WEST BANK: Palestinians ask for international protection citing rise in attacks by Israeli settlers

The Palestinian Authority asked for international protection Monday citing a sharp rise in Israeli settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

The call came after three Israelis from the Havat Maon settlement allegedly stabbed and seriously injured 33-year-old Mahmud Ibrahim Awad of Khirbat Tuba, a tiny village south of the West Bank city of Hebron, as he was walking home Monday morning. Awad was stabbed in the head, chest and arm.

In another incident, Israeli settlers allegedly opened fire at Palestinians during a funeral in the village of Beit Ommar, north of Hebron, injuring two people. One of them, a 59-year-old, was reported in critical condition. The second suffered injuries in the leg.

The Israeli army, which maintains a presence nearby because the village is on a road often used by settlers, intervened, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the Palestinians, who threw rocks at the settlers after the shooting.

Ghassan Khatib, director of the Palestinian Authority media center, issued a statement holding the Israeli government responsible for what he called "serious and systematic escalation" in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

Khatib called for "urgent international protection to prevent further crimes against the civilians."

Palestinians say attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank have escalated since the bloody slaying of an Israeli family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar last week. 

No one has been arrested yet in connection with the Itamar killings, but Israeli officials and news media blamed Palestinian militants, resulting, Palestinians say, in revenge attacks by settlers. The Israeli government has placed a gag order on the investigation, after rumors that Thai and Filipino guest workers had been rounded up for questioning in the attack.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who strongly denounced the Itamar slayings, also denounced the assumption that a Palestinian was responsible, accusing Israel of convicting Palestinians before the truth behind the crime was known.

"There is an insistence on blaming the Palestinian people before the investigation had revealed the truth about who the killer was," Abbas said, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. "I do not know why this persistence and why they insist on this position even though the facts are not yet known."

Abbas said "there are daily crimes committed by Israeli settlers" against Palestinian civilians, yet no one seems to be talking about them. "Our villages are being attacked on a daily basis, and so our mosques and our homes and our olive trees are cut down," he said. "Israel and the international community should take note of that."

In its weekly Protection of Civilians report, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory recorded 32 incidents in which by settlers caused damage to Palestinian property, including one incident that left eight Palestinians injured.

It said that in the immediate aftermath of the Itamar killings, Israeli settlers rioted in the West Bank village of Awarta, the closest to the settlement, setting fire to tires and assaulting an 18-year-old Palestinian. Additionally, incidents of settler stone-throwing and vandalism were reported in the Ramallah, Nablus, Kalkiliya and Hebron areas of the West Bank, resulting in 13 Palestinian injuries and damage to many vehicles, homes and other private and commercial structures, OCHA said.

OCHA noted that in the days before the killings in Itamar there had already been a sharp increase in the number of settler attacks against Palestinians, beginning March 3 when Israeli settlers held a “day of rage” to protest the Israeli army demolition of a number of unauthorized structures in the Havat Gilad settlement outpost. Settlers rioted and blocked major roads and intersections across the West Bank in what they described as payback in the "price tag" policy targeting Palestinian civilians and property to protest the Israeli army's removal of their illegal outposts.

OCHA said that during the first two weeks of March there were 10 incidents involving Israeli settlers that resulted in 15 injuries to Palestinians, and 34 additional incidents resulting in damage to Palestinian property.

— Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

Photo: Israeli soldiers and Palestinian medics treat Mahmud Ibrahim Awad, 33, after he was allegedly attacked by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Yatta, near the Jewish settlement of Mahon, in the occupied West Bank. Credit: Abed al Hashlamoun / Reuters

Comments

[J.R]

Where is the blood??? The AP photo of this incident shows him prior to medics arrival,head on the same pillow and no blood. The AP report brief:
Mahmud Ibrahim Awad, 33-year-old Palestinian
Mahmud Ibrahim Awad, a 33-year-old Palestinian, lies on the ground after he was attacked with a knife by Israeli settlers near the Jewish settlement of Mahon, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Awad suffered stab wounds, mainly to his chest and hands, and was taken to hospital in Hebron. (AFP/Str)
GO PALLYWOOD!!! Here is the link it's the same guy:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110321/wl_mideast_afp/israelpalestinianconflictsettlers_20110321142453

[ABG]

Don't worry, Hypatia. Israel has been kicking butt in the region for, oh, roughly 63 years.

Yes, the level of discourse from the "peaceful" Palestinian sect is undeniably lame.

[ABG]

@Dean: Seriously. And how quick were the Palestinians calling Israel murderers for a cancer patient dying 2 hours before a daily confrontation against the IDF at the Biilin separation barrier? Answer: About as quickly as the Palestinians told NPR that IDF was committing a genocide in Jenin.

There is no middle ground with the Palestinian leadership. Abbas sits on his duff for 9 months out of a 10 month good faith gesture waiting period, and the whole world (purportedly) goes ballistic.

These are, of course, just a few sad examples of the gross inability to lead the Palestinian populace to a peaceful co-existence with Israel. And the LA Times, among others, eat up the mania and spit back at us a bunch of cancerous half-truths and total discrepancies.

BTW: What's up with Gilad Schalit, LA Times? Does anyone at Times Mirror Square want to investigate the inability of delivering news that matters as opposed to propaganda that obfuscates?

[ABG]

Post by post, the LA Times message board is looking like a bunch of extreme, Israel bashing buffoons, eh, nobiggovduh?

[auro]

So much bias in the news... no wonder people have so much hatred against Israel. Don't understand why people always say Palestinians are the victims, they are not, they are full of hatred and bitterness.

[woobie]

Even lengthy articles on the tragic incident fail to mention the extremely relevant and chillingly ironic fact that Itamar was founded and is largely populated by fanatic Jewish extremists, many of whom believe that the killing of non-Jewish infants is religiously permitted, and sometimes mandated, as discussed in a best-selling book The King’s Torah, which was written by authors from the area and endorsed by numerous rabbis and religious schools (but opposed by most Israelis).

Alison Weir
CounterPunch
March 17, 2011

[woobie]

For now, however, American news reports continue to provide excruciating details about the atrocity. Given the amount of reportage, it is surprising how much significant information is omitted.

For example, none of these reports mention that the location of the murders, Itamar (near Nablus), is an illegal Jewish-only settlement on stolen Palestinian land in the midst of refugees whom Israel pushed off their ancestral land through massacres and ruthless military actions.

Nor do reports mention the frequency with which Israeli settlers beat, occasionally torture, and sometimes murder Palestinians of all ages, burn their crops, and hack down their groves of olive trees, the livelihood of many Palestinian villagers; hundreds, at least, of these trees, have been destroyed by rampaging Israeli settlers.

[woobie]

124 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and over 1,452 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

US media widely and repeatedly reported on the horrific March 11th murder of three small Israeli children and their parents. While no one yet knows who committed this grotesque act, reports presume that the murderers were Palestinian, and for this reason the incident is receiving major attention. Various heads of state, including President Obama, have condemned it.

If it turns out that the murderer or murderers were Israeli, as some previously presumed “terrorists” have turned out to be, or a foreign worker who had previously threatened the family over unpaid wages, as some reports from the area suggest, it is likely that coverage of the tragic incident will quickly vanish from U.S. headlines

[Dean Blake]

Abbas is quick to point out that there is yet no proof of the Arab murder of the Fogel family in a locked, secured compound on the Sabbath, but then accuses the settlers of doing crimes 'daily' without naming the crimes or the perpetrtors!! hypocrite.

[nobiggovduh]

Day by day the Israelis are looking more like uncivilized religious fanatics.

[xexon]

"This is just more propaganda to take away attention from the family that was murdered by Palestinians and the 50 rocket attack just last weekend from Hamas terrorists"

Posted by: atrayu

What evidence do you have that it was a Palestinian that butchered that family? The answer is you don't and you're making assumptions for the sake of political gain and hatemongering.

Word on the street is it was an Asian servant that murdered that family. Over a wage dispute.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march162011/itamar-suspect.php

x

[walt kovacs]

the la times

official mouthpiece of terrorists and printer of pallywood pictures

good going

[woobie]

It is about time the US boycotted Israel and ceased its daily $8 million+ in 'aid' and the whole world could see and know what the Palestinians in the OPT have been enduring at the merciless hands of the Israeli Zionists and begin to understand the resentment.

[Hypatia]

Waiting for the Israelis to demand "international protection" against Palestinian terrorists, in the wake of the bloody slaughter of an Israeli family by one of them? Waiting for the Times' FRONT PAGE coverage of this atrocity?

(See the pictures on-line of the father holding his infant daughter, both with their throats slashed, and two other children the same way?
Can you put yourself in the place of the other children returning home after visiting friends, and finding -- THAT!

Do you remember the Times' FRONT PAGE picture of a bereaved mother after her daughter died in a suicide bombing? Only the picture was of the PALESTINIAN mother of the terrorist, not of the Israeli woman victim of the suicide bombing. Tells you where the Times' sympathies lie.

[rupert]

How about international protection for Israelis from rockets fired at their civiliians from Lebanon and Gaza

================

It's not about right and wrong. It's about Arabs having more oil.

[MissMarple]

The rockets from Hamas, have nothing to do with the settlements, the attacks on Palestinians by settlers, or the attacks on settlers by Palestinians. Fatah, that controls the West Bank, does not speak to Hamas, does not share their attitude toward peace talks, or their philosophy of Palestinian Statehood. The Palestinian Authority is Fatah.

While building in Jerusalem proper seems to be a legitimate move for Israel, building in clearly outlying areas doesn't seem reasonable. However, this was worked out in 2000, and then Arafat walked away from the deal. Israelis are stuck on that.

If Fatah can get Hamas (first to not kill them) to agree that at the completion of an agreement, they will agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, and Israel will recognize Palestine in its agreed to borders, then there can be an agreement.

[Joe]

@Michael................ That's easy. Just ask the illegal settlers to withdraw from the Pals' lands..................enough said..............

[Michael]

How about international protection for Israelis from rockets fired at their civiliians from Lebanon and Gaza

[atrayu]

This is just more propaganda to take away attention from the family that was murdered by Palestinians and the 50 rocket attack just last weekend from Hamas terrorists.

[Joe]

@ Mike K...............Not as much as the illegal settlers'.........Hmmmm!!