West Bank – Palestinians say residents of a West Bank village captured and briefly held more than a dozen Jewish settlers after the two groups traded blows, accusing the group of having thrown rocks at farmers tending their fields in the occupied West Bank.
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An Associated Press photographer saw 13 settlers in a building Tuesday, most with signs of beating injuries and some tied up.
After about two hours, the settlers were handed to the Israeli military. The military had no immediate comment.
Palestinian villagers Abdel Hakim Wadi and Ziad Odeh say the incident began around noon near the village of Qusra when settlers attacked the farmers in an olive grove, injuring a Palestinian boy.
They say other villagers soon arrived and gave chase. Odeh says villagers grabbed about 20 settlers.
Wadi says the villagers notified the media and then the Israeli army.
The incident added to simmering tensions between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers in the West Bank with the United States struggling to usher forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that resumed in July after a three-year halt.
The Israelis, who appeared to be aged between 15 and 30, were detained in an uninhabited house on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Qusra after what Palestinians said was a settler assault on local farmers.
“I was tending my fields when a group of around 30 settlers came down the hill and attacked us with stones,” Palestinian farmer Mahmoud Tubasi told Reuters.
“We chased them and they fled to a house under construction. They were cornered there and some of the people here beat them – they had attacked us on our own land.”
A Reuters witness said the villagers beat 15 Israeli settlers with their fists and sticks, causing some to bleed from the head and mouth.
The Palestinians later released the group, whom they said came from a nearby Jewish settlement, to Israeli soldiers, after forcing them pass one-by-one though a gauntlet of residents who rained blows on them.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ANTI-ARAB VANDALISM IN JAFFA
In another incident, vandals slashed car tires and scrawled “Arabs=Murderers” and “No co-existence!” on a wall in Jaffa, which has a large Arab population and is part of Tel Aviv on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
There has been a spate of similar attacks on Christian holy sites, Arab and Palestinian communities in recent months by what Israeli authorities generally suspect are hard-line nationalist settlers.
Violence in the West Bank has increased in recent months, and at least 19 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed in the territory since peace negotiations were revived. A 40-day survey, published two weeks ago by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, documented 27 cases of settler attacks on Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season last fall.
Palestinians seek to create a state in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip – an enclave ruled by Hamas Islamists opposed to the U.S. peace effort – with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel captured the areas in the 1967 Middle East war and pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005. Palestinians say Israel’s settlements on occupied land – which most countries consider illegal – will deny them a viable state.
Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday wide gaps remained in the peace talks after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest visit and he cast doubt over the chances of reaching a final accord by an April target.
Israel cites historical and biblical links to the West Bank and Jerusalem and says it intends to keep major settlement blocs under any future peace agreement.
I’m sure that AP photographer will be fired immediately for daring to say that Arabs did anything wrong.
Sounds like they are lucky to be alive. A Jew doesn’t act, the way these settlers act. I don’t believe any responsible Rabbi condones this behavior.
the settlers won’t take this lightly, the Arab village will be burned in retaliation
As long as there’s settlers there won’t be peace… Period.
Let them kill each-other in this competition of “my hillside is the holy one and promised by God” but keep IDF out of it when your life is in danger.
Thank God this bunch of hooligans was caught! They are lucky to have gotten out alive.
Tag Mechir = bunch of animals
I don’t know. It still sounds like the Arabs are playing victim here, as usual. When Jews are attacked, isn’t it obvious that it’s they’re fault?! (I’m being sarcastic people, before you start berating me).
These settlers just eant a pitur (release) from the army
I don’t like when people condone wrong behavior on the part of fellow Jews.
But it’s rather disturbing how almost everyone here is basing their reaction on the Palestinian version of events—which may not be terribly objective or accurate (as with their version of most of history). What is this—Haaretz?
Do all the settlers from that area have long unkempt hair and look like they just smoked a joint?
Don’t jump to conclusions about what may or may not have happened based on accounts by just one side.
Since when are you guys shocked that the settlers would go and attack Arabs. Do you guys understand that their women and children their brothers and fathers are getting stabbed, shot and bludgeoned to death on a fairly regular basis.
If the blacks would be killing Jews in a monthly basis in Brooklyn would you hesitate to slash some tires????? Be sensitive to how Jews are being slaughtered like lambs in Israel you morons. Fight back!!!
The Israelis in this incident live in the area and should be allowed to walk wherever they want just like Arabs do anywhere in Israel. Israelis are often nervous and scared to even drive through a predominant Arab neighborhood let alone walk in one so everyone should respect these guys. Perhaps the Arabs initiated the violence.
What’s sad to see is that the Israelis were simply completely overpowered and bullied, this mustn’t be the case ever again.