Palestinian victims of violence by Israeli settlers have been given a valuable weapon to bring their attackers to justice, writes Sheera Frenkel

11 July 2008
The Times

The footage is shaky and amateur but the image is no less disturbing. A Palestinian man, arrested by Israeli soldiers, kneels on the ground bound by his wrists to a wooden electrical pole. Suddenly a Jewish settler strides into view and levels a kick at the Arab detainee before his assailant is restrained by a soldier.

For years these incidents, allegedly committed by Jewish settlers against Palestinians living in the West Bank, have been recorded by human rights groups but rarely proven. That is until an initiative by the Israeli B'Tselem human rights group, which distributed 100 cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank recently. The equipment has been used to capture dozens of attacks by settlers.

"Before nothing would have happened, and no one would have known," said Methat Abu Karsh, the victim of the latest assault.

Attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have been carried out for years, said Mr Abu Karsh, 30, who remembered similar incidents against his father and uncles. This time fellow Palestinians were close enough to capture the moment on video.

"The camera is our only weapon, and it could be the best one we have," he said, rubbing his bandaged arms and head. "I was bound for nearly 45 minutes, all the while I was hurt, and a rope pulled at my hands and throat," he said, adding that the settlers caught him while he was trying to put out a fire in the fields.

"They claimed we had started the fire and that we were attacking the settlement. Police arrested us even though we said we were the victims."

No action was taken by the authorities until the video of the attack on Mr Abu Karsh was released. The police arrested two people from the Samoa settlement for the attack.

Cameras seem incongruous in the biblical landscape of the southern part of the West Bank, where Palestinian villages dot the valleys below the modern Jewish settlements. The images documented by the cameras however have changed the rules of the game for many Palestinians - releasing graphic images to a shocked Israeli public.

Last month a video camera was used to record the attack by four masked settlers, armed with bats and clubs, on Thamam al-Nawaja, 57, and her 61-year-old husband. It took weeks for police to arrest a settler who they believed was involved, marking the first time that the Israeli authorities have followed up on the dozens of complaints filed by the al-Nawajas.

Ms al-Nawaja said that she hoped the arrest would stop the attacks on her family for the coming weeks. She said that the family has adopted the camera as a permanent fixture.

"If they kill us, at least it will be filmed. At least it will upset people. It will not disappear into the silence," she said.

A report by the Israeli Yesh Din human rights group found that one in ten investigations into attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank resulted in an indictment. Police said that they investigated every complaint filed to the authorities.

"The settlers run the show out here. The police, the army, they are just going through the paces. The only real weapon we have to fight the settlers is our camera - and the media," Ms al-Nawaja said.

For some settlers the attacks are retaliation for the murders of hundreds of Israelis during the first and second intifadas at the hands of Palestinian militants.

"The Government is afraid to do anything so we do it. Most of what the media prints about us is lies, generated by the Arab propaganda machine," said a settler from Susia, who refused to give her name or to comment on the incidents.

Several other settlers also refused to discuss the matter but said that a small group of young, extremist settlers were disgracing the entire population.

Ezra Nawi, an activist with the Ta'ayush organisation, said that he has witnessed settler attacks against the Palestinians since the 1990s. "For years, our complaints fell on deaf ears. These cameras have changed everything, they are forcing action and giving us new tools to fight against this violence," he said.

About 2.5 million Palestinians and 275,000 Jews live in the West Bank, which was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. The current Palestinian leadership is negotiating for a Palestinian state based on the prewar borders.

Israel has encouraged the colonisation of the West Bank by settlers although the public remains divided over the policy.

Non-governmental bodies that work within the West Bank have reported an increase in settler violence in the past year. According to the OCHA, the UN chief aid group in the territories, there have been 76 cases of settler violence in 2007, with four deaths this year compared to no deaths in the previous two years.

Palestinian aid groups also reported unusual tactics used by settlers in recent months, including the manufacturing of crude rockets by Jewish theological students in the Yitzhar settlement.

Seven of the rockets, which were built according to instructions downloaded from the internet, have been launched on the nearby Palestinian city of Nablus in recent weeks. No one was injured and police have arrested several of the students for questioning.