Too easy on settler crime

[Ognir]

In the early days of Israeli occupation in the territories, Jewish settler leaders promised a life of "coexistence" with the Palestinian population, and they even employed Palestinian laborers in construction and service jobs.

In recent years, as radical elements in the settlements and outposts have proliferated and become more powerful, the coexistence approach often seems to make way for a violent struggle that aims to deprive the Palestinians of their land.

Jews who presume to be upholding the duty of settling the land openly discuss their intention of making the lives of Arab residents a misery and pushing them out of what they call Judea and Samaria.

In the last four weeks, the media have reported a series of grave incidents, most of them in the Hebron Hills area.

Four Palestinians from the village of Khirbet Sussia were beaten by masked settlers while herding their sheep. One of them, a 57-year-old woman, was hospitalized. The Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court released two suspects in the assault to house arrest.

Last week Palestinian police sources reported that two improvised mortar shells, bearing the legends "Sharon 1" and "Sharon 2," were fired from the settlement of Bracha to the village of Burin, near Nablus.

Last weekend a Palestinian from the village of Samua in the southern Hebron Hills complained that he had been beaten by a group of settlers from Asael. Police who found the man tied to a post in the settlement took him to the hospital for treatment and arrested one of the settlers.

Most offenses against Palestinians are not reported at all because in many cases the victims do not bother to call the police or file a complaint against the attackers.

This is in part because cases are usually closed, for various reasons; even those that are heard by a court usually end in acquittal or a light sentence.

Commander Avshalom Peled, the chief of police in Hebron - a center of anti-Palestinian violence - recently expressed the attitude of the Judea and Samaria District Police toward Jewish crime.

This high-ranking officer said that "the settlers are etched in the public consciousness as those who create disturbances, but the majority of the settler public is quiet and only a minority among them disturbs the peace."

By contrast, Peled described the human rights organizations that try to protect the Palestinians as belonging to the "militant left" and said their activities "might be grave and dangerous."

As long as there is no political agreement on the fate of the occupied territories, the State of Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Palestinian population there. Just as the Defense Ministry allocates forces and funds to protect the settlers, including trespassers and illegal builders, the Public Security Ministry must give the police the resources they need to protect law-abiding Palestinian citizens. The law-enforcement agencies, including the prosecution and the courts, must treat Jewish criminal behavior as severely as they do Palestinian crimes.

One cannot expect the Palestinian Authority to deal harshly with those who attack Jews when Jewish violence against Palestinians is tolerated.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000239.html