Monday, July 29, 2002

Hebron Settlers Attack Palestinian
Jewish settlers went on a rampage here today after the funeral of an ambushed soldier, killing a teenage girl, attacking a Palestinian neighborhood, battling the Israeli police and beating several journalists.

The trouble began when Palestinians, confined to their homes, and the settlers threw stones at each other during the funeral procession for Staff Sgt. Elazar Liebovich, himself a settler in this always tense city, where about 400 Jewish settlers live among 100,000 Palestinians.

The settlers here are among the most religious and ideologically driven, and clashes are frequent.

Sergeant Liebovich, 21, was one of four Israelis slain in a roadside ambush on a settler's bypass highway south of here on Friday evening.

The violence began today as the sergeant's funeral procession left the biblical Tomb of the Patriarchs, revered by Jews and Muslims, heading through the narrow streets of the Old City toward the cemetery.

The Arab market was open in the morning but, fearing trouble, the army — a constant presence in Hebron long before the current crackdown — imposed a curfew.

Settlers and Palestinians began throwing stones, witnesses said. Then the settlers began firing, first in the air, then toward the Palestinian houses. Some soldiers in uniform, apparently comrades of Sergeant Liebovich, joined in, the witnesses said.

Nivin Jamjoum, 14, was struck in the head by a bullet as she stood on a second-floor balcony of her family's home and died instantly, said her brother, Marwan, 26, who was shot in the leg.

The settlers attacked the area around the Arab market, which is close to their main enclave, breaking car windows with iron bars, trying to smash the vendors' tables and setting a house on fire, the witnesses said. They fought with the Israeli police, reportedly injuring 15 officers. Hospital officials said nine other Palestinians had been injured, including an 8-year-old boy who was stabbed.

The settlers sent a message this morning on the elaborate beepers that journalists here carry warning them not to go to the funeral because they would not be welcome. They were not.

Hanan Shlein, a reporter from the Israeli newspaper Maariv, saw the crowd attack a photographer at the first outbreak of rock throwing — a tall man he thought was an American freelancer — and beat him badly, smashing his cameras before he was rescued by the army. Then Mr. Schlien himself was roughly ordered to leave by settlers.

A lttle while later, a photographer from another Israeli paper, Yediot Ahronot, was beaten as he tried to take pictures near the marketplace, and his equipment was broken. A reporter from the same newspaper who tried to help him was also beaten.

"The mood is very hard," Moishe Ben Zimara, a settler leader, said later in the afternoon. "Today is the anniversary of the 1929 massacre here, and two hours ago we buried another victim." He referred to an Arab rampage in 1929 that killed 67 people in the small Jewish community here at that time.

"Again we see the murderers, the Arab Palestinians who are threatening the entire free world, and the feelings are very hard," he said. "We want the deportation of all the Arabs from Yatta."

Settlers, many with assault rifles slung over their shoulders, strolled along the otherwise empty streets while clumps of weary looking paratroopers, who are usually on duty here, rested near their vehicles.

The settlers here, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, are among the most militant in the West Bank. Many wore blue T-shirts with white lettering on the back reading, in Hebrew: "No Arabs — No Attacks."

Much in the Jewish part of the city commemorates not only the 1929 killings, but more recent deaths. The area by the Arab market is marked by a huge sign, in English and Hebrew, proclaiming it "Gross Square — in memory of Aaron Gross, murdered by Arab terrorists in 1983."

In Nablus today, thousands of Palestinians defied the army's 39-day curfew of their city, filling the streets and opening markets and shops. It was the first act of Palestinian civil disobedience against the military occupation that has virtually shut down life in the West Bank for more than a month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/international/middleeast/29MIDE.html

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