Violence flared last week after Israeli riot police forcibly evicted some 250 settlers from a disputed Palestinian-owned home that the settlers had occupied last year. Tensions have been high ever since an Israeli High Court ruling last month that ordered the settlers to vacate the building.
Following Thursday’s eviction, settlers from the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement went on what the Israeli press has described as a “rampage” against Palestinians. They shot at Palestinians, set fire to homes, cars and olive groves, and defaced mosques and graves. Hebron resident Hosni Abu Seifan was among the Palestinian victims of settler gunfire.
HOSNI ABU SEIFAN: [translated] The settlers attacked us at the house and fired live bullets on us. With a handgun, they shot my father. Then, later, they set the house on fire. There was only a few meters between us, maybe one or one-and-a-half meters, and he probably had his hand on the gun, too, when he shot my father.
The shots fired by the settlers at Hosni Abu Seifan and his father were captured on video. The footage shows a settler firing a handgun at the two Palestinian men at close range. The video was shot by a family member of the injured men. He was using a camera distributed by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem that has given more than a hundred video cameras to Palestinian families across the West Bank so they can record violence by settlers and the Israeli army.
The settlers caught on camera have reportedly turned themselves in to the Hebron police. But the footage caused a minor stir inside Israel, and outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned the settlers’ actions, saying they constituted a “pogrom.”
Shooting Back is a project that B’Tselem has been running for the past two years. It’s basically a video distribution—camera distribution project. B’Tselem give out small video cameras to Palestinian civilians living in what they call hotspots, that is, next to settlements, next to checkpoints, next to military installations, next to the so-called separation barrier, basically areas where they know there are frequent human rights violations, but which usually go undocumented.
And the basic idea is to be able to inform the Israeli public, first of all, but also the international public, of what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A picture is worth more than a thousand words. The success of this project can be measured at a time like this when a video clip filmed by one of the family members of the three Palestinians who were shot, Jamal Abu Seifan, he filmed the clip himself and was able to reach local media in Israel and international media.
The problem that the settlers are living in the heart of the city, that means they are living between, arround, 200,000 Palestinians who are living very close to the settlers. And the settlers, they don’t like the Arabs, who are very close to them. And the settler—the Palestinians, they see those settlers are occupying Hebron. So around, now, 500 settlers are living in all the city of Hebron. They are occupying some houses there.
The army are closing many roads because the settlers are there.
Many Palestinian houses, they use a ladder to go to their homes, because the main door is welded by the army. Many other Palestinian houses and families, they need to pass four or five checkpoints in 100 meters to go into their homes. So the daily life there, it’s very, very hard.
The people are suffering daily from the settlers’ presence in the city. They are not against a Jewish presence, but they are against the radical and the fanatic settlers who are living and declaring Hebron as an Israeli city.
There are two laws in Hebron. The Israeli government, they implement the military law on the Palestinians, and they civic law on the settlers, which means double standard.
And the settlers in Hebron, they are mainly armed with guns or with weapons. And it’s very, very important, you know, from the international world and from the Israeli people to say something about the settlers’ weapons. It’s very, very important to take off the weapons from them, especially because they are very, very violent people, and they believe in violence.
Issa Amro and Mich’ael Zupraner talking with Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Issa Amro, B’Tselem field worker.
Mich’ael Zupraner, works with B’Tselem’s Shooting Back project and runs an experimental internet/TV channel called HEB2.
– from democracynow. 10 Dec 2008.