village of Sinjil. One window was smashed in the attack.
7 June: Settlers from Karmei Tzur trespassed onto Palestinian land and sprayed chemicals onto 20 grapevines belonging to a Hebron resident.
9 June: Settlers entered Bani Naim in the Hebron district and set fire to 20 dunums (5 acres) of olive groves.
10 June: Settlers from Kiryat Arba entered the Old City of Hebron and threw stones at Palestinian-owned vehicles. Three windshields were destroyed in the attack.
12 June: Settlers entered the village of Beitillu and sprayed gas in the face of a Palestinian. The Palestinian suffered from suffocation as a result.
14 June: Settlers entered Kafr Malik in Ramallah and set fire to two civilian vehicles.
15 June: Settlers entered Aqraba and physically attacked a Palestinian causing injuries.
15 June: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
18 June: Settlers entered Madama in the Nablus district and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the incident.
18 June: A settler vehicle entered Zatara near Bethlehem and ran over a 16-year old Palestinian, causing critical injuries.
19 June: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked Palestinians. One civilian was severely injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 32 When Settlers Attack
22 June: Settlers trespassed onto Palestinian land in Sinjil and cut down approximately 50 olive trees.
23 June: A settler vehicle entered the Arrub refugee camp in Hebron and drove into a herd of sheep. Five sheep were killed in the incident.
24 June: Settlers entered Beit Sakariya and uprooted 70 grapevines.
29 June: Settlers entered the village of Sawma’a and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
29 June: Settlers threw stones at cars in Jit village. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
July
1 July: A settler vehicle entered Marj Na’ja in Jericho and ran over a nine-year old causing critical injury.
1 July: Settlers from Yitzhar entered the district of Nablus and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured in the incident.
4 July: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at villagers in Madama. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
4 July: A settler vehicle entered Madama and ran over a Palestinian causing critical injuries.
7 July: Settlers threw stones at cars in Asira Al-Qibliya damaging one windshield.
14 July: Settlers from Efrat entered the Bethlehem governorate and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
14 July: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians on the Jenin-Nablus main road. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
17 July: A settler vehicle entered Husan village in the Bethlehem governorate and ran over a six-year old. The child sustained critical injuries in the attack.
18 July: Settlers trespassed into Manshiya village and set fire to fifteen olive trees.
19 July: Settlers entered Sair village and leveled two dunums (1/2 acre) of land in preparation for the creation of an outpost.
20 July: Settlers from Ma’ale Mikhmas entered Mikhmas and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
22 July: Settlers from Eshkolot leveled 50 dunums (12.5 acres) of land in Ramadin near Hebron.
23 July: Settlers entered Qusra and physically beat three sheep, injuring one and killing two.
26 July: Settlers entered Beitillu and opened gunfire on Palestinian villagers. Four were injured in the attack.
28 July: Settlers entered the village of Tuwani and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
The Palestine Center 33 When Settlers Attack
30 July: Settlers entered Jit village and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
30 July: Settlers entered Ar-Ram village near Jerusalem and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
31 July: Settlers entered Tuwani and physically attacked Palestinians and activists. Two were injured in the attack and one camera belonging to an activist was destroyed.
August
4 August: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian on Road #60 near Bethlehem causing injury.
4 August: Settlers harassed two children in Burqa, a village in the Nablus district.
14 August: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians on the Ramallah-Nablus main road. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
21 August: Settlers from Koghaf Yacoub entered Mikhmas and physically attacked one Palestinian child causing injuries.
21 August: A settler vehicle ran over two Palestinians, one of whom was a twelve-year old girl. Both sustained critical injuries in the operation.
21 August: A settler vehicle entered the Ramallah district and struck a Palestinian male, causing severe injuries.
21 August: Settlers enter the Qusra village and set fire to 70 olive trees.
24 August: Settlers threw stones at vehicles on the Ramallah-Nablus main road. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
27 August: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a Palestinian man causing injuries.
27 August: Settlers entered Wadi Qana and broke the branches off eight olive trees and two lemon trees belonging to Palestinians.
28 August: A settler vehicle entered Halhul and ran over a fifteen-year old male. He sustained critical injuries in the attack.
30 August: Settlers entered the Qalqiliya district and set fire to fifteen olive trees owned by Palestinians.
31 August: Settlers entered Deir Istiya and uprooted 32 olive trees.
The Palestine Center 34 When Settlers Attack
September
2 September: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a fifteen-year old Palestinian male causing injury.
3 September: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian near the Kafr Tappuah settlement. The victim sustained critical injuries in the attack.
6 September: Settlers trespassed onto Palestinian land in Huwarra and set five olive trees on fire.
9 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron uprooted a Palestinian olive tree.
9 September: Settlers entered the Qusra village in the Nablus district and set fire to 40 olive trees.
9 September: Settlers from Kiryat Arba opened gunfire on the Palestinian village of Buweira damaging one vehicle.
9 September: Settlers threw stones at Wadi Qilt in Jericho damaging one vehicle.
10 September: Settlers in the market of Hebron’s Old City threw stones at Palestinian residents. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
10 September: Settlers entered Ta’l Al-Roumeda and physically attacked Palestinians. Three were injured as a result.
10 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles near the Huwwara checkpoint in the Nablus district. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
11 September: Settlers entered Halhul and set fire to 100 grape vines belonging to village residents.
12 September: Settlers entered Deir Dibwan and set fire to 30 fruit trees.
12 September: Settlers entered the village of Burqa and set fire to two vehicles.
12 September: Settlers from Kedumim threw stones at the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. Two vehicles were damaged in the attack.
12 September: Settlers near Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. Two vehicles were damaged in the attack.
12 September: Settlers entered the village of Taybeh and threw stones at vehicles. One car window was destroyed in the attack.
13 September: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Nablus and physically attacked a Palestinian male, causing injuries.
13 September: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinians in the district of Nablus. Salah and Eyad Sanakra were injured in the attack.
13 September: Settlers entered Jit village near Qalqiliya and set fire to 100 olive trees.
The Palestine Center 35 When Settlers Attack
13 September: Settlers from Rimonim infiltrated Deir Dibwan, set fire to three cars and defaced a Palestinian home.
14 September: A settler vehicle in Hebron’s Old City ran over seven-year old Ahmed Jaber. Jaber was critically injured in the attack.
14 September: Settlers from Yitzhar physically attacked three Palestinian men in the Nablus district. All three sustained injuries in the attack.
14 September: Settlers from Yitzhar set fire to a Palestinian-owned vehicle in the district of Nablus.
15 September: Settlers set fire to two vehicles in the district of Nablus.
15 September: Settlers near the outpost of Homesh kidnapped a 16-year old Palestinian male.
15 September: Setters ran over a child on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. The victim was critically wounded in the attack.
17 September: Settlers entered the Nablus village Aqraba and kidnapped brothers Ghassan and Ashraf Jaber.
18 September: A settler vehicle in the village of Jamean ran over Ahmed Ali, causing serious injuries.
18 September: A settler vehicle on road #60 near Hebron ran over Nather Sabarna, causing serious injuries.
18 September: Settlers entered Deir Istiya and set fire to 500 olive trees and a number of almond and fig trees as well.
18 September: Settlers threw stones at Palestinian cars traveling in Joura Al Shamaa. One car was damaged in the attack.
19 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian woman causing injuries.
19 September: Settlers set fire to 100 dunums (25 acres) of land in Einabus, a village in the Nablus district.
20 September: Settlers set fire to 400 olive trees in the northern Qalqiliya area.
20 September: Settlers kidnapped a Palestinian university student on the Tulkarem-Nablus road.
21 September: Settlers entered Zatara and attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian male was injured in the attack.
21 September: Settlers set fire to dozens of grape vines in the district of Hebron.
21 September: Settlers threw stones at a Palestinian home in the Old City of Hebron. The home sustained damage in the attack.
The Palestine Center 36 When Settlers Attack
21 September: Settlers from Kfar Etzion threw stones at Palestinian vehicles in the Bethlehem governorate. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
22 September: A settler vehicle rammed two Palestinian vehicles in the district of Ramallah. The attack destroyed two vehicles and two male Palestinians were hospitalized.
22 September: Settlers set 50 dunums (12.5 acres) of olive trees on fire in Deir Jarir.
22 September: Sixty olive trees were set on fire by settlers in the village Madama.
23 September: A settler vehicle in Hebron ran over eight-year old Farid Jaber. He was seriously injured in the attack. Jaber later died as a result of the attack.
23 September: Settlers set several olive trees on fire in Qusra. After clashing with Palestinian villagers, the Israeli military intervened to quell the Palestinian response using tear gas and gunfire. Eight Palestinians were injured by the Israeli military as a result. One Palestinian, Essam Kamal, was shot and killed in the incident.
23 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Ibeida. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
23 September: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along Road #60 in the district of Hebron. Four vehicles were damaged in the attack.
24 September: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along the main road in Bethlehem. As a result, one vehicle flipped and a passenger was hospitalized.
25 September: Settlers from Alon Moreh infiltrated Deir Al Hatab village and set fire to one storage facility.
25 September: Settlers set 400 olive trees on fire in the village of Qusra in the Nablus governorate.
25 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in Huwwara. One vehicle sustained damage as a result.
28 September: A settler vehicle ran over fifteen-year old A’mar Hanhin in the village of Halhoul near Hebron. A’mar was critically injured in the attack.
29 September: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and uprooted tens of olive trees.
30 September: Under the protection of the Israeli military, settlers raided the village of Beit Furik in Nablus. Military officials fired tear gas at Palestinians leading to several injuries.
30 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron opened fire on Palestinian vehicles, shooting out the front window of one car.
The Palestine Center 37 When Settlers Attack
October
1 October: In the village of Al Nabi Saleh, settlers set several olive trees on fire.
1 October: Settlers entered Huwwara in the Nablus governorate and set dozens of olive trees on fire.
1 October: In Deir Sharaf, settlers entered the village and burned several olive trees.
1 October: Settlers raided the village of Burin under the protection of the Israeli military. Military officials fired tear gas at Palestinians causing several Palestinians to suffer from suffocation.
1 October: Settlers entered the village of Madama and uprooted several olive trees.
1 October: Settlers uprooted several olive trees in the village of Khirbet Shwiekeh in Hebron.
1 October: Settlers stormed the home of Rujab Abu Isa under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers proceeded to detain two civilians, including a child, for responding to the settler attacks.
3 October: Settlers dumped sewage on a home in the Bethlehem governorate.
4 October: A settler vehicle in Huwwara ran over two children on their way to school. Both children were severely injured in the attack.
4 October: Settlers severely beat Hassan Mohammad in the governorate of Hebron. He was working on the settlement of Modein when the attack occurred.
4 October: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron threw stones at Palestinian property, breaking one home window and one car windshield.
5 October: Settlers entered the village of Jit and attacked 64-year old Hussein Jabarin as he harvested olives. Jabarin was hospitalized with severe contusions sustained in the attack.
5 October: A settler vehicle entered the Nablus governorate and ran over fifteen-year old Rajeh Hijazi who sustained severe injuries in the attack.
5 October: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and cut down 180 olive trees.
5 October: A settler vehicle entered the village of Jiflik in Jericho and ran over Nasar Abu-Al Kabash. He was left hospitalized with severe injuries in the attack.
6 October: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in Al-Bireh. Fourteen-year old Ismail Ibrahim Mutteir was admitted to the hospital after sustaining a blow to the head.
6 October: Settlers entered the village of Jinsafout in Qalqiliya and physically attacked Khader Eid as he harvested olives. Eid was injured in the attack.
7 October: Settlers threw stones at the village of Azzun in the Qalqiliya district. Several vehicles were damaged as a result.
The Palestine Center 38 When Settlers Attack
7 October: Settlers entered the village of Jamean in the Salfit district and physically attacked Hussan Muhammad Al Haj and his son while they harvested olives. Both sustained injuries in the attack.
7 October: Settlers entered the Bethlehem governorate and poisoned fields in which sheep graze. Ten sheep were killed after ingesting poisons.
9 October: Settlers threw stones at vehicles passing through Ein Kinia in Ramallah. One car was damaged and two passengers were injured in the attack.
9 October: Settlers set agricultural land on fire in the village of Awarta. Settlers also proceeded to set fire to the car of a journalist reporting the incident.
9 October: Settlers entered Azzmout and broke the branches of eleven olive trees.
9 October: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along the Nablus-Ramallah road in the Nablus governorate. The car of Dr. Laila Ghanam, governor of Ramallah, was damaged in the attack.
11 October: Settlers entered the village of Mikhmas and damaged several olive trees.
11 October: Settlers entered Ras Karkar in the district of Ramallah and set fire to several olive trees.
11 October: Settlers entered Yatma in the district of Nablus and set fire to several olive trees.
12 October: A group of settlers entered the Salfit district and set fire to olive groves in Kufr Al Dik village. Two hundred and fifty olive trees were destroyed in the vandalizing.
12 October: A group of Israeli settlers leveled a plot of land in the governorate of Salfit in preparation for the creation of a new outpost.
13 October: Israeli settlers physically attacked Ahmad Khalil in the village of Beit Ummar as he was tending his sheep near the Karmei Tzor settlement. Khalil was hospitalized as a result of the attack.
14 October: A group of Israeli settlers raided the village of Atara in the district of Ramallah and set fire to agricultural land. Several olive trees were destroyed as a result.
14 October: Israeli settlers physically attacked and injured Ali Al-Sidda as he was collecting olives in Qalqiliya. Settlers withdrew under the protection of the Israeli military.
14 October: Settlers entered Iskaka village and leveled 35 dunums (8.75 acres) of agricultural land. They also surrounded the plot with barbed-wire in an apparent attempt to create a settlement outpost.
15 October: Israeli settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles passing along the main road near the Beit El settlement north of Al-Bireh. The attack damaged several vehicles and injured eleven-year old Daoud Abu Haj.
16 October: An Israeli settler abducted and assaulted a child as he left school in the Al-Thawri neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The Palestine Center 39 When Settlers Attack
17 October: A group of Israeli settlers entered agricultural land in Nablus and assaulted Abdel-karim Yousef and his mother. The two sustained injuries and inhaled pepper spray in the attack.
18 October: A group of Israeli settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles as they passed the settlement of Ateret. Ali Asi was hospitalized in the attack sustaining a critical injury to the eye.
18 October: A group of Israeli settlers harassed and chased Muhiba Abdel Fatah as she was collecting her olive harvest in Nablus. During the chase, she broke her right leg.
21 October: Settlers entered Qarryout village and threw stones at farmers and international solidarity activists as they harvested olives. Three people were injured. Israeli forces intervened, firing tear gas which injured five more Palestinians and three more internationals.
21 October: Settlers set fire to olive groves in various villages throughout the Nablus governorate. Several olive trees were destroyed in the attack.
23 October: Settlers stoned vehicles passing along the Ramallah-Nablus road. The windshield of a car owned by a Nablus resident was destroyed in the attack.
25 October: Settlers leveled a plot of agricultural land east of the village of Kafr Qaddoum in the Qalqilya district. The plot is owned by Salim Aishtewi.
26 October: Settlers physically attacked a Palestinian woman named Ibtisam Al-Rajabi in the Old City of Hebron. She was hospitalized as a result.
26 October: Settlers physically attacked a shepherd near the city of Hebron. In the process of the attack, three sheep were killed and six were stolen.
27 October: Settlers entered Beit Safafa in the Jerusalem district and stole the olives from 20 olive trees.
31 October: Settlers positioned near Mikhmas threw stones at Palestinian villagers. Aisha Abu Ali was admitted to a hospital after sustaining critical injuries in the attack.
November
9 November: Abdel Mutalleb Mohammad Hakim Mashti, 46, died as a result of being hit by a settler vehicle in the village of Wadi Qana in Salfit.
11 November: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in the village of Yasuf as they harvested olives. Ahmed Abdallah was injured as a result of the attack and several vehicles were damaged.
12 November: Settlers physically attacked Hijaz Jaber, a resident of Hebron. Jaber was hospitalized after sustaining critical injuries in the attack.
13 November: A settler vehicle ran over Ibtisam Abuhashash on route 60 near Hebron. She was admitted to the hospital after sustaining critical injuries.
The Palestine Center 40 When Settlers Attack
13 November: A settler in the governorate of Salfit shot pepper spray in the face of Abdil Halim Daoud. Daoud was admitted to the hospital as a result.
19 November: Mohammed Daoud was physically attacked by a group of settlers near the Old City of Hebron. He was admitted to the hospital as a result.
23 November: A group of settlers raided the village of Yanoun and stoned several residents tending to their goats. Masaleh Jaber sustained injuries in the attack.
24 November: A settler vehicle ran over 16-year old Mohammad Daraghma and Nassar Daraghma. Both were severely injured, sustaining broken bones in the attack.
25 November: Settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles a near the village of Jinsafut injuring Sulaiman Kan’an.
December
3 December: Israeli settlers assaulted Najeh Abed Al-Qadder while trying to enter Salem village.
3 December: Israeli settlers from Yitzhar settlement stoned Palestinian vehicles in Nablus. Two children, Rwaida Yousef and Yousef Abu Awwad, were injured as a result of the attack.
5 December: A group of settlers set several trees on fire near the Silet Al-Thaher area in Jenin.
6 December: Israeli settlers raided Orif village and abducted 65 year old Salim Shihadeh as he was herding his sheep. He was later released.
6 December: Settlers stormed Zaatara and pepper-sprayed several residents, including national security officer Ahmad Al-Thib.
7 December: A group of settlers damaged a Palestinian vehicle after the car collided with a settler’s vehicle.
7 December: A group of settlers set fire to the entrance of a mosque in Burqin and wrote anti-Arab slogans on the walls.
7 December: Settlers in the governorate of Ramallah set fire to a bulldozer owned by Nael Sabrah and a vehicle owned by Motasim Samara.
7 December: Israeli settlers occupied, plowed and planted 40 dunums of land owned by Al-Nawajaa and Al-Hadar families north of Yatta.
8 December: An Israeli settler ran over 16 year-old Fida Odeh in the governorate of Nablus, leaving the teenager hospitalized with moderate injuries.
10 December: A group of Israeli settlers assaulted three worshipers who were on their way to the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City of Hebron.
11 December: Israeli settlers physically attacked Jumaa Musa while he was leaving his farm near Hebron.
12 December: Under the protection of the Israeli army, a group of Israeli settlers stoned and damaged several homes in Nablus. The homes belonged to Khalil Saleh, Bassam Saleh, Abdel Fatah Ahmad, Ibrahim Makhlouf and Abdel Baset Ahmad.
The Palestine Center 41 When Settlers Attack
13 December: Israeli settlers stoned vehicles along the Qalqilya–Nablus road, damaging the vehicles owned by Anwar Kaabi and Odeh Ramadin, residents of Al-Ramadin village, and injuring passengers Sanaa Rayan and her daughter Israa – residents of Qarwat Bani Hassan in Salfit – and Mohammad Khleif, a resident of Al-Nabi Eliyas village in Qalqilya.
14 December: A group of armed settlers raided Duma, setting fire to a vehicle and water tank. The group also spray painted in Hebrew: “A gift from the youth of Yitsahar settlement” on a house fence.
14 December: Israeli settlers raided Yasouf village and set fire to a vehicle owned by Mohammad Masalha. They also spray painted in Hebrew “Price to Pay” on a wall.
14 December: Armed settlers raided Kafil Harres, set fire to a vehicleowned by Ahmad Ubeid and spray painted in Hebrew “ Price to Pay” on a house wall.
15 December: Israeli settlers near Ramallah stoned and damaged a car belonging to Nazal Aqel.
15 December: A group of Israeli set fire to a mosque in Burqa and wrote racist graffiti on the walls.
16 December: Israeli settlers raided Burin village and destroyed 15 olive trees.
17 December: A group of Israeli settlers raided the homes of Adeeb Abu Eisha and Issa Amro in Hebron’s Old City, and physically attacked the residents.
18 December: Settlers assaulted Muntaser Mansour and raided his property in Deir Istya.
19 December: In Beitin village, Settlers set fire to 4 vehicles and a truck owned by Najah Mustafa, Najah Al-Imseity, Ahmad Abul Sanbal, and Samia Badran.
19 December: Settlers stoned vehicles driving on the Qalqiliya–Nablus road and damaged the vehicle of Mohammad Qaddumi.
19 December: An Israeli settler ran over Mohammad Thaher with his truck; the child was hospitalized. Settlers also assaulted Fadi Samara near the accident site.
20 December: A group of Israeli settlers physically assaulted residents in eastern Qalqilya.
20 December: Israeli settlers raided Bani Na’im and spray painted racist slogans on the walls of the mosque.
22 December: Israeli settlers in Khirbeit Shwiekiya destroyed 30 olive trees owned by Othman Samara. Settlers also spray painted racist slogans on the property walls.
24 December: A group of settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked and injured 15 year old Abdala Shaheen who was later admitted to a hospital for treatment.
31 December: Israeli settlers violently beat Khalid Hamarat of Husan village. He was hospitalized with severe bruises.
31 December: Settlers severely beat several Palestinian residents after surrounding them with police guards in the governorate of Bethlehem. Sa’ad Sanad was left injured.
31 December: An Israeli settler pepper-sprayed the face of Arfat Al Bayad, sending him to the hospital.
The Palestine Center 42 When Settlers Attack
Data Analysis Variable Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V
Palestinian Actions
Palestinian Violence-WB
-.034*
-.049**
-.141**
-.037*
-.117**
Palestinian Violence -GAZA
-.006***
-.006***
-.074***
-.006***
-.076***
Israeli Actions
Israeli Government Announcements
-.0342
-.022
-.081
-.063
Israeli Government Executions
.233**
.228**
.283**
.280**
Log Likelihood
-1179.74
-1173.5
-1164.73
-1176.15
-1167.6
Dispersion
Mean
Mean
Mean
Mean
Mean
*=P<.05 , **=P<.01, ***=P<.001 N=369 Above are results of several multivariate negative binomial regression models of the effect of the four different variables on settler violence. The models vary based on variables included as well as the treatment of the variables. Model I tests Palestinian violence only, Model II tests the absolute values of the four variables. In Model III we transformed the Palestinian violence variables to > 1. In Model IV we treated Israeli Actions as a dichotomous variable whereas Model V included the transformed variables of Model III and the dichotomous variables of Model IV. The ordering of the coefficients remains the same throughout the different models however goodness of fit tests suggests support for Model III. Interpretation of the coefficients in this model suggests each Israeli government execution increases the expected number of settler violence incidents by 25.7 percent while instances of Palestinian violence in the West Bank decreases the expected number of settler violence incidents by 13.2 percent.
Interestingly, while Palestinian violence has a statistically significant relationship with instances of settler violence, that relationship is negative. An explanation could be that after an instance of Palestinian violence, settlers are told to stay home by direction of the military. This intriguing result should be investigated further in other analyses. However, the only variable which has a statistically significant and positive effect on settler violence is Israeli government executions. This lends evidence to support the ‘price tag’ branch of the responsorial explanation but it must be noted that the degree of variance explained by this model is minor.
The Palestine Center 43 When Settlers Attack
The Ten Most Dangerous Settlements
In this section we will focus on the most dangerous settlements; the settlements which have most often been the origin of attack in events in our database. It is important to note that settlement of origin is not known in each incident. Often, incidents occur and little is known about the origin of the settlers. In some cases, victims of settler violence do not even see the attacking settlers as in the case of most arson attacks or destruction of property incidents which either occur in the dark of night or in areas where few witnesses may be present. We have information for settlement of origin in approximately one-third of all the cases in our database (1,163) and based on this information, we’ve determined the following are the most active and most dangerous settlements:
Yitzhar
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1000
Villages Most Targeted:
Burin (31%), Madama (14%) , Urif (10%), Asira Qibliya (17%)
Kedumim
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
3-4,000
Villages Most Targeted:
Kufr Qaddum (44%) , Qalqilya-Nablus Road (27%) Jit (7%)
17%
20%
15%
25%
23%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc
5%
9%
13%
39%
34%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc.
The Palestine Center 44 When Settlers Attack
Kiryat Arba
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
7-10,000
Villages Most Targeted:
Hebron Old City(88%) Baqa (6%)
Bracha
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1-1,500
Villages Most Targeted:
Burin(62%%) Iraq Burin (17%) Kufr Qalil (6%)
13%
35%
26%
5%
21%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Vehicular Attack
Misc.
19%
15%
22%
13%
11%
20%
Attacks
Shooting
Arson
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Misc.
The Palestine Center 45 When Settlers Attack
Susya
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
700-1000
Areas Most Targeted:
South of Yatta (60%) Wadi Suweid (10%)
Gilad
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
N/A
Areas Most Targeted:
Jit (38%) Farata (26%) Immatin (11%) Till (11%)
26%
7%
9%
35%
23%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Theft
Arson
Physical Attack
Misc.
26%
21%
26%
27%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attacks
Misc
The Palestine Center 46 When Settlers Attack
Maon
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
3-500
Areas Most Targeted:
Tawani(33%) Yatta (33%) Tuba (10%)
Karnei Shomron
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
6-7,000
Areas Most Targeted:
Kfur Thulth (23%) Kufr Laqif (28%) Main Road (25%)
24%
49%
8%
5%
14%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Arson
Misc
41%
22%
12%
25%
Attacks
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Misc
The Palestine Center 47 When Settlers Attack
Alon Moreh
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1,500
Areas Most Targeted:
Deir al Hatab (39%)
Salem (21%) Azmout (17%)
Kfar Tappuah
Governorate: Salfit
Population:
1000
Areas Most Targeted:
Yasuf (63%)
Yatma (5%)
13%
15%
9%
25%
9%
29%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Shooting
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc
42%
23%
6%
6%
23%
Attacks
Stone Throwing
Physical Attack
Shooting
Arson
Misc
The Palestine Center 48 When Settlers Attack
Most Vulnerable Villages
Village Vulnerability District Attacking Settlement(s) Most Common Attacks Faced Burin
Extreme
Nablus Bracha (53%) & Yitzhar (48%)
Arson (18%) Dest. Of Prop. (18%) Huwwara
Extreme
Nablus Yitzhar (80%) & Bracha (20%)
Arson (18%) Stone Throwing (18%) Jit
Extreme
Qalqilya Gilad (76%) & Kedumim (24%)
Stone Throwing (34%) Arson (20%) Kufr Qaddum
High
Qalqilya Kedumim
Physical Attack (18%) Dest. Of Prop. 10%) Yatta (South)
High
Hebron Maon (30%) Susiya (59%)
Phy. Attack (40%) Dest. Of Prop. 33%) Asira Qibliya
High
Nablus Yitzhar
Arson (28%) Haris
High
Salfit Revava
Stone Throwing (22%) Dest. of Prop. (15%) Burqa
High
Nablus Shavei Shomron
Arson (17%) Shootings (13%) Iraq Burin
High
Nablus Bracha (80%) Yitzhar (20%)
Stone Throwing (16%) Dest. of Prop. (13%) Zatara
High
Salfit Kfar Tappuah
Stone Throwing (44%) Phy. Attacks(24%) Kfar Laqif
High
Qalqiliya Karnei Shomron
Stone Throwing (40%) Azzun
High
Qalqiliya Kedumim (28%) Shomron (28%)
Stone Throwing (16%) Dest. of Prop. (15%) Safa
High
Hebron Bat Ayin
Shooting (19%) Dest. of Prop. (19%) Yasuf
High
Salfit Kfar Tappuah
Phy. Attack (20%) Shooting(16%)
The Palestine Center 49 When Settlers Attack
Acknowledgments
This report and our settler violence database is an ongoing project entering its third year. The Palestine Center would like to thank a number of people who contributed to this report. Steven Souryal, Sanaa Saeed, Katharine Forman, Elise Springuel, Mikki O’Leary, Sara Cady, Evan Fowler, Alexandra Dominguez, Marianna Jordan, Joseph Abushawish, Fadia Shawish and Asma Jaber all contributed to the significant coding effort. Nawal Atallah helped with copy editing.
The Palestine Center would also like to acknowledge the Palestine Monitoring Group, whose daily reports provided the best resource for coding and analysis, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, whose press round-ups were used for coding additional variables and B’Tselem whose colorful, high-resolution map provided the most legible option for our cases section above.
For questions regarding this report or for further information on settler violence, please contact Yousef Munayyer at ymunayyer@palestinecenter.org or call 202.338.1290.
The Palestine Center
2012
When Settlers Attack
Israeli settler violence is a growing and consistent threat to Palestinian livelihood. Spanning over seven years, with daily data, this analysis explains why, how and when Israeli settler violence happens…
Cover image: The Palestinian village of Urif, in Area B, as seen from the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar less than 3,500 feet away.
The views, facts and interpretations presented in this report are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund. The Palestine Center is the educational program of The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. The material may not be used without permission from The Palestine Center and the author.
When Settlers Attack
© 2012 by the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development
The Palestine Center
2425 Virginia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037 USA
Tel. (202) 338-1290
Fax (202) 333-7742
E-mail: info@palestinecenter.org
Web site: www.thejerusalemfund.org/palestinecenter
Contents
Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...i
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………..………...1
Data: Origins and Scope...................................................................................................................................1
Trends and Patterns…………………………………………………………………………………………………..2
General Trend Over Time…………………………………………………………………………………….2
Trends over Space……………………………………………………………………………………………….3
Trends in Tactics………………………………………………………………………………………………...5
Why?............................................................................................................................................................................7
Governorate Cases: Mapping the Violence?........................................................................................10
Illusions of the “Price Tag” Narrative.....................................................................................................22
Recommendations............................................................................................................................................23
To Israel…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...23
To the United States…………………………………………………………………………………………..24
To the Palestinians…………………………………………………………………………………………….24
To Journalists……………………………………………………………………………………………………24
Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......25
Notable Incidents in 2011………………………………………………………………………………...25
Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………………...42
The Most Dangerous Settlements……………………………………………………………………..43
Most Vulnerable Villages………………………………………………………………………………….48
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………………….49
i
Executive Summary
Israeli settler violence presents a direct and consistent threat to Palestinian civilians and their property in the occupied West Bank and instances of Israeli settler violence are on the rise.
From 2010 to 2011 there was a 39 percent increase in incidents of Israel Settler violence. In the five year period from 2007 through 2011 there has been a 315 percent increase. Conversely, over the same 5-year period, there has been a 95 percent decrease in Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
There is a noticeable shift in the proportion of violence as it occurs geographically in the West Bank. In the past, the southern part of the West Bank saw the largest number of instances but in recent years the northern part of the West Bank is becoming increasingly targeted and has overtaken the southern part of the West Bank in terms of number of attacks.
The period of the olive harvest annually brings a peak in violent settler activity. The presence of Palestinian civilians in olive groves, where they are easy targets for unrestrained and violent Israeli settlers, is the main reason why this occurs on an annual basis.
There is a noticeable increase in the frequency and proportion of arson attacks employed by violent settlers. This suggests that violent settlers are increasingly choosing this method of violence and will continue to do so. The percentage of arson among all attack types in 2005 was 6 percent and has risen to 11 percent in 2011.
While minimal variation in Israeli settler violence over time can be explained as a response to Israeli state actions against settlements, like the dismantlement of outposts, the vast majority of Israeli settler violence is not responsorial but rather structural and symptomatic of occupation.
Over 90 percent of all Palestinian villages which have experienced multiple instances of Israeli settler violence are in areas which fall under Israeli security jurisdiction.
The Palestine Center 1 When Settlers Attack
Introduction
Over the duration of the ‘peace process’ the number of Israelis living beyond the Green Line has tripled from about 200,000 in 1990 to well above 650,000 today. Throughout this Israeli expansion into Palestinian territory the usurpation of Palestinian resources continues to be commonplace. However, in recent years the phenomenon of Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians has become a primary concern for the safety and security of Palestinian livelihood. While Israeli settler violence is not new, the extent and frequency with which it is perpetrated today is. This undeniable trend, which has been evident for several years now, seems to be the new normal. For this reason, this study aims to better understand where and how settler violence is happening and what causes it in an effort to understand how best to stop it.
Data: Origins and Scope
The data used in this analysis is largely from daily reports of the Palestine Monitoring Group (PMG) which is “an inter-agency group of Palestinian civilian ministries and security agencies. Established in August 2003, the PMG monitors all aspects of ground conditions in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Occupied Gaza Strip.”1 This resource provides the best readily available data, catalogued on a daily basis, for analysis.2 While the PMG reports record various events, including the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) actions, raids, arrests, incursions and so on, we coded the daily reports for two different types of events: settler violence and Palestinian attacks.
Our aim was to get a better understanding of Israeli settler violence and where, how, how often and why it happens. To make the best attempt at answering the why, we coded Palestinian attacks over the same span of time in an attempt to understand the relationship between the two. Could Israeli settler violence be a response to Palestinian violence? We discuss this in our analysis below. We also sought to understand the relationship between Israeli government actions and settler violence. Coverage of Israeli settler violence often describes ‘price tag’ events, a term settlers use to describe retaliations to Israeli government action that limit the settlers’ political goals. To understand the relationship between these two variables and to grasp just what extent of Israeli settler violence is in fact ‘price tag’ attacks, we coded Israeli state actions against settlements and discuss the relationship between the two below.
The data covers the period from September of 2004 through December of 2011. This seven-plus year span of daily events amounts to over 3,700 separate incidents coded in the settler violence database. We are able to code for many important variables including the date and time of the incident, the type of incident, the location of the incident, the number of injuries or deaths, if any, and the settlement of origin from which the perpetrators departed. For this last variable, settlement of origin, we have data on approximately one third of incidents (N=1,163). Incidents occurred in
1 http://www.nad-plo.org/etemplate.php?id=184
2 Since this data was recorded by the PMG, the Palestine Center cannot independently verify the veracity of every incident. However, trends identified in this data match trends identified by various other independent and international agencies like UN OCHA.
The Palestine Center 2 When Settlers Attack
every governorate of the West Bank. In a later section of this report, we will discuss in detail the specific challenges facing Palestinian victims of settler violence in each governorate.
Trends and Patterns
In this section, we will cover three types of trends in Israeli settler violence that have occurred over the duration of the period reflected in our database.
General Trend Over Time
With the exception of 2005, which saw a flurry of violent settler activity, setter violence has steadily increased year after year. The increase in incidents is particularly significant beginning in 2007. It is important to note in the chart here that data for 2010 is incomplete and includes only the first eleven months of the year,3 while 2011 and all other years are complete.
Two thousand eleven was by far the most violent year, seeing a 39 percent increase over the previous year and a 315 percent increase over a mere five years ago. In early 2011, we identified this trend at an event at the Palestine Center noting: “[There is] a very strong, noticeable increase in Israeli settler violence over the past five years, and mind you 2011 is on pace to beat 2010. We started with an extremely violent two months of 2011 and it shows no indication of slowing down.”4 During this same period above, Palestinian violence in the West Bank drops dramatically (95%).
3 Due to a gap in the available daily reports, December 2010 is missing from our database and aggregate numbers for 2010 were weighted to produce an additional month’s projection.
4 Transcript- Presentation at Palestine Center, April 19th, 2011 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/29175/pid/897
0
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2005
2006
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Incidents Per Year 2005-2011
Incidents
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Trends Over Space
The second important trend is the change in where settler violence is concentrated. The chart below depicts a noticeable shift over the duration of the period reflected in our data. Here, the number of incidents per year in each governorate is shown. Hebron, the southernmost governorate of the West Bank, has long been the locale that has seen the largest single portion of settler violence. Much of this violence is personal and close range type attacks like assault, vehicular assault, harassment or stone throwing. This is largely due to the presence of a small number of particularly ideological Israeli settlers in the heart of a major Palestinian city in the West Bank; Hebron. In the governorate of Hebron, we can separate incidents into two categories to better understand the effect of this small concentration of settlers in the city’s center. Just over 60 percent of incidents in the Hebron governorate occur in the city of Hebron while the remaining 40 percent occur in the surrounding villages.
However, in recent years we’ve begun to notice change in which areas see the most incidents of settler violence. As depicted in the chart below, Nablus, a governorate in the north of the West Bank, is seeing an increasingly larger portion of settler violence than ever before. The polynomials in the chart reflect the trends over time. This northward shift in violence is also evident in other governorates in the north of the West Bank including Ramallah, Qalqilya and Salfit which accounted for about 20 percent of incidents in 2006 and account for 30 percent of incidents so far in 2011.
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Incidents by Governorate per Year
Bethelehem
Hebron
Jenin
Jericho
Jerusalem
Nablus
Qalqilya
Ramallah
Salfit
Tubas
Tulkarem
Poly. (Hebron)
Poly. (Nablus)
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That the proportion of incidents in the north is so high by this point in the year5 is particularly startling as the annual peak of settler violence incidents in the north occurs in the months of October and November during the Palestinian olive harvest.
In the chart below, we look at when and where incidents happen by dividing governorates into north and south regions, with the former including Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Salfit, Tubas and Tulkarem and the latter including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem and Jericho. The governorates in the north region are far more populated with olive trees than those in the south. In fact, some 68 percent of the West Bank land cultivated with olive trees is in the north while 32 percent is in the south.6 You can easily see that the most noticeable gap between the two regions is evident during the olive harvest. This divergence is largely due to the presence of Palestinian civilians in olive groves during the harvest where they become easy targets for Israeli settlers.
In general, the geographic trend north, where rural villages are predominantly targeted, suggests that settlers are exploiting unfettered access to isolated Palestinian villages to perpetrate violence more than ever before.
5 Chart above reflects first 9 months of 2011
6 http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=455
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Percentage of Incidents By Region and Month
South
North
Olive Harvest
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11%
32%
11%
4%
5%
12%
25%
Top Incident Types in 2011
Arson
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Vehicular Attack
Shootings
Physical Attacks
Misc.
Trends in Tactics
Israeli settlers have used a variety of methods to attack Palestinian civilians and their property. There are clear variations in the methods used over space and, to a lesser degree, over time. While our database recorded all types of attacks including kidnappings, stabbings, poisonings and many more, this section of the report will focus on the most often occurring attacks which, on an annual basis, account for the majority of Israeli settler violence. Thus far in 2011, for example, the top six attack types depicted in the chart account for approximately 75 percent of all incidents.
Understanding the attack types:
ARSON- This is the deliberate setting to fire of property. The percentage of arson attacks has doubled since 2005 when it made up close to 6 percent of settler attacks. This alarming trend is most evident in the north of the West Bank where through September of 2011 Nablus and Qalqilya alone saw 55 percent of all arsons. In our database, arson attacks, which overwhelmingly target property and often agriculture, have resulted in only ten injuries and immeasurable loss of property.
STONE THROWING- This is the throwing of stones either at civilians or their livestock, vehicles or homes. Like arson, stone throwing has become a more prevalent attack type in recent years having accounted for 20 percent of attacks in 2005 and 32 percent thus far in 2011. A similar geographic shift in this attack type is also noticeable. In 2005, for example, the majority of stone throwing incidents, 55 percent, took place in Hebron while Nablus, Qalqilya and Ramallah combined saw less than 20 percent of these incidents. Today, a near inversion of these numbers is evident with Hebron seeing about 20 percent and Nablus, Qalqilya and Ramallah seeing 58 percent. We’ve recorded 171 injuries as a result of stone throwing.
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DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY- This is simply the deliberate destruction of property excluding arsons. Often, these attacks take the form of uprooting Palestinian crops, particularly olive trees, but can also include other acts like the deliberate destruction of wells or vehicles. Generally speaking, these incidents are divided geographically across the West Bank; however, in recent years northern governorates have seen an increase in their share of such incidents. Destruction of property has resulted in five injuries and the loss of countless Palestinian crops and trees.
VEHICULAR ATTACK- This is the use of vehicles to attack Palestinian civilians or their livestock. Often the most vulnerable members of society fall victim to these types of attacks including children and the elderly. Shepherds and Bedouin who are often grazing their livestock in fields adjacent to roads have fallen prey to these types of attacks as well. These incidents are most prevalent in the Hebron governorate but also increasingly a problem in the northern governorates of Nablus, Qalqilya and Salfit along an Israeli settler road corridor. Vehicular attacks have claimed the lives of ten Palestinian civilians over the period covered by our data and left 208 more injured.
SHOOTINGS- This is self-explanatory. Settlers are largely armed and have used firearms against Palestinian civilians. Geographically, this attack type is distributed throughout the West Bank with the largest number of incidents occurring in Hebron (24 percent) and Nablus (32 percent). Shootings have left fourteen Palestinians dead and 100 more injured during the period for which we have recorded data.
PHYSICAL ATTACKS- These are person-to-person violent attacks. Unlike some of the other attacks, physical attacks require a high degree of proximity to be carried out and for this reason they are most prevalent in the Hebron governorate and particularly in the city of Hebron itself where settlers live in the midst of a Palestinian city. Over 40 percent of physical attacks in our database occurred in Hebron. This type of attack has understandably been the most harmful to Palestinians and has resulted in the death of three civilians and the injury of 675 others in the period covered by our data.
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Why?
What causes Israeli settler violence or rather, what increases the occurrence of settler violence over space and time? We have already established earlier in this report the clear increase in incidents during the olive harvest season. However, settler violence is a consistent phenomenon that occurs on a daily or near daily basis. In 2011, for example, we witnessed an average of 2.6 incidents per day. The question then is what conditions effect increases and decreases in settler violence?
There are three possible explanations for patterns of settler violence. These fall into two categories; the first is responsorial and the second is structural. Two explanations fall under the first category and these are 1) that settler violence is a response to Palestinian attacks or 2) that settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions against settler ideology. This second explanation has been referred to as the ‘price tag’ explanation which borrows from terminology the settlers use to describe their strategy. The strategy, as they describe it, is aimed at exacting a price for each step the state of Israel takes against the settler movement.
The third explanation is structural and has less to do with changing variables over time and everything to do with unchanging security conditions on the ground. This explanation provides that patterns of settler violence can be explained geographically because the stratified security jurisdiction across the West Bank creates pockets where there is little or no deterrent for settler attacks.
In this section we will test these three explanations in the hopes of understanding what best explains patterns of settler violence. To do so, we will employ an analysis of the data we have collected as well as analyze cases in each governorate to better understand these events over geography.
Explanations
Responsorial
Settler violence is a response to Palestinian violence?
Settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions?
Structural
Settler violence is a product of demographics and security arrangements?
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We begin with the first category of explanations: the responsorial. To determine how powerful an explanation these different notions provide we needed to understand the relationship between several variables and trends in Israeli settler violence. We coded for two variables which each can be divided into two sub-variables. These are explained below.
Palestinian Violence/Attacks
We sought to understand if Israeli settler violence is a response to Palestinian violence. To do this, we recorded all instances of Palestinian violence over the time period that corresponds with our settler violence data. This variable was divided into two based on the location of the attack. Attacks emanating from Gaza (overwhelmingly rockets which caused no casualties) were coded separately than attacks in the West Bank. The reason for this is straightforward; we believed that if settler violence was a response to Palestinian attacks it would likely be more connected to attacks in the West Bank which are closer to the actual settlers than attacks from Gaza. Of course, we could not discount the possibility that settler violence is also a response to attacks from Gaza. To understand the individual effects of both of these variables we tested them in the same model.
Israeli Government Actions
We also wanted to understand if Israeli settler violence is a response to Israeli government actions which have been called ‘price tag’ attacks. Settler groups have announced their intentions to attack Palestinians anytime the state of Israel acts against the settlers. Notable instances have come when Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza. During this period, settler violence in the West Bank increased dramatically. Other notable instances were also present over time. To test this, we recorded instances of Israeli government actions against the settlements over the period covered by our database. We divided these into two variables as well. The first was announcements of decisions either by the Israeli Cabinet, the Knesset or the Israeli courts to limit settlement expansion or dismantle settlements or settlement infrastructure. The second was instances of executions of those decisions. We sought to parse these two because we believed settlers might have different responses to executions and announcements. To test the relationship of both to settler violence we included them in our model.
A Responsorial Phenomenon?
After analyzing the data7 using the week as our unit of analysis (369 observations), we were able to understand the effect of both Palestinian attacks and Israeli government actions on settler violence. The number of settler violence incidents in any given week was tested against the number of Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli government actions against the settlers. The results reveal that Palestinian attacks do not have a positive relationship with Israeli settler violence, neither do Israeli government announcements. The only factor which has a positive and statistically significant relationship with settler violence is Israeli government executions. However, this model explains very little of the variation in Israeli settler violence over the seven year span. In fact, 84 percent of weeks in the analysis did not see any Israeli government executions. These cases
7 For tabulated results, see Appendix
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still had significant variation (Mean = 9.1, S.DV. = 7.9). This lends significant evidence to suggest that Israeli settler violence is not a responsorial phenomenon and that the so-called ‘price tag’ attacks only make up a very small part of the explanation behind why settler violence occurs.
So, if settler violence is not explained as a response to other events, what other factors could affect the prevalence of these attacks against Palestinians and their property? We turn next to the geographic and structural explanation.
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Governorate Cases: Mapping the Violence
Below we look at each governorate and show the most common attacking settlements within that governorate and the villages that are more vulnerable and most often targeted. The names of the most vulnerable villages are encircled on the map in yellow and the red arrows show the direction from which attacks on that village come from. These maps allow us to better understand the geography of Israeli settler violence and also give the reader a nuanced understanding of just how intertwined Israeli settlements are among Palestinian villages. Notice the location of the targeted villages and which area of security jurisdiction they overwhelmingly fall in.
Bethlehem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Betar Illit, Efrat, Neve Daniel
Most Common Targets: Artas, Beit Sahur, Husan, Al-Khadr, Nahhalin, Tuqu’
The Palestine Center 11 When Settlers Attack
Hebron
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Bat Ayin, Bat Hadassah, Hagai, Harsina, Karmei Tzur, Kiryat Arba, Maon, Ramat Yishay, Susiya
Most Common Targets: Baqa, Buweira, Beit Ummar, Halhul, Safa, Tuwani, Yatta area
The Palestine Center 12 When Settlers Attack
Jenin
Most Common Attacking Settlements8: Mevo Dotan, Sa Nur, Homesh
Most Common Targets: Yabad, Fanduqumiya, Silat-a-Dahr, Jaba’
8 The settlements of Homesh and SaNur were evacuated in 2005. However, settlers often attempt to come back to restart their settlements in those areas and confront Palestinian civilians. Homesh settlers in particular became more active in attacks after its dismantlement.
The Palestine Center 13 When Settlers Attack
Jericho
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Mitzpeh Yericho, Vered Yericho, Tomer
Most Common Targets: Awja9, Ein Duyuk, Malih, Wadi Qilt, Fasayil
9 Awja sees the majority of settler violence in the governorate and its location on a main settler road has much to do with an overrepresentation of vehicular attacks compared to other governorates.
The Palestine Center 14 When Settlers Attack
Jerusalem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Maale Adumim, Maale Mikhmas, Neve Yakov
Most Common Targets: Mikhmas, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Old City
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Nablus
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Yitzhar, Bracha, Alon Moreh, Itamar
Most Common Targets: Burin, Huwwara, Iraq Burin, Urif, Yanun,Qusra, Qaryut, Salem, Madama, Burqa, Asira Qibliya
The Palestine Center 16 When Settlers Attack
Qalqilya
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Havat Gilad
Most Common Targets: Azzun, Farrata, Immatin, Jinsafut, Jit, Kfur Laqif, Kfur Qaddum
The Palestine Center 17 When Settlers Attack
Ramallah
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Halamish, Beit El, Shilo
Most Common Targets: Turmus Ayya, Mughayyir, Sinjil, Deir Nidham, Beitillu
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Salfit
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Ariel, Kfar Tappuah, Revava, Yakir
Most Common Targets: Bruqin, Deir Istiya, Deir Ballut, Haris, Kufr ad-Dik, Wadi Qana, Yasuf, Zatara.
The Palestine Center 19 When Settlers Attack
Tubas
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Maskiyot, Rotem
Most Common Targets: Ein al Bayda, Malih
The Palestine Center 20 When Settlers Attack
Tulkarem
Most Common Attacking Settlements: Einav, Avni Hafetz
Most Common Targets: Ramin, Beit Lid, Kufr Labad
The Palestine Center 21 When Settlers Attack
What becomes evident when looking at the location of the attacking settlements and the targeted villages in each governorate is a fairly consistent pattern of attacking within areas where Israel has security jurisdiction under the agreed upon Oslo Accords framework. Two examples highlight this trend well. In the Nablus governorate (Page 15 ), the extremely active settlement of Bracha is located right next to the Palestinian city of Nablus and its Area A perimeter. Despite proximity to a wide range of targets there, the vast majority of attacks originating from Bracha target the Palestinian villages of Burin and Iraq Burin which are further from the settlement and under Israeli security jurisdiction. Another example is in Jenin (Page 12) where settlers returning to the site of Homesh or Sa Nur or settlers in Mevo Dotan clearly opt to attack targets under Israeli security jurisdiction while many other near-by targets are ignored.
The explanation is simple, as the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem10 notes:
Since the settlements began in the Occupied Territories, the authorities have adopted an undeclared policy of leniency toward Israelis who harm Palestinians and damage Palestinian property. Various state commissions and committees have noted this tendency…Numerous reports and publications issued by human rights organizations in Israel have reached the same conclusion.
A report by another human rights organization11, Yesh Din, weighs in on a similar note revealing:
a total failure of the SJ District [West Bank] Police in investigating Palestinian complaints about Israeli civilians harming them and their property. In 90% of the complaints that were filed the police treatment ended with the investigation filed being closed or the complaints lost…Alongside the SJ district police, the IDF forces in the West Bank also have a great deal of responsibility for the State of Israel’s shirking its duty anchored in martial law to protect the residents of the OPT from the violence of a third party. As noted, the IDF does not view the protection of the Palestinian civilians as one of its missions, and does not explain to its soldiers and commanders their duties in that area. A systematic treatment by the IDF and monitoring of treatment of soldiers who are not filing the army’s orders drafted in the spirit of the Law Enforcement Procedures do not in fact exist.
Settlers perpetuating violence against Palestinians and their property know they are not likely to face any punitive action from the Israeli authorities for their crimes. This is guaranteed in so far as their actions are carried out in areas where Israel has security jurisdiction. Acting under the cover of Israeli impunity, settlers know precisely what areas they can attack without having to worry about any deterrents.
While Israeli government actions against settlements proved significant in generating increases in settler violence in a small percentage of observations, over 90 percent of all villages facing multiple
10 B’Tselem “Human Rights in the Occupied Territories” http://www.btselem.org/download/2009_annual_report_eng.pdf
11 Yesh Din, A Semblance of Law http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/opt_prot_yeshdin_semblance_law_june_2006.pdf
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instances of settler violence in our database (139 villages) are located in areas under Israeli security jurisdiction.
Illusions of the “Price Tag” Narrative
While so-called ‘price tag’ attacks do occur, as we have demonstrated above, these attacks account for a small fraction of the totality of Israeli settler violence. This is not the understanding one would get, however, by reading most of what is written in recent media reports about Israeli settler violence. The narrative around the reporting of such events pits extreme right-wing settlers against the Israeli government which is often presented as condemning the rare acts of hooligans.
Take this recent story in The Atlantic , for example: According to a 2008 Haaretz article, the roots of price tag attacks can be traced to the August 2005 dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip."Ever since then, the extreme right has sought to establish a 'balance of terror,' in which every state action aimed at them--from demolishing a caravan in an outpost to restricting the movements of those suspected of harassing Palestinian olive harvesters--generates an immediate, violent reaction," the left-wing paper wrote at the time. And violence is on the rise. Reuters notes that attacks by settlers against Palestinian property in the West Bank have risen by 57 percent in the first seven months of 2011 compared with the same period last year. The news agency adds that the perpetrators of price tag attacks appear to operate in small groups that resemble terrorist cells, and that no charges have been brought against suspects in price tag incidents. Here the antagonists are the price-taggers who act only when the obligation-abiding Israeli state dismantles an outpost. This twisted narrative leads the reader to believe that the settlers and the Israeli state are facing off against each other and this is the reason why settler violence exists and is on the rise. The Israeli state and its military, which is obligated by international law to protect the civilians in the territory it occupies, is absolved of all responsibility for settler violence. The reality is an inversion of this narrative. It is in fact because the Israeli state overwhelming fails to confront the settlers and provide protection for Palestinians and their property that settlers are emboldened and perpetuate attacks. ‘Price tag’ attacks occur but represent a miniscule portion of settler violence. Yet, in the scant mainstream media coverage of Israeli settler violence, the ‘price tag’ narrative is dominant.
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Recommendations
To Israel
Israel should end all settlement construction and ultimately withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territory. The failure to do this in the interim, however, does not absolve Israel of its obligations to protect Palestinian civilians in the territories it occupies.
The most active and violent settlements are known and the most vulnerable Palestinian villages are also known. Israel must devote targeted military and policing resources to cracking down on settler violence throughout the West Bank but particularly in and around the most dangerous settlements.
In addition to taking proactive measures around the most dangerous settlements to curb Israeli settler violence, Israeli police and the IDF must act to prevent settler violence as it occurs and must stop intervening only as a protective force for the violent settlers.
The government of Israel should make it a priority to overhaul its procedures and policies relating to the investigation of settler violence incidents. Instances of Israeli settler violence must be immediately, thoroughly and credibly investigated with appropriate sentences adjudicated. Punishments for perpetrators of violence should not vary based on the ethnicity or religious background of the perpetrator or target but rather be determined to fit the crime.
The government of Israel should take policy measures to police settlements which are active in settler violence against Palestinian civilians and arrest and punish leaders or preachers who advocate violence within these settlements.
Given that Israel has an obligation to protect Palestinian civilians in occupied territory under international law and that over 90 percent of incidents of Israeli settler violence happen in areas where Israel has security jurisdiction, Israel bears the most significant and direct responsibility to combat settler violence.
The Palestine Center 24 When Settlers Attack
To the United States
The government of the United States should press the government of Israel in both private and public forums to immediately enact policies to curb Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians and their property.
The United States should also conduct an internal review of any U.S. taxpayer dollars which are going to fund Israeli settlements and prohibit any such funding. Particular attention should be paid to American charities which may exploit non-profit status to collect donations and direct U.S. tax dollars toward settlements.
To the Palestinians
With the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank being clearly known, Palestinian leaders should devote resources to protect isolated villages even if armed security forces are not permitted. Such resources can include training for villagers on how to resist, document and record settler violence as well as medical and emergency resources like environmentally safe extinguishants.
To Journalists
While covering ‘price tag’ settler violence is important, focusing coverage of settler violence on these incidents misrepresents the scope as well as the cause of this phenomenon. It is Israeli government inaction and not actions that allow most settler violence to occur. This report is meant to serve as a reference point on Israeli settler violence and journalists covering the issue would do well to use it and other comprehensive reports as a departure point for reporting.
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Appendix
Notable Incidents in 2011
January
4 January: Settlers killed two sheep belonging to Palestinians in the village of Qusra in the governorate of Nablus.
8 January: Settlers uprooted 100 olive tree seedlings in the village of Qusra in Nablus.
9 January: Settlers used chemical compounds to destroy 25 olive trees in Mughayyir, a village within the Ramallah district.
14 January: Settlers came into the village of Qusra in Nablus and opened gunfire on Palestinians, injuring six.
16 January: Settlers in the Baqa’a Valley near Hebron opened gunfire on villagers injuring one 17-year old Palestinian.
24 January: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian and inflicted injuries.
24 January: In the village of Tuwani near Hebron, settlers opened gunfire on the village killing two sheep.
27 January: Settlers from Maskiyyot entered the village of Ein Al Hilwa and physically attacked two Palestinians. Both sustained injuries as a result.
28 January: Settlers from Beitar Elit entered Nahhalin in the governorate of Bethlehem and attacked Palestinians. One civilian was injured as a result.
28 January: Settlers in Hebron physically attacked an eleven-year old in the Old City. The child was injured in the attack.
28 January: Settlers attacked Palestinians near the settlement of Susiya. Two civilians were injured as a result.
28 January: Settlers from the Bracha settlement opened gunfire on residents living in the Iraq Burin village. Seventeen-year old Maher Hamza Qadous was killed as a result of the gunfire.
29 January: Settlers from Beit Ayin opened fire on villagers from Safa in the district of Hebron. One Palestinian was wounded and 17-year old Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl was killed in the attack.
29 January: Settlers physically attacked Palestinians in the village of Surif in Hebron. Two villagers were injured in the attack.
30 January: Settlers attacked a Palestinian in Fasayil, a village in the Jericho governorate. The victim sustained injuries in the attack.
The Palestine Center 26 When Settlers Attack
February
4 February: Settlers near Beit Ummar in the Hebron district threw stones at Palestinian civilians. Two people were injured in the attack.
11 February: Settlers in the Old City of Jerusalem severely beat and stabbed two civilians. One Palestinian was critically wounded while Hussam Al-Rweidi was killed in the attack.
15 February: A Palestinian was physically attacked in Mikhmas. Attackers came from the nearby Ma’ale Mikhmas settlement.
15 February: Settlers set fire to 250 olive trees near the village of Safa in the district of Hebron.
16 February: Settlers from Kaida opened gunfire on Palestinians in the village of Jalud. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
19 February: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a Palestinian. The Palestinian was injured in the attack.
20 February: Settlers from Maskiyyot physically attacked Palestinians in Ein Al Hilwa. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
20 February: Settlers entered the village of Qusra in the Nablus governorate and cut down approximately 250 olive trees.
22 February: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked Palestinians resulting in two individuals being injured.
23 February: Settlers from Bracha entered the village of Burin, physically attacked Palestinians and set fire to two vehicles. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
25 February: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Urif near Nablus and uprooted 25 olive trees belonging to Hussein Abdul Fattah Safadi.
26 February: Settlers from Bracha entered Burin and physically attacked Palestinians injuring one.
March
1 March: Settlers from Karnei Shomron threw stones at vehicles on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. One civilian was injured in the attack.
1 March: A settler vehicle ran over a three-year old child in Lubban Al Gharbi, a village in the Ramallah governorate. The child was critically wounded as a result.
1 March: A settler vehicle ran over a six-year old child in Hebron’s Old City. The child was critically wounded as a result.
1 March: Settlers entered the village of Huwwara and set fire to a two-story home.
3 March: Settlers from the Nahli’el settlement entered the village of Beitullu near Ramallah and set fire to one vehicle.
The Palestine Center 27 When Settlers Attack
4 March: Settlers from Shavot Rachel entered the Palestinian village of Jalud and uprooted 350 olive tree seedlings.
4 March: Settlers threw stones at homes in the village of Burin near Nablus. Three homes sustained damage in the attack
6 March: Settlers from Bracha entered Iraq Burin in the Nablus district and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured in the attack.
6 March: Settlers entered Dura Al Qar near Ramallah and kidnapped three children.
6 March: Settlers entered Kfar Laqif in the Qalqiliya governorate and threw stones at vehicles. One vehicle was damaged as a result.
8 March: Settlers entered Qusra village near Nablus and physically attacked Palestinians. The Israel army intervened and also opened fire on Palestinians. Nine were injured as a result.
10 March: Settlers from Eili Zahav entered the Deir Ballut village in the district of Salfit and cut down 25 olive trees.
24 March: Settlers entered the village of Taybeh in Ramallah and threw stones at Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
24 March: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinians in Nablus. Two were injured in the attack
26 March: Settlers entered Burqa and physically attacked a Palestinian security officer. The officer sustained injuries as a result.
27 March: Settlers from Karnei Shomron threw stones at cars on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. Two vehicles were damaged and one Palestinian was injured in the attack.
27 March: Settlers from Shilo threw stones at Palestinians in Ramallah. Two Palestinians sustained injuries.
28 March: A settler ran over a four-year old girl in the village of Turrama near Hebron. She was critically wounded as a result.
29 March: A settler drove their vehicle into a herd of sheep outside the Tuqu village in Bethlehem. Ten sheep were killed as a result.
31 March: Settlers from Halamish threw stones at Palestinians in the district of Ramallah. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
31 March: A settler vehicle ran over a three-year old girl in Hebron’s Old City. She was critically injured as a result.
31 March: Settlers near the Homesh outpost entered the district of Jenin and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured as a result.
The Palestine Center 28 When Settlers Attack
April
2 April: A settler vehicle rammed a civilian vehicle near the settlement of Yitzhar. The Palestinian driver was hospitalized after their car flipped.
3 April: A settler vehicle rammed a taxi at the Hamra checkpoint in Jericho. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
4 April: Settlers entered the village of Mughayyir and physically attacked Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
10 April: Settlers entered the village of Asira Al Qibliya and threw stones and glass bottles at Palestinians, set fire to one vehicle and destroyed an electricity generator. Two Palestinians were injured as a result.
12 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian causing injuries.
12 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron set fire to two vendor stalls.
13 April: A settler vehicle in the Old City of Hebron hit five-year old Hala Uthman Id’eis as she rode her bike. She was hospitalized as a result of the attack.
14 April: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian in the village of Hajja. The victim was transported to the hospital for treatment.
15 April: Settlers from Shilo entered Turmus’ Ayya and physically attacked Palestinians. Four were injured in the attack.
17 April: Settlers threw stones at homes and vehicles in Hebron’s Old City. Two windows and one windshield were destroyed in the attack.
17 April: A settler vehicle entered the village of Yanoun and drove into a herd of sheep. Three sheep were killed in the attack.
18 April: Settlers from Susiya entered Hebron and physically attacked Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
20 April: Settlers entered Iraq Burin and threw stones at Palestinians. One was injured in the attack.
20 April: Settlers from Bracha entered the village of Burin and physically attacked Palestinians. Four were injured as a result.
24 April: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City destroyed a windshield belonging to a Palestinian.
25 April: Settlers entered Burin and physically attacked a Palestinian man. He sustained injuries in the attack.
25 April: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a 65-year old man. He sustained injuries in the attack
25 April: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron sprayed gases at Palestinian civilians. Two suffered from suffocation as a result of the attack.
The Palestine Center 29 When Settlers Attack
25 April: Settlers threw stones on villagers in Huwwara. Three were injured as a result, including one twelve-year old youth.
25 April: Settlers entered Burin and set fire to a Palestinians vehicle. The vehicle was destroyed as a result.
25 April: Settlers in Sheikh Jarrah sprayed gases into the eyes of three children. The children sustained injuries in the attack.
28 April: Settlers from Yitzhar physically attacked Palestinians in the Nablus district. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
28 April: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Haris. One windshield was smashed in the attack.
29 April: Settlers physically attacked Palestinians near the Yitzhar settlement. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
30 April: Settlers from Ytizhar threw stones at cars in the Nablus governorate. Three windshields were destroyed in the attack.
May
1 May: Settlers from Bracha threw stones at villagers in Burin. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
1 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Jit. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
5 May: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and physically attacked Palestinians. One civilian was injured in the attack.
5 May: Settlers attacked Palestinians in the Nablus district. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
8 May: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron attempted to kidnap a four-year old child. The child was injured in the incident.
8 May: Settlers in Shiekh Jarrah threw stones at Palestinian children. One child was injured in the attack.
10 May: Settlers entered Haris near Salfit and threw stones at vehicles. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
14 May: Settlers near Kokhav Hashahar threw stones at vehicles in the Ramallah district. Four vehicles were damaged in the attack.
15 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. One windshield was destroyed and one Palestinian was injured in the attack.
15 May: Settlers from Havat Gilad entered Jit village and physically attacked Palestinians. Three civilians were injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 30 When Settlers Attack
16 May: Settlers entered Nahhalin village in the Bethlehem governorate and threw stones at vehicles. Two windshields were destroyed in the attack.
16 May: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the event.
17 May: Settlers raided an orphanage in the village of Thuri. The settlers proceeded to detain the principal and deputy of the orphanage. Three Palestinians were injured in the operation.
17 May: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Duma in the district of Nablus. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
20 May: Settlers entered Beitillu and cut down 35 olive trees. They also physically attacked the owner of the olive trees. The Palestinian owner sustained severe injuries in the attack.
21 May: Settlers entered Asira Al Qibliya and physically attacked Palestinian residents. Three Palestinians were injured in the attack.
21 May: Settlers from Yitzhar entered the village of Urif in the Nablus district and detained two residents of the village.
23 May: Settlers entered Kafr Qaddam near Qalqiliya and cut down 60 olive trees.
23 May: Settlers entered the Bethlehem district and threw stones at vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
24 May: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Madama and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
28 May: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered the Hebron village of Beit Ummar and destroyed Palestinian crops. Among the crops destroyed were 17 olive seedlings, three olive trees and 20 grapevines.
28 May: A settler vehicle on Road #60 near Bethlehem ran over a five-year old girl. She was critically wounded and hospitalized as a result.
29 May: Settlers from Kafr Tappuah attacked Palestinians in the governorate of Salfit. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
29 May: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. One windshield was destroyed in the attack.
30 May: A settler vehicle on Road #60 in the Bethlehem governorate hit a man and his nine-year old son. Both sustained injuries in the attack.
31 May: Settlers near Susiya attacked Palestinians in the Hebron district in southern Palestine. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 31 When Settlers Attack
June
1 June: Settlers wielding iron tools and bars attacked Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem. Three Palestinians were injured in the attack.
1 June: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered Safa and uprooted fifteen grapevines belonging to Palestinian villagers.
3 June: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
3 June: A settler vehicle ran over a six-year old in the village of Shuqba in the Ramallah governorate. The child was critically injured in the attack.
3 June: Settlers threw stones at villagers in Far’ata village near Qalqilya. Two Palestinians were injured in the attack.
5 June: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the Old City of Hebron. One vehicle was damaged and one Palestinian was injured.
5 June: Settlers from Beit Ayin entered Safa and destroyed 35 grapevines belonging to Palestinian villagers.
5 June: Settlers threw stones at homes in the village of Sinjil. One window was smashed in the attack.
7 June: Settlers from Karmei Tzur trespassed onto Palestinian land and sprayed chemicals onto 20 grapevines belonging to a Hebron resident.
9 June: Settlers entered Bani Naim in the Hebron district and set fire to 20 dunums (5 acres) of olive groves.
10 June: Settlers from Kiryat Arba entered the Old City of Hebron and threw stones at Palestinian-owned vehicles. Three windshields were destroyed in the attack.
12 June: Settlers entered the village of Beitillu and sprayed gas in the face of a Palestinian. The Palestinian suffered from suffocation as a result.
14 June: Settlers entered Kafr Malik in Ramallah and set fire to two civilian vehicles.
15 June: Settlers entered Aqraba and physically attacked a Palestinian causing injuries.
15 June: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
18 June: Settlers entered Madama in the Nablus district and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the incident.
18 June: A settler vehicle entered Zatara near Bethlehem and ran over a 16-year old Palestinian, causing critical injuries.
19 June: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked Palestinians. One civilian was severely injured in the attack.
The Palestine Center 32 When Settlers Attack
22 June: Settlers trespassed onto Palestinian land in Sinjil and cut down approximately 50 olive trees.
23 June: A settler vehicle entered the Arrub refugee camp in Hebron and drove into a herd of sheep. Five sheep were killed in the incident.
24 June: Settlers entered Beit Sakariya and uprooted 70 grapevines.
29 June: Settlers entered the village of Sawma’a and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
29 June: Settlers threw stones at cars in Jit village. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
July
1 July: A settler vehicle entered Marj Na’ja in Jericho and ran over a nine-year old causing critical injury.
1 July: Settlers from Yitzhar entered the district of Nablus and physically attacked Palestinians. Two were injured in the incident.
4 July: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at villagers in Madama. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
4 July: A settler vehicle entered Madama and ran over a Palestinian causing critical injuries.
7 July: Settlers threw stones at cars in Asira Al-Qibliya damaging one windshield.
14 July: Settlers from Efrat entered the Bethlehem governorate and physically attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
14 July: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians on the Jenin-Nablus main road. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
17 July: A settler vehicle entered Husan village in the Bethlehem governorate and ran over a six-year old. The child sustained critical injuries in the attack.
18 July: Settlers trespassed into Manshiya village and set fire to fifteen olive trees.
19 July: Settlers entered Sair village and leveled two dunums (1/2 acre) of land in preparation for the creation of an outpost.
20 July: Settlers from Ma’ale Mikhmas entered Mikhmas and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
22 July: Settlers from Eshkolot leveled 50 dunums (12.5 acres) of land in Ramadin near Hebron.
23 July: Settlers entered Qusra and physically beat three sheep, injuring one and killing two.
26 July: Settlers entered Beitillu and opened gunfire on Palestinian villagers. Four were injured in the attack.
28 July: Settlers entered the village of Tuwani and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
The Palestine Center 33 When Settlers Attack
30 July: Settlers entered Jit village and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
30 July: Settlers entered Ar-Ram village near Jerusalem and physically attacked Palestinian residents. One Palestinian sustained injuries in the attack.
31 July: Settlers entered Tuwani and physically attacked Palestinians and activists. Two were injured in the attack and one camera belonging to an activist was destroyed.
August
4 August: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian on Road #60 near Bethlehem causing injury.
4 August: Settlers harassed two children in Burqa, a village in the Nablus district.
14 August: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians on the Ramallah-Nablus main road. One Palestinian was injured as a result.
21 August: Settlers from Koghaf Yacoub entered Mikhmas and physically attacked one Palestinian child causing injuries.
21 August: A settler vehicle ran over two Palestinians, one of whom was a twelve-year old girl. Both sustained critical injuries in the operation.
21 August: A settler vehicle entered the Ramallah district and struck a Palestinian male, causing severe injuries.
21 August: Settlers enter the Qusra village and set fire to 70 olive trees.
24 August: Settlers threw stones at vehicles on the Ramallah-Nablus main road. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
27 August: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a Palestinian man causing injuries.
27 August: Settlers entered Wadi Qana and broke the branches off eight olive trees and two lemon trees belonging to Palestinians.
28 August: A settler vehicle entered Halhul and ran over a fifteen-year old male. He sustained critical injuries in the attack.
30 August: Settlers entered the Qalqiliya district and set fire to fifteen olive trees owned by Palestinians.
31 August: Settlers entered Deir Istiya and uprooted 32 olive trees.
The Palestine Center 34 When Settlers Attack
September
2 September: Settlers in Hebron’s Old City physically attacked a fifteen-year old Palestinian male causing injury.
3 September: A settler vehicle ran over a Palestinian near the Kafr Tappuah settlement. The victim sustained critical injuries in the attack.
6 September: Settlers trespassed onto Palestinian land in Huwarra and set five olive trees on fire.
9 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron uprooted a Palestinian olive tree.
9 September: Settlers entered the Qusra village in the Nablus district and set fire to 40 olive trees.
9 September: Settlers from Kiryat Arba opened gunfire on the Palestinian village of Buweira damaging one vehicle.
9 September: Settlers threw stones at Wadi Qilt in Jericho damaging one vehicle.
10 September: Settlers in the market of Hebron’s Old City threw stones at Palestinian residents. One Palestinian was injured in the attack.
10 September: Settlers entered Ta’l Al-Roumeda and physically attacked Palestinians. Three were injured as a result.
10 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles near the Huwwara checkpoint in the Nablus district. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
11 September: Settlers entered Halhul and set fire to 100 grape vines belonging to village residents.
12 September: Settlers entered Deir Dibwan and set fire to 30 fruit trees.
12 September: Settlers entered the village of Burqa and set fire to two vehicles.
12 September: Settlers from Kedumim threw stones at the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. Two vehicles were damaged in the attack.
12 September: Settlers near Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinian vehicles. Two vehicles were damaged in the attack.
12 September: Settlers entered the village of Taybeh and threw stones at vehicles. One car window was destroyed in the attack.
13 September: Settlers from Yitzhar entered Nablus and physically attacked a Palestinian male, causing injuries.
13 September: Settlers from Yitzhar threw stones at Palestinians in the district of Nablus. Salah and Eyad Sanakra were injured in the attack.
13 September: Settlers entered Jit village near Qalqiliya and set fire to 100 olive trees.
The Palestine Center 35 When Settlers Attack
13 September: Settlers from Rimonim infiltrated Deir Dibwan, set fire to three cars and defaced a Palestinian home.
14 September: A settler vehicle in Hebron’s Old City ran over seven-year old Ahmed Jaber. Jaber was critically injured in the attack.
14 September: Settlers from Yitzhar physically attacked three Palestinian men in the Nablus district. All three sustained injuries in the attack.
14 September: Settlers from Yitzhar set fire to a Palestinian-owned vehicle in the district of Nablus.
15 September: Settlers set fire to two vehicles in the district of Nablus.
15 September: Settlers near the outpost of Homesh kidnapped a 16-year old Palestinian male.
15 September: Setters ran over a child on the Qalqiliya-Nablus road. The victim was critically wounded in the attack.
17 September: Settlers entered the Nablus village Aqraba and kidnapped brothers Ghassan and Ashraf Jaber.
18 September: A settler vehicle in the village of Jamean ran over Ahmed Ali, causing serious injuries.
18 September: A settler vehicle on road #60 near Hebron ran over Nather Sabarna, causing serious injuries.
18 September: Settlers entered Deir Istiya and set fire to 500 olive trees and a number of almond and fig trees as well.
18 September: Settlers threw stones at Palestinian cars traveling in Joura Al Shamaa. One car was damaged in the attack.
19 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked a Palestinian woman causing injuries.
19 September: Settlers set fire to 100 dunums (25 acres) of land in Einabus, a village in the Nablus district.
20 September: Settlers set fire to 400 olive trees in the northern Qalqiliya area.
20 September: Settlers kidnapped a Palestinian university student on the Tulkarem-Nablus road.
21 September: Settlers entered Zatara and attacked Palestinians. One Palestinian male was injured in the attack.
21 September: Settlers set fire to dozens of grape vines in the district of Hebron.
21 September: Settlers threw stones at a Palestinian home in the Old City of Hebron. The home sustained damage in the attack.
The Palestine Center 36 When Settlers Attack
21 September: Settlers from Kfar Etzion threw stones at Palestinian vehicles in the Bethlehem governorate. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
22 September: A settler vehicle rammed two Palestinian vehicles in the district of Ramallah. The attack destroyed two vehicles and two male Palestinians were hospitalized.
22 September: Settlers set 50 dunums (12.5 acres) of olive trees on fire in Deir Jarir.
22 September: Sixty olive trees were set on fire by settlers in the village Madama.
23 September: A settler vehicle in Hebron ran over eight-year old Farid Jaber. He was seriously injured in the attack. Jaber later died as a result of the attack.
23 September: Settlers set several olive trees on fire in Qusra. After clashing with Palestinian villagers, the Israeli military intervened to quell the Palestinian response using tear gas and gunfire. Eight Palestinians were injured by the Israeli military as a result. One Palestinian, Essam Kamal, was shot and killed in the incident.
23 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in the village of Ibeida. One vehicle was damaged in the attack.
23 September: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along Road #60 in the district of Hebron. Four vehicles were damaged in the attack.
24 September: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along the main road in Bethlehem. As a result, one vehicle flipped and a passenger was hospitalized.
25 September: Settlers from Alon Moreh infiltrated Deir Al Hatab village and set fire to one storage facility.
25 September: Settlers set 400 olive trees on fire in the village of Qusra in the Nablus governorate.
25 September: Settlers threw stones at vehicles in Huwwara. One vehicle sustained damage as a result.
28 September: A settler vehicle ran over fifteen-year old A’mar Hanhin in the village of Halhoul near Hebron. A’mar was critically injured in the attack.
29 September: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and uprooted tens of olive trees.
30 September: Under the protection of the Israeli military, settlers raided the village of Beit Furik in Nablus. Military officials fired tear gas at Palestinians leading to several injuries.
30 September: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron opened fire on Palestinian vehicles, shooting out the front window of one car.
The Palestine Center 37 When Settlers Attack
October
1 October: In the village of Al Nabi Saleh, settlers set several olive trees on fire.
1 October: Settlers entered Huwwara in the Nablus governorate and set dozens of olive trees on fire.
1 October: In Deir Sharaf, settlers entered the village and burned several olive trees.
1 October: Settlers raided the village of Burin under the protection of the Israeli military. Military officials fired tear gas at Palestinians causing several Palestinians to suffer from suffocation.
1 October: Settlers entered the village of Madama and uprooted several olive trees.
1 October: Settlers uprooted several olive trees in the village of Khirbet Shwiekeh in Hebron.
1 October: Settlers stormed the home of Rujab Abu Isa under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers proceeded to detain two civilians, including a child, for responding to the settler attacks.
3 October: Settlers dumped sewage on a home in the Bethlehem governorate.
4 October: A settler vehicle in Huwwara ran over two children on their way to school. Both children were severely injured in the attack.
4 October: Settlers severely beat Hassan Mohammad in the governorate of Hebron. He was working on the settlement of Modein when the attack occurred.
4 October: Settlers in the Old City of Hebron threw stones at Palestinian property, breaking one home window and one car windshield.
5 October: Settlers entered the village of Jit and attacked 64-year old Hussein Jabarin as he harvested olives. Jabarin was hospitalized with severe contusions sustained in the attack.
5 October: A settler vehicle entered the Nablus governorate and ran over fifteen-year old Rajeh Hijazi who sustained severe injuries in the attack.
5 October: Settlers entered the village of Qusra and cut down 180 olive trees.
5 October: A settler vehicle entered the village of Jiflik in Jericho and ran over Nasar Abu-Al Kabash. He was left hospitalized with severe injuries in the attack.
6 October: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in Al-Bireh. Fourteen-year old Ismail Ibrahim Mutteir was admitted to the hospital after sustaining a blow to the head.
6 October: Settlers entered the village of Jinsafout in Qalqiliya and physically attacked Khader Eid as he harvested olives. Eid was injured in the attack.
7 October: Settlers threw stones at the village of Azzun in the Qalqiliya district. Several vehicles were damaged as a result.
The Palestine Center 38 When Settlers Attack
7 October: Settlers entered the village of Jamean in the Salfit district and physically attacked Hussan Muhammad Al Haj and his son while they harvested olives. Both sustained injuries in the attack.
7 October: Settlers entered the Bethlehem governorate and poisoned fields in which sheep graze. Ten sheep were killed after ingesting poisons.
9 October: Settlers threw stones at vehicles passing through Ein Kinia in Ramallah. One car was damaged and two passengers were injured in the attack.
9 October: Settlers set agricultural land on fire in the village of Awarta. Settlers also proceeded to set fire to the car of a journalist reporting the incident.
9 October: Settlers entered Azzmout and broke the branches of eleven olive trees.
9 October: Settlers threw stones at cars passing along the Nablus-Ramallah road in the Nablus governorate. The car of Dr. Laila Ghanam, governor of Ramallah, was damaged in the attack.
11 October: Settlers entered the village of Mikhmas and damaged several olive trees.
11 October: Settlers entered Ras Karkar in the district of Ramallah and set fire to several olive trees.
11 October: Settlers entered Yatma in the district of Nablus and set fire to several olive trees.
12 October: A group of settlers entered the Salfit district and set fire to olive groves in Kufr Al Dik village. Two hundred and fifty olive trees were destroyed in the vandalizing.
12 October: A group of Israeli settlers leveled a plot of land in the governorate of Salfit in preparation for the creation of a new outpost.
13 October: Israeli settlers physically attacked Ahmad Khalil in the village of Beit Ummar as he was tending his sheep near the Karmei Tzor settlement. Khalil was hospitalized as a result of the attack.
14 October: A group of Israeli settlers raided the village of Atara in the district of Ramallah and set fire to agricultural land. Several olive trees were destroyed as a result.
14 October: Israeli settlers physically attacked and injured Ali Al-Sidda as he was collecting olives in Qalqiliya. Settlers withdrew under the protection of the Israeli military.
14 October: Settlers entered Iskaka village and leveled 35 dunums (8.75 acres) of agricultural land. They also surrounded the plot with barbed-wire in an apparent attempt to create a settlement outpost.
15 October: Israeli settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles passing along the main road near the Beit El settlement north of Al-Bireh. The attack damaged several vehicles and injured eleven-year old Daoud Abu Haj.
16 October: An Israeli settler abducted and assaulted a child as he left school in the Al-Thawri neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The Palestine Center 39 When Settlers Attack
17 October: A group of Israeli settlers entered agricultural land in Nablus and assaulted Abdel-karim Yousef and his mother. The two sustained injuries and inhaled pepper spray in the attack.
18 October: A group of Israeli settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles as they passed the settlement of Ateret. Ali Asi was hospitalized in the attack sustaining a critical injury to the eye.
18 October: A group of Israeli settlers harassed and chased Muhiba Abdel Fatah as she was collecting her olive harvest in Nablus. During the chase, she broke her right leg.
21 October: Settlers entered Qarryout village and threw stones at farmers and international solidarity activists as they harvested olives. Three people were injured. Israeli forces intervened, firing tear gas which injured five more Palestinians and three more internationals.
21 October: Settlers set fire to olive groves in various villages throughout the Nablus governorate. Several olive trees were destroyed in the attack.
23 October: Settlers stoned vehicles passing along the Ramallah-Nablus road. The windshield of a car owned by a Nablus resident was destroyed in the attack.
25 October: Settlers leveled a plot of agricultural land east of the village of Kafr Qaddoum in the Qalqilya district. The plot is owned by Salim Aishtewi.
26 October: Settlers physically attacked a Palestinian woman named Ibtisam Al-Rajabi in the Old City of Hebron. She was hospitalized as a result.
26 October: Settlers physically attacked a shepherd near the city of Hebron. In the process of the attack, three sheep were killed and six were stolen.
27 October: Settlers entered Beit Safafa in the Jerusalem district and stole the olives from 20 olive trees.
31 October: Settlers positioned near Mikhmas threw stones at Palestinian villagers. Aisha Abu Ali was admitted to a hospital after sustaining critical injuries in the attack.
November
9 November: Abdel Mutalleb Mohammad Hakim Mashti, 46, died as a result of being hit by a settler vehicle in the village of Wadi Qana in Salfit.
11 November: Settlers threw stones at Palestinians in the village of Yasuf as they harvested olives. Ahmed Abdallah was injured as a result of the attack and several vehicles were damaged.
12 November: Settlers physically attacked Hijaz Jaber, a resident of Hebron. Jaber was hospitalized after sustaining critical injuries in the attack.
13 November: A settler vehicle ran over Ibtisam Abuhashash on route 60 near Hebron. She was admitted to the hospital after sustaining critical injuries.
The Palestine Center 40 When Settlers Attack
13 November: A settler in the governorate of Salfit shot pepper spray in the face of Abdil Halim Daoud. Daoud was admitted to the hospital as a result.
19 November: Mohammed Daoud was physically attacked by a group of settlers near the Old City of Hebron. He was admitted to the hospital as a result.
23 November: A group of settlers raided the village of Yanoun and stoned several residents tending to their goats. Masaleh Jaber sustained injuries in the attack.
24 November: A settler vehicle ran over 16-year old Mohammad Daraghma and Nassar Daraghma. Both were severely injured, sustaining broken bones in the attack.
25 November: Settlers stoned Palestinian vehicles a near the village of Jinsafut injuring Sulaiman Kan’an.
December
3 December: Israeli settlers assaulted Najeh Abed Al-Qadder while trying to enter Salem village.
3 December: Israeli settlers from Yitzhar settlement stoned Palestinian vehicles in Nablus. Two children, Rwaida Yousef and Yousef Abu Awwad, were injured as a result of the attack.
5 December: A group of settlers set several trees on fire near the Silet Al-Thaher area in Jenin.
6 December: Israeli settlers raided Orif village and abducted 65 year old Salim Shihadeh as he was herding his sheep. He was later released.
6 December: Settlers stormed Zaatara and pepper-sprayed several residents, including national security officer Ahmad Al-Thib.
7 December: A group of settlers damaged a Palestinian vehicle after the car collided with a settler’s vehicle.
7 December: A group of settlers set fire to the entrance of a mosque in Burqin and wrote anti-Arab slogans on the walls.
7 December: Settlers in the governorate of Ramallah set fire to a bulldozer owned by Nael Sabrah and a vehicle owned by Motasim Samara.
7 December: Israeli settlers occupied, plowed and planted 40 dunums of land owned by Al-Nawajaa and Al-Hadar families north of Yatta.
8 December: An Israeli settler ran over 16 year-old Fida Odeh in the governorate of Nablus, leaving the teenager hospitalized with moderate injuries.
10 December: A group of Israeli settlers assaulted three worshipers who were on their way to the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City of Hebron.
11 December: Israeli settlers physically attacked Jumaa Musa while he was leaving his farm near Hebron.
12 December: Under the protection of the Israeli army, a group of Israeli settlers stoned and damaged several homes in Nablus. The homes belonged to Khalil Saleh, Bassam Saleh, Abdel Fatah Ahmad, Ibrahim Makhlouf and Abdel Baset Ahmad.
The Palestine Center 41 When Settlers Attack
13 December: Israeli settlers stoned vehicles along the Qalqilya–Nablus road, damaging the vehicles owned by Anwar Kaabi and Odeh Ramadin, residents of Al-Ramadin village, and injuring passengers Sanaa Rayan and her daughter Israa – residents of Qarwat Bani Hassan in Salfit – and Mohammad Khleif, a resident of Al-Nabi Eliyas village in Qalqilya.
14 December: A group of armed settlers raided Duma, setting fire to a vehicle and water tank. The group also spray painted in Hebrew: “A gift from the youth of Yitsahar settlement” on a house fence.
14 December: Israeli settlers raided Yasouf village and set fire to a vehicle owned by Mohammad Masalha. They also spray painted in Hebrew “Price to Pay” on a wall.
14 December: Armed settlers raided Kafil Harres, set fire to a vehicleowned by Ahmad Ubeid and spray painted in Hebrew “ Price to Pay” on a house wall.
15 December: Israeli settlers near Ramallah stoned and damaged a car belonging to Nazal Aqel.
15 December: A group of Israeli set fire to a mosque in Burqa and wrote racist graffiti on the walls.
16 December: Israeli settlers raided Burin village and destroyed 15 olive trees.
17 December: A group of Israeli settlers raided the homes of Adeeb Abu Eisha and Issa Amro in Hebron’s Old City, and physically attacked the residents.
18 December: Settlers assaulted Muntaser Mansour and raided his property in Deir Istya.
19 December: In Beitin village, Settlers set fire to 4 vehicles and a truck owned by Najah Mustafa, Najah Al-Imseity, Ahmad Abul Sanbal, and Samia Badran.
19 December: Settlers stoned vehicles driving on the Qalqiliya–Nablus road and damaged the vehicle of Mohammad Qaddumi.
19 December: An Israeli settler ran over Mohammad Thaher with his truck; the child was hospitalized. Settlers also assaulted Fadi Samara near the accident site.
20 December: A group of Israeli settlers physically assaulted residents in eastern Qalqilya.
20 December: Israeli settlers raided Bani Na’im and spray painted racist slogans on the walls of the mosque.
22 December: Israeli settlers in Khirbeit Shwiekiya destroyed 30 olive trees owned by Othman Samara. Settlers also spray painted racist slogans on the property walls.
24 December: A group of settlers in the Old City of Hebron physically attacked and injured 15 year old Abdala Shaheen who was later admitted to a hospital for treatment.
31 December: Israeli settlers violently beat Khalid Hamarat of Husan village. He was hospitalized with severe bruises.
31 December: Settlers severely beat several Palestinian residents after surrounding them with police guards in the governorate of Bethlehem. Sa’ad Sanad was left injured.
31 December: An Israeli settler pepper-sprayed the face of Arfat Al Bayad, sending him to the hospital.
The Palestine Center 42 When Settlers Attack
Data Analysis Variable Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V
Palestinian Actions
Palestinian Violence-WB
-.034*
-.049**
-.141**
-.037*
-.117**
Palestinian Violence -GAZA
-.006***
-.006***
-.074***
-.006***
-.076***
Israeli Actions
Israeli Government Announcements
-.0342
-.022
-.081
-.063
Israeli Government Executions
.233**
.228**
.283**
.280**
Log Likelihood
-1179.74
-1173.5
-1164.73
-1176.15
-1167.6
Dispersion
Mean
Mean
Mean
Mean
Mean
*=P<.05 , **=P<.01, ***=P<.001 N=369 Above are results of several multivariate negative binomial regression models of the effect of the four different variables on settler violence. The models vary based on variables included as well as the treatment of the variables. Model I tests Palestinian violence only, Model II tests the absolute values of the four variables. In Model III we transformed the Palestinian violence variables to > 1. In Model IV we treated Israeli Actions as a dichotomous variable whereas Model V included the transformed variables of Model III and the dichotomous variables of Model IV. The ordering of the coefficients remains the same throughout the different models however goodness of fit tests suggests support for Model III. Interpretation of the coefficients in this model suggests each Israeli government execution increases the expected number of settler violence incidents by 25.7 percent while instances of Palestinian violence in the West Bank decreases the expected number of settler violence incidents by 13.2 percent.
Interestingly, while Palestinian violence has a statistically significant relationship with instances of settler violence, that relationship is negative. An explanation could be that after an instance of Palestinian violence, settlers are told to stay home by direction of the military. This intriguing result should be investigated further in other analyses. However, the only variable which has a statistically significant and positive effect on settler violence is Israeli government executions. This lends evidence to support the ‘price tag’ branch of the responsorial explanation but it must be noted that the degree of variance explained by this model is minor.
The Palestine Center 43 When Settlers Attack
The Ten Most Dangerous Settlements
In this section we will focus on the most dangerous settlements; the settlements which have most often been the origin of attack in events in our database. It is important to note that settlement of origin is not known in each incident. Often, incidents occur and little is known about the origin of the settlers. In some cases, victims of settler violence do not even see the attacking settlers as in the case of most arson attacks or destruction of property incidents which either occur in the dark of night or in areas where few witnesses may be present. We have information for settlement of origin in approximately one-third of all the cases in our database (1,163) and based on this information, we’ve determined the following are the most active and most dangerous settlements:
Yitzhar
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1000
Villages Most Targeted:
Burin (31%), Madama (14%) , Urif (10%), Asira Qibliya (17%)
Kedumim
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
3-4,000
Villages Most Targeted:
Kufr Qaddum (44%) , Qalqilya-Nablus Road (27%) Jit (7%)
17%
20%
15%
25%
23%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc
5%
9%
13%
39%
34%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc.
The Palestine Center 44 When Settlers Attack
Kiryat Arba
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
7-10,000
Villages Most Targeted:
Hebron Old City(88%) Baqa (6%)
Bracha
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1-1,500
Villages Most Targeted:
Burin(62%%) Iraq Burin (17%) Kufr Qalil (6%)
13%
35%
26%
5%
21%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Vehicular Attack
Misc.
19%
15%
22%
13%
11%
20%
Attacks
Shooting
Arson
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Misc.
The Palestine Center 45 When Settlers Attack
Susya
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
700-1000
Areas Most Targeted:
South of Yatta (60%) Wadi Suweid (10%)
Gilad
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
N/A
Areas Most Targeted:
Jit (38%) Farata (26%) Immatin (11%) Till (11%)
26%
7%
9%
35%
23%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Theft
Arson
Physical Attack
Misc.
26%
21%
26%
27%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Physical Attacks
Misc
The Palestine Center 46 When Settlers Attack
Maon
Governorate: Hebron
Population:
3-500
Areas Most Targeted:
Tawani(33%) Yatta (33%) Tuba (10%)
Karnei Shomron
Governorate: Qalqilya
Population:
6-7,000
Areas Most Targeted:
Kfur Thulth (23%) Kufr Laqif (28%) Main Road (25%)
24%
49%
8%
5%
14%
Attacks
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Arson
Misc
41%
22%
12%
25%
Attacks
Stone Throwing
Destruction of Property
Physical Attack
Misc
The Palestine Center 47 When Settlers Attack
Alon Moreh
Governorate: Nablus
Population:
1,500
Areas Most Targeted:
Deir al Hatab (39%)
Salem (21%) Azmout (17%)
Kfar Tappuah
Governorate: Salfit
Population:
1000
Areas Most Targeted:
Yasuf (63%)
Yatma (5%)
13%
15%
9%
25%
9%
29%
Attacks
Arson
Destruction of Property
Shooting
Physical Attack
Stone Throwing
Misc
42%
23%
6%
6%
23%
Attacks
Stone Throwing
Physical Attack
Shooting
Arson
Misc
The Palestine Center 48 When Settlers Attack
Most Vulnerable Villages
Village Vulnerability District Attacking Settlement(s) Most Common Attacks Faced Burin
Extreme
Nablus Bracha (53%) & Yitzhar (48%)
Arson (18%) Dest. Of Prop. (18%) Huwwara
Extreme
Nablus Yitzhar (80%) & Bracha (20%)
Arson (18%) Stone Throwing (18%) Jit
Extreme
Qalqilya Gilad (76%) & Kedumim (24%)
Stone Throwing (34%) Arson (20%) Kufr Qaddum
High
Qalqilya Kedumim
Physical Attack (18%) Dest. Of Prop. 10%) Yatta (South)
High
Hebron Maon (30%) Susiya (59%)
Phy. Attack (40%) Dest. Of Prop. 33%) Asira Qibliya
High
Nablus Yitzhar
Arson (28%) Haris
High
Salfit Revava
Stone Throwing (22%) Dest. of Prop. (15%) Burqa
High
Nablus Shavei Shomron
Arson (17%) Shootings (13%) Iraq Burin
High
Nablus Bracha (80%) Yitzhar (20%)
Stone Throwing (16%) Dest. of Prop. (13%) Zatara
High
Salfit Kfar Tappuah
Stone Throwing (44%) Phy. Attacks(24%) Kfar Laqif
High
Qalqiliya Karnei Shomron
Stone Throwing (40%) Azzun
High
Qalqiliya Kedumim (28%) Shomron (28%)
Stone Throwing (16%) Dest. of Prop. (15%) Safa
High
Hebron Bat Ayin
Shooting (19%) Dest. of Prop. (19%) Yasuf
High
Salfit Kfar Tappuah
Phy. Attack (20%) Shooting(16%)
The Palestine Center 49 When Settlers Attack
Acknowledgments
This report and our settler violence database is an ongoing project entering its third year. The Palestine Center would like to thank a number of people who contributed to this report. Steven Souryal, Sanaa Saeed, Katharine Forman, Elise Springuel, Mikki O’Leary, Sara Cady, Evan Fowler, Alexandra Dominguez, Marianna Jordan, Joseph Abushawish, Fadia Shawish and Asma Jaber all contributed to the significant coding effort. Nawal Atallah helped with copy editing.
The Palestine Center would also like to acknowledge the Palestine Monitoring Group, whose daily reports provided the best resource for coding and analysis, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, whose press round-ups were used for coding additional variables and B’Tselem whose colorful, high-resolution map provided the most legible option for our cases section above.
For questions regarding this report or for further information on settler violence, please contact Yousef Munayyer at ymunayyer@palestinecenter.org or call 202.338.1290.
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